Challenge filmmaking is perverse. Take something that has to be done slowly and painstakingly, and add the element of speed and deadlines and kitchen-sink required elements to it, and you’re virtually assured of a substandard final product. Add creative people to the mix, who never met a job they were [...]
Warning: Major language nerdosity ahead.
There are a bunch of billboards around town right now. Advertising a new smartphone, they proclaim it “a bare-knuckled bucket of does.” Every time I pass, I think of deer. Every time. The ads suggest a certain dystopian menace, and does — as in a deer, [...]
I was reading the New York Times special “winter drinks” issue when it occurred to me that my subset of the baby boom might go down in history as the Lost Generation of Cocktails. Just the first three paragraphs left me feeling I’d been parachuted into a very strange [...]
If this blogging gig paid anything, I’d hire Jolene as my research assistant. Not only does she read the entire internet every day, she actually remembers what she read, searches like a ninja and is always able to provide a helpful link to something that ran six months ago. She [...]
I hope your holiday was pleasant. Mine was, although at some point I shifted into hibernation mode — all I want to do is sleep, a condition that will likely last until we change the clocks again. Sleep and eat. You ask me, the bears have the right idea.
Maybe [...]
Brother Rod Dreher comes in for a certain amount of abuse in this space, but when he’s right — or at least in the ballpark of right — I have to give him his due.
I saw this excerpt from She-Who’s recent interview with Barbara Walters, demonstrating her awesome foreign [...]
Never ask an idle question on a blog, unless you want it answered. In this case I did, and I’m grateful to my old pal Vince for checking with his own pal Eddie, a native speaker of…I think Mandarin Chinese, although it could be Cantonese, and it may be both. [...]
Huh. I just realized I have to clean my whole house in the next two days, including two bathrooms, and that will, well, sort of suck. I’m editing copy for GrossePointeToday.com at the moment, I have a gym session that cannot be skipped in the Week of 10 Million Calories, [...]
I had an errand downtown Saturday, but alas, the block I was trying to reach was closed off. Parked police cars with lights flashing sat at either end, and in between were what appeared to be either soldiers or the baddest-ass SWAT unit in the tri-state area. Bomb scare? I [...]
I favors a .45.
Late edit explanation: Alan said, “Brother Mouzone favors a Walther PPK380. Omar was the one carrying the .45. He said the Walther tends to jump in the hand.” Whatever. But I admit the error.
[...]Someone at the gym sent me one of the parody videos for the Shake Weight. No links here, as they’re about as difficult to find as Vi@gra spam, and I don’t want to be responsible for offending any of you. But it raises the question of what, exactly, the [...]
Alan came back from a short fishing trip yesterday, which took him through western Michigan. Our many commenters who hail from that whiter, Dutchier, more pious part of the state can attest it has a lot in common with northeast Indiana — Fort Wayne with more blueberries, if you will. [...]
It’s time for another edition of Short Attention Span Theater:
In honor of “unfriend” being christened a word by the New Oxford Dictionary, I decided to do some. My Facebook is becoming ridiculous, not only a time suck but a ceaseless update on the lives of people I wouldn’t [...]
The Los Angeles Times online crossword is easier than the New York Times’. It also has a faultless interface that never falters, making speed part of the experience and leading to my daily back-and-forth e-mail with Eric Zorn; if you can beat 7:23, you can beat me today. (Late-breaking [...]
Today is Alan and Kate’s birthday, and if birthdays aren’t a reason to get out your Fostoria square cake stand, I don’t know what is. Square cake stands require square cakes, however, and I didn’t have any square cake pans. We were at a mall on Saturday, so I stopped [...]
I’m about to put the Vietnam Veterans Memorial back in my attic-brain, but before I do, I want to consider monuments and memorials a bit longer. What happened to the wall in its early years — the addition of the two sculpture pieces and the flags — is probably nothing [...]
I wonder if, in years to come, some bright scholar will name Maya Lin as the fulcrum upon which everything we believe about dying in service to one’s country shifted. Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., pulled off something magical and strange with her beautiful [...]
Last summer I wrote about going to the 48 Hour Film Challenge awards, held in a loft overlooking the Packard-plant ruin, and how the arsonists trashing the place thoughtfully put on a fire for us. I think I also mentioned the truck sticking out the window:
The longer we keep a rabbit in the house, the longer I think it belongs out of the house. Not to live out there — it is a pet, little miss I will be petted oh yes I will — but for a stretch of outside time every day. I’ve [...]
