Some friends of ours who used to live in Detroit moved to Nashville a couple years ago and occasionally suggest they’re open to visitors, but the timing was never right until it was, and then it wasn’t. Shadow Show is headed down to SXSW again this year, and is playing gigs along the way. There was one Saturday night in guess-where, so we thought, sure, we can drive down for a long weekend, see the girls, see our friends.

Unfortunately, one of our host’s aunts died, the funeral was a can’t-miss event, so they invited us to stay at their house anyway, etc. etc., and we decided what the hell, let’s go.

I’m glad we went. I hadn’t been to Nashville in decades. It is a decidedly different city than it was then, by a factor of about a million. The changes are…well, it doesn’t matter if we approve or not. They’ve happened and they’re not going away. Yeah, I remember Broadway as a scene but not a Scene^tm; back then we went to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and had a few beers but did not exit into the alley behind the Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Old Opry, where it was said countless performers before us had done, having one last snootful before taking the stage. On Sunday, I wouldn’t have entered Tootsie’s with a live cattle prod. It was SEC tournament weekend, and the entire strip was rockin’ with basketball fans, drunks and brides-to-be, all entranced by the cover bands playing in every bar.

Oh, those brides-to-be. Someone informed me that Nashville is now Bachville, i.e. the country’s biggest non-Vegas destination for bachelorette parties, and not having known that already makes me feel like I’m not keeping up. March is considered the beginning of Bachelorette season, and they were already evident, traveling in packs, squealing, caroling WOOOOO from pedal pubs, you know the drill. (An aside: Is there a more jarring disconnect between the people on a pedal pub and the people watching them from the street? I don’t think so.) In googling for why this is so, I came across a five year old, but still excellent story in BuzzFeed that goes deep into not only the trend itself, but what it says about the city, which is gentrifying at a staggering pace. This piece was great, too. And full of tidbits like this:

(Bachelorette parties) love taking pictures in front of murals, which, over the last decade, have come to dot every gentrifying section of the city. What started as a covertly capitalist art form (a “I Believe in Nashville” mural designed by a merch company) has become overtly so, as business owners all over town realize the free advertising potential of Instagram location tags. During peak bachelorette season, the photo line at the most popular Nashville mural — artist Kelsey Montague’s “angel wings,” just a block away from Biscuit Love — can take 90 minutes.

An hour and a half wait to take a picture!? I sent this to Alan while we were eating lunch on Sunday, and who should come in and take a nearby table?

We did get to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was much better than I expected — thoughtfully curated, spiced up with music interludes and interesting artifacts, like Les Paul’s log guitar, outfits from Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors and a lot more. The Hatch Show Print shop is in the same building, so we stopped there, too. Worth a visit for sure.

The Saturday-night Shadow Show was, however, one of their worst, as judged by the musicians themselves. The PA was shit, there were no monitors, they had to play last — touring etiquette in these situations say the road band goes second, I’m informed — and Kate said she never wanted to play a gig like that again. As for me, I’m just glad no one gouged me for parking, which happened in nicer parts of town on Sunday. And it was nice to catch up with Mr. and Mrs. Bassett, who joined us for most of a very long evening.

Did we try hot chicken? We did. It’s a spicy chicken sandwich.

Sunday night was another show, this one at the Brooklyn Bowl, a benefit for uninsured musicians. Elvis Costello and Billy Gibbons were the co-headliners. Elvis sounded less than great; his voice wasn’t coming through, the band wasn’t tight and his roadie brought out a new guitar for nearly every song, none of which seemed to please him. Fortunately, the show was closed by Gibbons, and once he banged out the opening chords to “Sharp Dressed Man,” we knew everything was going to be fine, and it was:

Oh, and that little text block on the mural in the first picture? The one you can’t read? A version of George Jones’ infamous lawn-mower story. His wife would hide all the vehicle keys when she left, to keep her hopeless alcoholic husband from heading to the liquor store:

And I didn’t have to wait at all to take it.

We’re taking a little road trip this weekend, and I hit the library in search of reading material. I’d selected a couple of novels when I saw Maggie Haberman’s “Confidence Man” there on the new-books shelf, and put the novels down. It’s a thick book. I doubt I’ll finish it in the two-week new-book borrowing period, road trip or no.

