The revolution is over

Instead of fomenting international socialism (which they were no good at, anyway,) Cuba is entering the international business world by ... suing somebody. Actually, it'll probably end amicably, but the state-owned Cuban cigar shoppe brand, La Casa del Habano, which operates in a number of countries (not the US, obviously) is suing a Detroit-area smoke shop, La Casa De La Habana, over name infringement.

I don't give a damn, obviously, for the outcome, but I think it's a hoot that Cuba is flexing this kind of non-ideological muscle. If we could just get a cease-and-desist order on Hugo Chavez now, forbidding him from saying the name, "United States," it would be a diplomatic step forward.

And speaking of the lunatics of the world's leadership, did you see that Ahmadinejad got not verbally, not politically, but physically slapped by one of his peers, according to some of the Wiki leaks stuff? Can a shoe-flinging or pork-pie assault be far off?

2011: made it

So, here we are. Made it out of 2010 with my sanity (an assertion which, I suppose, is open to debate,) but it seemed questionable once or twice. I'm including the truly unfortunate self-portrait only by way of a warning: you really, really don't want to go through an allogeneic stem cell transplant. None of the wreckage you see has anything at all to do with the myeloma; it's all the treatment and the treatments for the treatment. I look kind of like a plucked turkey, and I have just about the energy to do a blog post or two a day, but I'm still standing.

If there's any message at all it's just this: if you think something's wrong, it probably is. I spent my entire life never sick a day, and then in a year, through the disinterest and inability of a useless general practitioner, let this sneak up on me. Don't let it happen to you; if somebody says, "go get an MRI," go get one.

Anyway, enough whining. Thanks for all the support and good wishes. It's uphill from here.

"I'm in ..." what? Jail?

A Detroit public schools teacher tried to pawn her clearly-marked school netbook. Marked how, you ask? With some kind of school slogan or other, reading "I'm in." To their credit, the pawn shop turned her in.

Maybe I've been over-rating the teacher's union. Maybe they're really not getting paid enough.

Remainders and literary evidence from the book sellers

Sick of this yet? I confess I may be a bit, but still, I find it interesting what kind of books get into the "bargain books" catalogs, of which I get a large number. Here, with some opinionated commentary, are a few notes from what I hope is the last of 2010's batch.

• Atheism gets a big mention, I presume since most people who have already given up on God have read or written the books. From Richard Dawkins' mostly brilliant work on why religion is a Very Bad Thing (from which he leaves out, unfortunately, the compelling reasons why people have had to invent God for themselves,) we find the genuinely pathetic document described as follows: God's Problem: How the bible fails to answer our most important question -- why we suffer. Bart Ehrman. The author ... discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites people of faith -- or no faith -- to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us. Get the impression that Mr. Ehrman may have done some suffering himself lately?
  
• Pimpology: the 48 laws of the game. Pimpin' Ken with K.Hunter. Color photos. I bet there are.
  
• How to succeed with women. R. Louis and D. Copeland. Foolproof ways to a woman's heart ... oh, hell, you've heard all this before. Just read Pimpology and do the opposite.
  
• Or read: Asshole: How I got rich and happy by not giving a damn about anyone and how you can too. Martin Kihn.
  
• The complete idiot's guide to alchemy. Dennis William Hauck.
  
• Aftermath: A guide to preparing for and surviving apocolypse 2012. Problem with this one is that, as I've noted elsewhere, the Maya dates probably don't translate to 2012 at all, and may be off by a positive or negative number. But why let that spoil a great idiocy? The world could still end in 2012, just not for this set of reasons.
  
• How to make millions in real estate in three years starting with no cash. Tyler G. Hicks. And end up with no cash, too. Special fourth edition forward by B. Madoff.
  
• Any number of books by Ann Coulter. Too many to bother typing.
  
• And my personal high-value recommendation, for only $9.95, A Salute to Hee Haw: Collector's edition.
  