Is this a winter-is-coming thing, or an Obama-is-deploying-the-black-helicopters thing?
[...]Now it can be told: I knew some people in Fort Wayne whose son-in-law was shot in one of these incidents like the one yesterday. It was also at a military base; it was what’s come to be known as the Fort Bragg sniper incident of 1995.
Now it [...]
There are stats nerds on this here internet, but I am not one of them. Every so often I run across a blogger who uses their stats program and its tracking powers to hunt down and punish readers who have displeased them in some way — posting IP numbers, sometimes [...]
You’re never too old to learn something new. I managed to report the results of every contested race in the Grosse Pointes last night in a single tweet with not even a shortened URL, and given my tendency to run on at the keyboard, I think this shows not [...]
I have to say something about Henry Allen, a journalism story that’s mostly staying in journalism circles and probably that’s where it belongs, because it has no greater import or anything. I mention it mainly because I always wanted to work for or with Allen, a legendary writer and [...]
Halloween went swimmingly. The air was nippy but not too, the leaves crunchy and abundant, and once again, I overbought. I used to buy 10 bags of candy. This year, I bought…I forget how many, but it was way more than 10. I blanched a moment when the total came [...]
Detroit! Never boring, this city, and I mean never. The Wayne County prosecutor dragged the former mayor — the disgraced felon, that is — back from Texas, where he now lives, for a probation hearing, to answer questions about his finances, to wit: Why is he claiming poverty when it [...]
There was a raid in Detroit and Dearborn yesterday. The FBI went after a radical mosque catering mainly to African-American converts. The leader, who was killed in a shootout with the G-folks, appears in an Olan Mills-ish portrait looking like a character from bad community theater. From what I can [...]
Another quiet morning with Ruby. (Hop. Hop. Hop. Scratch-scratch-scratch. STOP CHEWING THAT! It’s a loop.) A mild day. Rain seems to be gone for a while. It brought down a fresh load of leaves, so the work I did over the weekend, raking and piling, looks completely undone. Ah, well. [...]
I bought a giant sunflower head at the farm market last week, and finally got around to hanging it from one of the trees. It took the squirrels a day to strip it bare and leave it in pieces on the ground. This guy was so [...]
The top vote-getter in the Detroit City Council primary in August was Charles Pugh. You Fort Wayners might remember him from his days as a young reporter for WKJG, although he didn’t stay long. He was clearly ambitious, and before long was en route to a bigger markets, until he [...]
Such a day to travel to Ann Arbor — the air still soft, fall colors at their absolute peak, the oblivious overprivileged students stepping in front of your car and I’m sorry but are you riding that bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street, HEADED DIRECTLY FOR ME?
She was. [...]
I’m in Ann Arbor, doing online journalism training. About to eat roast beef. Carry on, all.
[...]I feel better, and I don’t quite trust it. You know how these things go: You step out of the shower and proclaim lo, I am healed, set off about your day and feel like crap by noon. I have a full day of training tomorrow in Ann Arbor, and [...]
There are two kinds of entertainment for children. There’s the kind that is unapologetically for children. “Barney & Friends” is a perfect example. Smiling, happy, clap– and sing-along, broad as a barn — this is why kids love it and adults hate it.
There’s another kind that pitches at two [...]
In a dark moment I would describe many of the people in Hank Stuever’s wonderful new book as awful, and maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but certainly they’re my opposite in every way — George Bush-lovin’, Jesus-worshipin’, Red State-occupyin’, exurbia-residin’ Texans. They say tomayta, [...]
You ask me, everything you need to know about Balloon Boy’s family is that they were on “Wife Swap.” Normal families aren’t on “Wife Swap.” (Or its Fox equivalent, “Trading Spouses,” which went out of production a couple years ago.) The premise — two radically different but equally insane kennels [...]
I don’t know if you’ve been following the Ralph Lauren Photoshopping story. It all started when Boing Boing called them out for trying to quash criticism of this preposterous ad image by getting the blog post pulled as a copyright violation. Things worsened (for Ralph, anyway) when it was [...]
Because I have another ridiculous day ahead, an all-bloggage Wednesday, and we’ll try for something better by tomorrow, eh?
