I know this stupid blog has readers across the country, so I must ask our Milwaukee correspondents what they make of the Stradivarius theft — and subsequent recovery — in their fair city.

I first heard about it via this New York Times story, which did not disappoint:

It should have been one of those nights musicians live for. Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for nearly two decades, had just closed a chamber concert in his own “Frankly Music” series with Messiaen’s hushed, eerily intense “Quartet for the End of Time.” Mr. Almond drew the graceful, ringing high notes of the finale from his prized 1715 Stradivarius violin, producing a tone so intensely focused that the audience in the Wisconsin Lutheran College’s 388-seat auditorium sat in awed silence for 20 seconds before applauding.

But the glow of the moment evaporated quickly, once Mr. Almond, 49, stepped into the college art center’s parking lot at 10:20 p.m. Monday, his violin carefully swaddled against the subzero temperatures and minus-25-degree wind chill. And as he neared his car, a figure stepped up to him and shot him with a stun gun.

It happened in a matter of seconds: Mr. Almond dropped the violin, the attacker scooped it up and jumped into a late 1980s or early ’90s maroon or burgundy minivan, where an accomplice was waiting to speed away.

Based on that early information, I figured the violin was already halfway around the world, bound for a Russian, Chinese or perhaps a Japanese mobster’s bunker, there to lie in suspended animation, decay setting in for lack of proper care and play, until it was found years later, maybe when the mobster’s junkie nephew tried to pawn it.

I mean, clearly, this was the work of professionals, no?

No. Or, at least, not very skilled ones. The instrument was recovered in Milwaukee, in the attic of a home, and two guys, one of them named Universal Allah, are in custody. Neither one looks anything like like Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons, which is the only acceptable face for this crime, IMO — European, faded good looks and a deep appreciation for classical music as played by stringed instruments. Hell, I’d believe Hannibal Lecter stole the thing before these guys.

What, do you suppose, is the story here? More will be revealed, I expect.

Alan informed me that most Stradivari and similar violins are technically owned by zillionaires, who form buyers’ syndicates and lend them to worthy musicians to play. Makes sense. They really need to be played to stay in shape, just as pearls need to be worn to stay pretty. I expect Frank Almond will continue to play this one, but he’ll be walked to his car by orchestra hall security now.

So, then. In the bloggage today, a friend sent this along, one of those great data maps on the most pleasant places to live. I notice that when I moved from Fort Wayne to Detroit, I gained eight “pleasant” days a year along with a radically higher homicide rate, so hey! Win! The most pleasant places are all in coastal or near-coastal California, the least-pleasant in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming and some place called East of Cedarville, Calif. Discuss. (The fact North Dakota isn’t contributing to the least-pleasant list is a mystery to me, too.)

I only read two sections of the Detroit Free Press when it arrives on Sunday, so I missed the Great Cleavage Debate, which followed this story, which is probably good, because if I’d read this sentence cold, my head might have exploded:

Cleavage is a powerful, powerful thing.

The story became a journalism story, mainly because of a poll attached about who has the best cleavage, blah blah blah. That’s not what interests me today. Rather, I don’t think I’m working with the same definition as everybody else. What, exactly, is cleavage? I thought cleavage occurred when you had enough breast heft that, when displayed in a low-cut neckline, you actually had a cleft. By that measure, two of the three women in the accompanying photo don’t actually have cleavage at all. Am I wrong? Don’t misunderstand, they all look great, but in that picture, only Sofia Vergara is rocking cleavage. Amy Adams has a lovely top half, but she’s slight-breasted enough, in the ’70s style, to be free of it. And Lupita Nyong’o has one of those enviable rock-hard fashion bodies that makes every dress look fantastic, in large part because she doesn’t have much boobage at all.

You guys take 20 or 30 minutes, examine the picture, maybe do some outside research, and get back to me on that. I have a weekend to start. Hope yours is great.

Somehow I got sucked down a Woody Allen rabbit hole today. I really wish that hadn’t happened, because it makes my brain spin like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

When I was a columnist, I sometimes got thoroughly sick of having to have an opinion about everything, and the Woody Allen situation today is one of those things that I’m simply refusing to engage with, like a late movie you’re just waiting to fall asleep in front of. No matter how many times I turn it over in my head, I come up with the same conclusions:

1) Someone is lying, and it is impossible to know who that is.
2) In our country, when we’re not sure about someone’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, we don’t convict.
3) Of all the children in the world who are abused every day, whatever did or didn’t happen to Dylan Farrow constitutes getting off easy, as these things go. (A friend of mine is a therapist; her small talk turns your hair white.)
4) Speaking truth is important. So is healing.

