Enotes

(Note: every Friday I'll post a favorite rant from the archives) from May 27, 2009 Near Total Recall I'll pick you up at the Stroh's plant after work, then we'll ride on our Uniroyal tires to Cunningham's Drugs for a milkshake. Better yet, a Vernor's float. Speaking of beverages, I'm running low on Towne Club pop, so can we stop at the distribution outlet? I have my case of empty bottles in the trunk. Then it'll be off to Great Scott! for a few groceries. If you're good, I'll treat you to dinner downtown at the Rattlesnake Club. After a day at Bob-Lo, of course. Who says you can't go home anymore? You can do it in your mind. All the time. Whenever suits your fancy. I've pedaled my bike to Cunningham's, but for the baseball cards in the dispensing machine near the registers. Then I've traded them right out front, amidst the passers-by, with my friends. Meet me at the Kern Clock. And while we're nearby, you can do some Father...

Geez, how stinky ARE our homes, anyway? It's appearing that the technology propping up the air freshener industry is rivaling that of home security systems. Just saw an ad on TV for a product that is equipped with motion detectors , so that when "traffic is heavier in the house"---or words to that effect---it knows when to spritz more of the smelly stuff into the air. Wow. Several years ago, someone let the air freshener people off their leash and now they're running wild, developing one product after another in an effort that we should all, as law-abiding, non-stinky Americans, take offense to. To me, it's like if someone offers you a mint. Isn't there something subliminal about that? I know there is, because I've been that person offering the mint, and I can tell you that there was definitely an ulterior motive in doing so! So here's an entire industry offering us various ways to "freshen up" our homes. What are they trying to tell us? It s...

I'm about ready to put autumn on a milk carton. "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" You remember autumn, don't you? Fall? That once-lovely season wedged between summer and winter, like a crutch that we know can't possibly last but we're happy to use it as long as we can, anyway. Fall---with its once-crisp, sunny days and crunchy leaves beneath your feet, the subtle smell of someone burning them, not too far away. Fall---when you get into your car after it's been under the sun and turn on the A/C, only to have to turn the heat on the next morning when you hop in. What's all this about global warming? And who is the bloody Brit who moved here and brought his weather along with him? Or maybe the invader came from our left flank, from Seattle. Maybe a Starbucks wonk? Regardless, this is the worst fall on record in Michigan, nudging out last year's, which surpassed the year's prior to that. In fact, where have any of our seasons gone? We used to have four of them i...

His name was Soupy, but his game was pies. He was Milton Supman by birth, and like so many stars of that era, his stage name was a cocktail of nicknames and nods to others. Soupy Sales is gone, passed away at 83 and it would be nice if you had lunch today in his honor. Then, maybe tonight, take a pie in the face to top off the day. Comedian Sales took, by his unofficial count, about 9,000 pies in the kisser over the years, beginning in the 1950s when he burst onto the scene in Detroit, hosting "Lunch with Soupy." The pie-in-the-face routine wasn't invented by Sales, but no one made it more famous than he. It got so big that stars the likes of Frank Sinatra, no less, would line up to take a pie from Soupy, who wasn't always the recipient---he could play perpetrator, too. Soupy Sales was minding his own business as Milton Supman, child of a Jewish dry goods merchant who had emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in 1894, when his older brothers attained the nicknames Ham ...

The haircut is dying a slow, shaggy death. Say goodbye to another of our traditions: the lazy, chatty time spent in the barber's chair. If you think our depressed economy hasn't cut through several swathes of Americana, think again. "People wait longer," my barber Vito told me last time I was in the chair. "Instead of six weeks they might go eight, or longer, between cuts." It should be noted that Vito told me this as I was a few weeks tardy for my own shearing. It all adds up. More and more people waiting longer and longer between haircuts, and the corner barber shop starts feeling the pinch. Vito's been cutting my hair for several years, over at Filary's on Dequindre in Warren. He gained me as a customer after the previous owner died unexpectedly. Vito's a Brooklyn kid, though he's no longer a kid, I suppose. He's been here long enough to call himself a Detroiter, though. A year or so ago, Filary's started closing on Wednesdays, in ...

The cemetery which contains the souls of our child actors is littered with victims of stress, mismanagement, mental abuse, and weakness of will. Patty Duke's grave marker in that mythical cemetery would contain all of the above on its stone. Duke was the eponymous star of "The Patty Duke Show," in which she played two characters who were, improbably, identical cousins---Patty and Cathy. The show ran for three seasons, beginning in 1963. The first season is now out on DVD. Duke told CNN that she's excited her five granddaughters will finally be able to see what "Nana did when she was a teenager." "I am tickled, just tickled," she said. But Duke, who was just shy of 17 when the series debuted, was troubled. She says the show was a relief during what were difficult times for her. She wrote about her tormented childhood in her autobiography, "Call Me Anna," discussing her struggles with mental abuse at the hands of her managers, which she say...

So now the NEXT time a boy gets caught in a balloon, for real, we're not going to believe it. I'm only being slightly facetious. I resisted writing about six-year-old Falcon Heene---the boy who we all thought might be floating in the sky somewhere over Colorado in a homemade weather balloon---because, No. 1: I wanted to see how everything played out; and No. 2: I was saving it for a day when I had me some writer's block. Well, No. 1 has cured No. 2. Turns out that Heene's dad may have masterminded---and I use that word extremely loosely---an elaborate (again, loosely) hoax (tightly) in order that he might gain some fame and notoriety for his whacky weather research. According to CNN.com, authorities say the event---in which the tearful couple claimed their six-year-old may have been trapped in the flying-saucer-like contraption floating through the air---was staged. Richard and Mayumi Heene had met in a Hollywood acting school and pursued fame for their family in the wo...