A contributor to the Times of London considers the problem of celebrity culture:
First and foremost, there is the opportunity cost of interminable second-hand gossip; preoccupation with celebrities is an appalling squandering [...]
Yesterday was a holiday, I discovered when I started my police rounds. Let me see the hands of those who are a) employed in the private sector; b) had yesterday off; and c) don’t live in Columbus, Ohio.
Yes, I thought so. Columbus Day is one of those holidays we [...]
Grosse Pointe is a community that honors tradition. (Sometimes to a fault. That’s for another day.) Lots of people who live here as adults grew up here, went away to college, and came back like homing pigeons, because they like the continuity of the place, its small-town feel, its bedrock [...]
As sleepy as I am in the morning, there aren’t many reports coming out of the radio that make me stop what I’m doing and turn up the volume, convinced I’m experiencing audio hallucinations. Today was different.
I gather this was the reaction in Oslo, too, where the assembled [...]
The NYT reports on the New Jersey governor’s race, and states pretty baldly that the incumbent, Jon Corzine, is making his opponent’s size a campaign issue:
It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping [...]
Someone is remaking “Red Dawn.” I know, I know: why? It’s perfect the way it is. What could ever top this mid-‘80s Cold War paranoid fantasy? What’s the new story, now that the Evil Empire has been defanged and we still have the memory of those indelible performances — Patrick [...]
How did I manage to plan my week so everything happens on Monday or Tuesday? Bottom line is, I have work on top of work to do today, and in jettisoning chores, the blog draws the short straw today. Regular readers know I consider this my daily warmup and batting [...]
I may have to take it all back, Michael Pollan. This very very long, very very stomach-turning New York Times piece is worth every minute it takes to read, and urp you stifle in response.
The story is about how one 22-year-old woman was left paralyzed and brain-damaged by [...]
What to say about David Letterman? Cad? Sexual harasser? Sugar daddy? All of the above. My head hurts. I’m struck by this unsourced gossip, via Defamer, which implies a gig working for Dave was win-win all around, if you didn’t mind occasional sexual service in return for having your [...]
Lazy morning, watching the bunny hop around. While Ruby will never claim her place in the pet hall of fame, it has been interesting having her live with us. Humanity’s deal with companion animals has always been that we’ll share our bounty in exchange for something of theirs — mousing [...]
I’ve been scanning the usual sources, and it’s gratifying to see that condemnation of Roman Polanski among people who have never been offered entrance to a luxury lounge is pretty close to universal. Among the ahem artistic community — pinkies up! — not so much. I admire Martin Scorsese, and [...]
Roman Polanski will, as they say, “face justice” in a child-rape case so old the victim is perimenopausal. Good. There shouldn’t be a statute of limitations on that sort of thing, and no matter what the victim says today, there needs to be a reckoning, 76 years old or not, [...]
So many interesting things in the meeee-dya — every so often I like to say it like the pests who brayed it in my ear all these years — this weekend. I hardly know where to start. As many of you know, Detroit is having a moment in the national [...]
I found a notebook yesterday. Nothing like a full software reinstall to send what should stay buried tumbling from the shelves. Keeping notebooks is one of those things all writers are supposed to do, and I sort of do, but not enough. There’s the how-to-carry thing, for one. There’s the [...]
For a brief shining moment in 2005 or so, Kate and I had a shared TV ritual — “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” 7 to 8 p.m. in my market and probably yours, too. It was fun, and it was educational. Then she discovered “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was on [...]
One thing you have to admit about the American pop-culture barrel: It really has no bottom. You think the Jackass/Bruno/Borat oeuvre was the last word in vulgarity? You have yet to meet Tucker Max. You think the long, sordid story of Michael Jackson’s corpse ended when his moldering bones were [...]
Yes, Jeff, I did see “Mad Men.” I’m gonna be doing some spoilin’ here, so take a minute and leave the room if you must and OH MY GOD THEY RAN A LAWNMOWER OVER THE ENGLISH GUY’S FOOT. I’m not sure what this show is trying to tell me this [...]
My search for the ideal stimulant continues. I’m trying to find that elusive pick-me-up that I can down sometime around 10 p.m. that will keep me alert until 1 a.m., but still let me sleep afterward. Two cups of coffee handle the stay-awake part, but sour my stomach for sleeping. [...]
