Until this weekend, I knew…thinking…one (1) person who had seen “Master and Commander,” one of my old KWF fellows in Ann Arbor. I said, “Jay, did you see any movies this weekend?” “Yeah, I checked out ‘Master and Commander.’ “How was it?” “I liked it.”

And with that, I forgot about “Master and Commander” for 20 years or so, when I learned the film, which is technically titled “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” is now a Thing, mainly and almost exclusively with young men, who apparently do things like this:

That’s the opening title of the film, directed by Peter Weir and starring his countryman Russell Crowe, based on – here’s another thing I simply didn’t know – what Roger Ebert calls the “beloved” novels of Patrick O’Brian, and there’s a whole series of them.

Clearly, on my own this weekend as Alan went fishing up north, it was time to check out “Master and Commander.” And like Jay, I liked it. Didn’t love it. I’m not a guy. But I liked it.

If you wanted to know what life at sea on a British man-o-war (the HMS Surprise) was like at the beginning of the 19th century (see tattoo above), this is your movie. Craftwise, it’s excellent; the battle scenes are amazing and give the viewer a real sense of what it must be like, to be far offshore on a wooden ship being hit by cannon fire. In between the framing battles that open and close the narrative, it’s kind of episodic. Here’s the scene where we see field medicine performed on deck by the ship’s surgeon. Here’s the scene where the surgeon operates on himself, using a mirror. Here’s the stop in the Galapagos Islands. And so on.

Essentially I’m in agreement with this GQ writer, a woman, who contends:

If you kidnapped a hundred of Hollywood’s top minds and forced them to work around the clock, they could not engineer a more exquisite Dad Movie. Though Master and Commander is ostensibly about the Surprise sailing to intercept a French enemy warship, the battle scenes, exhilarating as they may be, are few and far in between. The bulk of the film—and the heart of its charm—is instead a meticulous rendering of daily life at sea: the monotony of hard labor, the palpable threat of scurvy, the dirty-faced sailors who sleep in close quarters and grin through yellowed teeth. (You know it smells crazy in there.) Even better? All the screen time devoted to close conversations between Aubrey and Maturin, and their two-dude violin and cello jam sessions. You come away with a sense of satisfaction at their accomplishments and camaraderie, and just a bit of longing over a bygone way of life.

That’s just right. Check it out if you find yourself with a couple hours at your disposal and nothing on the teevee.

Otherwise, this weekend was a blur, running from one place to the next, although it was almost all fun. Met up with some friends at an out-of-the-way spot in the post-industrial stretches of Southwest Detroit. We sat on the patio while inside, a DJ mixed pop dance hits with mariachi. At one point I went inside to get another beer and noticed a satellite feed from some Spanish-speaking country, featuring, no shit, bare-knuckle boxing. I guess gloves are for “Master and Commander” fans. Saturday was a whirl of activity until I got home around 3:30 in the afternoon and said, Enough. Time for some Russell Crowe. Today I cleaned until Alan came home. We’ll celebrate Father’s Day tomorrow or later in the week; the Derringers don’t set much store on the Hallmark holidays.

Meanwhile, I read the news:

Sen. Joni Ernst says Iowans want someone who can “pull together” a divided country, and good luck with that, hon.

Yikes. The week lies ahead. Enjoy what’s left of your day, dads.

I feel like I spend half my time here apologizing, but OK then, that’s the way it is. I have an entry in my weekly planner that goes:

WORKOUTS:
MPS:
BLOGS:

As the week goes on, I add hashmarks. Workouts is self-explanatory; I aim for 5-6. MPs are morning pages, the daily stream-of-consciousness longhand thing I’ve been doing for a while, in hopes of waking up with a fully formed idea for a novel one of these days. As for BLOGS, I try for three. Often I only make it to two. This is the second of the week. I try, I fail, I’m human, and this is why I am resisting all calls to give this Substack thing a whirl.

