Gone in sixty seconds

Take yourself one (1) tall glass and fill it with ice cream. Fill the rest with Vernors ginger ale. Wolf.

OK, so it wasnt' exactly gone in 60 seconds, but it went a lot faster than I thought it would.

Long and strong

I’ve always had a thing for big, strong American cars. I’m not much of a car guy in that I’m not so mechanically inclined, although once, in high school, Dave Smokoska showed me how to get a car that won’t start, to actually start, by using a pen to push the carburetor flap open a couple of times. “Works for more than just writing,” he said. He was a good guy and a good friend when we were young men and I hope his life is going well. So yes, I like big cars and I cannot lie, with a specific preference in mid-60s to mid-70s hoop rides, namely any Cadillac or Oldsmobile, especially the 98 (booming with the trunk of funk/all you jealous punks can’t stop the dunk; thanks Mr. Ridenour), and the Buicks Electra, Bonneville and LeSabre. I found this Caddy going through some old photos. I took it at a car show on the western side of Michigan in the summer 2004. It was a fun day. The weather was warm and sunny, not at all like this 20-degree BULLSHIT. So yes, here’s a cranberry red Fleetwood for y’all.

Dog sitting, literally

We have this lovely girl staying with us for a few days.

Hi. I'm dumb.

Got stuck behind this gross monster on the way home from work yesterday. And I’m not one of these anti-SUV cats, either. It’s a free market, buy whatever you want, gas cylinder-wise. Having said that, I think it’s dumb and silly when you have the money to spend and you buy something like THIS.

GROSS! Even the steering wheel was yellow. Yeah, yeah, you’re an Army Ranger, you can sever my spine using only a piece of your toenail. I get it. But you still look like a flame driving this thing, of your own volition, down the street.

Me and the boys (and their folks, and some other friends)

Got to spend some quality time with my nephews this past weekend, as we met up with their parents, and Steve and Leslie for some brunch action at Lili’s. Always good to see the lads. I don’t get to see them as often as I would like, and it’s really a goddamn crying shame because I live about five minutes away from them. Still good to see them. Max and his dad checked out the fish tank.

Max also had a particular interest in a flower on the table.

which he eventually got a hold of to show to his momma

And this big rig, this is his (not so) little brother Sam. Check him out. He is, I think, nearly 5 months old.

Love that guy.

I just shake my head

I see Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old man while on a quail hunting weekend. This administration never ceases to astound me. I’ll bet he stopped the bleeding by stuffing the wound with cash.

Nice shooting there, Dickie Boy. Fucking idiot.

I prefer XXL, actually

It was an interesting and fun weekend amid the Super Bowl XL hoopla around town. The Motown Winter Blast was a total success, or so it seemed. Kerry and I went on Friday night, got killer, free parking and ended up having quite a time. It was very festival-like down there. I had heard more than one person compare it to a Mardi Gras-like environment. It was almost surreal, to be walking along Woodward, south of Grand Circus Park, on a Friday night, and see masses of people whooping it up, coming in and out of bars, lines of people ambling down the usually empty or not running People Mover stations, and a sense of mirth nearly leviathan in scope.

Overheard more than once were folks saying things like “It should be like this every weekend.” Yes, it should people, but sadly, it won’t, at least not for now. Check back in August, during the jazz festival, where they close off Woodward from Hart Plaza to Campus Martius, and line the street with food booths and musicians. I bet turnout for that will be impressive, seeing as how so many locals were downtown over the weekend, having themselves a good time in the middle of winter. Put out some good music and 70-degree temps and I bet the place will be packed. Still though, we had a lot of fun. The crowds were great, dominated mainly by Steelers fans. The game didn’t mean as much to me as what national and local media were saying about the city, and it seems that most of it was glowing and positive. And locally, most people appeared to behave themselves. However, the Chicken can go no further without extended condolences to the family of the 24-year-old woman shot to death early Sunday morning outside of Mavericks. Reportedly, police said in the Freep that the shooting was a result of a “bumping incident.” Somebody bumped into the wrong dude and got shot for it. No, that’s not fucked up or anything. That, and I think I read somewhere that a homeless guy was stabbed to death over the weekend. I really thought that something twisted would happen in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, like some out-of-towners were gunned down coming out of a hotel, but security all around downtown was tight, or so it seemed. But again, it was weird and exciting to see downtown lit up like that.