Ruby the rabbit is turning out to be less pet by far than a dog or cat, but still amusing. I keep her close by, to monitor her chewing and miscellaneous destruction, but also to observe her wacky antics. She likes to climb to the tops of things, then jump [...]
The first great-books club meeting of the year was yesterday, although maybe that’s pushing it. We don’t read any great books in toto, we read selections from them, in a master text called “Great Conversations,” which the library, the sponsor of this shindig, provides. There was dark talk of [...]
God, I hate it when NPR tries to be hip. I also hate it when they show willful obtuseness in the face of pop culture. On this score, I’m impossible to please, and should probably just tune out when they try something like an “appreciation” of Patrick Swayze, which [...]
I’m wondering if I need to stop paying attention to politics for a while. It was a beautiful weekend, and while checking e-mail Saturday I surfed over to Memeorandum to see what was going on with the teabaggers. Michelle Malkin’s blog proclaimed the march at 2 million strong. I [...]
I suppose we can all say what we were doing when it happened. I’ll spare you my recollections; they’re unremarkable and who really cares? What I think about at this distance isn’t just what happened that day, it’s what happened after. A mental data dump in no particular order, with [...]
Wow. The people calling this the “most astonishingly tasteless thing I’ve ever read in a newspaper,” are somehow …selling it short. For those of you too time-starved to click through, here’s the lead on Mark Whicker’s column yesterday in the Orange County Register:
It doesn’t sound as if Jaycee Dugard [...]
You all know about my fear of heights. Look what I found today — BASE jumping from the RenCen here in Detroit:
This makes my head whirl. Someone on the local forum where I found this pointed out it’s at least a few years old; it predates the riverfront improvements. Still. [...]
Is mental illness afoot in the land? If you say, “Spiders are crawling up the wall! Can’t you see them?” And I say no I can’t but here, let’s take a picture of them; if there are none in the picture will you believe they’re imaginary? And you say, well, [...]
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not [...]
An embarrassment of riches…
…and the distant thunder of frost. Ack! Mums!
[...]Beb said in comments yesterday that the Michigan State Fair felt “hollowed-out,” and that’s it in a nutshell. In this, our fifth fair together, Kate and I have an arrangement: We get there before noon, and I buy her a wristband that will allow her to ride all the rides [...]
I’m doing a big hardware/software upgrade over the weekend. (Isn’t that thrilling? Doesn’t that make you want to read the next sentence?) Long story short: Snow Leopard, plus a commodious new hard drive that will make my laptop a yawning maw of data. I’m taking advantage of some bundling/upgrade deals, [...]
Ruby, our new rabbit, has her first official nickname. Spriggy had approximately a thousand, ranging from Fart in a Hot Skillet to his Indian name, Joe Walks Along. So we like to call our animals by handles other than their given names. But even I was impressed when Alan threw [...]
NN.C community member Basset sent along this artifact of southern culture (he lives in Nashville) with a brief note: “Saw the attached flag yesterday for sale at a flea market outside Lebanon, Tennessee, about half an hour east of Nashville. Don’t know who they think might buy one.” The flag [...]
I watched a little of the Kennedy wake, and a little of the Kennedy funeral mass. Both seemed like pretty standard affairs as these things go, if a bit funnier — those Irish like a wake to be celebratory, and Teddy’s certainly was. Lance Mannion found a nice clip, [...]
Jeez, it’s cold. August 28th, it’s just above 60 degrees outside and we’re looking at a day of rain. The acorns are falling on the roof with such violence it sounds like we’re under sniper fire. The squirrels come down and eat them on the deck, leaving the shells to [...]
My schedule’s been all bollixed up these days, and I keep missing my 10 a.m. exercise class, Pumping Iron for Cougars and a Few Fat Girls Like Me. So last night I went to Pilates for the first time. Mat Pilates, aka the kind you do in a class, as [...]
A note to my right-of-center readers: I kept my mouth shut about Ronald Reagan. (I did not keep my mouth shut about daughter Patti’s fairly repulsive essay for People magazine, but a girl has her limits.) I understand he was important to many people, who found him to be [...]
The first story that kicked up in my health-care searching last night was this, about the GOP’s “seniors’ health care bill of rights.” Taking a page from the Contract with on America playbook, Michael Steele has evidently found what he thinks is the key to elderly America’s heart.