But, as I usually say, I’ve been busy. I’m in training for a new part-time job this week, which I’ll reveal in due time. And the news has been so insanely…insane, I find myself just-can’t-evening a lot. Driving home yesterday, listening to a podcast on the arraignment the day before, and I heard Ron DeSantis pledging that if he is elected president, he will pardon Donald Trump, and calling upon all GOP candidates to do the same, and it kinda-sorta hit me: This could happen. Jesus Christ, just what I need: Another two years of doomscrolling and worrying and whatever-the-fucking.

I may need to really-really retire at some point. Just wait for Social Security to fill my bank account every month and relax. But not yet.

Meanwhile, however, this indictment is sucking all the goddamn oxygen out of my personal room. Every time I turn on the news, I’m reminded that we elected a criminal to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and could very well do it again. I’m just so…SICK OF THIS. When is this guy going to go away?

As I have, really, nothing today that you folks might say better, I’ll let this go. The weekend awaits. Let’s all enjoy it.

Today my pleasant little suburb had its “first annual” — the copy editor in me winced — “family fun bike ride.” It was clearly aimed at families with children, but they needed volunteers, so what the hell, I signed up. I’d hoped I’d get assigned to sweep, i.e., be the last in the peloton to make sure no one falls behind, but instead they assigned each volunteer to a corner, to make sure everyone stayed on course.

The course, I should add, was a rectangle. Down so many blocks, over one block, back the same number of blocks, over to the starting point. Total distance: 1.4 miles. Like I said, families with kids, and little ones. The lead and sweep positions were police, one on a bike and the sweep in a vehicle, lights blazing. We don’t take chances with child safety in the tender, fearful suburbs. I rode out to my post alone, and passed a yard where the owner gave me a cheery wave. I waved back, then noticed his side door had a Trump/Pence sign on the window. Given the events of last Friday, I wanted to circle back, stop and yell HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU PEOPLE ANYWAY? But I didn’t. Look at me, the adult.

Anyway, the bike ride was fun, even though it rained. (Finally, rain. The first in at least a month.) As the last of them passed my post, I got on my own bike and rode back to the park with them. It was a grandmother and her wee grandson, who still had training wheels, and was working mightily to keep pumping away. We encouraged him, and he found his second wind. The sweeping police vehicle celebrated our finish with a siren whoop. Forty-five minutes of waiting around after volunteer registration, 12 minutes of cycling, then home.

I spent the weekend running hither and yon, and so today, bike ride notwithstanding, was all about relaxation. (And doing pre-work for next week’s work.) So I had time to read the entire lengthy obituary for Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who died Saturday. (Gift link to the obit.) What…a life. On my way back from Columbus after the moving adventure, I listened to some podcasts, and heard one, a recent “Fresh Air” episode, on Clarence Thomas, tied to a POV episode about him and Ginni. I hadn’t realized how grim and painful Thomas’ early life had been; he is the ultimate example of the therapy phrase “hurt people hurt people.” His grandfather, who raised him, emotionally abused him. White people abused him. Black people abused him. So he grew up to be an asshole. So did Ted Kaczynski, although there’s a strong case to be made that he was simply born broken.

The obit has a hell of a kicker:

Online, young people with a variety of partisan allegiances, or none at all, have developed an intricate

vocabulary of half-ironic Unabomber support. They proclaim themselves “anti-civ” or #tedpilled; they refer to “Uncle Ted.” Videos on TikTok of Unabomber-related songs, voice-overs and dances have acquired millions of views, according to a 2021 article in The Baffler.

Mr. Kaczynski was no longer the mysterious killer who had belatedly projected an outlandish justification for violence; now he was the originator of one of many styles of transgression and all-knowing condemnation to adopt online. His crimes lay in a past young people had never known, and he was imprisoned, no longer an active threat to society.

His online support did not indicate how many eco-terrorists had been newly minted, but it did measure a prevalence of cynicism, boredom, dissatisfaction with modern life and gloom about its prospects for change.

During his imprisonment, Mr. Kaczynski copied his correspondence by hand and forwarded it to the University of Michigan’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection, an archive devoted to radical protest, which has amassed dozens of boxes of Kaczynskiana.