But I’m making progress, and one thing is abundantly clear from the earliest pages: Donald Trump not only is a fraud, a fool, a confidence man and every other pejorative assigned to him in the last seven years, but he always has been. From the jump, this guy was as bad as he was in the White House, and barely 100 pages in, I’m mad at every enabler who let him get away with it, mostly in the New York media – the reporters who printed his lies, his exaggerations, his steaming piles of bullshit, because it was good copy, or good TV or whatever. Sure, we didn’t know how dangerous he’d become. All through 2016, a friend would gleefully post his shenanigans on his social media and comment, “Best. Election. Ever.” I remember his face a few days later, after his daughter had someone scream at her from a passing car in the days after the vote, “I’m gonna grab your pussy!!” Not so funny.

During the worst of that administration, I would sometimes mentally list of the Five Men to Blame, and think how swift and merciless their punishment should be (and only a guillotine would do, in my opinion). Mark Burnett, Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Erik Prince, and that was only the list I’m thinking of now. It changed a lot, although Burnett and Murdoch were always on it. (And Rudy’s pretty pathetic now; his punishment is having to be Rudy Giuliani, pathetic drunken clown. A woman I know works in a Manhattan office building with a lobby Rudy passes through regularly. The security guard told her America’s Mayor no longer ties his shoes.)

But it’s plain that there are a lot more than five men to blame for Trump. Skipping ahead to read passages here and there, I appreciate Haberman’s withering gaze, and her ability to deploy that old reporter’s trick of demonstrating an idiot’s idiocy by just quoting him accurately. Another observation: All of his speaking tics – “fantastic,” “disaster,” “tremendous,” the way he never said “very” without repeating it once or twice – were all there from the beginning.

I don’t like to immerse myself in this man’s life again. The habit certain of my friends have adopted, of ignoring the news more or less entirely, has occurred to me from time to time. But that strikes me as turning one’s back on a rabid dog. It may be out of sight, but it’s still dangerous.

OK, time to make dinner. See, I can do a second blog in a week. Cleared some shit off my desk, and the next few days look pretty good.

You guys! I’m so sorry I’ve been such a sluggard here. I don’t know where last week went. But let’s soldier on, anyway:

I generally dislike anniversary journalism, but Monday is March 6, which sticks in my head as the beginning of Covid in Michigan. The first cases wouldn’t be diagnosed and announced until the 10th, the day of the primary election, but on the 6th the chill was definitely in the air. Kate and the girls had a show at Third Man Records, the beginning of what they hoped would be a victory march down to SXSW in Austin, but by then, SXSW had been cancelled. “Just go anyway,” I told them. “People will be getting together and playing anyway, with or without the festival’s backing.” They were afraid no one would come out to Third Man that night, but once the Bernie Sanders rally at the nearby TCF Center concluded, they had no problem filling the place. I noticed one guy standing way off by himself in a mask. Huh, I thought.

Within days, the governor would start issuing shutdown orders, and within weeks, those orders would be the genesis of a new right-wing movement here, which led directly to…well, a lot of things. The utter delamination of the state GOP, although pockets of strength remain. The shenanigans in Ottawa County got their start then. There are others.

I wrote a story for Deadline on the one-year anniversary, presented oral history-style, which means it’s too long, but oh well. I’ve reread it around this time the last couple of years, because I don’t want to forget anything about the early days – the fear, the panic, the way people one block away would cross the street when they saw me coming, walking the dog. (I, on the other hand, would only step off to the curb line. That was my comfort zone.) The way some people wiped down their groceries. The homemade masks, the Karen tantrums in grocery stores, the toilet paper hoarding, all of it.

The New York Times magazine had a Covid oral-history story last week, and one quote in it hit me between the eyes:

In the final set of interviews, most of which were conducted last summer, some people said the pandemic was over while others insisted it absolutely was not. Or that it was “sort of queasily over.” Or that it had been over, but then “it stopped being over.” “I think we all, as a society, became better,” one nursing-home aide concluded. A nonprofit worker confessed, “I used to think that we lived in a society, and I thought that people would come together to take care of one another, and I don’t think that anymore.”

