Don't worry about Rick's

Rumors have been spreading this summer that Rick's, the premier trashy upperclassmen's bar in Ann Arbor, lost its lease and is closing or moving to somewhere near Necto. According to sources close to Rick's, there's no truth to them — in fact, the owners just recently signed a 10-year extension on the lease. Just thought it was important to clear this up.

More pranks, please

Alyse links to a Ms. Pacman-themed music video. I'll take this opportunity to plug the UM Patriots' excellent Pacman video (read Forest Casey's Daily story on the group here.)

Anyone hear anything on whether they're going to be around in the fall? I'm a huge fan of elaborate college pranks, and I think there aren't nearly enough of them at Michigan. Hopefully after UM Patriots' successes last year, we'll at least start seeing some good copycats.

Probably the best college prank I've seen, by the way, is "Lecture Musical" by this group out of Columbia. It's a really impressive, elaborate effort, and it's executed perfectly. I also like the professor's reaction. "Start-Up Sound" is pretty good, too.

Anyone at Michigan think they can do better? I'm looking at you, Royal Lions.

Speaking of bad-ass ...

I liked this quote from Wings coach Mike Babcock on Dallas Drake:

"He's not going to be happy on the fourth line; he is going to want someone's job -- I love that. ... I believe, in life in general, people are put out to pasture too early -- the Detroit Red Wings don't believe in that. Dallas has a lot of hockey left in him. When you talk to him, you get excited because he's that passionate. He's going to be great."

Read the rest of the story for some good updates on the Wings' lines for next season.

Oh, Detroit drivers

Getting off the Lodge on my way to work today, I saw someone drive the wrong way at least 30 yards down a one-way street -- in reverse. How bad-ass is that?

Want to marvel at human ingenuity?

I never knew this: The International Space Station is visible to the naked eye. It's in low Earth orbit, so it's only in the sky for a few minutes at a time. According to this guy, recent hardware additions have made it easier to see, and it's especially bright now because Endeavour is docked at the station shiny-side down.

If this sort of thing gets you geeked up like it does me, go here to find out when the station will be visible from your city. (The next sighting from Detroit is tomorrow at 10:18 p.m.) The shuttle will be coming back to Earth in a few days (as usual, NASA still doesn't know exactly when), so try to catch it soon.

David Boyle, fixture of the netroots

An American Spectator writer, in a roundup of embarrassing comments by lefty bloggers at the YearlyKos convention, found this gem by the always-bizarre David Boyle:

"St. Augustine's heavenly 'City of God' is not wholly different from the 'City of Kos' or the 'City of Blog' that the orange (not clockwork) cooperative 'we' blog Daily Kos is." Boyle writes. "The blog is just too progressive not to be redolent of something higher."

If you don't know Boyle, it's hard to describe how weird he is. The unofficial style at the Daily for describing him is "Ann Arbor gadfly." I think he's the only Arbor Update blogger ever to be kicked off the site. Check out his music video and mp3s (songs include "George W. Pussy" and "Arafat May Never Die" here.

Chauncey Bailey's Detroit memorial service and funeral Mass

... is 6 p.m. tomorrow at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament on Woodward. It's open to the public. I don't know if Cardinal Maida will celebrate the Mass, but either way, it's worth attending. (For more on Bailey, see these posts.)

Hitchens on Anna Wintour

Ben just directed me to this YouTube video where some guy runs across Christopher Hitchens on the street and asks him what Anna Wintour was like in the the '70s. It's pretty awesome. I had no idea they'd dated, but this Guardian piece confirms it.

Screw The New Republic ...

I want to work for Us Weekly. What could be more satisfying than crafting lines like "Britney Spears is on a tramp-age!"?

Bad news for awkward-looking aquatic mammals

The Chinese Yangtze river dolphin has been declared extinct, making it the first large vertebrate to die off in half a century. Who would've guessed this guy might have a hard time adapting to human fishing activity:



Seriously, though, it's a blow to those of us who like our large aquatic populations bio-diverse. (via Mark Maynard)

Facebook group of the day (or: How stupid is Leon Drolet?)

Group name: Prop #2 is the best thing in Michigan since sliced bread
Type: Student Groups - Political Groups
Members: 96
Description: Everyone that is happy that the minorities finally stop complaining and are now considered equal to whites then join this group because this is how i feel. So join the group if your happy about it cause I know I am. Also if your mad about every interview against prop 2 is from some minority asshole that has a dumb ass name that you know is foreign by looking at it

Must be some kind of a parody by left-leaning tricksters, right? No respectable Michigan Civil Rights Initiative supporter would ever be dumb enough to join such an objectionable group.

Oh, wait:


Yes, that's the Leon Drolet, former statewide chair of the MCRI, and now chair of a state panel on civil rights.

What's wrong with young Republicans?

The recently elected chair of the Young Republican National Federation is under investigation for, uh, violating a sleeping male Young Republican after a house party for the group (via Michigan Conservative Dossier).