According to New York magazine, Mr. Kaczynski’s papers became one of the collection’s most popular offerings. In an interview with the magazine, Julie Herrada, the collection’s curator, declined to describe the people so intrigued by Mr. Kaczynski that they visit the library to look through his archive. She said just one thing: “Nobody seems crazy.”

No doubt. We’ll be passing this way again, I’m sure. Have a good week, all.

Taylor Swift is coming to town for two nights, Friday and Saturday, and it appears the town has caught Swiftie Fever.

Whatever that means.

I remember standing on a corner downtown, in the Beforetimes, and watching a giant semi rumble down Woodward Avenue headed for Ford Field emblazoned 1989 World Tour. This was a couple days before the show, and I figured they needed that long to set up the stage. But with this recent visit I realize it could merely have been the merch truck. The shows are Friday and Saturday night, but the merch store opened today, Thursday, and the line was wrapped around the block hours ahead of time:

The first “Swifties” arrived more than seven hours before sales opened from a truck parked outside Ford Field. By 8 a.m., more than 1,000 fans were lined up awaiting the 10 a.m. opening to buy T-shirts, sweatshirts and other items commemorating the pop superstar’s Eras Tour.

“The merch is special, but we made so many memories waiting in line and being here and going to the shows and posting on Instagram and just listening to her music and that just means so much more to me,” said Stella Kane of Brighton, who came with sister, Ireland, 14, and arrived at Ford Field about 2 a.m. with their cousin, Ainsley Kane, 18, of Novi. “I mean, the merch is important, but it’s the memories that come with it that make it so much better.”

It’s the white-girl version of Aretha’s funeral viewing a few years back, when they laid her out in the Wright Museum of African-American History for a couple days (changing her outfit every day), for fans to pay their respects. Lots of these Swifties today didn’t even have tickets, which are selling for four figures even in the nosebleed sections. And OK then:

Swift’s 52-night, 20-city tour is anticipated to earn the singer-songwriter around $500 million, according to Forbes.

Not bad for a few months’ work. I’m unfamiliar with her body of work, although I dialed her up on Spotify while I made dinner. Perfect pop music, and I can absolutely understand why young women love her.

Otherwise, we are not experiencing the degree of misery New York is due to the forest-fire smoke, although we’re definitely feeling it. Red-orb sunrises and sunsets, and air-quality warnings every day for a week or so. We have the windows closed and the furnace running the fan. I’m not as bugged as Alan, aka Allergy Guy, but my eyes are a little itchy.

Michigan hasn’t had rain in at least three weeks, maybe more, and the northern forests are tinder-dry, just as fireworks and peak camping seasons ramp up. There was a 3,000-acre burn near Grayling last weekend, and I expect more.

Just remember: Global warming is a Chinese myth, as reported by our former president.

Speaking of whom: Indicted. Again.

Finally, would someone stuff Salena Zito in a bag somewhere:

For the record, I’ve seen nothing but constant urging for kids to explore skilled trades for years now. The column is about Mike Rowe, who is allegedly a skilled tradesman but who spends most of his time hosting a TV show and otherwise being a media guy, but never mind that. I’d link it, but paywall. Apparently he spends a lot of time talking to Fox News-type audiences. What a surprise.

OK, into the weekend we go. Swiftly!

The other day Alan remarked that The New York Times needs to employ more people who don’t live in New York. He was carping about some illustrations in this story – “that isn’t a come-along, and who wants Blundstones to wade through disaster debris?” – that for the record, I consider fairly minor quibbles. But I’d been thinking the same thing after listening to a podcast they did about the affordability crisis in large coastal cities.

Totally valid story, that one, and something we’ve been discussing in the comments here, of late. But their suggestions of the “affordable” cities young educated people are allegedly fleeing to? Austin. Phoenix. Miami. Atlanta. Um, hello? And the episode started so promisingly, with a young woman who’d left Brooklyn because she realized she’d never be able to own anything, much less the bar she aspired to run, if she stayed in New York. She’s now in Birmingham, Alabama, with not one but two bars, a big house with a yard, a car and four dogs. But those other four cities? All have median home prices above $500,000, with the exception of Atlanta, where it’s $400,000, but you’d happily pay the extra $100,000 to escape from its typical traffic jams.