That last quote, especially, echoed some of the way people talked in my story. Here’s a state legislator who lost her sister early on:

After Isaac (Robinson, a member of the Michigan Legislature) passed, (the legislature) didn’t go back immediately. We had some votes, mainly to extend the Governor’s executive order powers, and Democrats wanted a joint resolution allowing virtual voting. (The Republicans) didn’t take the resolution up. I was of the mindset that the Republicans weren’t starting from a place of “how do we deal with this crisis,” but “how do we jam the governor.”

And the funeral director:

It hit my community so hard, and we were screaming and it’s like nobody heard us. I’d hear these people saying, “We have to open up. I can’t go to my restaurant anymore,” and I’m having trouble getting gloves because of the hoarding. Without gloves, I’m out of business.

That’s kind of where I am, three years later. To be sure, the ER doctor and epidemiologist said she came away with optimism about the power of people working together, but she was mainly talking about her medical colleagues. I’m no longer confident, or even optimistic, that faced with an existential public-health threat, people will do the right thing. Here’s something I hear a lot: “I am just so over Covid.” Aren’t we all, but it’s still with us. To be sure, my masking is less common than it was. I went to a densely packed show a while back, mask-free. I eat in restaurants again. But I mask on planes, and I still watch case numbers. If they go up, I mask up. I’m still a No-vid, but I don’t worry that I could die, if I got it. I’ve been vaccinated five times; if I get it, I expect mild symptoms and long Covid to be far less likely. But I don’t want to get it in the first place.

My faith in my fellow citizens, though? That’s in the toilet. Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying “The Last of Us,” the post-zombie apocalypse show on HBO now. It posits a future where the thing you most have to fear is not the zombies, but your fellow healthy American. Everyone is armed to the teeth; busting a cap in someone’s ass is considered totally acceptable to protect one’s food or vehicle or whatever. The government is a dominating fascist force. There’s a thriving black market in the human settlements that remain. That, I regret to say, is what I expect the next time a pandemic hits.

Not that I wish to start the week on a bummer note! After a wet, sloppy snowstorm Friday night, we’ve had two days of snow-melting weather, and spring is most definitely on its way.

I know it isn’t funny, but I can’t stop laughing at that idiot Scott Adams, who fucked around and found out in recent days, and now finds himself dependent on other dumbshit racists like him to pay the bills. And his cash reserves, of course, of which I’m sure there are plenty.

Look for Dilbert T-shirts on the Proud Boys soon.

Gene Weingarten has the best take on it (so far), which spends a bit of time discussing why Adams is so, so goddamn dumb, but thinks of himself as a genius:

You are probably aware of the latest rant by Scott Adams, the creator of the pioneering workplace-related comic strip Dilbert. Adams, who has long been flirting with right-wing positions, sees himself as a rare genius — he once actually wrote that, anonymously, as a comment to a blog, as though it was an observation by someone else, and got caught. He also sees himself as a courageous provocateur and not a septic asshole, apparently on account of his doctor of geniusness degree. As you probably know, he finally went right over the top last week and did a face plant from 50 feet onto asphalt.

Citing a Rasmussen poll reporting that only 53 percent of Black people agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be White,” (roughly half of the rest were unsure, and the rest said “no.”) Adams concluded in a streaming video that Black people are a “hate group,” and that the best solution to this fact is that “White people get the hell away from Black people.” He also said Black people were at fault for “not focusing on education,” and added “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.”

How dumb is Scott Adams? This dumb:

Rasmussen is generally regarded to be the most right-biased major pollster in the country. On its homepage right now are the following headlines, based on its recent inquiries: Conservative Viewers Are Better Informed About Important Topics; Not ‘Woke’ Yet? Most Voters Reject Anti-White Beliefs ; Local Impact of Illegal Immigration Mostly Bad, Voters Say; Fentanyl: Most Voters Rate Biden Low on Handling Problem. The only other question in the poll of whether it is okay to be White was: “Agree or disagree: Black people can be racist, too.” One can presume that Rasmussen does not exactly have its finger on the pulse of the Black community.