Someone brought up something the other day, in connection with a completely different matter: Why do we spend so much time looking at what doesn’t work, instead of what does? If the numbers of abused children are as high as we’re told, surely not every single one of them is so traumatized that the sight of their abuser makes them vomit. What works? Is it therapy, revenge, inner strength? Surely there’s something good to be plucked from this rancid shitshow other than I believe this one and that one is lying.

By the way, I always separate art from the artist. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anything good to watch, listen to or experience. Artists are frequently shits. This is not a secret.

That said, here’s a fascinating XOJane roundup of all the well-known artists who have gone for young girls. It’s sort of sick, actually.

Bloggage? OK, sure. Of all the things I’ve read about Philip Seymour Hoffman since Sunday, this is the second-worst:

One continuing mystery of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death is this: Why was he in such abject need of a shoddy, solitary and dangerous chemical high when he knew the pure joy that comes with just being with your kids?

And if you’re wondering what’s the worst, it’s this thing, by the same writer:

As a crime scene investigator emerged to fetch a brown paper evidence bag, photographers fired off their flashes as they had when taking shots of Hoffman at openings and awards ceremonies. The light glinted strobe-like off the brick façade and the air momentarily filled with the paparazzi sound of camera shutters.

Ugh.

OK, so. We got another six inches of snow today, so quickly that I let Wendy out and let her back in five minutes later and she had a measurable snowfall on her back. So what did I do? Waited until it tapered off, fired up the snow blower and moved it off the damn driveway.

This shit is getting old. At least, it’s making me feel that way.

My Russian teacher and I were marveling at the news during the last winter Olympics, that the next one would be in Sochi. It’s a resort at a fairly southerly latitude, for starters, and, well, it’s Russia. The country has galloped ahead on the usual emergent-economy trajectory, but an Olympic Games is a herculean task to mount, and this isn’t China.

Turns out we might have been on to something:

Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.

My favorite is this:

My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, “do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.”

That’s from Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune.

I wonder if any of us really realizes how much safer our so-called nanny state keeps us, by insisting on things like animal control and water purification. I remember when we were in Argentina a decade ago — hardly a third-world country — and coming across broken sidewalks, which may or may not be under repair. No orange cones, no caution tape, just whoopsie daisy, there’s an 8-inch drop.

We should let the market decide whether water is safe to splash on your face, don’t you think?

So. I was driving to Ann Arbor today, listening to Tom Jones’ version of “Sixteen Tons,” and it reminded me of something I read a while ago — that Jones is married to the same girl he chose back in the hometown, pre-famous days. A quick Google, and what do you know: They’ve been married since before I was born:

“We grew up together, come from the same place, have the same sense of humour. That has a lot to do with it. How do you walk away from somebody that you get along so well with? What’s the point?

“And we do still have a lot of laughs together. The first thing my wife asks me when I get home is: ‘Have you heard any good jokes lately?’”

It doesn’t exactly sound like passion — he admits to having had many infidelities and a long-term affair with Mary Wilson — but after all this time, more of a tea cozy of a marriage, warm and comforting and familiar. She looks like an ordinary girl from Wales who married a handsome boy and then found herself being swept up by his crazy career.

Remember: The only two people qualified to judge the quality of a marriage are the people in it.

Guess what we’re doing tonight? Waiting for snow. Yes! Snow! Quite a lot of it, too, although not as much as some. Then another deep freeze.

At least it’s a short month.

For a few weeks now, I’ve had a draft on my WordPress dashboard that reads “crudity Seth MacFarlane all horror movies.” I don’t think it’s going to get written. As I recall, I started jotting notes while watching the first 20 minutes of “Ted,” the film MacFarlane wrote and directed, but realized if I was going to say anything intelligent about it, I’d have to watch the rest of it, and I couldn’t do that.

It occurs to me that, day after day, Mondays are the hardest to come up with something to say here. Not much happens to me on a Monday, unless you could two gingerly minces around the bock on the treacherous icy lumpy fuck, as well as a few phone calls and 12 million emails. I have but two things to offer today, one stolen from Eric Zorn’s link roundup, but a subject I’ve always wondered about: How do they make the yellow first-down line in televised football? Like this.