I waited to hear mention of…well, why not Columbus, Ohio? Indianapolis? St. Louis? Or are they all lost to us, too? When we drove to Nashville in March, we stopped for the night in Cincinnati, and found a hotel on the Kentucky side of the river. The desk clerk informed us that we probably couldn’t get a house there, either, at least not in a nice area close to the river, for much less than half a mil.

So I guess we’re staying put, at least until Michigan comes fully into its own as the Saudi Arabia of fresh water. This column is paywalled and the Detroit News doesn’t do gift links, but it tracks precisely with my thinking after the census showed Michigan again failing to grow very much, and the powers that be announced a study group to come up with a growth strategy. I’ll quote more liberally than I usually do:

During her annual address at last week’s Mackinac Policy Conference, Whitmer said Michigan “will be a climate refuge” in one breath, but then in the next said the state shouldn’t make that the strategy to address the fact Michigan has leaped from the 29th oldest state in 2000 to the 13th oldest state in the 2020 Census.

“But our population goals cannot be cynically fueled by climigrants — these are people who migrate to Michigan because of climate change,” Whitmer said. “It’s got to be driven by our ability to address global challenges and what we have to offer.”

What Michigan has to offer climigrants is water and mostly predictable four seasons of weather. (Yes, it snows. Get over it, folks. Nature is beautiful.)

The global challenge is going to be access to fresh water. Michigan has got 21% of it — and 80% of North America’s freshwater is contained in our Great Lakes, our thousands of inland lakes and rivers, and our deep underground aquifers.

Whether it’s for human consumption, growing food, sustaining forests or building electric vehicle batteries, Michigan has the water to sustain our future and the other states won’t — and state and other officials should not be omitting that from the sales pitch of why people should move to Michigan.

Bingo, although I’m a little concerned about referring to the Great Lakes as “ours.” (Swim across all but one of them, and you come ashore in Canada.) Not only that, you can still get a house here for less than $400,000, or even $300,000. Plus we have great music, friendly people and reproductive freedom now embedded in the state constitution.

Meanwhile, Axios informed me this morning, two major insurers are no longer writing homeowner policies in California, and new-home construction is being restricted in Phoenix for, guess why, lack of groundwater.

So, Phoenix as the bolt hole for fleeing Angelenos? Miami — ha ha! Miami! with hurricanes and rising sea levels! — for New Yorkers? I don’t think so.

Waiting for a firestorm or hurricane to get you? Try Michigan. You can sprinkle your lawn here, even though we, too, are in an extended dry spell. All we have to worry about are occasional tornados. And the housing is (relatively) cheap. You can be my neighbor.

I have friends who have moved…let me count… three or four times in 10 or so years, and honestly, I don’t know how the hell they’ve survived. My brother lived in a small apartment, the heavy stuff was already done by his younger friends, and still, two days of moving his dusty shit from one place to another left me grumpy and wrung out like a worn dishrag. Driving home, I was forced — forced, I say — to put Donna Summer singles on very very loud in my car, just to keep my spirits up for the final push from Toledo to Detroit.

Of course, it would help if he hadn’t lived in one of those hellscape ’70s-era apartment complexes, about a dozen or so units that all look like this:

I mean, every single one. I was trying to find his unit in this ghastly array, talking to my sister on the phone, and said, “I bet even the people who build this shit were depressed afterward.” Of course they weren’t; this was the ’70s, and complexes like these were going up everywhere. The better ones had pools, at least, but this one didn’t. Just these ugly mushroom-capped buildings, garages and… shudder.

But he’s in a better place now, in a better part of town. And I have rested and rehydrated, got some pool time and some non-crap food, and I feel mostly human again.

And I do recommend Donna for slow periods on the road. Especially “Hot Stuff” and any playlist called Disco Forever.