So why not take a stupid poll and make a stupid rant out of it, if it makes people pay attention to you? I get the feeling the stakes in a game like this, which is to say, one’s own YouTube show, is to start out saying something ridiculous and keep saying it, and escalate and escalate until, like a balloon, it pops. I’ve done radio before; YouTube can’t be that different. People say radio is an intimate medium, but only if you have the imagination to feel people out there, breathing and paying attention. Or not paying attention; maybe you’d be the kind of host who imagines attention wandering, distraction, and so you pump up the volume, hoping that the technology will somehow evolve in the next 30 seconds and they’ll talk back.

They never talk back. And so, if you’re dumb, you just keep blabbing, like Adams.

I shouldn’t talk. One of these days I’ll step in it. But no one pays attention to people like me.

OK, then. The week begins. One more to get this story done, and then we’ll be back to status quo.

Sorry, guys. I accepted a freelance assignment with the dreaded one-two punch of being, first, a fairly dry topic and second, a tight deadline. So I’ve been distracted this week. Every time I do one of these, I think: Isn’t it time to stop doing this? Then I think: Can I use the money? I can always use the money. And so: More phone calls, emails, etc.

I’m indebted to David Simon for once observing that if it were fun, they’d call it show fun. But it’s business, and so it’s show business. Some things aren’t fun.

So. The other part of this is that I’m in the dreaded late-winter doldrums. We had an ice storm midweek that, thankfully, didn’t rob us of our power like hundreds of thousands of others in the metro area, but it’s bleak enough outdoors that I have been staring at the walls and observing my empty skull like Annie Hall watching herself and Alby having sex.

But it’s at least partly sunny today — although fucking cold — and I hope to make some progress on my story today. And it’s Friday, so no matter what happens, my sources won’t be at their desks tomorrow, and I can not think about it for two whole days. A garden center on one of the main drags here always puts up a spring countdown board around this time of year, and I can report it’s below 30 now.

Someone sent me this a little while ago, and it has roused me to my usual state of simmering outrage:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Republican lawmakers voted Wednesday to prohibit Indiana University from using any state money to support its sexual research institution after a far-right legislator unleashed disputed allegations of child exploitation by its founder and famed mid-20th century researcher Alfred Kinsey.

The Indiana House voted 53-34 to block state funding toward the Kinsey Institute that has long faced criticism from conservatives for its ongoing research and the legacy of Kinsey’s work that they blame for contributing to liberalized sexual morals, including more acceptance of homosexuality and pornography.

Oh, of course they did. Living in the Hoosier state for 20 years, I was often amazed that the Kinsey Institute existed there at all, but I was schooled on the tremendous influence of a single Indiana University president, Herman B Wells (no period on the B, a style oddity you learn the first time you mess it up), who fought the hayseed legislature and prevailed, which was every bit of the miracle you might be thinking it is. The mover behind this is a sourpuss with the ironic name of Larissa Sweet, new to the legislature, hailing from where else but Huntington County:

Republican Rep. Lorissa Sweet claimed that some of Kinsey’s research was child exploitation as she argued for an amendment to the state budget bill against funding for the institute.

“By limiting the funding to Kinsey Institute through Indiana University’s tax dollars, we can be assured that we are not funding ongoing research committed by crimes.” Sweet said.

And I’ll break my usual three-paragraph rule to include the pushback by Bloomington’s voice:

Democratic Rep. Matt Pierce, whose Bloomington district includes the university campus, responded that Sweet’s claims were “based on old unproven allegations of conspiracies that did not exist,” calling them “warmed-over internet memes that keep coming back.”

Yep. Although frankly, it would serve Indiana right if the Kinsey Institute packed up its enormous collection of literature, research and art — more on that in a minute — and decamped for more tolerant pastures. Although I’m sure if they did, the legislature would demand payment for the materials collected through the publicly funded university.

For those who think the Institute is some dank orgy pit, be advised that they guard their gates carefully, admitting only serious scholars or students doing research for classes. A friend of mine was granted entry to find material for a paper on cohabitation before marriage, and said it was extraordinary, not just for the amazing library, where “Doctor’s Naughty Nurse” was shelved next to peer-reviewed studies of male impotence next to “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” and so on, but also the art collection, which hardly anyone talks about. They have paintings and so on from renowned artists, all pretty, shall we say, frank. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see Thomas Hart Benton’s R-rated sketchbook, wouldn’t you? Sex is a big part of human life; it’s important to study it, and always has been, something Wells knew and Sweet…doesn’t.