And here’s a seven-minute Philip Seymour Hoffman highlight reel, with NSFW language but some of his most memorable scenes:

I loved “The Savages.” Think I’ll Netflix it tonight, if it’s Netflixable.

For now, eh, a weak effort and I’m out.

I guess I’ll be watching the Super Bowl tonight — confession: Sometimes I knock out Monday’s blog on Sunday afternoon — but I’ll be thinking about Philip Seymour Hoffman, whom I suspect was just Phil to his friends. (The three-name thing is probably a quirk of the Screen Actors Guild, because there was already a member named Phil Hoffman. Same with race horses.)

Anyway, I agreed with this observation by David Weigel, that what made Hoffman so great was his versatility:

He was the rare actor who could be cast in a key role without giving away what kind of character he was playing. …You see James Woods in a movie, you know he’s going to end up wearing the black hat. You saw Hoffman — and you had no clue.

That’s right. Lots of people mention “Capote,” but that one didn’t stick with me; it was so much about the voice. Truman Capote was sort of a human cartoon, and as with any cartoon, it’s mostly painted in primary colors.

My favorite Hoffman roles are far darker, with “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” at the top of the list; he plays a traitorous son who betrays his parents for money, a real train wreck of a guy, but as with all his roles, he half makes you root for him. There’s a scene in that one where he visits a high-end drug house — drug apartment, this being Manhattan — that serves as an oasis for well-to-do users. You pay not only for the dope, but for the shooting services and a room to nod in. We see him stretched out on the bed in his underwear (Hoffman had no vanity about his lumpy body), staring at the ceiling with dope eyes, and honestly, it’s all I could think of when I heard the news.

But there was also “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” and “The Big Lebowski.” He played a feckless WASP in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and a WASP-hater in “Charlie Wilson’s War” — see his big scene in the Dave Weigel link, above. Also, “The Savages” and “Moneyball,” and he was the only thing that made “Pirate Radio” worth two hours of your time. Like Chris Cooper, he brought authority to his parts. I saw Cooper play, in the course of a few years, an oil wildcatter, a horse trainer, an FBI agent and an orchid thief, and if I’d met him on the street outside the theater showing “Seabiscuit,” I’d have asked him how to get a horse to bend to the right. Put Hoffman in a baseball uniform, and oh, hey, I didn’t know you were manager of the Oakland A’s, Phil.

Goddamn fucking heroin.

Anyway: Twelve great Hoffman performances, with video clips. David Edelstein on the actor and the man. Feel free to add your own.

Remember when Super Bowl halftime shows were put on by Up With People? Deadspin remembers.

Meanwhile, it looks like another character-builder of a week. It snowed half the day Saturday, then switched to rain, a lot of it. The new wet snow, the melting of the old stuff and the rain left huge slushy puddles everywhere, and then what happened? The temperature dropped, and will stay low all week. Which means what we thought was icy lumpy fuck? This is icy lumpy fuck. It’s awful.

But every day, the days get longer. And now it’s February. Onward.

I read Rebecca Burns’ interesting explication of Atlanta’s snowpocalypse, which is also a criticism of sprawl and bad urban planning, while I was sitting at the car-repair place. My car has entered its nickel-and-dime years, but as long as the nickels aren’t too numerous, I figure it’s worth hanging on to.

It was a long repair, though, and stretched over the lunch hour. While the garage is smack in the middle of a highly developed stretch of strip malls, it appeared the only non-fast food option was a pizza joint about half a block away. I zipped the Parka of Tribulation (its rebranded name; I think it sounds more biblical than “parka of misery”) and headed out.

Good lord, but walking in St. Clair Shores is a royal-ass pain. It’s one of those suburbs with older roots, but that really blossomed in the glorious age of the automobile. Why would anyone walk anywhere when you can get into your shiny chariot of freedom and drive? Last summer, when I needed to get there after a two-day repair, I decided to ride my bike — it’s only a few miles. But there simply wasn’t a way to do it that didn’t involve taking a road that would be risky to life and limb. So I ended up going all the way on the sidewalk (Harper Avenue, for you locals), which I absolutely hate to do, but why not? It’s not like anyone walks on them.

Certainly they’re not all cleared of snow, as I discovered today. Between the biting winds, the snow piles and the agog looks of passing motorists — looky there, someone’s walkin’ — I’d had just about enough of my winter stroll almost as soon as it started.

But the car steers correctly now, at least. Just in time for another snow squall. More coming, too.

