I forgot to tell you guys about our Friday evening over the weekend. The three of us went to see “House of Gucci,” and for Alan and me, it was our first trip to see a movie in a theater since the pandemic. The movie was just OK — more on that in a minute — but the experience of watching it in the theater was? Awful.

No wonder everyone is trying to short AMC stock. The whole experience was interminable and expensive.

If you’re going to a movie these days, especially a first-run movie the first weekend it’s open, you should expect to pay the top price, but holy shit — $14 per ticket, and that’s the beginning. Popcorn — two small popcorns, mind you — were $16. They were salty, so we got three beers to carry in. $35, plus tip. We’re now t $100 for three people to see a movie.

Showtime: 6 p.m. The previews start, and keep going. And going, and going. They ran for 25 minutes, followed by five minutes of turn-off-your-phone spots and a long one featuring Nicole Kidman, extolling the experience of seeing a movie in a theater. The movie finally started at 6:30. It was nearly two and a half hours, which meant we were there for three.

And it wasn’t very good. The short version: Everybody speaks in a mamma-mia-that’s-a-spicy-meatball accent, which somewhat obscures the clunky dialogue but doesn’t obscure that the movie is too long, verges on camp, veers wildly in tone and, most appallingly, is a movie about a fashion house that contains hardly any fashion.
Although Lady Gaga looks great and that’s about all I can say about it.

See it yourself if you want; maybe you’ll love it.

But enough about my petty complaints. Today we had a school shooting in exurban suburbia. Three dead so far, eight injured, including a teacher. It’s going to be a brutal few days, and I’m not looking forward to it. Who would?

Random France photo, on a government building. As national mottos go, it’s a good one:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the liberal media:

Want more? OK, here ya go:

All of the above is a lie. The people Trump is endorsing in Michigan aren’t making “election administration and investigating last year’s vote central to their platforms,” they’re Stop the Steal lunatics who have stated, baldly, that Trump Won, and that if they’re elected, they’re going to do their best to make sure he never loses again.

The election has been litigated, recounted, audited and investigated, and none of their claims have been found to have any basis in fact.

But this is NBC News here, and to write that Trump “narrowly” lost Michigan is also fiction. He lost Michigan by 154,000 votes. That is not a narrow victory. And these people are not interested in improving elections. This is the “liberal,” mainstream media promoting this fucking garbage. I can’t stand it.

But OK, it’s the long weekend. I got most of my shopping done (online), picked up a couple stocking stuffers from local businesses, and even scored a white shirt I’ve been looking for forEVER from a local business, and a black-owned one at that. So I’m counting this as a win, Chuck Todd or not.

My birthday was very nice, even if I spent much of it cooking, at least it was pretty easy. Thanksgiving is basically a matter of chopping and timing; with enough advance work, you really don’t have to spend all day in the kitchen. We had the usual for our small tribe of four, and it was very fine, topped with two desserts, for Team Cake and Team Pie. The last of the turkey went into tonight’s tetrazzini, and that puts the holiday to bed. With the worst of the chores handled, I intend to spend the rest of December doing January organizing and maybe making some gingerbread. The hell with the holidays; maybe we can enjoy the season for once. See the lights, go to some parties, all of it.

And it was very nice to watch Michigan beat the shit out of Ohio State, the first in a decade:

Those leaving Ann Arbor, please drive and celebrate safely. If you happen to be heading to the state down south, you can really take your time, your season is over. #DriveMichiganSafely pic.twitter.com/qGM03Kt9jv

— MSP Metro Detroit (@mspmetrodet) November 27, 2021

So the week begins. Enjoy it.

I get a lot of spam. Everybody does, I guess. On my Gmail account, which is rapidly becoming the one I use most, it’s generally sales pitches and the like, which at least fall into convenient folders. One or two clicks, and it all goes away. My Mac Mail account, the one associated with this site, is more of a pain. But sometimes, it’s fun to look deeper.

