Oy, what to do with Kevin. This is why I’m in such a mood of late — that and the cough that is now in day 10, but is oddly just-a-cough; I otherwise feel fine. (I don’t think that sentence was properly punctuated, but I don’t care.) Anyway, I find myself more sympathetic to Kevin, at the same time I wonder if we’re the right home for him.

His energy is boundless. (Ours is not.) His training is…sketchy. (Our expectations are higher, shall we say.) His attitude is stubborn. (So is ours.) Right now he’s whining at Alan because I’ve hidden his incredibly loud squeaky toy. And this is at the end of the day after a lot of fetch and a trip to the dog park.

So I feel like I need to look for someone who can fill those gaps. At the same time I’m trying to civilize him. He’s mastered Sit, some limited Stay and is working on Come. But he only does it under ideal conditions. Also, he nips. The little shit.

Then he jumps up on the couch with me and gives me the eyes:

I can’t help I got these long legs and too much energy. The other day he jumped on the couch and smashed me in the face in the process.

Ah well. We take it day to day.

Hope you all had a great Easter. It’s cold here. Supposed to snow tomorrow — three inches. It’s plainly going to be cold for the rest of my life. It is my curse.

So it was a good day to read this bone-chilling longform piece on a heretofore un- or little-known serial rapist to come through Joe Paterno’s Penn State football team. It’s a difficult read, but such a well-reported story. It doesn’t skimp on the details, but goes so deep, and covers the whole case without being exploitative. Set aside an hour, or a few days, to absorb it all.

That’s all I got — naughty Kevin and a rapist. We’re promised “a nice warmup” as the week goes on. We. Shall. See.

Man, it’s been a long week. I can’t tell whether it’s the dog, the cough or that I wrenched my knee on…Tuesday, I guess it was, in this blurry smudge of days. Some of you have Good Friday off, which makes me throw back my head and laugh and laugh and reflect I’ve never had Good Friday off in my life, except maybe from school.

Journalists get fewer holidays than anyone, because we all gotta work at least some of them.

But honestly, I don’t care. I could always quit. And I’m not quitting yet.

So. A friend gave me a copy of “Blood, Sweat & Chrome,” with a very long subtitle that boils down to “an oral history of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road.'” It’s been a while since I saw it, so I booted it up on Amazon Video Monday night, just to refresh. Then I remembered the GOP county delegate conventions were also being held Monday night, so I skittered between post-apocalyptic adventurer Max and GOP-convention Twitter, and it was a little hard to tell the difference:

I watched the absolutely unhinged Macomb County GOP convention so you don’t have to. Beloved Trumper Mark Forton was overthrown, with Eric Castiglia taking over as Chair. The meeting devolves into cursing & anger, one woman yelling, “You’re all for the New World Order! Fuck you!” pic.twitter.com/6WsTMt8IYx

— Left of Center MI (@leftofcentermi) April 12, 2022

Admittedly, that was the wildest, but that’s also the key MAGA county, Macomb, just north of us. The woman you hear on the video is Mellissa Carone, the messy-updo lady who was one of Rudy Giuliani’s star witnesses after the November 2020 election here. She’s gotten hard into politics in the aftermath, although she was just disqualified from her run for the state House, for submitting a faulty affidavit with her campaign finance report. She’s vowing to fight. We’ll see how that goes.

Macomb County is where the so-called Reagan Democrats were born, and you can see what they’re doing now – fighting viciously amongst themselves:

It was chaos tonight as the Macomb County (MI) GOP voted to oust party chairman Mark Forton. At various times, people were yelling “RINO” and “communist” at each other, among other things. pic.twitter.com/vYJQDMqqmC

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) April 12, 2022

What is one to do, observing such a spectacle? I’ll tell you: Not a damn thing. Other than note the resemblance between some members and Immortan Joe.

I’m so tired. I need to get out of the house more. Plus there was a police shooting in Grand Rapids week before last that is just now starting to be felt elsewhere, so there’s always a story in front of my face about it. Plus Trump endorsing Meemaw’s grandbaby, Elon Musk bidding for Twitter and Dianne Feinstein has full-on dementia. Is there no good news to be had in this rotten world?