Sweet is a first-termer, on the record supporting all the usual right-wing crap — health freedom, gun freedom, all the freedoms (except reproductive, of course). She’s from Wabash, has a degree from Purdue in “animal agribusiness” and works as a pet groomer. And this is who District 50 has representing them in the people’s house.

OK, I’m sufficiently irritated to get back to real work now. You all have a good weekend and let’s hope for a warmer kind of sunshine next week.

There’s a piece from last week’s Atlantic that’s been going around, about the MSU situation. It’s well-written of course, but I thought it was way, way too sentimental; I mean, if the time for thoughts and prayers is over, so too is the shocked I-never-thought-it-could-happen-here-in-this-very-special-place piece. I mean, how many times does this have to happen before we stop being shocked? And I wrote a long-ish blog about it. However, I decided #toosoon, and decided to, what’s the word, extend some grace to people who are truly suffering, and spiked it.

See? I do have a heart. And that’s why no third blog last week.

But I will save this one paragraph toward the end, more or less as I wrote it five days ago:

Every teary tribute to the Specialness and the Majesty of MSU or any other institution struck by violence or sexual assault or another tragedy puts it in a unique category, i.e., one that is so special to so many that it must be protected at all costs. Then, when someone like Larry Nassar comes along, the people charged with defending it promote the interests of the institution over those of the people who suffered in it. How many times have we seen this in the past 20 years? Many. Many-many-many.

And I also want you to see two images that received lots of play last week. Like many campuses, MSU has a boulder that students paint for various occasions. Here was the MSU boulder the day after the shootings:

And here it was a day later:

College Republicans, a raiding party up from Hillsdale or townies? You tell me.

And one final note: It turns out I had a brief encounter with one of the Grosse Pointe MSU kids who died, on New Year’s Eve, 2020. Five of us had gathered for a pod celebration at one couple’s house. Their teenage daughter was having her own celebration in the basement. There’s a bathroom down there, but it must have been occupied, because one of the boys came upstairs and very politely asked to use one on the first floor. We were having a really good time, and the host said, “Only if you can name one of the Beatles.” He waited a beat, and blurted out, “John McCarthy.” We laughed and laughed and directed him to the loo. His name was Brian, but I’ll always think of him as John McCarthy. Gone at 20 years old, our sacrifice on the altar of the Second Amendment.

But life goes on, and a new week begins. Hope yours is swell.

A mass shooter took out eight young people, three of them fatally, at Michigan State University last night. I’m not going to do the things we do when this happens.

Warning: This is going to get ranty, I fear.

I will not change my profile picture on my social media to any of the approved images — the MSU Spartan with a tear dripping from its eye seems to be the preferred one for now, although there may be others. I won’t be using hashtags like #MSUStrong or #heartbroken or anything like that. I won’t be wearing green and white, or attending candlelight vigils. Not gonna buy flowers to lay on a pile somewhere, nor stuffed animals.

I get why people do all those things; it beats doing nothing, I guess. But doing nothing is better than this performative, useless thing where we collectively make a heart with our hands for a few days, then go right back to the same old shit that leads to this type of same old shit.

Here’s another thing I won’t be doing: Telling you “Don’t talk about the bad man who did this! Talk about the wonderful young people who died!” Nope. I’m sure they were fine young people. I’m sure they were bright and driven and had plans for their lives that were only beginning. It’s a tragedy they’ll never be able to carry them out, that their absence will mean decades of pain for their parents, siblings and friends. But to talk about only that, and to ignore the many bad things that led their killer to that moment last night when he fired his gun, is to say those young people are just props in our own performative grief.

In this case, the killer, ID’d as Anthony McRae, had a misdemeanor firearms charge in his record, for which he was initially charged with a felony, then pleaded down. He received probation, did the term, and was released from supervision in 2021. From the history journalists have been able to glean in the last 24 hours, he looks like a very familiar sort in 21st-century America: A guy who loved guns. Neighbors complained he’d take target practice from the back door of the house he shared with his father. It wasn’t a big house. His dad said he tried to get his son to give them up, but he refused.

Like I said: A familiar story. A defense lawyer talks sense here:

The plea to a lesser, misdemeanor charge is not unusual, said Birmingham defense lawyer Wade Fink, who was not involved in the case.

