Good morning, America, how are ya?

I think a lot these days about the damage done over the last 10 years or so. I’m focused on RFK Jr. at the moment, but I could be thinking of any one of dozens of people. Bobby’s patron speaks of children being “injected with this giant needle,” a ridiculous lie that’s hardly ever refuted by a journalist. RFK Jr talks about “72 vaccines,” another lie. The standard childhood vaccine array today is aimed at 15 diseases, some given over time in multiple doses. I counted the number of doses on the Cleveland Clinic vaccination schedule, and it totaled 37. My child got every one of them, including HPV, which conservatives, with typical Christian charity, call the slut shot. Needless to say, she’s healthy, unless you consider choosing a career in rock music an illness, ha ha.

And yet. A friend has a mother with some fragile health conditions, and when he told her recently that he didn’t want to visit until he’d had a Covid shot, she expressed concern that he’d had “too many” of those. He obligingly sent her the story about the German man who deliberately got a Covid vaccine about every four days for more than two years, for a total of 217. He is fine. But this is what I think of as the damage.

Clearly we’ll never reach Bobby and his cohort on this issue, but their continual amplification of this lie is seeping into the consciousness of otherwise reasonable people, who just vaguely worry that he’s probably wrong, but maybe he’s right, or a little bit right, and let that keep them from stopping in at their local pharmacy for whatever they’re due for.

Me, I’ve gotten eight Covid shots. I figure I’ll be getting two a year until I die. Still a Novid here. (Now let’s cue the troll who always pops up and jeers at us. Mr. Coffee, or something.) Might still get it. But I won’t get it because I let some propagandist talk me out of a safe vaccine. I got flu and shingles shots on Friday, and my fucking arm is still hot and sore from the latter, but that’s normal and I remember people with shingles telling me they have never, ever suffered such pain. Seems a good trade-off.

Today is the election. Over the last four years, despite saying ridiculous bullshit like “if I lose, that means it’s rigged,” millions of Americans have bought in to the idea our elections are not secure. They hold up this or that case of shenanigans as proof, whereas anyone who’s paid attention knows that yes, election fraud is easy to commit, on a very small scale. I could have voted in Indiana and Michigan — hands up don’t shoot — for a couple years, but I didn’t. And if I had, it would have made a difference in any race with a one-vote margin. I could have collected Kate’s absentee ballot and deposited it in the drop box with mine and Alan’s, which would technically be ballot harvesting because we don’t live in the same household anymore. Perusing the Heritage Foundation’s database of election fraud, you can read about individual cases. There are 19 listed for Michigan. Here’s one for Brandon Hall, a bottom-tier GOP activist:

Brandon Hall was convicted of ten counts of ballot petition fraud stemming from the 2012 election. Chris Houghtaling, who sought to become a candidate for the Ottawa County District Court, hired Hall to acquire the necessary signatures for his candidacy; Houghtaling reportedly did not care whether the signatures were collected legally or illegally, and even assisted in Hall’s crime by providing him old 2010 petitions to copy. Hall, realizing he did not collect enough signatures, used a phone book to complete the rest. Hall’s friend, Zachary Savage, assisted with the fraud, but prosecutors granted him immunity in exchange for his testimony. Hall appealed his conviction, which was affirmed. He is awaiting sentencing.

(Hall is the genius who briefly worked for James Craig, a former Detroit police chief who ran unsuccessfully for governor, and was part of this fiasco.)

Here’s another, Nancy Williams:

Nancy Williams was charged by the state in Wayne County with 3 felony counts of forging a signature on an absentee ballot, 2 felony counts of election law forgery, 5 misdemeanor counts of false statements on applications for absentee ballots, and 7 misdemeanor counts of receiving a payment to influence vote after participating in an absentee ballot trafficking scheme involving elderly voters at a nursing care facility. She submitted voter registration and absentee ballot applications for 26 legally incapacitated residents under her care without their consent. Williams had the absentee ballots mailed directly to her. She pleaded guilty to 7 counts of receiving a payment to influence vote in exchange for dismissal of the other charges, was sentenced to one year of probation, fined $3,500, and assessed $1,096 in fees. Similar charges against Williams in Oakland County are still pending.

You don’t win elections with 26 votes, at least not important ones. You win with thousands, hundreds of thousands. And that requires a conspiracy so vast it would collapse in hours.