We were having so much fun, my pants started to glow.

And I’m sorry, but this was too good to pass up.

Oh, and I snapped this for my boy Thurston. This kid was in front of us and I actually asked him to hold still so I could get a picture of his jacket. “I have a friend of mine named Thurston,” I told him. And I do.

I didn’t take up many freebies, save for The Rooster getting us into the Sports Illustrated Super Swimsuit Party Saturday night at The Emerald Theater. Sadly, it was a HUGE disappointment. We got corralled into a red carpet media area where he waited for nearly an hour and a half before being let into the party, which is all we wanted to do in the first place. For 90 minutes on that red carpet, it was nothing but local losers and no names. A Detroit Lion came through, as did convicted rapist and former Macomb County Sheriff William Hackel. Some swimsuit models showed up eventually, which was ultimately good for the eyeballs.

Whatevs. The big hype of the night was that asshole wigger/whapper/neo-country bullshit opportunist Bob Ritchie, oh wait, sorry, Kid Rock. He was slated to play at midnight and he eventually showed up, as did that hanger-on/minion buddy of his, Uncle Kracker. We could’ve stayed for that concert, but we got in, had a couple of quick pops and got the fuck out. Forget that guy and his shitty music. That, and it was a total cock festival in there. Nothing but guys. Ball Soup. Pecker Party. It was billed as one of the biggest parties in town, but when you’re throwing down your gig in a snowstorm, 30 minutes away from downtown and on the same night as Maxim and Penthouse are having their parties, you’re probably shit out of luck. And we were. It was packed in this place and they had the stage open for dancing, including this aspiring prostitute. Oop, wait, sorry about that, she’s probably majoring in marketing or some shit.

Turnout, from a celebrity standpoint, was kind of sparse. There were the abovementioned “musicians,” as well as former NFL QB Mark Rypien, Darryl McDaniels of RUN-DMC, Eli Manning and Hall of Famer Lynn Swann, who is running for the Republican governor seat of Pennsylvania. So, I guess, he can fuck off. And that pretty much was it, which is disappointing considering that the list of invited guests included the following: Cedric the Entertainer, Terrell Owens, Reggie Bush (Heisman Trophy winner), Matt Leinart (another Heisman winner), Vince Young, Clinton Portis, Warrick Dunn, Carnell Williams (NFL Rookie of The Year), Edgerrin James, Curtis Marttin, Jerry Rice, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Brandi Chastain and about a dozen other jocks.

I’m not complaining by any means. I wasn’t there to see any of those people or talk to them or interview them or get my picture taken with them. I managed some fun out of it, enjoying some quality time with my friend, The Rooster.

Now, the game is over and everyone is leaving, we’ll see how clean the sides of the freeways and downtown stays. They’ll usher in all of the homeless people they swept off the streets for the weekend and I’m sure downtown will go back to the dull roar it was before Super Bowl madness ensued. But make little mistake, a Friday or Saturday night in downtown Detroit is a lot livelier than it was, say, five years ago. There is more to do, more people actually living down there and a general sense of interest/pride in the city, which can only be encouraging, no matter where you live in metro Detroit.

We like you too, Dan

I like this guy a lot more today than I did yesterday. Finally, someone with a respectable thing to say about Detroit (although he does make some lame points). I’ll take it any day over people who point to Detroit and go “Ha Ha!! Your city is ugly and your economy is weak!”

Getting revved up about the Motor City

By Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe Columnist | January 31, 2006

DETROIT -- I come to you in praise of Detroit. That's right. I like Detroit. In fact, I love Detroit. I could live here. Really.


It's fashionable for out-of-town sports columnists to invade a Super Bowl host city and trash the place. If memory serves correct, I may have been guilty of this once or twice in the past (Houston, we had a problem. Yo, Jacksonville -- have you Big Gulp yahoos built a three-story hotel yet?). But not this time. Who needs Miami, Tempe, or Southern California? We have Super Bowl XL right here in the heart of the Motor City.