“It is exceedingly common for someone who doesn’t have a criminal history and was carrying a concealed weapon,” Fink said. “If everybody went to prison for that, you would have an overcrowding problem and you would be giving a lot of younger people felonies, which hurts them their whole life.

“What would have stopped this is more difficulty accessing guns,” Fink added. “The felony isn’t going to stop a madman.”

I’m feeling angry because already all this shit is starting, the static and snow that obscures the lesson Mr. Fink is trying to tell us. This never would have happened if he’d been put behind bars! This never would have happened if he couldn’t just walk into those buildings! This never would have happened if we had more two-parent homes! And so on. There are unlocked schools, single parents and jail-happy judges in many other countries, but this only happens here, pretty much.

One final note: Two of the three students who were killed were from Grosse Pointe. The girl, 19, went to Kate’s high school; the boy, 20, went to the other one. Both fine young people. Brian Fraser and Arielle Anderson. There, I said their names.

But until we do something serious about this madness, they’ll only be the most recent in a lengthening list.

Perry Johnson is a Michigan weirdo. He got rich as a self-described “quality guru,” i.e. a guy who helps manufacturing plants (hence Michigan) get ISO 9000 certification, but even that is a stretch.

He ran for governor last year, and flamed out spectacularly: Along with another candidate, he hired a firm to gather the signatures he’d need to get on the ballot. The firm took his money and turned in piles of garbage signatures that didn’t pass review, or court challenges. It was pretty funny when it happened, because this is a guy who followed the Trump path of claiming that his business genius makes him qualified, even overqualified, to run the state government. But he couldn’t hire competent signature-gatherers, or even get any volunteers. Throughout his short campaign, news photos showed him flashing his veneered teeth to small rooms populated by sad-looking old white people, the kind of people who will drag themselves to campaign events in the teeth of a Michigan winter.

I wrote about his exit for Deadline. There’s not much I’d change in that column. One major expenditure, for an ad in last year’s Super Bowl, is embedded in it, and I’d encourage you to watch it, because humiliating defeat has not crushed Perry Johnson’s spirit, oh no it hasn’t. Some political consultant with an utter lack of shame has convinced ol’ Perry that he’s not gubernatorial timber, he’s presidential timber, and so: Another Super Bowl ad, this confined to Iowa media markets, and hoo-boy, here you go:

This has to be one of the most horrifying things I've seen in a while. pic.twitter.com/P9kBdMy5xp

— Ian Sandler-Bowen (@iansandlerbowen) February 12, 2023

The op-ed editor for the Detroit News points out it’s so weird, it’s probably designed just to get people talking — remember the demon-sheep spot for ol’ what’s-her-name, Carly Fiorina? So I suppose I’m playing into Perry’s greasy paws just by noticing it; the king of junk faxes would absolutely adopt that strategy. Plus, you’ll notice he’s peddling a book in the course of his ad, so maybe he’s figuring enough senile Iowans go for it, and asking their younger relatives how to read this thing called an e-book doesn’t quash enough sales (“Grandpa, what did I tell you about ordering things you see on TV?”) to make it worth it.

But I’m appalled enough by the grotesque quality of this ad that I’ll take the bait. It has it all, including two of the slimmest and most beautiful female members of Congress rendered as quadruple-chinned fat ladies. Johnson’s own wife, whom he married late in life, is plump, which shows he must not ask her opinion about much. Ah well, she’s busy with their young children. And it features the president as a gibbering idiot, because they can’t think of anything else bad to say about him.

(Just for the record, New York and Minnesota, where AOC and Ilhan Omar hail from, are donor states. Iowa, on the other hand? Takers. And they raise a lot of hogs there.)

Oh, well. He’ll learn his lesson, and some consultants will get paid, and we’ll all forget Perry Johnson soon enough. I close by echoing my colleague’s words from more than a year ago: What a weirdo.

The Chiefs won the Super Bowl. I consider this good news, something positive we’ll look back on after the alien invasion is fully realized. Carry on, and watch for more military jets overhead. Happy Monday.