But that’s where we are today. I hope we take a step back, but I expect bad things will happen between now and next January 20. We just don’t know what kind of bad things, and they’ll be different for everyone.

Be at peace, all. I’m working overnight tonight as a Dem challenger (observer) in Macomb County, where the city clerk has opted NOT to take advantage of eight days of pre-processing of absentee ballots, for unclear reasons. What that means is, I go to work at midnight and get off Whenever. So expect me Whenever, and play nice in the comments.

Sorry for not much to say today, but my brain is buzzing and I need to get some real work done. In the meantime, I remind you that this idiot is going around saying this, and I honestly can’t imagine anything worse for the country:

Anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. announces that Trump has “promised” him total “control” over America’s public health agencies if he wins pic.twitter.com/BRJceUzwVk

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 30, 2024

Please vote as though your life depends on it, because it does.

I’d imagine most of us remember those fabulous ’80s, right? That’s when “classic rock” emerged as a radio format, often credited to the utterly loathsome Randy Michaels. By effectively shutting the door on new music, the genre became moribund, only occasionally spawning retro-new acts like the Black Crowes. For me, it’s when radio really started to suck.

But when hip-hop rose to dominate pop music — and when lots of classic-rock dudes had teenage sons who scorned dad’s records for the rap that their elders hated and feared, and did so beneath the private headphones of a Walkman — it got nasty. I vividly recall many station IDs where some male voice would snarl TODAY’S BEST CLASSIC ROCK…AND NO RAP. There was an action movie whose TV ads featured a black gangster snarling at Bruce Willis, “I’m wanna make you scream in pain!” and Willis replies, “Play some rap music.” Ha ha. A rock DJ in Fort Wayne told me that when he played Run-DMC’s cover of “Walk This Way,” the phone lines lit up immediately, and not in praise, if you know what I mean.

Racist? You bet. Hip-hop may not be your cup of tea, but you can’t say it hasn’t stood the test of time. Public Enemy comes up from time to time in my boxing classes, and it still sounds contemporary, which is not something you can say about the synth-heavy pop of the ’80s, which is so dated it makes you smell AquaNet. Even the scary-ass rappers every white person was afraid of have matured into cuddly pop-culture heroes (looking at you, Snoop Dogg) or even people we should respect and listen to; if you didn’t see Barack Obama paying tribute to Eminem last week, I certainly did, and reflected on when one of my editors in Fort Wayne, a true music appreciator across genres, was appalled by his Slim Shady debut to the point of alarm.

But some people, mostly old white GenX or Boomers, still hate it.

I thought of this a few years back, when I was browsing for a hairbrush at CVS and overheard a black woman, younger than me but not by much, singing along to Billy Joel on the store’s music system. She was doing it kind of absently, looking for something on the shelves too, but I was struck by how much feeling she managed to infuse in a lyric I’d already heard 187,000 times. She had every right to find it as lame as I did, but she didn’t.

This week we have a crew hanging drywall in the basement. They’re all black, and like all drywall crews, they pass the time playing music on a Bluetooth speaker. I’d expect a playlist, or a radio station, that draws from the deep wells of blackness in pop music, but no. At the moment, it’s the Eagles. Before that, U2. Before that, Hall & Oates. The only black artist I can recall hearing this morning is Tina Turner, and “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” a fine track, but not exactly a deep one for that artist. I texted the family about this, and Alan noted, “The first day I thought they were curating their playlist so as not to frighten the white folks upstairs. But no. (The crew leader) knew the lyrics and was singing along to a Foreigner song.”

When it dropped, I know I linked to Wesley Morris’ contribution to the 1619 Project, a podcast episode called “The Birth of American Music,” and I still think it’s one of the best explanations of how we got here that you can get in half an hour. It starts with a funny intro about yacht rock, and here’s the pivot point:

This is the sound not just of black America, but the sound of America. It is deeply American, almost especially when it’s sung by British people like David Bowie and Annie Lennox and Amy Winehouse. And it fills me with pride. Like, I know that there is something irresistible and ultimately inevitable about black music being a part of American popular music. But it also reminds me that there’s a history to this, a very painful history. And in the most perversely ironic way, it’s this historical pain that is responsible for this music.

It goes on from there, but I don’t want to spoil it.