Motown has had its problems in the last 40 years, no question. Crime and unemployment hit hard. Just last week Ford announced more devastating layoffs. There has been flight from downtown, and a lot of the great old institutions (Hudson's Department Store) shut down or packed up and left. There are boarded-up buildings, and the glass in front of the cashier at White Castle by the downtown bus station is thicker than the lens of the Hubble Telescope.

But the place is coming back, I tell you. It's a real city with a real downtown. It has real taxi cabs, four big league teams, and hard-working people who aren't afraid to eat red meat, drink brown liquor, or say, ''Merry Christmas." You can still light up a smoke in your favorite downtown bar without getting arrested.

Detroit gave us Ernie Harwell and Al Kaline. Detroit is where Mark Fidrych became a god. Detroit had the Lindell AC and Hoot Robinson's, a couple of baseball taverns where you never asked to see the wine list. Detroit has the Red Wings, one of the Original Six, who sell out every game, downtown, and feature the most talented roster in the NHL. Meanwhile, the Detroit Pistons are the best team in the NBA, a unit of actual adult basketball players, winning nightly in a suburban building called the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Detroit gave us Diana, Flo, and Mary. It gave us Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson and the late David Ruffin and the Temptations. It gave us Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and the James Montgomery Blues Band. Detroit gave us the late Joe Falls, plus Mitch Albom, Mitch Ryder, Barry Sanders, and Bo Schembechler.

Detroit gave us Rosa Parks, Henry Ford, Stroh's Beer, Lionel Trains, and Walter Reuther. It is home of the world's largest tire, an eight-story Uniroyal that served as a Ferris wheel at the New York World's Fair in 1964. Detroit is where the Lions play at home on national television every Thanksgiving. Detroit gave us Ty Cobb, Gordie Howe, and Bill Laimbeer (OK, never mind that last one)


Detroit gave us ''8 Mile," Eminem, Kid Rock, Uncle Cracker, Jackie Wilson, Madonna, Martha Reeves, Joe Louis, Ted Nugent, and Dick Vitale. (Vitale was coach of the Pistons when Detroit traded the No. 1 overall pick to the Celtics, who turned around and swapped it to Golden State, in effect getting Robert Parish and Kevin McHale for Joe Barry Carroll.) And it was the Detroit Tigers who lost to the California Angels in the last game of the 1967 season to give the Impossible Dream Red Sox the pennant.

Detroit gave us Marvin Gaye and Aretha, who sang, ''When my soul was in the lost and found, you came along to claim it."

The city's soul has been lost for a while, but Detroiters are determined to reclaim it. Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick says this is Detroit's chance to reintroduce itself to the world. He says this is his city's ''coming-out party."

No less than 10,000 volunteers are working with the Super Bowl Committee, and they are killing us with kindness this week. They're eager to answer all of our questions and quick to apologize for anything that's less than perfect. Several people told me they're sorry about the rainy weather. There was hail nearby yesterday.

No problem, Detroit. We did not come here for the weather. In fact, local climate is perhaps the most overrated Super Bowl ingredient. Last year's weeklong abomination in Jacksonville was not saved by any great Florida weather. Most of that week felt like Chelsea in March. It was damp and drizzly just about every day. Houston was no better the year before.

Certainly San Diego and Arizona (and Miami next year) can promise a few sun-splashed days, but most Super Bowl activities (eating, drinking, client-schmoozing, and gambling) take place indoors. In Detroit, we expect the weather to be terrible, so there is no chance for disappointment. Nobody brought their golf clubs to Super Bowl XL.

Folks from Detroit have been the butt of jokes for so long, they're trying almost too hard to be nice this week. It's not necessary. Really. This is a place with real people with real problems. No one sweats the small stuff, and you can be pretty sure the local librarians would let the FBI look at a computer if it had been used to e-mail a bomb scare to one of the local universities.

NFL big shots contend that a Super Bowl pumps $300 million into the local economy of a host city. Detroit can use the boost. Last week's crushing news from Ford is not something the locals can sugarcoat, not even during the annual festival of gluttony that is the Super Bowl.