After I got home, I retrieved “Heat 2” from my local library; I had to wait long enough that I’d forgotten I was on the hold list. This is Michael Mann’s novel-as-sequel to his film “Heat,” one of my favorites; one night in France when it was pouring buckets outside, we stayed inside to watch it on Netflix with French subtitles (I thought I might pick up some tips on obscenities). I read the whole 460-page thing in three days, which is to say it’s a page-turner, but oy, it reads like Mann dictated the whole thing into voice memos and left Meg Gardiner, his co-author, to turn it into prose. The action sequences — see, I’m even using film jargon here — are described in the most minute detail, as are the weapons, while the female characters are basically a combination of stock adjectives for hair, skin and body.

However! If you were a fan of the movie, you’ll probably find it worth your while. It’s both a prequel and sequel to the story told in the film, so you get lots of Neil McCauley, Michael Cerrito and Chris Shiherlis, as well as Vincent Hanna. And the female characters are all beautiful, athletic, and move like lionesses. And if you like that stuff, you’ll like this stuff.

Now it’s Monday, and it’s time to get to work. Poached eggs and spinach for breakfast, I’m thinking. I need to start the week like Popeye.

Hey, everyone. I am in Columbus, helping my brother move. It is supposed to be 86 degrees today, and I am wearing my sweat-proof underwear, to give you an idea of the glamour I’m operating under.

However! I have a great read for you today. Remember my friend Nathan Gotsch, who ran for Congress last year in Fort Wayne, as an independent? He’s been up to other stuff lately, namely producing the LGBT-themed play that got all the bigots up in their feelings. The Washington Post story about it dropped today (gift link), and it’s a great story about taking from bigots and giving it to deserving kids.

Enjoy. I’m off to sweat and clean a bathroom.

This is Movement weekend, Movement being the three-day techno music fest at Hart Plaza downtown that kicks off summer in Detroit. Tickets aren’t cheap, but there are related parties in lots of clubs that cost far less to enter. On Sunday was the by-now-traditional sunrise rave at a local art park, and that was free. So I went with two young friends, who I sometimes call my surrogate sons:

That was 7:30 a.m., and all three of us had slept the night before, which wasn’t true of many other attendees. I did have a single beer, and a single hit of a preroll going around. In the druggy world of techno, that’s like sipping a small glass of sherry at a three-day bacchanal. Plus it’s legal, and what the hell, I ain’t dead yet.

As it was, a beer on an empty stomach and one tiny hit of today’s supercharged weed was just enough to put my head in a weird, dreamy space, not high, just ultra-relaxed. We had breakfast afterward and a wonderful, loopy conversation about everything, including a few moments on photojournalist Don McCullin, who specialized in war zones and was seemingly unafraid of anything. (I guess I should say “is,” as he’s still alive, at 87.) He went to Africa, the Middle East, Vietnam, but it’s his pictures of street fighting during the Troubles in Northern Ireland that are my favorites, if images of such violence can be said to be favorite. I still like looking at them, because you have to respect photographers this crazy, because otherwise, how would we know?

Also, if we have another civil war in this country, it’ll be fought like the one in Northern Ireland, i.e. house-to-house and block-to-block. Ain’t no north-and-south anymore. I tell my friends with cottages in rural areas, “Let me know when you have to shoot your way into your vacation home,” and sometimes people chuckle, but mostly not.

The best way to experience techno is to be there when someone is spinning live; it’s not great music for idle listening, at least for me. Any attempt to upload video would end in tears, so accept this frame to give you an idea:

The theme of this party was Sunday gospel, and the DJ was layering beats over gospel rousers. It was quite fetching. I saw a guy dancing in a Tushy T-shirt; the front read Ask me about my butthole. The art-park venue has lots of regulars, one of whom shoots fire:

As I left, I passed a man my age who had introduced himself, mentioning a mutual acquaintance. I said goodbye on my way out, as he was stenciling a quotation about justice, in Arabic and Hebrew, onto an art car that looked like a giant cockroach. And there’s a sentence you don’t get to write every day, and another reason I’m happy to live next to this nutty city.

I hope you’re enjoying your holiday weekend, if you are fortunate enough to have one.

Well, I guess we have to say something about Tina Turner. It’s hard to do, because so much has already been said about her. Now that the top ranks in news organizations have been taken over by Gen X, the headlines and obits are concentrating on her ’80s period, i.e., post-Ike. That’s a defensible stance; her struggle to leave her abusive ex-husband was the turning point of her life and career, and we’re not supposed to give bad people like Ike Turner credit, even for the good things they did.