Most of it is pitches from crap outfits pointing out that something on this blog from, say, 2006 has a dead link, and would I like a replacement? They have a suggestion! (No.) I ignore these, of course. They generally come in threes — first pitch, second pitch (Hi, Nancy, just checking to see if you had any response to my offer last week…), third pitch (I know you’re busy, but I thought I’d circle back and…). Then they go away. Usually.

I also get an occasional threat from someone who claims to have hacked my entire computer and recorded me “wanking to YouPorn.” If I don’t pay up in a specific amount of Bitcoin, it will be sent to everyone on my contacts list. I keep thinking I should respond by asking to see some frame grabs from these recordings, just to be sure it’s me.

Then there are the poorly spelled and punctuated warnings from various entities offering me a $20 credit at CVS if I just click the big button. One had a return address that was something like kiVHeish@yahoo, etc. As the kids say: Seems legit.

Bottom line: 90 percent of my inbox is garbage. It strikes me that sooner or later, American capitalism + freedom ruins everything. When was the last time you answered an unknown number on your cell phone and the person on the other end was someone you actually wanted to talk to? We have this wonderful technology that allows us to make phone calls from a slender rectangle we carry in our pockets, but it’s mostly useless for communicating with anyone other than people we already know. All because we wouldn’t regulate.

I don’t have a transition from spam to turkey, but I guess I don’t need one. Thanks for the birthday greetings. The actual day is on Thanksgiving this year, so I’ll be observing my birthday by making a big meal with two desserts – pumpkin pie and birthday cake. I’ll be 64, which moves me into the Medicare Penumbra, during which your phone rings with odd numbers every day and the spam — oy, the spam. (I know this because for some reason Alan’s name was associated with my number, and I’ve spent the last year declining his calls.) Got my first call just the other day. It’s gonna be so much fun. Only 365 more days of this.

Happy birthday to me, happy Thanksgiving to all of us and happy weekend, likewise. Random France photo of the day, an unusual civic sculpture outside Nice city hall. Nice thumb, I guess:

I decided to try something new for me — learning from past mistakes, in this case — and do my Thanksgiving shopping early. I swam Friday morning, came home, dried my hair, tanked up on coffee and hit Kroger at about 9:30 a.m.

What a fabulous idea. The store was fairly quiet, but fully stocked on everything I needed, and while there were only two checkout lanes open, I was in and out in 40 minutes. The turkey I bought at Eastern Market the previous day. Such a strange feeling, knocking that out ahead of time; it seems the madhouse crowds the weekend before any big holiday always comes as a fresh surprise. But when I did my usual Saturday shopping last weekend, and the rush had already begun — bloated endcaps on every aisle, mid-aisle stacks of flour and sugar and canned pumpkin — I knew I had to have a plan.

My shopping experience would be improved immensely if my fellow grocery-getters would do two things: 1) Be aware of the space they’re occupying, which is my way of saying that if you want to have a long reading experience with peanut-butter labels, park your cart to one side of the aisle and don’t leave it sitting in the middle where no one can get around; and 2) I can’t remember the second thing, because the first thing is so much more important.

And if you’re still reading, be advised that groceries are very important at this time of year, and yes, that’s why I felt like bragging a little.

Unfortunately, Michigan is now number one in the country in per-capita Covid cases. With a bullet! Or maybe just a hissing ventilator, whatever. The caseload is exploding, and with the holidays bearing down. However, I read some interesting things over the weekend, which explained that vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans are birds of a feather. Which is to say that if you’re vaxed, chances are you hang with others who are, too, and probably have more protection than the unvaxed, who have similar patterns in their associations. That said, Kate’s second band, GiGi, has a Thanksgiving-eve show and I will probably go, but wear a mask the whole damn time.

How was the weekend? I made a fancy dinner Friday and ordered a pizza Saturday, but most of all, I cleaned for the coming holiday. We also watched “King Richard,” the movie about Venus and Serena Williams’ dad, and it was a bit overlong, but not terrible at all. By the end, I wanted to slug King Richard, but he had the courage of his convictions — you gotta give him that.

In other words, a pretty bleh weekend, but a holiday awaits. So there’s that.