Given up for dead a few years ago, Detroit has survived and appears to be coming back the way Cleveland and Baltimore and Pittsburgh came back. The golden days -- when GM custodians had summer homes and their wives got new eyeglasses every year because their health plan said they could -- are never coming back. But the Super Bowl has come back to Detroit, and some of us are glad to be here.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.

Mover, not so much a shaker

I got this idea from Dirty Jase. I’ve compiled a feature here on everywhere I’ve ever lived. I was raised in this house,

from the age of 5 until 20, in what I considered to be a normal, rational, well-adjusted upbringing. My dad was a plumber, my mom a nurse. I had a lot of great friends in the neighborhood, did well in school, hit it hard when I got to the teen years. My two oldest sisters and oldest brother were long moved from that home by the time I hit my formative years.

Moved here at 20

in late-August 1990 and this was my first time away from home, 90 minutes south down I-75 to Detroit, well, the suburbs of Detroit, but school was in the city. I made this ultimate leap with my friend HR. She would later prove to be one of my best friends. We’re like siblings now, 15 years of growing up together will do that. I moved in there in August and four months later, my mother passed away. I was 21 and even 15 years later it’s still kind of tough to digest, although it’s a lot easier now than it was then. It was still a good place to live, though. Nice apartment. Those two upstairs windows in the front? That was my room. A lot of Slayer and Public Enemy going on in there. I went home for the summer,

I did an internship at the local newspaper, stayed at the old house, which my brother bought off my parents before my mother passed. Went back to school in the fall.

I mustered up some goddamn balls and moved into the city.

I thought I was so cool filling out address labels with the word “Detroit” on them. The apartment was bizarre, this huge room with a separate bathroom and kitchen, with a window that looked down into this beat-up courtyard.

It was quite a lesson, in so many ways. It was a great-looking apartment, neighborhood and building. I looked at it three times. And the night I moved in, the first night I was in there, and the sun went down, it was like everyone around my block was holding a skeet shooting contest, I never heard so much gunfire in my fucking life. It got so bad I would later move out, after walking past the body of a dead man on E. Grand Boulevard, resting comfortably atop a short wall about 50 feet from Liquor Plus.
It was crazy there. I was a student, so I scheduled all of my classes during the morning and afternoon. I came and went as I pleased in an apartment building with about 70 tenants, all of them black. My unit was at the end of a hall, which I liked. My neighbor was an effeminate male who fucking loved gospel music. This, I disliked.
I learned two very valuable lessons in that apartment. First, unless your body is riddled with bullets, don’t try calling the Detroit Police Department. My first Saturday night in the crib, I’m digging the whole deal, it’s a nice night, I have the window open, looking out to the back 40. Some post-season baseball is on the TV, the beer is cold, the nuts are salty (not THOSE nuts, asshole). I hear a commotion. I look out from my third-floor view into the back alley and see that this poor guy is getting his ass kicked by two other dudes. Did the pair attack him? Do they have weapons? Did the guy on the ground getting stomped like a bee, did he somehow have this coming? Do I go help this man? Ah, I know, I’ll call the cops, tell them what’s going on. I call the cops and get this demanding broad yelling at me, and at the same asking me, what’s the nature of my call. I tell her this guy is getting beat up in the alley behind my building. “I can see them,” I tell her. “They’re kicking and hitting him.”
“We’ll have a car there in about 45 minutes.”
“Forty-five minutes?” I yelped, almost indignant, forgetting, clearly, where I was living. “This guy is getting his ass kicked right now. You can’t get here quicker than that?”
“Shuggah,” she said, “it’s Saturday night, somebody getting they (sic) ass kicked somewhere.” This is a shot of the alley where the guy was getting his beat-down.

On a side note here, as I was taking this photo, I could hear a dog barking behind me. I thought to myself “boy, I sure hope he’s not a stray.” I turn around to see this scary pit bull behind a makeshift sort of fence and I raise the camera to get a shot of him, before three of his buddies come shooting out from behind him, barking and running straight at me. This is me hauling ass.