Well, there’s this comedy bit:

TN Senator says Hitler made something of himself after being homeless & you can too. I’m going to have to apologize to the universe for this guy. Hey @MeidasTouch not a single day passes without TN GOP embarrassing the hell out of our state.😬 @meiselasb @meidasjordy @BMeiselas pic.twitter.com/SrNyGsS86B

— Rep. Gloria Johnson (@VoteGloriaJ) April 14, 2022

OK, you all. I’m done for now. Happy Easter, and I promise I’ll be better next week.

Something else my friend wrote me the other day, about the hard-right lunatic of our mutual acquaintance:

As for how to move on in a nation nearly half-filled with people who would vote for Donald Trump, I think it’s back to the basics of organizing: If you and your neighbor disagree on 10 vital questions but agree on two, there’s the start of a coalition on two issues.

I hear that a lot. It’s Counseling 101: Find the things you agree on, however slight, and work from there. I worry that I’m past that. That requires me to assume that the other side is dealing in good faith, and I no longer do, even as I realize the reason they aren’t, and can’t, is that they’ve brainwashed themselves. They’ve locked themselves into an information bubble so thick and impenetrable I’m not sure it can be breached. Something has to happen to make them unlock it from the inside and come out into the sunlight of facts.

And that’s where my thoughts are on what is, for 2022 anyway, a reasonably nice spring day. The sun is out, it’s chilly but not intolerably so, and I have something in my chest that is making me cough like a tubercular wino. No other real symptoms despite Despair Over This Dog, so I haven’t repeated my Covid test. Maybe I should. We’ll see how things develop.

The dog: Today Kate came over to print a couple of documents for her European trip (they leave tomorrow night). Kevin growled and barked at the printer as though it was an invading predator. He’s also doing it, still, when Alan comes to bed, which is usually an hour or two after I turn in (morning person / night owl). He cries non-stop in the car, and I’m talking about from the end of the driveway to destination, no matter how long or short the trip. Every day this week I open my eyes and think: Fuck. Kevin. What will today be like? No wonder I’m grumpy.

Ah, well. Neutering is bright and early tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes from here. My vet: “It’s the start.”

I joined a Facebook group for former employees of the Columbus Dispatch. This photo was shared today:

The copy desk was outsourced to some other place – maybe Texas – a while back, and I guess the workload is starting to strain capacity, eh? Either that, or someone started the Saturday-night party a bit early.

Finally, in what is turning out to be a mixed Sunday bag: I’ve been reading the reactions to the verdict Friday, the one that acquitted two defendants in the Whitmer kidnap plot and deadlocked on the other two. Of course this is being spun in MAGAville as COMPLETE EXONERATION, as though two other defendants weren’t so convinced they’d be going up the river for a long time that they didn’t plead to six years in return for their testimony. Ah well. The best thing I’ve read so far is this column by Brian Dickerson at the Freep. It’s paywalled so you can’t read it, but here’s the gist:

In her star-crossed 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton famously consigned half of Donald Trump’s supporters to a “basket of deplorables” that included “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” Trump pounced on her indiscretion, insisting that Clinton had slandered every Republican voter in the land. MAGA devotees responded by donning shirts and hats that proudly proclaimed their “deplorable” status.

But Clinton was giving voice to what has since become an article of faith among millions of Americans (including many Republicans): the conviction that, far from being a fringe minority, the paranoiac “deplorables” she spoke of have become a significant presence in thousands of communities.

And even before they began deploying their theory that Whitmer’s accused kidnappers had been snared in an entrapment scheme masterminded by FBI provocateurs, defense attorneys set out to convince the public that their clients were no more sinister or dangerous than the deplorables we encounter everyday at our workplaces, grocery stores and family reunions.

And:

In his closing argument, defendant Adam Fox’s lawyer sought to convince jurors his client posed no greater threat than the garden-variety deplorables in their own lives. “He isn’t a leader,” defense attorney Christopher Gibbons insisted. “He doesn’t have the equipment. He doesn’t have the skills.”

Gibbons was being diplomatic, but his subliminal message to jurors was unmistakable:

Look, Adam Fox and his friends are idiots. When Hillary Clinton spoke of those pathetic souls you’d cross the street to avoid passing on the sidewalk, she was talking about my client.