There’s a whole YouTube subgenre of black people listening to white music. This is only a mild taste of it. And all of this is, I hasten to add, FINE. It is great that we can all enjoy all the music that’s out there, even Foreigner. I just think it’s funny, how that woman in the CVS could take a Billy Joel song and make it pretty great. I’d buy her record! “In the Aisles: A CVS Shopper Covers Billy Joel,” maybe. That would drive the rock DJs nuts. But these boneheads who run rock radio can’t find it in their cinder-like hearts to enjoy a little Kendrick Lamar.

OK, then. Just a few more days until widespread civil unrest breaks out in American cities! Let’s listen to music and take our minds off it.

I was champing at the bit to vote early, and did, along with 145,000 other Michigan voters, which suggests a lot of bit-champing out there. My early-voting center said it had been steady all day, and it was. Didn’t take me long with the straight-ticket option, a choice I used to scorn, but well: Things are different now. Then there were the usual Wayne County judicial races, lots of them unopposed and/or under-opposed, which means the ballot says “vote for no more than 18,” and there are only 16 names in the race, so why bother.

But it’s done. And I got the good sticker:

Now let’s see if the number of emails and texts drop off. I’ve found responding “fuck off” to the ones that come from candidates you despise works as well as STOP. Just another week and change until I can either stop taking OTC sleep aids, or start taking double doses, plus CBD gummies.

I’m fresh home from leading the neighborhood Halloween slow roll, although I didn’t. Lead, that is. I got the tandem out, wiped the dust off, pumped up the tires, made a playlist, and met about five kids and three adults at the appointed place. When we set out, I led for about half a block before three kids dressed as Ironman, some other superhero and a dragon (but “a Mario dragon, not a regular dragon”) blew past me and set a rather brisk pace. Fortunately, one of the other adults had done group rides before, and could outpace them and block the intersections. I just tooled along on my Soviet limousine, playing The Cramps and Bow Wow Wow, and everyone arrived at the block party safely.

Update: Just received a text from someone telling me to call Sen. Stabenow and tell her “Michigan families can’t afford higher prices and to support the elimination of taxes on overtime and tips to help families survive.” Testing my Fuck Off strategy.

Count me among those who are not outraged by the Washington Post’s non-endorsement. I’ve always found endorsements fairly silly, a relic from when every newspaper had a specific constituency. (Fun fact: There were once six daily newspapers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, two of them in German.) I could excuse a union worker for wondering which judge the labor paper thinks he or she could vote for. But the self-importance that some editorial boards display around this time is ridiculous, for a practice that maybe, maybe influences 10,000 votes nationwide. That said, to decide to forego endorsements this year of all years is only proof that an authoritarian doesn’t have to crack down, they just have to make other people think they might, and people like Jeff Bezos fall right in line. So I didn’t cancel our subscription. I should cancel Amazon Prime, and still might.

Meanwhile, I found this infuriating multimedia presentation on how abortion is, and isn’t, being performed in the new era. Dr. Kristi Tomlin’s story is particularly crazy-making.

Finally, if you’re online as much as I am, you’ve probably noticed the degradation of content on websites and social-media platforms. I used to hate that word — content — but what’s out there now doesn’t really deserve to be called anything else. Turns out, the problem is “slop,” most of it AI-generated. Interesting explanation at the link. I guess it was fun while it lasted.

Monday awaits us all. Hang tight.

I don’t believe we have yet said goodbye to Mitzi Gaynor. She died last week, at 93. She was mourned in the usual modern fashion — some amusing clips of her energetic dancing posted online, some YAS QUEEN, a note added to the lengthening list for the In Memoriam reel at next year’s Oscars.

I will remember Mitzi mainly for her effect on Eddie Fisher.

Eddie was a sportswriter in Columbus, already past his prime by the time I arrived in 1979. I don’t know if he even had a beat, but he looked like the kind of guy who’d cover horse racing. A bachelor. He always had a wet cigar stub clamped in his jaw, smelled like a wet cigar stub and had a tendency to look at women like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. Eyes bugging out on springs, tongue rolling out like a carpet runner — you know the type.

He’s gone now, and his obit informs me that he spent a stretch as the paper’s entertainment editor. Even though he toiled in Sports, he hung on to one assignment from his earlier job, and that was writing advances for at least some of the Kenley Players summer-stock productions, and certainly the ones starring Mitzi Gaynor. I think he considered her a friend of sorts.