Once I realized they were contained, I took a picture of them, from the safety of my car.

Lesson No. 2: Use spray-paint only in well-ventilated areas. The ideal venue for that would anywhere outdoors. I used it to paint part of my kitchen. I had a small kitchen window that barely opened and kitchen cabinets that were this industrial quality aluminum-steel. I thought they needed a splash of fresh paint, so I bought three cans of Krylon and started to add the first coat and then a second, in the kitchen on a November day. Twenty minutes later I stumbled out of that room, like a rummy from a saloon, overcome by the fumes. I aired the place out and split for a few hours, but man, that was a really dumb idea.

I looked at that apartment twice, both times during the day. It was a beautiful, tree-lined street. The other buildings on the block were brick and charming and it had a weird, big-city feel that I usually saw on TV or in movies. But after I moved in, and the sun went down, it as if every single resident on that block, went outside, drew a gun and started firing. It was insane, and it freaked me out. I lived like that for about three months before I called my brother Frank one night and told him what was going on. He suggested I move, which I did, from Seward Street, to Sixth Street in downtown Royal Oak, at corner of South Washington and Sixth Street, inside Aldor Manor

above what was then Repeat The Beat record store

I wish I had pictures of the apartment, it was really sharp. It had a cool tile bathroom and one of those big-ass ceramic old-school sinks with the ribbed surface to the left of the sink for the water to drain down. I wrapped up my final year of school in that apartment and they were some truly great times. About a year later, I moved to 803 S. Center with HR, John Waack and Lee Malone. I earlier lamented aboutthis place. at my old blog.
In a span of 11 years, I would move in and out of this house four times between this move and where I now reside so, heretofore, I’ll refer to that place simply as 803.
I stayed there for years before I split in 1995 to move in with Benny at 18650 W. Warren in Detroit on what I would, and still do, refer to as the “west side-west side.”

The apartment was phenomenal, roomy and spacious with this insanely long hallway from which rooms shot out on both sides. We threw a football back and forth down that hallway it was so long. It was located above a used appliance repair store and had this great bar, Chick’s Bar, a block away. Plus, we paid, like, a nickel a month to live there. I stayed there for just over a year, all the while working at the Ann Arbor News, from 4 p.m. to midnight, on their sports desk. It was great. My roommate worked banker’s hours, so when I got home at 1 in the morning, he was asleep. And when I got up at 11 or noon, he was gone. We saw each rarely, maybe one day a week. There was a stretch where we didn’t see each other for three weeks straight. When we finally did run into each other in the living room on a Saturday afternoon, we were like “Hey!! What’s up?? Shit, let’s go to the bar, haven’t seen you in a while.”

Things got crazy in that apartment, as the weather warmed and the fucking hoods came out in force. Two things happened at that address that were oddly monumental in my life. Once, my roommate woke me up at 9 a.m. on a Sunday (this, after I got off work at 1 a.m., got home at 2, lounging and getting high until about 5 or 6) morning. He wakes me up and ushers me out into the dining room where, on a table, sits a line of cocaine about as long as my arm. “Do it up,” he says, rubbing the palm of his hand upward across the front of his nose, from the fingertips down to the heel of his hand, rather quickly “That’s for you,” he said, pointing to it. I just looked at him in disbelief. Dude, I was sleeping. And I don’t even want this shit right now. You go ahead. I turn around to hear him not only wolfing down this line but to see two of the neighborhood’s nastiest, wasted junkie hookers you could imagine (think: rail-thin; bruised upper thighs), sitting on the couch. I look at them, I look back at him, I look at them again. This can’t be happening. I start back to my bedroom, stunned, when he comes up and puts his arm on my shoulder. “I got one of them for you.” I went back to bed. The place was big enough where I didn’t hear much.

The other fucked-up scenario happened when I was at work. Some fellas with guns came and shot up the entire side of our building, about five feet below our living room windows, and leaving a rat-a-tat line of bullet holes along the building, below my bedroom window and my roommate’s bedroom window. There was an incident in the apartment behind ours with this wigger asshole named Keith who had a party, someone got beat up, left the party and would return later in the company of some REAL gangsta niggas, who took it out on our building. I come home from work, again at about 1 in the morning, to find four Detroit cop cars in front of my doorway

I moved out two weeks later, and in about 3 more weeks, I would be here, in San Francisco, living with Dirty Jase.