But hey, you all know people like my client. And if we allow the government to lock up all the Adam Foxes in the country, how long before your own neighbors and crazy uncles find themselves behind bars?

Sorry for the longer-than-usual snip, but: Paywalled.

Personally, I think the jury, freighted with Up North Michiganians, just couldn’t face their neighbors back home if they didn’t acquit at least some of them. So they did.

OK, then. Time to make Sunday dinner and maybe a cocktail. God knows I need it.

I’m getting Alan’s cold. It’s a chest-living variety, and yes, we both tested, him twice, and we’re both negative. People still get colds. Especially after two years of living behind masks. As if trying to civilize this fucking dog isn’t enough of a stressor, now this.

But I did get about 20 minutes of down time yesterday afternoon, and caught up in nostalgia, I did a little Facebook-searching for old colleagues, classmates, etc. — the sort of people I don’t stay in touch with, but am intermittently curious about from time to time.

I looked up a guy I used to work with, who I remember as a gentle soul who was certainly traditional and probably Republican — like 90 percent of Hoosiers — but the sort of Republican I remember from there, which is to say, wrong but not an asshole about it.

You see the punchline coming, right?

He’s fond of memes. This is the one that rocked me back on my heels:

Oh. OK. I sent this to a friend, who also worked with him, and he replied:

The greatest underrecognized impact of Trumpism is grief. I feel it so often when I look at all the people who taste-tested authoritarianism and decided they wanted more. They’ve been carried away by some kind of psychological contagion, but I remember so much else about them and share so much history and experience with them before the mess we have now become. In the shortest form, I stand by what I told (my wife) the morning after Trump’s election, when she demanded some kind of explanation from me, because I’d been pretty confident about an HRC win: “I guess there are a lot more rotten people in America than I thought.” I can posture as smug or contemptuous or dismissive, but five or six years later, more than anything else, I’m still grieving the loss of so much regard for so many people. Living with so many fellow citizens who are so diminished makes me feel diminished, too.

I think that is exactly right. It’s less so for me — I tend to skip grief and go straight to anger — but I, too, have that disorienting, dispiriting feeling of looking at someone you thought you knew and realizing: I didn’t know. Of course you don’t know, in the know-know sense, someone you work with. But every day we have to interact with people we aren’t intimately acquainted with, and that’s the feeling I’m talking about, of going through a day, buying groceries, working, commuting, walking in the park, and having to think: Is it you? Are you one of them?

The day after the 2016 election, I walked Wendy in the morning, still feeling utterly shell-shocked, and a man passed me on the street. He looked me in the eye and gave me a smirk-smile that I still remember. And that was before we knew how terrible Trump would turn out to be! In 2016, that smile said, “I hate Hillary.” Today it would say, “I’m OK with all of it.” I’ve lived deep in Republican country for most of my life. Like I said, I thought I knew these people. I didn’t know them.

Oh, well. Let’s uplift the mood a little, shall we?

I found this story, which someone in my network posted, the other day. I’m astonished this is the first I’d heard of it. Just the headline, OMG: The guitarist who saved hundreds of people on a sinking cruise liner, and it does not disappoint:

“I was calling, ‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!’ and just waiting for somebody to answer,” Moss says.
A big, deep, rich voice eventually replied. “Yes, what is your Mayday?”

Relieved, Moss explained that he was on the cruise ship Oceanos and that it was sinking.

“OK. How long have you got left to float?”

“I don’t know – we’ve got the starboard railings in the water, we’re rolling around, we’ve taken on a huge amount of water,” Moss said. “We still have at least 200 people on board.”

“OK. What is your position?”

“We’re probably about halfway between the port of East London and Durban.”

“No, no, no, what are your coordinates?”

Moss had no idea what their coordinates were.

“What rank are you?”

“Well, I’m not a rank – I’m a guitarist.”

Why has no one made this movie? You know who helped him save all those people? His wife. His wife the bassist. It’s too good.

OK, off to shower and consider how I’m going to handle Kevin today. Yesterday started well and ended badly. Today is calm so far. We’ll see.

Good weekend, all.