He loved, loved, loved Mitzi, and rarely missed the chance to drop her birth name into his slavering stories: Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber. I once walked past his desk when he was interviewing her. I think he was actually drooling.

Admittedly, Mitzi was quite something, an energetic hoofer with the legs to match. Her summer show wasn’t a play or musical, just “The Mitzi Gaynor Show,” with hoofing and jokes and false eyelashes and a crowd of backup dancers in tight pants and top hats. If you like that kind of thing, it was your kind of thing.

Mitzi had an active Instagram account, where she or her reps would post old clips of her dancing in some short number with a rhinestone-studded fringe hem. I guess that means she was young at heart. I could certainly watch her sing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” on repeat for about an hour.

In the midst of looking up stuff, I found a short piece about John Kenley, founder of the players, with this startling revelation:

Born to Slovakian saloon keepers in 1906, John was born in Denver Colorado, after the family had fled increasing prohibition laws on the East Coast. Born intersex, John (who occasionally went by “Joan” but utilized male pronouns when at work) entered show business when the family moved to Cleveland Ohio, where he worked as a female impersonator, acrobat, dancer, and audience plant at comedy show before he made the move to New York City.

I had no idea.

So farewell, Mitzi. You were a true entertainer.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mitzi Gaynor (@themitzigaynor)

Someone I know wondered this weekend whether the story about Arnold Palmer that Trump told this weekend came from his good buddy Jack Nicklaus. Not that we’ll ever know. Another reason to despise the Golden Bear. You Buckeyes know that Nicklaus is probably the most famous native of Upper Arlington, the Columbus suburb where I grew up. (There’s also Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s, but he moved in later.) Jack is MAGA now, so I don’t feel bad about disliking him.

Or rather, Jack supports “the best candidate.” I expect he’ll consider the guy who talked about Arnie’s shlong the best. The guy who posted this last night:

Check out the package on that piece of fan art. MAGA is always going on about “stolen valor.” You’d think this would bother them. You’d think wrong.

Some of the early reports about the Arnold Palmer remarked didn’t say what Trump actually said. There were a few headlines like this, from the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (thanks, Jason):

I think even the NYT referred to “memories” about Palmer, but fortunately the rewrite desk sharpened it up:

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.

…His monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis. Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity. He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris.

“Such a horrible four years,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration, as he surveyed the crowd of hundreds of people in front of him. “We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —.”

Ugh. Oh well. Short shrift today, because my weekend was pretty full, but unexceptional. A Friday-night movie (“A Clockwork Orange” at a revival house), a Saturday bike outing, a Sunday bike outing, a welcome-home dinner for Kate, who’s been on the road this past week. Then I had this really weird dream just before I woke up, and it fogged my head for hours. Now I gotta get to work.

So I hope your week isn’t starting like mine.

I asked for sweata weatha, and I got it. Highs today in the low 50s, and because our Nest thermostat is always trying to save us a few pennies, I realized today that once again it had nudged the thermostat down to 66 and my nose was cold. And this reminded me of a nose warmer that some catalog we used to get carried; it looked like a stocking cap for your nose, and you would presumably give that as a gag gift to someone like me, but certainly never wear it where any other human being could see you.

I couldn’t think of the catalog’s name. And while it wasn’t Hammacher Schlemmer, that’s the only one that came to mind. Does it still exist? It does, as a website now.

And it’s still pretty weird:

And:

But this being the 21st century, guess what, they have vibrators. Behold, the “Award Winning Women’s Sexual Wellness Massager:”

“Come on, CVS carries those things now,” Alan told me. OK, but still. This is the place I first saw the “weather forecaster” that was a picture of a donkey with a tail made of yarn. “If the tail’s movin’, it’s windy. If it’s wet, it’s rainin’,” etc. It was something of a surprise.

But never fear, you can still buy a nose warmer, but not at Hammacher Schlemmer. This was from some other outfit:

They are surprisingly numerous on Etsy, as well. Go figure.