But the first time I saw Tina perform she was with Ike, and it left a mark. They were at the Ohio State Fair, we got in early enough to be in the first rows, and their performance was…indelible. (That means “it left a mark,” ha.) This must have been in their career bump after “Proud Mary,” and they performed as Ike and Tina Turner. I remember none of Ike, lurking in the back like the dark presence and bandleader he was. You watched Tina. The three Ikettes stood to Tina’s right, a few feet behind her. But they were all dressed similarly, in short dresses with fringe that never stopped shaking, because they didn’t, either. God knows how Tina could sing as well as she did, moving all the time; she must have had the cardio fitness of a Tour de France stage leader. They did slow songs, but Tina stutter-stepped through those, too, leaving it all on the stage, which was set up on the racetrack where harness races were held, the first rows seated on the track and the rest up in the grandstand. It wasn’t a glamorous venue; the fair director was famous for x-ing out those infamous tour riders that performers insisted on, delivering the same mediocre fair food to all the acts.

I’m sure Tina was used to it. Her memoir — most memoirs of performers of that era — was pretty clear about the tour grind they went through on the way to making the charts. Stage life is difficult, especially when your cheating husband is going through Ikettes like jelly beans, and beating you when you object. And they were black, which meant the chitlin circuit to start, until The Rolling Stones invited them to open in the ’60s, and they started reaching white audiences. It is said that Tina taught Mick Jagger to dance, and I believe it.

If you saw “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the biopic based on her memoir, you know all this, especially the dramatic split with Ike, where they fought in the back of a limousine in Las Vegas Dallas, she got out at a light left Ike sleeping in their hotel room and walked across the street crossed a busy highway to a Ramada Inn, where she told the manager she had 36 cents in her purse and a Mobil credit card, but would they give her a room anyway? He did, and she stayed at Ramadas for years afterward, mentioning the kindness in interviews whenever she was asked.

So it’s not surprising the interviews will mention the triumphant, you-go-girl part of her career first. I saw the Private Dancer tour in Fort Wayne, the shaggy-wig look, the Auntie Entity persona, and it was excellent. But you never forget your first Tina.

You guys can talk about that Tina if you want, but the record I’ll be playing in my head today is my absolute favorite, the Phil Spector production of “River Deep, Mountain High.” The story goes that Phil agreed to put Ike’s name on the recording, but only if he butted all the way out, and he did. So this is Tina-without-Ike, plus another bad man, but oh well.

One more small thing, no, two: She was really her own woman, embracing Buddhism and practicing it faithfully. And she left behind American racism, moving to Europe decades ago and settling in Switzerland. I always liked that about her, and pictured her hitting her singing bowl and chanting her mantra.

She also had the best single response to a question about whether she’d had plastic surgery, during her comeback. She replied yes, she had, because being beaten by her husband had left facial fractures that affected her breathing. And “I had my breasts put back in place,” she said. Take that, Ed Bradley, or whoever asked.

Did you ever see her? What did you think?

Well, that was a great weekend. Long, too much driving, but I got it done, the mother-to-be was showered — did I mention this trip was for a baby shower? — and I drank approximately 17,000 gallons of beer. My lord, they love their beer in Wisconsin, don’t they? And by 17,000 gallons, I don’t mean to say that I was drunk the whole time. It’s just that however many I had felt like 17,000 gallons. Beer used to be all I drank and now it’s more like once in a while. I felt… bilious. But happy. Perfect weather, old friends, a couple hours of WXRT on the radio.

And lakes:

And sunsets over the lakes:

The University of Wisconsin student union is the best I’ve ever been to, on yet another lake:

But I got home in time for “Succession,” which I see many of you have been discussing. A killer episode in a killer season. I will grieve its disappearance after next week. I’ve had my eye on Jeremy Strong since I saw him in “The Big Short” and it’s great to see him with such a meaty role.

And after <200 words, I can already tell I'm tapped out. Accept these photos and I'll be back later in the week.