Kevin is still on probation. After a nipping incident Monday morning, I was ready to surrender him to a shelter, but a very nice trainer saw my Facebook post on it, dropped everything and came right over. She worked with him a while and taught us some tricks to get some manners into his head. Her assessment: A very smart dog, but stubborn, and virtually untrained. We’re working on Sit/Stay, and he’s doing pretty well. Still to come: Down, Shut Up and No Goddamn Dogs on the Bed. But I have faith in the little bastard, who has many good traits besides cuteness — a prancing walk that’s fun to watch, 99 percent housebroken, walks well on the leash for a lunatic and a lotta personality.

Fingers crossed for Kevin, who may yet need a good lawyer.

Sometimes my morning rambles take me past the Indiana Policy Review, the right-wing organization in the Hoosier state, which the editorial-page editor of my former employer departed to found and run sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, can’t remember. They exist to spread ideas, etc., because there’s a real shortage of those in Indiana. Some of you have mentioned that the Kendallville papers run the column they offer by my former colleague Leo. Does anything else they offer ever see eyeballs other than in their magazine/website? Because I gotta say: This shit is whack.

The founder, who signs his pieces “tcl” but otherwise goes by T. Craig Ladwig, devoted the home page today to an attack on, get this, the Indiana Daily Student, the student newspaper. For an opinion piece. About the right’s favorite pinup girl, Ann Coulter.

Craig, like lots of newspaper editorial writers, considered himself something of an oracle. He didn’t mix much, but when he did he’d say things like “the problem with journalism today is a lack of adult supervision,” which I never quite understood but he seems to think quite witty, because it’s a phrase that turns up often in his work. It seems to be the driving force of this column about the IDS, anyway. He starts by complaining that the speech wasn’t covered by any other media, “for posterity,” although a quick Google turned up a video of part of the speech and a fairly perfunctory report from the local public-media stations. The speech was billed as, “Conservatism. Let’s Review the Evidence with Ann Coulter,” but the news seemed to be that Coulter abruptly left the stage, claiming she had a plane to catch and had already stayed longer than she’d agreed to. (She’d make a good prostitute. Admirable time management.)

It doesn’t sound like she was shouted down or otherwise abused, although she complained about the final question (about her religion) before leaving. What I found weird? In that video I posted above? Look at all that male-pattern baldness on the heads watching. Doesn’t look like a student crowd.

Maybe Craig hasn’t figured out Google yet.

But I don’t want to go deep on the Indiana Policy Review, an outfit that essentially hung another co-founder, Mike Pence, out to dry after January 6 — he wasn’t asked to do anything other than give us a little more time to investigate was the argument, as I recall. For years now, it’s essentially functioned as a sinecure for Ladwig and maybe a couple of others.

A sinecure. That would be nice, except for the putting-your-balls-in-escrow part.

What an exhausting week, and it’s only Tuesday. I feel like Josef Stalin, and all I’ve done in the last three days is yell NO and grab this dog out of one form of mischief or another. Let’s get over the hump and see what the downslope offers. Please behave, Kevin.

The Meijer family holds titanic status in west Michigan. Fred Meijer grew his grocery store (where Sammy, the wife of J.C. Burns, once toiled as a teenager) into a state, then a regional chain. They’re stores on the Walmart model, only nicer, IMO. That’s to say, about 100,000 square feet, with an enormous grocery and an Everything Store in the rest of the space. Like most west Michigan Dutch tycoons, they’re philanthropic — I mean, even the DeVos family is philanthropic — and Grand Rapids owes a lot to them.

Peter Meijer, newly elected (2020) U.S. representative, has the usual rich-son-headed-for-public-office bona fides. He’s a vet, Ivy League educated (Columbia) with an MBA (NYU), relief-agency experience, the whole nine. He’s told the story many times, about how horrifying it was to show up for his second day of work and be faced with an insurrection in his workplace, and he was one of two Michigan Republicans to vote to impeach President Trump afterward.

Of course, both are now in Trump’s crosshairs, and Trump came to Michigan Saturday to shit all over them. But get this:

“A guy who spells his name M-E-I-J-E-R but they pronounce it MY-ER. The hell kind of a spelling is that? MY-ER. MY-GER. It’s MY-GER— but it’s actually pronounced MY-ER… how the hell do you get MY-ER out of it?”