OK, then. I was going to stay away from you-know-who today, but the clips coming out of the Univision town hall last night were absolutely brutal; I suggest you dial some up. And I leave you with this banger of a deep dive out of Fort Wayne, about how Parkview Hospital grew and grew and got greedier and greedier. It’s detail-packed and riveting:

Revenue pressure was even brought down to the level of nurses – some of whom say they have been pushed to charge for the smallest of items from Kleenexes to batteries. One 2022 email, obtained by the Guardian, shows a supervisor at Parkview DeKalb telling nurses that she had reviewed their charts for the week and found they had “missed” $50,000 in charges as a team. The following year, managers told staff to be more stringent about how many linen towels they handed out to patients – an initiative they termed “linen stewardship”.

“It makes me feel disgusting. It makes me feel dirty,” said one current Parkview nurse, describing how staff have been made to charge for supplies and services down to the micro-level. “Why should I be trying to make sure that they’re getting the most money that they can?”

In some cases, these volume and coding protocols resulted in enormous bills and significant additional revenue for the system, according to medical and legal records reviewed by the Guardian.

In 2021, after a young girl went to the ER for an accidental razor cut, a doctor applied an “adhesive skin affix”, a special type of wound glue, on her finger for about 10 seconds, according to her mother. Afterwards, Parkview charged just over $85 for the glue capsule, about four to five times the price listed online. The hospital also tacked another $295 onto the bill for the labor, which it classified as an intermediate surgical procedure, according to paperwork reviewed by the Guardian.

Have a great weekend, all.

‘Twas a rough night last night. Bad insomnia, probably not helped by a late dinner of Alan’s chili, but never mind that. Slept horribly, which means today is a low-effort, low-achievement day, but oh well. And I missed my morning swim. But! I managed to unload the dishwasher, drank two large glasses of water and prepared a decent lunch, so here’s hoping tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime, new music from Shadow Show here.

And proud parental moment here, via WDET-FM here in Detroit:

Logrolling for my daughter out of the way, here’s one reason I slept badly: Trump’s dance party last night in Pennsylvania. It made me renew my vow, made periodically over the last few years, to not forgive any MAGAts in my extended circle, should they come groveling for mercy through the wreckage of the American republic. I know, that’s not Jesus’ way, but Jesus doesn’t have to live here, where I do, gnawing my nails to the cuticle that we might actually have four more years of this bullshit. Even if Trump loses, I expect weeks, maybe months, of civil unrest. It’s going to be ugly. My older friends remind me that the 1960s were in many ways worse, and they’re correct, but this is now. And every day, EVERY DAY, Trump is telling us who he is, and if that is who you are? Fuck off, all the way off, and don’t leave a forwarding address.

At the moment he’s being questioned by a braver soul at the Economic Club of Chicago, that is to say, braver than the limp noodle who questioned him in Detroit last week (see previous entry). If I were the “beautiful woman” he pointed to during this exchange, I’d get up, go home and take a Silkwood shower, followed by a dip in a mikvah, followed by a sage-smudging ceremony:

Trump points out a “beautiful woman” in the crowd and says to her of migrants, “they will look at you and kill you” pic.twitter.com/3r5vSEH6Vl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2024

So you can see, it’s just not a good Tuesday. Imagine if Biden — hell, if Harris — behaved the way Trump did last night. The New York Times would be sounding klaxon horns and calling battle stations. Instead, we have this:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

“Known for improvisational departures” — I ask you. Grandpa is sundowning.

Later:

Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed. After offering what appeared to be a closing statement and having his campaign play a James Brown song, Mr. Trump suggested taking another question or two. As the crowd cheered in approval, he said, “let’s go,” but then said he’d play “Y.M.C.A.” and send the crowd home.

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There’s nobody leaving,” he said. “What’s going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

I need to take a break from this stuff. Between this, the Israelis cooking refugees in tents and the Tigers losing, there’s no reason to open the paper (literally or figuratively) this week. But I’ll try to be back one more time before the end of it.

I was going to debrief you guys on Trump’s appearance — you can’t really call it a speech — before the Detroit Economic Club last week, but my week was back-loaded and I ran out of time. It was…well, it was fucking weird.

First, a little background: This was Trump’s second appearance before the DEC, which is a business group full of the city’s machers and machers-in-waiting. Another city equivalent might be the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco; I think New York has a similar group. They meet weekly or biweekly, and have speakers on serious subjects of interest to the business community, like tax or foreign policy, or topics of local interest, like the various sports teams, but almost always with a focus on the business impact of whatever the subject is.