Random France photo today is from Pere Lachaise cemetery, where you think everyone there died in the 19th century, but it turns out not: This young woman perished in the 2015 terror attack in Paris.

And…I am back. The Stones were great. I put off updating here until the column I wrote about it was published, as it is pretty much all I have to say about it, except for maybe this:

Leaving a football stadium with 30,000 other people the same week that Michigan led the nation in new Covid cases did not feel good. I had a mask on, but my friend kept muttering “CovidflumeCovidflumeCovidflume” behind me, and I fear he was right. I guess now we test the power of the ol’ booster.

I’ve never been to a Lions game. I was in Ford Field once before, to do an interview with someone who had an office there. Modern stadiums — stadia? — are marvels, especially if you’ve ever watched a Green Bay Packers game, or remember that Bengals-Chargers (? I think it was them) Freezer Bowl at Riverfront Stadium in 1980-whenever. Climate control is a miracle. I hope all those high ceilings kept the air moving, because: See previous paragraph.

Tuesday I and the Birthday Twins went to dinner at a local tapas bar, and Kate updated us on the exciting life of a rock musician/sound engineer. At the Seattle show, which was a festival scattered around multiple small clubs over three days, she walked into the green room and saw Michael Imperioli sitting there. Seems Christufuh has a band. They did not speak. Then they flew home on Delta instead of Spirit — “They give you a free cookie!” — and in another couple of days she’ll be freezing her ass off, doing live sound for the holiday tree lighting downtown. Living the dream.

It’s been a week. Next week will be bigger.

In the meantime, as we wait to watch the jury acquit Kyle Rittenhouse, let’s be grateful that as fucked-up as this country is at the moment, we can still despise Paul Gosar as one.

Good weekend, all. I’m off to pick out my turkey.

Random France photo: Used camera shop.

You may not see much of me midweek, for lo, I am going to the Rolling Stones concert Monday night here in Detroit.

Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. No, I do: A friend asked if I’d like to go, and I said sure, why not. At the time, we thought we were buying tickets for a summer 2020 show, and I liked the symmetry: 25 years after the first (and only) time I’d seen the Stones. Five years after Kate’s first (and only) time seeing the Stones, both of us in the days after our respective high-school graduations. I figured it would be the last time (maybe the last time, I don’t know), but why not? Have the Rolling Stones ever disappointed us? Who cares if everyone is old? Isn’t that a triumph in and of itself? Isn’t that worth an evening of my life?

So I’m going to see the Stones with two friends. Kate, flying in from a weekend gig in Seattle, might be there with another friend — depends on whether everything is on time. Our seats won’t be close, but we’ll be under the same roof, and that’s symmetry enough.

But I’ll probably be very tired on Tuesday, fading into Wednesday. You never know.

On to more depressing topics: There’s a missing man in East Lansing, a 19-year-old who disappeared the weekend of the MSU-UM game two weeks ago. Last seen leaving a dorm. He wasn’t a student there, but at another school, in Grand Rapids. Since the last anyone saw or heard from him, his phone hasn’t been used, ditto his credit cards. As you can imagine, his family and friends are devastated, and there are prayer vigils, searches and fundraising for rewards and such. You can’t give up, they say, and I absolutely agree. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst, they say, and I agree with that, too. But I have a feeling I know where he is, and it’s not good. You tell me what your conclusion would be, factoring in that the football game is always a blowout party weekend, that the red dot is the dorm he left to walk back to his car and his phone last pinged on Beal Street:

I think he’s in the river. It’s terrible.

I can’t go further than speculation, because I don’t know the depth of the river there, and how hard it is to get to from the roadbed. But it puts me in mind of the deaths at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse some years back:

Between 1997 and 2006, La Crosse experienced tragedy after tragedy as 8 separate college students were found to have drowned in the Mississippi River. The deaths, contrary to some “serial killer” theories put forth, were determined to be the results of excessive drinking combined with a close physical proximity to Riverside Park, bordering the Mississippi River.