Can’t imagine this helps in Western Michpic.twitter.com/dvzw40lKG6

— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) April 3, 2022

West Michigan — all of Michigan — is full of people with Dutch heritage and unusually spelled names. Pete Hoekstra (HOOK-stra) and Bill Huizenga (High-ZEN-guh), both politicians. Dykstra, Visser, Vandenberg, all the Van Somethings. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s own education secretary. Of all the things he could have said about Peter Meijer, he makes fun of the way he spells his name.

And when this asshole finally croaks, he’ll lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. He should have his corpse cut into pieces and strewn as food for vultures.

Meanwhile, I’m burying the lede. Say hi to Kevin:

He’s a victim of rapacious capitalism. He was happy with a family in Macomb County, until their landlord informed them “Zillow says I can get $500 more a month for this place” and raised the rent accordingly. They had to move to an apartment with a no-pets policy, so now Kevin is with us. My intent was to adopt him, not foster him, but so far he’s on probation, as he’s started hiking his leg on our furniture and is having a bit of a time settling. He needs to be neutered, like, yesterday. And will be, at our expense, but if he doesn’t chill out and stop peeing on the furniture, he may have to find another home. The good news is, he and Wendy are getting along fine, so no worries there. I’m trying to see the world through his eyes and empathize with the upheaval he’s face in the last 48 hours or so.

Just a question for the room: Spriggy was neutered on his six-month birthday. Kevin turned one on March 27, and the surrendering owners said their vet told them to wait until he was one. I’ve never, ever heard that, but it’s been a while since Spriggy lived with us, so maybe that’s the new standard practice? You tell me.

And with that, I’m back to keeping an eagle eye on the Kevster. Good week ahead, all.

I had to make a quick trip to Columbus Wednesday. (Brother in hospital, not immediately life-threatening, a couple of complications to iron out, no further comment.)

The complications ironed out early, so I thought I’d kill an hour revisiting my old neighborhoods before heading home, particularly the house I grew up in. I don’t have any of my own photos of it, but that’s why Google Street View and Zillow exist. This is how I remember it:

Very idealized photo, admittedly — color-corrected, mostly, maybe a little bit of wide-angle lens trickery. But it’s essentially the house I lived in, with three tall firs in the yard, and a screened porch on the east side. It was always a big deal when the porch opened for the season; Columbus Tent & Awning would come and erect the stored awnings, we’d sweep the winter’s dust, put the furniture out and spend summer evenings there, avoiding the mosquitos but enjoying the breeze. My dad would watch baseball games there. It had a tatami-type mat on the cement floor. Nice.

My parents sold in 1995 for about $160,000, maybe, as I recall.

A few years later, this, via Google Street View:

RIP, screened porch. I guess it couldn’t last in today’s MOAR SPAAAAAACE housing market. Maybe it became someone’s home office, or a play room, or something. The tradeoff? They added back that window on the second floor, assuming there was one at some time; it always puzzled me. That weird painted patch was basically right on the wall between the two front bedrooms. And I approve of the new frame for the front door. So I can live with that.

This was yesterday:

I have to think — I desperately think — this is just after the latest renovation, and they still intend to add back the shutters and certainly do something with the landscaping. All three front-yard trees are gone, with one anemic sapling now the sole arboreal occupant of the front yard. But I cannot lie: I kinda hate it. So. Much. Brick. When we moved in there was a lot of climbing English ivy on the house, which my parents tore down for the usual reasons. But this pile could use a little. It could use something, that’s for sure.

Now I really miss the porch. And I don’t even live there.

By the way, for those wondering about that light standard rising out of the back yard? My childhood home backs up to a middle-school athletic field. Before what was then the “new” high-school got its own gridiron, they played there, and one of my Saturday-morning jobs was cleaning up the trash dropped from the spectator stands into our yard — cups and popcorn boxes, mostly.

The last time it sold, this was a $610,000 house, and with this new work, I’m guessing the next sale price will be much higher. It’s the American dream to be priced out of the neighborhood your parents managed on two modest incomes.

And if you’d like to host me on your psychiatric couch, here’s the house I live in now:

Yeah, kinda familiar-looking, ain’a?

The apartment I lived in after moving out of my parents’ place, a four-flat in which the other second-floor resident was our own Jeff Borden, still looks exactly the same. So there’s continuity in the world.

The weekend awaits, and I need a shower. So I’m gonna take one.