New Orleans in two weeks. It’s going to be in the 70s there this weekend.

Wendy’s having a fierce chew at my feet as I write this, really working her Nylabone down to a nub. It seems to scratch a deep itch for her. The world is more hospitable to her now that the temperature has risen above 20 degrees. We took a longer-than-normal walk today and she enjoyed every step.

I don’t have much more. How’s your weekend looking? Kate will be starting another physics project — a cardboard boat — and there’s a party in Detroit for Ragnarok. I’ve been told it’s mainly an excuse to burn shit, so I’m really looking forward to it. The weather says it’ll be snowing. Quel surprise.

Have a great one, everybody. It sure took us long enough to get here.

I’m trying to avoid sugar these days. Not going paleo or low-carb, I’m eating fruit and occasional yogurt and, OK, dessert if someone sticks a piece of cake under my nose. But I’m trying to hold the line on the winter pudge that inevitably piles up this time of year, and it seemed the easiest way.

I had to stop working out as often as I had been when I blew out my knee, and the good news is? Haven’t gained back any of the 15 I lost over the summer. Yay, me. Twenty to go.

However: GOD, SUGAR IS WONDERFUL AND I MISS IT SO. I come from a long line of Germans, and we love our pastry and whipped cream and pie and ice cream and yes, even cheap-ass cookies like Oreos and the ones made by Keebler elves and especially those sold by Girl Scouts. I bought some Meyer lemons the other day. Normal people do that and think about cocktails and salad dressings. I thought of a Meyer lemon cake in one of my Chez Panisse cookbooks, and it took all my willpower not to make one.

Although I might this weekend.

How do people not get a sweet tooth? And once they have one, how do they let it go? I’ve heard people say it takes anywhere from a couple-three days to six weeks to stop craving sugar at the end of every meal, but all I can say is, it ain’t easy. I pour myself a big glass of water for dessert. I drink a cup of coffee. I leave the kitchen. And if I wait long enough, the protein of the meal works its way into my bloodstream and I stop thinking two little squares of dark chocolate would really hit the spot. But it takes a while.

Some people say, “I don’t crave sweets, but I just love bacon.” I love that, too. Bacon is sugar-cured, you know, most of it, anyway. Even if it weren’t, I reject the either-or nature of being either a fat or a sweets person. The two complement one another — whipped cream is sweetened fat, cake is sweetened fat, and sugar alone is sort of gross. As the kids say, it’s all love.

Don’t give me that crap about flour being sugar, too. It’s a carbohydrate, but unless it has raspberry jam slathered on it, it doesn’t hit the spot.

I’m not sorry. I’m just bereft.

It’s winter, hibernation season. All I want to do is eat a big piece of pie — maybe two — and crawl into bed with a couple good books. There to read and doze and let visions of sugarplums dance in my head.

So. A few words about sugar at midweek.

A little bloggage?

Guess who’s going to be in Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad? Bob Dylan.

Speaking of sugar, it’s the Uncle Sugar bounce!

And now I’m done. Good Thursday, all.

OK, I’m declaring it. The worst of the cold is over. Has to be. On Friday it will be 30 degrees. It will also be the last day of January. As my friend Mark used to say, “If you get to February, it’s practically over.” That’s not true, Groundhog Day foolishness to the contrary, but it’s close enough to true that you can fool yourself about it for a while. Then it’s Valentine’s Day, the traditional time to have an ice storm at this latitude, and then it’s just a fortnight until the shortest month of the year is over, and it’s March. First St. Patrick’s Day, then the first day of spring really arrives, along around the three-week mark. Then opening day, the first green mist on the trees.

Of course, this being Michigan, there will be a few snows in there, too. Last year I had my eye surgery on May 2. The spring leading up to it was awful, and the warmth arrived just as I was spending five days staring through my padded toilet seat.

So: Just (potentially) three more months of winter! But you see how I chopped it up like that? It’s just a series of fortnights and little mini-holidays.

But the -7 bullshit of this morning? OVER. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Seems like a day for a You Fuckers roundup. I was in a toleratin’-it mood until 3 p.m., when I called the bakery to find out what was left before I trudged over there, and discovered the entire place had been cleaned out. Time for some fuckers.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the jihad against Wendy Davis, aka “Abortion Barbie,” who is said to have slept her way into marriage to an affluent man, who then had to “raise their kids alone” while she went off to Harvard Law school. The slut! How dare she…do what conservatives counsel poor women to do, i.e., boost her socioeconomic status through marriage? Well — it shouldn’t surprise you to learn this — it turns out that it’s not entirely true. So: Fuckers.