You don’t say. The 2006 victim had a blood-alcohol level of .32. I was thinking of these deaths when I worked on the college-drinking project for Bridge some years back. That year, there had already been three in Michigan – a Chinese freshman, a girl, who died of alcohol poisoning before classes even started (BAC >.40); a kid who thought it would be fun to cross the glass roof on Nickels Arcade in Ann Arbor (.20), and fell through; and a weekend visitor to Central Michigan who got lost walking late at night and stumbled into a pond in a garden and drowned (can’t recall his BAC, but he was drunk).

One might think, “But why would he go down to the river? That makes no sense.” But drunks often do things that make no sense. That’s one of the side effects, you drinkers might remember from the last time you were overserved. As I recall from our reporting, the single most dangerous time for college-drinking misadventures is the first semester of freshman year. All of this lines up with the missing 19-year-old here.

Rivers flow, and bodies flow with them. Cold water holds them down for a while, but eventually they get caught on something, stop their downstream progress and, in time, reach the surface. I expect his parents will get him home, soon enough. You always hope for a miracle and who knows, maybe he’s in Florida, having slipped the bonds of civilization’s expectations and lighting out for the territories. But I doubt it.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

On a cheerier note, random French picture, this one sunset at Arles after a long, dreary storm:

I’ll say hi to Mick and Keef for y’all. Back whenever.

One of the pleasant side effects of travel is a continued interest in the places you’ve visited. I’m not going ape over French politics, but I started following an English-language website called the Reykjavik Grapevine after our trip there and will check in from time to time. This week’s top story: Tragedy at Reynisfjara.

No, I don’t know how to pronounce it. But we went there. It’s a magnificent place. Here’s 19-year-old Kate, looking like just another crag among many:

The crags are part of the attraction there, and the caves, but mostly it’s the beach, which is comprised of millions of the smoothest black pebbles you ever saw:

This is the southern tip of Iceland, and the sea is ferocious and unpredictable there. There are signs — so many signs — in multiple languages — so many languages — warning of “sneaker” waves, which live up to their name, and can sweep those who come too close off their feet and, quickly, out to sea.

And yet, YouTube is full of videos of tourists walking right up to the edge of the foam, ha ha, then getting hit by a sneaker wave and, within seconds, in dire peril. Someone usually is able to get them out. This week, it didn’t work. Someone died.

The Reykjavik Grapevine interviewed a tourist guide who often takes groups there:

“Once people are off the bus, as a guide, I always go down there,” David told the Grapevine. “I’m there the whole time. I go down ahead. My standard thing is I tell them how dangerous it is, and I tell people that where the waves are finishing on the beach, you give it at least 10 metres. You don’t go any closer and you always, always keep an eye on the ocean. I tell them that I will be there, and I don’t expect them to go any further than I say. I’ll tell them that they will see people doing really crazy stuff; playing chicken with the ocean, thinking it’s fun. You are not sheep. Use your brain, use your instinct, and listen to my words. To this day, I’ve had a few people get wet feet and that’s it, and I’ve been taking people there for over 15 years.”

While he says that this is common practice for experienced guides, there are limitations to just how much power they have over their groups.

“The problem with being a guide is, I have no authority,” he said. “After the last big incident, we’d be down there, screaming at people to get away from the ocean. Some people listen to us, but then there’s some people who will confront us and say ‘What are you, police?’ They’ll be swearing at us, telling us to f*ck off and all this.”

Who among us hasn’t done something stupid? But I look at this and think: Man, swept out to sea in the far north Atlantic while on vacation is a pretty stupid — but undeniably dramatic! — way to go.

Speaking of decidedly less dramatic passings, I’m remiss in not mentioning the loss of Ann Hilton Fisher’s mother, Miriam. Ann comments here, but not often, and is far more active on social media, particularly Facebook. Over the years, I’ve been charmed by her stories about Miriam, who is — was — something of a love dervish, serving her community (Marquette, Mich.), her church (First Presbyterian) and her friends and family. She was a firecracker to the end of her life; one of my favorite pictures is of her and Ann swimming in Lake Superior not many years ago, as the last of the winter’s ice bobs around them. She was one of those women who took in boarders at her house, students at Northern Michigan University, and some of their stories about her abundant kindness will move you to tears. Anyway, Miriam finally went to her (surely abundant) reward at 96 while we were in France, and her memorial was this week. There’s a site called Padlet that compiles all the ephemera of these events, and Miriam’s is worth poking around in. I wish it allowed hyperlinking to individual bits of it, but you can’t have everything. If you control-F to “Carrier,” you’ll find one of her boarder’s testimonies, which I think gives you a sense of what Miriam was all about. I also loved her story called “The Gift of Water,” about her life as the child of a missionary working in Iran.