This comes a few weeks after Michael Flory, the former Michigan Young Republicans chair, pleaded guilty to raping a college student at a national YR convention. At least he was sorry:

The teary-eyed college student he overpowered in a downtown hotel room gasped and dabbed her eyes as Flory replied to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan's question, "Are you indeed guilty?"

"Sure - yeah," Flory said.

It's a little cliched to accuse the Republicans of hypocrisy for this stuff. But like with Justin Zatkoff -- who isn't a sexual predator, but is a loudmouthed idiot who is animated entirely by venom toward the left -- you have to wonder about the people who elected these guys. I can't help feeling that there's something a little off about the GOP's young activist base, or at least about the character traits they look for in their leaders.

Barry Bonds

This column by Daily alum Mike Rosenberg is probably the best I've seen about Bonds. I also liked this earlier, 300-word piece by Rosenberg — it doesn't say anything that's not in the more recent one, but it's still worth reading for the impressive word economy and the nice Simon and Garfunkel reference.

One more Chauncey Bailey post

On Slate, Hitchens weighs in on Your Black Muslim Bakery:

Now, again, I am just asking, but what if this racket had been named the White Christian or Aryan Nations Cookie Parlor? (Motto and mission statement: "Don't F*** With Us.") I think that Oakland's mayor, Ron Dellums—who I was startled to find was still alive—would have joined a picket line around the store (as would I). The same would doubtless have been true of Rep. Barbara Lee, in whose district the YBMB was situated. But instead, in its role as a "community business," the YBMB enjoyed warm support and endorsement from both the mayor and the congresswoman. And the guns for past and future slayings were inside the store.

I think he skates a little too close to equating YBMB and the Nation of Islam with Islam proper. And it's a little hysterical to suggest that this sort of thing is about to start happening in cities across America. Still, he does make some good points. There's something very wrong with the fact that YBMB operated openly and with the support of the Oakland establishment.

Apple channels Patrick Bateman

Maybe it's just me, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this ad was American Psycho.

Attn. national media: Nothing on Facebook means anything

There's been a lot of buzz today about how Rudy Giuliani's daughter Caroline, a Harvard pre-frosh, belonged to a pro-Barack Obama Facebook group. The national news outlets have taken this as an endorsement, and another sign that Rudy's kids hate him.

OK, maybe. But here's the thing: What people say in their Facebook profiles isn't necessarily true. Especially among neurotic, pseudo-intellectual East Coast types, it's common to select fake interests and groups, usually as an expression of irony or a reference to some inside joke. People who Facebook this way tend to dramatically change their interests and groups on a whim, which is another way to signal that they're to be taken with a grain of salt.

(The media usually portray Facebook and MySpace as signs that our generation's narcissism has obviated our sense of privacy, but the reality is that young people withold far more than they reveal about themselves on social networks. Irony is just one popular method. I'm reminded of an older guy who added me as a Facebook friend recently -- his profile was completely sincere and exhaustive. It was striking because it was nothing like any college student's profile I've seen.)

With Caroline Giuliani, it's sort of a toss-up. I don't doubt that she's actually a liberal, as she listed in her profile, or that she has problems with her dad. But if she does support Barack Obama, would she join his Facebook group in all sincerity, effectively flipping Rudy the middle finger and airing out her daddy issues in public? Especially for someone just starting college life -- a time when most are especially self-conscious about how they project their developing image -- that would be pretty emo, wouldn't it?

I'm not saying that's not what she did. But it's just as likely that she joined the group whimsically -- as an inside joke, say, or on a dare. You just can't take these things at face value.

More on Chauncey Bailey

His killer was a member (a "good soldier," he says) of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a black Muslim splinter group with a violent streak. It's the worst-case scenario: He was murdered because he'd written critically about the group, and at least one member wanted to silence him.

Here's some background on the group, and a scathing essay on its founder, Yusuf Bey, printed shortly after he died in 2003. (In a weird twist, it turns out Bailey wrote Bey's obit for the Oakland Tribune, and this essay accuses Bailey of going soft in that story.)

According to this story, this is the first time a journalist has been assassinated in the United States since 1993.

Hitchens-ism of the day

From Slate:

When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter.

Jesus, Hitchens.

For more, see this Onion article.

Affirmative action talk

Chetly Zarko, the anti-affirmative action crusader and former Michigan Review writer, has launched a new "cross-partisan" blog about affirmative action and racial equality. According to this intro page, the site is supposed to be a place for opponents and proponents of racial preferences to find some common ground.

So far, it seems like Zarko is the only poster. Still, it's not a bad idea, and I agree that people on either side of this issue have more in common than most of them think. I hope Zarko manages to find some sharp bloggers from both sides. If he does, it could get interesting.

End of an era

Donald Hall, the U.S. poet laureate and former U-M professor, is stepping down after only one term. Here's a good article on his successor, Charles Simic.

From Slate, here's a poem by Hall and one by Simic.