And then there’s the National Review, specifically Kathryn Jean Lopez, abortion warrior, and this thing. I think Roy Edroso said it best: Put the family through hell with your ghoulish wingnut theology, then weep crocodile tears over them. Fuckers.

Not part of the roundup: Madonna, what are you doing? Asks Lindy West.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

While we’re on the subject of olive oil, I actually have a couple of bottles around the place at the moment. My cheap-o go-to is Costco’s big bottle. I think it’s around $12. But while doing my final holiday shopping, I saw Colavita on sale in the Eastern Market, for about $10. Bought some. I thought I’d compare labels:

Costco: “Produced from Italian-grown olives.” Colavita: “Premium world selection.” They went to the trouble of putting a hang tag on the neck of the bottle. You can read it if your eyes aren’t too bad — it’s the United Nations of blends.

And here I thought Costco was the cheater, because they started using green-tinted bottles a few months ago.

And now you know. This is what we get up to in the deep freeze.

It was actually a pretty productive day, all things considered. It was also one of those days when a shower seemed like a big accomplishment. If you’ve ever been a work-at-home employee, you know what I mean. I was awakened at 3:30 a.m. by a text message from the city, telling me we’d received three inches overnight, and the plows were being rounded up. Gee, thanks. I tried to get back to sleep, but didn’t do much more of it. I blew the snow for Kate and Alan. Made a bunch of phone calls. Read some stuff, wrote some stuff, made a late-afternoon Kroger run, and the whole place was like the Crips and Bloods — not enough carts, not enough checkout lines, malfunctioning scanners, a ridiculous mess in the parking lot.

School is called off for tomorrow. I am looking forward to sleeping late.

And if it isn’t glaringly obvious by now, I have very little to offer today. There is…

…Ross Douchehat, living up to the name.

Meanwhile, it’s going to 10 below tonight, and I still have to do some dishes.

Tuesday.

I realize we’ve been doing a lot of weather-bitching this winter, but this week we have coming up is going to test us all. After seven days of miserable cold, it warmed up just enough to dump a few more inches of snow on our heads and today and tomorrow? Single-digit highs, subzero low, and fuck you too. Will there be school? Don’t know yet. Will there be misery? Almost certainly. Will there be the small compensation of the abatement of my cold? Based on today’s tissue consumption, don’t think so.

I know, I know, in a few weeks this will all be over. Maybe a few days. Still.

Bitching complete. At least on that score.

Watched “Mitt” this weekend. It didn’t make me like him any better. In fact, it rather made me like him less. At one point, he ticks off the terrible taxes that a small business owner has to pay — federal, FICA, state, real estate, etc. “It goes to the government,” he said. Of course, these are taxes we all have to pay, too, only I’ve found it helps if you think of “the government” as an imperfect structure that inspects our food, repairs freeway overpasses, educates children and, of course, funds our never-ending supply of military operations around the globe. Pay a teacher a salary, and you know what he does with it? He buys houses, cat food and shoes. It’s an economy.

Now if you want to see money fly away and never been seen again, see what Bain Capital does with its profits. I also got peevish during the family’s final meeting before the concession on election night, and Mittens made a little speech about how the country was headed for a big-government tipping point within five years and, essentially, all is lost. Only a man who grew up the son of a major automotive executive and governor, educated at the finest schools money can buy, someone who beamed from Harvard straight into management consulting, whose wife was able to say with a straight face that they knew hard times because sometimes they had to “sell stock” to cover the bills, among about a million other instances of aggravated cluelessness — only he could get away with that and not have everyone else in the room pelt him with dinner rolls.

I also saw “Captain Phillips,” which was pretty good, an action movie with a conscience. Maybe when I don’t feel like my head is full of gunk, we can talk about that one.

For now, a skip to the bloggage:

Thanks, Dexter, for digging up this photo gallery from a California trail cam. It’s nice to see a place not covered with snow.

Your Italian extra-virgin olive oil is 69 percent likely to be not Italian, not extra virgin, and maybe not even olive oil.

Finally, as bad as it is where you are, take heart if you don’t have children in Louisiana public schools. Appalling. Infuriating and appalling.

A good week to all. Let’s hope it’s warmer by the end of it.