I finally [...]
We have no cell service, and no USB cord for picture-showin’, but we do have internet. This is just a fresh thread to make room for the ripostes to Jeff, who moments ago dropped this dead mouse on the table:
I continue to be fascinated by how easily folks accept calling [...]
No no no no no I don’t want to step out on the glass carbuncle on the Sears Tower observation deck. But be my guest, dear.
[...]For a Friday when I’m racing to complete a long to-do list ahead of leaving on a much-needed vacation, just some bloggage today. I’ll be in and out of here next week as the spirit moves me; it may move me a lot, or not at all, but I’ll be [...]
Is there any phrase in journalism more compelling than “fiery crash?” Just saying it makes my mouth water. We had one this morning in Detroit, which followed another Pavlovian term, “high-speed chase.” Rumor has it a TV station had video, which I didn’t see; the TV doesn’t go on [...]
Caught part of the Joan Rivers roast on Comedy Central the other night. To paraphrase Philip Roth: Never have I heard the word vagina spoken so much in one evening, and I am a woman who has heard the word vagina spoken.
Joan’s vagina, we heard, is old, dry, old, [...]
I have an early interview, followed by my Russian lesson, and as sometimes happens, I find myself with nothing prepared. Well, there’s this — an iPhone picture I took last night on my bike ride:
Isn’t that pretty? If only I’d had my better camera.
So, [...]
The 48 Hour Film Project awards were this weekend. The event was held in a loft with the sort of sci-fi-apocalypse-hello-America-this-is-your-future view Detroiters take for granted:
That’s the Packard plant, beloved of lazy photojournalists looking for a tragic symbol of Detroit’s industrial decline; Jim at Sweet Juniper (and [...]
John Dingell’s town hall meeting erupted in chaos, as the Journalese goes. Some guy pushed his son’s wheelchair up to the podium and extended a trembling finger at the 81-year-old congressman; he was so calm and reasoned, the police had to escort him out. But that wasn’t the worst [...]
Slate has a story today on why vintage stoves are better than modern ones, and while the writer, Regina Schrambling, comes at the subject from a somewhat more oblique angle than I would have — she bought her ’50’s-era Wedgewood as “vintage” in the early ‘90s — we arrive [...]
As you can imagine, yesterday wasn’t a very good day all around, even as we were all certain we did the right thing. Sprig started to fail on Sunday. At first we thought it was a repeat of the bad indigestion he had a couple months ago. But by Monday [...]
Spriggy, 1991–2009
I’ll have more to say about this later. For now, this is just to let his vast fan club know he’s no longer with us.
[...]I have a feeling John McIntyre is one of those copy-desk chiefs I would have loved with an all-consuming passion right up until the moment I didn’t. Recently released from the Baltimore Sun, he now writes a blog at…
(May I just pause for a moment and marvel at how I [...]
Well, I finally read the Pollan piece in the NYT. Very interesting, lots of detail, mostly true, and yet, once again, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being lectured to. It’s not a good feeling. I think it was this passage that did it:
…Kitchen work itself has [...]
So I was watching coverage of the beer summit last night, and wondered what they were really talking about. They looked so uncomfortable — how can you drink beer in a suit? And from those stupid mugs? If you’re going to have a beer summit, at least loosen the ties [...]
This is the time in summer when my body clock finally readjusts to not having to get up at 7, and I frequently manage to sleep clear ’til 8. Woo. I will have five weeks of this until I have to start getting up at 7 again. Alan sometimes wonders [...]
Good story in the NYT this morning on food styling for the movies, pegged to “Julie & Julia,” of course. I’m not sure I’ll be seeing J&J, at least not in theaters. I can’t think of a person whose work I enjoy so much in one place and dislike [...]
A case of animal hoarding came to light here last week. Someone saw a loose kitten, which led to a conversation with T. Creepy Neighbor, which led to the animal-control people showing up, which is evidently the only agency that knows what the telltale smell indicates. Long story short: [...]
For our 48-hour film challenge, we needed a car that might be driven by a creep. Of course, we turned to Detroit’s back catalog. (It helped that it was owned by our designated Car Guy, the guy who got us the stretch limo last year.) I became its caretaker, and [...]
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