Every year there’s a perennial between-the-holidays story to be written, at least here in Michigan. It’s about the unclaimed property office in the Department of Treasury, and how to search and claim what might be yours. And every year I try, because there’s a $50 gift card from Lands End waiting for me there. I have zero memory how it got there. Maybe it was a Christmas gift I never redeemed, or store credit for a sweater I returned, or something else, but there it sits, year after year, with my name on it, mocking me.

It mocks me because I can’t seem to claim it. One year it required a notarized statement, which was probably more than I could get around to that year. But every time I see it in the database, I fill out the form, and at some point the form asks me to submit proof the unclaimed property is really mine. I have said, over and over, that I don’t have the gift card, so I can’t do that.

This year, I wrote a more detailed letter. I explained the concept of Catch-22, and said it several ways: If I had the gift card, it wouldn’t be unclaimed, but I don’t, so it is. And I asked, politely, that if I was going to be denied again, I would appreciate the Department of Treasury using the card to buy clothing for a poor child, and just delete it from the database.

Most years, I never hear back at all. But this year, I opened it, and the first word was Congratulations, so it’s a 2023 miracle.

And it gets better: They’re not sending me the gift card, but a $50 check, and that’s good, because Lands End quality has really slipped over the time I’ve been angling for my phantom gift card. So I guess I should donate it to a clothing bank, or something, because I already sent that intention out in the universe. Or I could combine it with the $180 that Michigan Democrats want to send me as part of their policy package this year (“inflation relief checks” is what they’re called), and have a nice dinner with Alan somewhere.

Oh, and I should add: This year’s stories about the unclaimed property office notes that the biggest single piece it has is a $2 million life-insurance payout, so if you’ve lost any relatives in Michigan lately, might want to search that database.

So.

One of the irritating things about Madonna, to me, is how thoroughly she has snowed people who should know better. (I’m not talking about her music – even I have a playlist on my Spotify account. It’s called “Tolerable Madonna” and is about 40 minutes long. I use it on short bike rides.) As long as she’s been around, she’s been bullshitting academics, critics and others with the idea that her “reinventions” are thoughtfully calculated, thick with carefully considered details, cultural references and other frippery that makes her, basically, a walking/talking PhD dissertation in pop-culture studies. She used to tell interviewers about how well-informed she is, and that her IQ was 140, so obviously, y’know, this is all real.

When it was pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention that what Madonna does well is scan the outer regions of pop culture, the place where her soccer-mom fans don’t spend much, or any, time, and import them into her routine. Also, that she is a narcissist without peer.

This has been going on for decades now. Camille Paglia, I’m looking at you.

Now the torch has been passed, in this case to Jennifer Weiner, who takes note of Madonna’s new face, which has been there for a while but got its widest exposure yet at the Grammys:

All of Madonna’s features looked exaggerated, pushed and polished to an extreme. There was her forehead, smooth and gleaming as a porcelain bowl. Her eyebrows, bleached and plucked to near-invisibility. Her cheekbones, with deep hollows beneath them. The total effect was familiar, but more than slightly off.

…Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby?

Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.

Oh, pfft. Madonna is 64, and can’t stand it. So she fell into a trap many people, most of them women, have fallen into already. She’s probably had dozens, scores of procedures already done to her face and body, most of them good; until recently, she looked great. But at some point the body says, “Girl, it’s time to stop,” and she ignored it. This is not a critique of “the work of beauty.” It’s a sad woman grasping for relevance.

Has anyone noticed that Madonna always wears gloves, and has for years now? I’d bet plenty that it’s because the veins on her hands bulge, a common side effect of exercise and vigorous physical activity: Exercise delivers lots more blood to the muscles, and veins return that blood to the heart. Athletes have larger veins than non-athletes, and that’s okay.

Madonna has always been proud of her commitment to fitness; she was trained as a dancer, after all. You’d think she’d display her hands without shame. And she’s going around these days talking about how the most controversial thing she’s ever done was to “stick around.” OK, then! Look like someone who’s been sticking around for a while. Patti Smith is almost aggressively old and gray these days, as she continues to make music and write. Most of the older female musicians at the Grammys that night, like Bonnie Raitt, looked their age. What’s so terrible about being old? (Other than knee pain, she said, wincing.)

OK, enough. I’m going to wait by the mailbox for my $50.