One thing the club is very proud of is, they’ve been addressed by all U.S. presidents going back to…can’t remember. Decades. Usually these people come through when they’re still candidates, but they come through. They don’t pay honoraria; speakers come because it’s an honor to be invited to address the C-suiters of the auto companies and other industries based in southeast Michigan.

Trump first came through as a candidate, in 2016. It didn’t go well. A lot of people bought tickets with the intent to disrupt, and the first one — a woman who leapt to her feet and started screaming at him about something — came about 10 minutes in. I was there, and counted about 20 or so more, one of the yellers none other than not-yet-a-congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Security guards frog-marched each one out of the hall.

But Trump gave a speech, a prepared speech with a prompter. You can read it here. It’s full of empty promises, but it’s coherent.

Eight years later, he was invited back, most likely because of the influence of John Rakolta, a top-tier macher who served as ambassador to the U.A.E. during Trump’s term. He’s nearly the same age, and built a huge construction company here, Walbridge. Rich as Croesus, as you can imagine. Pop-culture fans may recall his wife, Terry, who was nationally famous in the ’90s when she led a boycott of “Married…With Children.” Bill O’Reilly had her on his show a lot.

(I know all this because I was hired to write a book for some anniversary of its founding, a custom-publishing job. I remember seeing Terry at the launch party and wondering why she looked so familiar. She still wears her hair the same way. She also appears to have an Instagram that reveals a fuckton of plastic surgery, but she looks damn good for 80.)

Anyway, Trump showed up last week, and it was very different. He didn’t speak as Candidate Trump, but Caesar Trump, rally-style. He walked the short distance to the podium and just stood there, while his walk-on music, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” naturally, played to its first chorus. It looked like this:

If his bronzer gets any darker he’s going to have to deport himself.pic.twitter.com/NhTtX2JqX9

#TraitorTrump

— Scottacular (@Scottcrates) October 11, 2024

The Twitter account I found this on quipped: “If his bronzer gets any darker, he’s going to have to deport himself.”

There was no prepared speech, and no disruptions. (I imagine the security was about 10X tougher this time.) He just stood there and rambled, rally-style, for TWO HOURS, Fidel Castro-meets-late-life-Elvis. The headline was that he said if Kamala Harris is elected, the whole country will look like Detroit. I don’t know what the reaction was to this; I’m told it was “muted,” as we say in Journalese. Given how hard many in the room have worked to achieve the city’s recent triumphs — new buildings, the NFL Draft, etc. — I would certainly hope so. But in my opinion, the headline should have been: Mush-brain candidate for nation’s top office rambles for two goddamn hours, but no one asked me.

Incredibly, this display was followed by an onstage conversation with his buddy Rakolta, and that was even weirder. I wouldn’t expect the ex-ambassador to question him sharply, but the rapturous brown-nosing was something of a surprise. There were many serious-but-respectful questions he could have asked, like maybe about the proposal Trump floated, to make auto-loan insurance tax-deductible; what would that cost the national treasury? Or maybe the construction tycoon could ask how we can build housing after we’ve mass-deported a large chunk of the construction workforce. But he didn’t. The opener was something like, “You have so much energy. How do you do it?” followed by an even grosser one about the impressive, successful Trump children, and how did he manage this feat? I mean, Tiger Beat magazine was tougher on Justin Bieber.

Incredible — here’s the full footage of Trump getting a question about his parenting style at the Detroit Economic Club, then going on a nearly 8 minute rant that culminates in him calling for drug dealers to be put to death. His brain just flits around. pic.twitter.com/Ry3WjAtEfU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2024

Bah. Enough. The whole event sounded terrible. But Harris got an ad out of it:

Detroit is a city of resilience and hard work.

Donald Trump knows nothing about that.

Watch our new ad: pic.twitter.com/OGILiahTDe

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 11, 2024

The rest of the weekend was spent celebrating a friend’s birthday. The day was in August, but the gift was Friday. For a couple years now, we’ve been experimenting with the premise that the best yacht rock is found on any streaming channel’s Little River Band Radio setting. (For non-streamers, the “radio” allows the algorithm to put together a playlist that features that artist, plus similar ones.) So when I saw the LRB was coming through town, I bought her two tickets, and she graciously selected me as her plus-one. I booked a room downtown and we made a girls’ outing of it.