OK, then. We’re enjoying a warm day that will end in rain, and then Indian summer will be over for good, they promise us. Had to happen eventually. Good weekend, all.

People tell me I need to be empathetic, to meet people where they are, to not give up hope for our divided country. Then I read something like this, a comment Dexter left in the last thread:

When a farmer at his roadside vegetable stand began chatting small talk to me last August, he began loudly with all Trump supporters’ talk. “We all know Trump is our President”, and every other point, to the point, even, that the Covid19 is a hoax. I paid him for my goods and just wanted away from this maniac. I told him calmly of Carla Lee’s death from Covid19. “You mean she had the FLU!!!” he blurted out.

I found another place to buy my sweet corn. The gall that bastard showed, just after telling me he was a lay preacher in several little churches there.

And then I think: Nah, fuck these turd-juggling idiots.

I just read this in the NYT, which I am confident that farmer does not read. This is David Leonhardt writing here:

(The Covid vaccines) proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update.

The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.

In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.

And I am thinking very cruel thoughts right now, which I am not proud of, but honestly, what else can you do with people like this? A guy I know has a number of doctor friends who serve rural areas in Michigan’s Thumb, and hears this stuff all the time. “I’m sorry, but your father has Covid and we’re putting him on a ventilator.” “Daddy has the FLU, there ain’t no COVID!” You can lead a horse to water, etc.

How was everybody’s weekend? Mine was fine. Watched two movies — “Pig” and “The Green Knight,” as different as can be, but both worth watch, although I don’t recommend the second after a full meal and a couple glasses of wine. It’s…strange and contemplative. But beautiful. And “Pig” is similarly unexpected in almost every way. Good to see Alex Wolff, half of the Naked Brothers Band, which Kate used to watch on Nickelodeon. We also went out to a Detroit News farewell for one of Alan’s old colleagues, and that was nice. I also re-upped staples at Costco. Good to know we’re entering winter with all the laundry detergent we’ll ever need.

And it’s a beautiful day. What more can you ask of a Monday?

Another random France picture, below, of a volume of foot-fetish photography we spotted at a flea market, along with my own foot, which would not pass muster with Elmer Batters because I stop using nail polish after Labor Day. But it was published by Taschen, known for their outre subject matter and superior photo reproduction. The price started at 10 Euro, and immediately dropped to five. Reader, we bought it, shlepped it home and now it sits on our coffee table. It’s porny in places, but honestly, almost all the attention really is paid to feet. Foreward by Dian Hanson, described by her ex-boyfriend Robert Crumb as “sort of an Albert Schweitzer of filthy perverts.”

Oh, yesterday’s election was dreamy. Like one of those dreams where you keep telling yourself wake-up-wake-up-it’s-just-a-dream but it keeps going on and on and on. Which is to say: Abysmal turnout, yet again. Thirty-eight voters all day. When that happens, you find yourself staring at the animation on the voter-assist terminal screen. It recycles every three seconds. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, so it played 1,200 times in 60 minutes. Times…13 hours of voting. It played at least 15,600 times.

I think I watched 12,000 of them. It was in my eyeline.

This is my last year in this precinct, I think. Next year I want a new assignment. Absentee vote-counting, maybe. The same insanely long shift in a mask – because we will be wearing masks forever and ever, that’s clear to me now, get used to the smell of Purell – but constant work, no idleness.

Every so often we’d remark on the lack of voters. I’d say, “Mayor’s race a foregone conclusion. City council the only real races. Low-income precinct. It’s just not an exciting election.” And one of my fellow poll workers would say, every time, “With legalization of psychedelics on the ballot? How can you SAY that?” And I’d laugh, and watch the animation 500 more times, and two hours later, we’d have the same exchange.