Did I mention I’m dog-sitting this week? Not at my house, theirs. It’s just a mile or so from my house, so it’s not a huge deal, but I’m sleeping over with the dogs, one of whom is an insulin-dependent diabetic, and the other a cute little shit who thinks his cuteness excuses his in-house shitting. But whatever, they’re not my dogs, I’m just here to take care of them. What else do I have to do?

These friends of mine have all the streaming services, so I’ve been watching a lot of TV. One this week was the Pamela Anderson documentary on Netflix, “Pamela: A Love Story.” I didn’t get all the way through, but I saw enough to gather the gist: This sweet girl was fed into the sex-symbol meat grinder, had a wide range of experiences related to that, and is now telling her story, her face scrubbed of makeup.

This is, I’m sorry to say, an old story. A while back I noticed that single women past the age of 50 have a strong tendency to have lots of pets, and that all these pets sleep in their beds, up to and including 80-pound pitbulls. At the same time I can’t help but notice that when sex symbols worldwide age out of the role, they will inevitably swear off men forever and get heavily into animal charities. Brigitte Bardot, case in point. Anderson is following the same path; she sold her Malibu house for $11 million, bought her childhood home and a lot of surrounding land, and now lives in Vancouver with her parents and, you guessed it, a lot of animals.

Her latest marriage, to a construction worker on her reno project in Vancouver, didn’t last. This is a theme.

Not that I am judging. One thing that becomes clear, watching this heavily documented life play out in archival video, photos and readings from her own detailed journals is, this is a woman in love with love and always willing to take a chance on it. Also, she didn’t manage her money all that well, and from time to time she needed to marry someone with enough to support her.

And here’s the other thing: What happened to her, a process in which she was a willing and sometimes eager participant, was equal parts wild ride and tragedy. You look at old photos of her, from her teen years, and she is unrecognizable as source material for the bleached, pneumatically boobed, polished, waxed, sculpted creation that came later. Here she is at the literal beginning of her modeling career, when she was spotted at a Canadian sporting event by the Labatt’s crowd cam:

So pretty, so wholesome, right? Then Playboy magazine invited her to come down to L.A. and meet Hef, and that was the beginning. Breast implants, natch. Peroxide-blonde hair, but of course. I have no idea how many surgeries and procedures she’s had to maintain it all, but I’d guess plenty. Still pretty, still more or less natural:

Then the upper lip expanded, the eyebrows were tweezed into a high arch, the ridiculous Baywatch swimsuit was glued to her body and pretty soon she was getting married to Tommy Lee on a beach in Cancun. All this time men are staring at her, exposing themselves to her, pawing her, and, needless to say, masturbating frantically to her image. When women say, later, how uncomfortable they were with this level of literal exposure, I always want to ask: What did you think would happen? Had you ever seen a copy of Playboy? Sometimes, anticipating these questions, women will say, “They made me feel beautiful, which had never happened to me before,” and OK, I guess I understand. Anderson’s first sexual experience was a rape, and that does a number on your head. But none of this is a secret, and none of it was a secret when Anderson was drawn into it. She’s absolutely right that the obsession with her breasts was ridiculous, underlined by clip after clip of some late-night talk-show host goggling at them. (You know what that tells me? We need more female late-night talk-show hosts.)

But I can’t go along 100 percent with the “it turns out Pam was a person all along” hype. Everybody is a person, but we sometimes forget it. I’m glad that today’s sex symbols have more of a voice in these things; Emily Ratajkowski is photographed naked and semi-naked all the time, but also published a book of essays called “My Body.” I didn’t read it, but it was pretty respectfully reviewed. She had the advantage of coming along 20 years later.

Once again, we learn that women are human beings, and we should treat them as such, at least until they demonstrate, over and over, that either they consider themselves far, far better than the rest of us, or that their personhood is not something they value all that much, or that they have taken it to places where it’s clear they’re actually inviting the world’s judgment. Hello, Madonna and your latest terrifying face:

That’s her daughter, of course, Kate’s former classmate at U-M. She saw her once on the bus, and remarked, “She sure is pretty.” Careful, Lourdes. That’s what they said about Pam Anderson.

So the week starts. A few more days here, then a Shadow Show gig at the end of it. Should be good.