Yesterday all there was to read on the internet were opinions about Will Smith and Chris Rock, whether or not one or both of them should have done what they did, et cetera to the blah-blah. It made me want to poke my eyes out, but instead I just closed the laptop. Went downstairs to make lunch. Alan was putting flies he’d tied into one of the nine million plastic boxes he keeps them in.

“You know what this reminds me of?” I said. “When newspapers had tons of money, and a million columnists, and every single one would write about the same thing, when something like this happened.”

“Such as?”

I told him: The Sports guys would turn it into a crack about some hot-headed coach – “Coach K looked like he was about to go Will Smith on his star player’s ass,” only he wouldn’t say ass because THIS IS A FAMILY NEWSPAPER, so he’d say “butt” and still have to fight for it.

In Features, where the prevailing voices were women, there’d be something about The Pain of Alopecia, or What Sort of Example is Will Smith Setting For His Children. If one of the columnists were black, there might be something bemoaning the legacy of violence between black men.

For Metro, those folks would write about going to a Boys & Girls Club, maybe, to take the temperature of the youth on the issue of the day. Would contain some comic relief: Some kid asking “who’s Willy Smith?,” etc.

The A section, Nation/World, would probably not have anything, unless they have some old-fart windbag who usually writes about Washington. His/Her point would be: What’s The World Coming To When We Spend So Much Time Talking About This Silliness While There’s A War Going On?

And then, on Thursday, the Entertainment pages drop, and those people would have to find a fresh take on a topic that was old on Tuesday morning, but I’m confident they would have come up with something.

I’m so glad not to be in that grind anymore.

As for Chris Rock and his joke, I think this piece, about Joan Rivers, best captures my feelings.

Twitter got better as the day went on:

It's actually not funny at all? Will Smith could have killed him with that slap. What if his hand had been full of bees and Chris Rock was allergic to bees and one of the bees stung Chris and nobody had an epipen. Not so funny now is it

— ⛄️ (@nomchompsky) March 28, 2022

Moving on, then.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an immersive remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” This woman worked for CBS News in recent memory:

It wasn’t long ago that Lara Logan was a correspondent for CBS News, which is a little hard to believe considering the types of conspiracy theories she’s been pushing since she left the network. The latest came during an appearance on the right-wing podcast “And We Know,” during which Logan suggested that the theory of evolution is the result of a wealthy Jewish family paying Charles Darwin to devise an explanation for what gave rise to humanity.

“Does anyone know who employed Darwin, where Darwinism comes from?” Logan, now with Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation, asked. “Look it up: The Rothschilds. It goes back to 10 Downing Street. The same people who employed Darwin, and his theory of evolution and so on and so on. I’m not saying that none of that is true. I’m just saying Darwin was hired by someone to come up with a theory — based on evidence, OK, fine.”

Meanwhile, Actual News is happening elsewhere in our decaying democracy. No, it’s not Trump’s alleged hole in one. It’s this:

Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by CBS News’ chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa and The Washington Post’s associate editor Bob Woodward.

Have a nice day. I’m on to real work.

I really don’t love weightlifting, although what I do hardly qualifies — call it strength training, say. Sherri’s a weightlifter. I just have to drag my whiny ass to the gym once or twice a week to push around some dumbbells to supplement, and hopefully improve, the other things I do. But I dragged it today, whining all the way, for the first time in a long while (Delta, Omicron) and I can just tell I am going to be so sore tomorrow I may not be able to move. So best get this thing out of the way now, while I’m still capable of keyboard entry.

I’ve been exercising all pandemic, just not with the heavier stuff. But no, I did not feel “in shape” enough to not be sore.

Whine, whine.

So as my time here is limited, here’s what we did last night.

I know many of you are doing the hard work of supporting the Ukrainian people — writing checks, collecting donated goods, all that. The Derringers and their friends the Walshes did their part by going out to eat.

A former Wayne State student of mine, who went on to become the Free Press restaurant critic, is a Slavic emigre who came to this country as a boy. From Lithuania, but his family is Ukrainian. Lately he took the buyout from the paper and became editorial director for a pop-up dining space in Hazel Park. We’ve been there a few times — they do themed dinners with guest chefs, classes, that sort of thing. When I saw they had a Russian dinner planned, I perked up. We’re between Covid waves, we haven’t had a fancy dinner out in ages and what the hell else is your American Express card for, anyway? So we signed up. Then the war started, and the idea of paying tribute to Russia became a record scratch, so the theme was changed to “Slavic Solidarity,” and the profits directed to Ukrainian relief.