That was a fun time, carefree and delightful in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It was also a tough time. My stay in The City was brief, but well worth it and I still owe a hearty thanks to my friend for his hospitality. I returned to Michigan in November 1997, riding an Amtrak from San Francisco to Detroit, stopping in Colorado for a week. When I got back, I moved in the house on Maplehurst in Ferndale I rented with my friend Ethan.

We had a blast in this house, and those were some good times with him, but I was a miserable fucker in those days. I was out of control, drinking way too much, working this impossibly shitty job at a mortgage company, not writing and not publishing. I was always broke, always drunk and beating myself up over a situation that didn’t go so well with a girl I liked. I cleaned myself up, somewhat, and moved back to 803. That lasted about a year and I moved into this place down the street.

I was there for just over a year. It was there I started working at the newspaper company that employs me now. That apartment had zilch for aesthetics. It was gross and small and had low ceilings. But, for the first time since college, I was living on my own so that was kind of fun. I would later move back into 803 to ride things out. It was down me and Heidi in 803 and she would move in with the man she would ultimately marry. That was in 1999 and I stayed in that big-ass, four-bedroom house all by myself for two years. I watched the 9/11 coverage in that house all night long. I would move from there to this smaller rental house in Ferndale in 2002.

That house kind of sucked. Those were tough years. I had to put my dog to sleep while I lived in that house. Ten days later, at the age of 32, I had a heart attack. That fucked me up for a while, emotionally and whatnot. A piece of something (probably undigested bacon) broke off in my main artery and jammed it nearly shut. I had a stent put in, quit smoking cigarettes and kept a very close eye on my cholesterol, fat and sodium intake, as well as initiating an exercise regimen that was previously unseen in my life. I’m better these days. I’m due for a checkup, for things have been well in that department the last couple of years. I had a brush with death while I lived in that house and it taught me a lot about the value of life, not just mine but those of others. For three days I sat in a hospital bed alone, thinking of the shitty things I’ve done and said in my life, all of the mean, aggressive shit I put off on people who didn’t deserve it. I cooled out the temper, and the excessively constant binge drinking and a lot of the negative bullshit in my life. Like I said, I quit smoking, and that is one thing of which I’m extremely proud. I haven’t smoked one since, not even a puff, not even one little cheater ciggie in more than three years. Nothing. While that was a mess of a situation, it turned out for the best. It changed me as a person, sort of redirecting the puck of life a little closer to the net. Yeah, I still booze it up now and then, and I like to puff the kind, but not at all with the insane frequency I used to. The only other worthwhile thing to happen in that house was I met Kerry while I was living there. I would actually classify that as monumental.

I moved from Almont because the rent was a challenge to manage, paying nearly a grand a month in rent and utilities. I found a great apartment in Hamtramck, on Caniff, at the corner of Brombach.

I knocked my rent almost in half and was again taking part in some urban living. It felt good to get back in that environment, for a short while, but I got sick of it quickly. Admittedly, the apartment was a fantastic place to live. The landlord was super handy and the place was completely re-done before I moved in. I stayed there for a year before I moved in with Kerry on Oct 1. of last year. Two months later we would move into the house she bought on a fantastic street in Royal Oak.

All of those addresses served to build part of the foundation that is me. They all represent something, a certain time in my life, a specific reflective element of my being. Since I was a kid, I’ve always bored easily, which I believe is the root cause of my active imagination. I get bored in conversations with people, so while they’re going on, and I hear what they’re saying, I imagine them, I don’t know, morphing into a Muppet or something. As it was, I would often tire quickly of my environment. I have moved a lot, if you can’t tell. But it seems like the last two have been moves where I’m going nowhere but up, emotionally, financially, spiritually, whatever. I'm genuinely happy, stronger and I fucking love myself. I have both arms wrapped tightly around all of my friends and the people who care about me. I’ll never digress from here. That ascension will continue.