It wasn’t a good day for Democrats. I’m not an optimist. I think, in three more years, we’ll have a Trump-Biden rematch (because Biden won’t yield, because…I don’t know why). Trump will win, and American democracy as we’ve known it all our lives will be effectively over. Is that too strong? Maybe so, but you know what the Michigan Secretary of State did this week? Announced that starting soon, non-binary residents can choose X on their drivers’ licenses, instead of M or F. What a victory. What timing. She ran on reducing the wait in license branches to 30 minutes or less. Then the pandemic hit, and they went to an appointment system, which she announced would now be permanent. However, appointments are impossible to get unless you know how to game the system (basically, go on the site at 10 seconds past 8 a.m. or whenever the system goes live and try to snag one of the same-day appointments). So now, instead of waiting in line for an hour to renew your driver’s license (which can now have an X on it!!!!), you can have the experience of sitting in your own home, renewing your driver’s license the way you used to buy U2 tickets.

But in all of this, it’s key to remember that the other thing the secretary of state does? Run elections.

Just once, I want Democrats to behave as though they understand what the stakes are, and stop behaving as though saying “pregnant people” is some sort of landmark in civil rights. And stop handing their opponents the clubs to beat them with.

To be smarter, in other words.

It’s time for me to counter the degradation of all that sitting and snack-nibbling with a workout. Discuss.

At Eastern Market Saturday, I saw a familiar face – a downtown homeless guy, temporarily relocated to a higher foot-traffic area.

If I recall correctly, he’s an addict, and he looked even worse than the last time I saw him, pre-pandemic. He’s also fairly young and pretty smart. Once he asked for money from my editor as we walked back from lunch, and my editor, the softest touch in the world, stopped to peel off a couple of bucks for him. He rarely just forks over the cash, however, and as a true journalist, likes to engage in some small talk at the same time. Soon he was offering to help the guy get a state ID so he could apply for jobs, and I ducked into a coffee spot for an espresso while they hashed it out. When I came out, the homeless kid was saying, “…but there’s an opportunity cost for me in that situation, too,” and all I could think was: Kids, don’t do hard drugs.

Tuesday is election day, and I’m working again. Same precinct. This will be my fourth one there, and I think I’m going to ask for a transfer to the absentee counting boards for 2022, where there will at least be constant work, rather than the long stretches of ass-numbing crickets in our sleepy little precinct. The area we serve is pretty poor, hit hard by depopulation, and turnout is generally abysmal, even by Detroit standards. I think we had 35 voters, total, in August.

But I’m doing my part. I got my Covid test, copied my CDC vax card, printed out my assignment, and will be there at 5:45 a.m. ready for 14 hours in a mask. It’s important.

I know the crowd here skews older, but I have to ask: Do any of you watch comic-book movies? I made it through “Black Widow” on the flight home a couple weeks ago, and at the end had the same reaction I have to all the previous ones I’ve tried: Well, that was a movie. They’re so, what’s the word? Boring. The hero’s journey, spiced with several action sequences, ending with the sequel setup. Plus, if you haven’t followed the Marvel franchise through however many films they’ve squeezed out of it, you get the sense you’re missing in-jokes and backstory the producers simply assume you are familiar with. It’s like millions and millions are spent on people who go to various Comic Cons around the country and stand in line for four hours to listen to colloquia on Spider-Man.

Honestly the most interesting part of “Black Widow” was examining Florence Pugh’s remarkable heart-shaped face. Talk about a movie-star mug. Now to see if she can continue to deliver performances.

If I seem a little aimless today, it’s because I just finished a long story and feel like I’m finally caught up with everything I missed during my time away. And I had too much to drink last night – didn’t rip the knob off, just poured two cocktails into an empty stomach – and feel like my best strategy for today is a bike ride and a nap and maybe some TV. So here’s my new favorite picture: Kate and the band at their show Friday night (which we missed). They were Josie and the Pussycats! I love it. See you later this week.