So we got dressed up and headed to Hazel Park. Took two bottles of our own and paid the steep corkage, but it was worth it because one bottle was bubbles, and we had that with the first two courses.

Sunflowers on the table, of course. And what else do you drink with caviar but good champagne?

The chef introduced those as “caviar tacos,” and even though I’m not really a caviar girl, it was fabulous with the eggs, the blini, the sour cream, a little squirt of lemon. Yum.

We brought a bottle we got in France, and those Reidel glasses and the candle made it look so purty, I can’t even remember what point Lynn was making here.

The main course? Chicken Kiev, of course:

Surprisingly, that was the only course that wasn’t great. I wanted the butter to squirt, and it didn’t. But it tasted fine, and that’s what counts. Dessert was another blini with a berry compote and whipped cream. Just a lovely dinner on a cold night in the very early spring.

I wondered, as we drove home, if this is what rich people tell themselves after they do one of their over-the-top “fundraisers” for charity — that yes, I ate caviar and drank champagne, but it was for a good cause and I am a good person for doing so. I didn’t feel like a particularly good person, only a well-fed one.

Anyway, that was the highlight of the weekend. There may be more news coming soon, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Signing off, here is the Nall/Derringer co-prosperity sphere, FaceTuned to a near-unrecognizable state, but hey, that’s what digital photography is for, right? Warping reality:

Have a great week ahead, everyone.

Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Ryan Murphy’s entertainment factory. He has done some good work – “Glee” was fun for a while – but sooner or later it seems he can’t restrain himself, or the people who work for him, from getting all ooh-look-at-me-being-transgressive-here. I just get sick of it. I feel like it’s a movie I’ve seen once, didn’t like, and don’t need to sit through again.

He’s generally very well-liked by critics, too.

I didn’t watch the first “American Crime Story,” his limited series that looks at one big messy story about a terrible you-know-what. It was about the O.J. Simpson case, and I OD’d on that one when it happened. I did see the second season, on the murder of Gianni Versace, at least most of it. But the third season, about the impeachment of Bill Clinton, dropped on Hulu recently and I am there for it.

Murphy tends to use the same actors over and over, his own little repertory company, with one, Sarah Paulson, his muse. She was Marcia Clark in the O.J. story, and she’s Linda Tripp in the impeachment saga. Early criticism was that Murphy would have been better off casting another actress than putting Paulson in a wig and fat suit to play Tripp, and I would have agreed in the early episodes, but it’s paying off at the end. She brings some humanity to a thoroughly unlikable person, no small feat.

Tripp is styled as the hero of her own movie, a woman who sees herself as a Very Important Person Who Is Only Doing Her Patriotic Duty, even as she does one shitty thing after another — primarily taping Monica Lewinsky. At one point, she hisses that Ronald Reagan never set foot in the Oval Office without a suit and tie, but the Clintons OMG with their pizza and rock ‘n’ roll and such disrespect, blah blah blah. The rest of the players – Ken Starr and his creep squad, Matt Drudge, Paula Jones, Susan Carpenter McMillan, the whole freak squad – comes to vivid life. I find myself being whipsawed through the whole experience again, how betrayed I felt at first (an intern? REALLY?) followed by the whole greasy shitshow.

Starr doesn’t come off well. Neither does his smarmy little aide, Brett Kavanaugh. Many of the supporting cast are superior — Margo Martindale as Lucianne Goldberg in particular — although I couldn’t buy Edie Falco as Hillary. She’s too New Jersey to play a Midwestern girl.

But as a dramatization of an appalling chapter in American history, it works very well. God, I remember pulling into the Meijer in Fort Wayne during the impeachment debate, when Larry Flynt was dropping his bombshells about all those Republican hypocrites, and just sitting in my car, too stunned to even buy my groceries.

No wonder we got Trump. We deserved him.

The end of the week, tra-la tra-la. Now, just to make sure I go into it with a stomach of bile, think I’ll read about Ginni Thomas. You have a better one.