The show was everything I expected, which is to say, a reconstituted LRB that contains not even one original member, plus none of the replacements are even Australian, as the originals were. But we got a fairly tight set that didn’t go on too long (about an hour and 20), and because the crowd were boomers, hardly any standing. And boy, does the LRB have a dedicated fan base; when I bought the tickets last summer, there were few good ones left. But we did OK:

The guy in front of me was a superfan, and threw up those hook-em-horns hands the whole time:

On Saturday we ate at a spectacular little patisserie, and then wandered the neighborhood. This is in the parking lot of one of those new-style restaurants made for Instagram:

We did not eat there. Our friend who lives in the neighborhood said the dinner-hour valet line is “all Cybertrucks with young women contorting themselves on the hood to take selfies.” Sounds like a place I’d be allergic to, but just as an aside to Donald Trump, not so many years ago this was a grocery with a drug marketplace in the parking lot. So hey — if that’s the way the country is headed, what’s so terrible about that?

Have a great week, all.

A former colleague of mine, Leo Morris, died a little over a year ago. He lived a couple blocks down the street from us in Fort Wayne. A nice guy, a bit of an odd duck, which sometimes came out in conversation. He mentioned once that he’d spent the weekend boxing up all the books that he had stacked on his staircase, having long ago run out of shelf space. He was down to a treacherous, narrow path, and you know how those stories often end.

Anyway, he died, and his siblings, both of whom live elsewhere, sold his house. A friend sent me a Redfin screen capture of recent sales; it seems to have gone for about $95K, then was sold again for $101K just a few weeks later, and the $6,000 probably represents the work the first owner put into cleaning it out. Now it’s back on the market for $289,900, an eye-popping amount in my opinion, but also appears to have undergone a full gut rehab. I recall a dark interior with a pool table in the dining room. Now it’s flooded with light, hardwood floors, brand-new kitchen, the works. Even the third-floor attic space appears to have been sided with cedar, a very nice touch.

I sent it to Alex, who informs me that not only are real-estate prices skyrocketing in the Fort for the usual reasons, but my old neighborhood, in the 46807 zip code, is now known as “The 07,” and is considered the hipster ‘hood.

Story of my life. Jeff Borden and I lived in a four-flat apartment house in a strip of Columbus between two suburbs (Grandview and Upper Arlington), at a time when everyone else our age was renting in German Village. (Motto: Drive our charming brick streets, but don’t expect to find a parking place.) Alan and I bought in the 07 because it was affordable and close to our office, and the houses were solid and had lots of charming architectural details. Both that old strip of Columbus and our little piece of Fort Wayne are now considered cool. I guess I really am an artist after all. Top o’ the world, ma!

I spent a few minutes punching the zip code into Realtor.com, and hoo-boy: This beauty, designed by Joel Roberts Ninde, a female architect who worked a lot around there, is a mere $319,900, and also looks like it recently underwent some major renovations.

Three thousand square feet, four bedrooms, and check out that bathroom tile. I used to walk Spriggy past that house; I think it used to be blue. The exterior is stucco, and the owner said it stayed cool in summer until the temperatures went past 90. There are several Ninde houses around that neighborhood, and they have stuff like built-in cabinetry, second-floor sleeping porches, arched doorways and other drool-worthy features.

Downside: The 07 was, when I lived there, considered a little risky ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Maybe the hipsters have improved the place. The only violent crime I saw there pales in comparison to what happens in Detroit and environs on a random Saturday. If I had to move back I’d snatch up that house and start a hipster salon, something like Laurel Canyon in the ’60s.

This one, two blocks away, was my favorite. Not on the market at the moment:

The front door is on the side. The street-facing side is a solarium, with a fireplace on the back wall, that also serves the living room. A million-dollar house in any other city in the country. Sigh.

OK, enough real-estate porn. For a while I thought I’d contracted Covid over the weekend; I was coughing from the depth of my lungs. Then I realized it started while I was making kung pao chicken, and had been a little heavy-handed with the Thai chilis. Basically, I pepper-sprayed myself when they hit the hot oil and sent up a cloud of capsaicin into my own lungs. Everything is fine now, but I can still tell it happened.

In other news at this hour, I am very, very worried about Florida. This storm is a mofo. Please stay safe, and I hope those of you in the footprint will send up a flare (so to speak) here when you’re out of danger.