In the unlikely case that anyone cares, my personal reading lately has ranged far and wide (since that's about all I can do right now,) and has included a second look at The Arikara War: The First Plains Indian War, 1823 by William R. Nester. Since the "war" consisted of two inconclusive battles, the book is mostly about the before and after and causes; the Arikara were an unpleasant and treacherous bunch of plains Indians living along the lower Missouri River, just about the time that a bunch of unpleasant and treacherous fur trappers decided to push the boundaries of manifest destiny further west, in conflict with the Indians, the US government, the Hudson Bay Company, the English government, and each other. Surprisingly, bloodshed and military incompetence, on all sides, abounded. Great stuff, if you think the history of the west starts after the Civil War.

Changes at Paesano

After 12 years of feisty, not always very successful direction of the East Side's sole Italian restaurant, Isabella Nicoletti is leaving. Although Michael Roddy disses "red sauce Italian" in the article, I was always a bit disappointed with the lack of comfort food and reliable pasta quality -- if Isabella was in the kitchen, things were fine, but if not, dishes could come out cool, under done, and clearly mystifying to the help. She knew how she wanted it done, but didn't seem great at passing that along. When Chaad Thomas left as wine director, reasons to go seemed to decline. I make a better bolognese, for example, to my twisted taste, nor did Roman dishes ever make much of an appearance -- if you wanted alfredo, carbonora, or all'amatriciana, you were out of luck. Poultry was usually ok, if it was duck sauce, but chicken seemed to elude them. Red meat -- hit or miss.

I don't know David Whitney, the sous chef who is stepping into Isabella's clogs, but here's hoping he'll back off on the Veneto and expand just a bit south and west to take on Tuscany and Rome. (Tuscany: imagine getting a bowl of zuppa di farro with a dash of real Luccese olive oil on a December night. Can anyone even spell "farro" in Ann Arbor? Does anyone know where Lucca is?) It would be great to have a slightly less micro-ethno-centric place over here on the city wall.

All that slightly snarky stuff said, I always liked Isabella and her piquant attitude, and I hope she does well. Paesano and the Roddys are great supporters of the community and of good food. Here's hoping for an evolution, not a revolution.

He's back and running again

Wasn't there a football player years back called Mean Al Green?

More detail (sort of) on Snyder's fix-Michigan-quick notions

So a touch more detail, most of it wide-eyed, about Snyder's fix things in six months ideas. Mostly about budget, consolidating school non-educational services, prison services, and -- best of luck with this -- getting business to agree to a 6% tax on profit instead of a new sales tax on consumer services. Less and less impressed by the minute.

Why Detroit is hosed

MLIVE considers this the range of top stories for 2010:

"MLive Detroit's top stories of 2010: From Kwame's indictment to Eminem's recovery"

One talentless buffoon in jail, another back on the streets.

The musical: threat or menace?

I don't write a lot about musicals, mostly because I don't appreciate the art form. First, you restrict the action to a stage in a theater. So far, not unlike a play. But much unlike a play, you are then expected to create a spectacle for the audience (apparently -- I don't claim to know squat about this, personally.) And of course, you have have to 1 to n captivating, unforgettable, toe-tapping songs which generations of high-school performance nerds can break into as a kind of harmonized inside joke ("We were both in Paint Your Wagon and you weren't -- neener neener.) I never encountered this in high school because, recognizing our utter lack of vocal or instrumental talent, we never tried musicals. We stuck to plays. So I never had any affection with or familiarity with musicals until I got to college, and by then my tastes had calcified some.

Anyway (they never said if "rambling" would be a side effect of the steroids, but the above paragraph is perhaps an early indication,) musicals don't make much of an impression on the smooth, glossy, molasses-like surface of my consciousness. Julie Taymor's Spiderman thing, though, is capturing some of my attention, just because it's so Vietnam / Afghanistan - like in its morassness (morassitude?) She's in and she can't get out without a) losing everybody's combined shirts in the money invested to date, and b) admitting that all our boys and girls died in vain. Well, so far, nobody's died, but you know what I mean.

This week, they had one preview show (I think that's what it's called) and somebody fell and was injured. They had another one and, glory be, nothing untoward (meaning unplanned) happened. It apparently goes live next week, and with those stats, there may not be any actors left in NYC by February. Interestingly, maybe because these are "preview" shows? nothing was said in the article I read about quality -- like, was it any good, man?

Kids who drink at dinner with the family drink less later on

Something I've been saying for years ... socialize young people to the notion that alcohol is wine-with-dinner, not tequila-with-both-hands, and you'll cut down on problem drinking.