A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
Do you know the special recipe for making Detroit Style pizza?
Come along and find out. It starts with the crust – deep and thick in composition and yet light and airy in taste. From there it just gets better and better...
Detroit's known for many things, including its pizza, according to one study.
That was a fun survey of the Detroit pizza scene.
WLNS in Lansing, Michigan, has been uploading location shots all morning as part of the station's "Its Detroit Style Pizza Day and Buddy's is giving back" series. I'm sharing this one.
Looks like the location reporter's having as much fun as the Fox 2 reporter did.
At the popular Cantoro Italian Market & Trattoria in Plymouth, curbside pickup and cross-trained employees have become seamless parts of operating thanks to the pandemic.
The pandemic may finally end, but COVID-19 may always be with us, as another common cold virus, although I think it will be an "uncommon cold" in its effects for years, if not decades, to come if it becomes endemic. That's not reassuring. I expect to be wearing masks during cold and flu season and getting annual booster shots for new strains for the foreseeable future. Sigh.
The CDC has categorized most of Michigan in the low or medium risk COVID-19 category. These categories can help us decide if we need to mask up.
I live in a "green" county, which means it's up to me. I'm going out for a haircut for the first time in three months today and I'm still planning on wearing my mask despite my being vaxxed and boosted. I still think the rate of transmission is on the high side and my health condition puts me at risk.
That's the good news. Follow over the jump for the bad news.
For today's Sunday entertainment feature, I'm going to do for Motor City Comic Con what I did for Youmacon a year and a half ago, explore the convention through the eyes of Detroit's media. This year, I'll focus on how the local television stations cover it. They seem to love it, with WXYZ, WJBK, and WWJ all uploading multiple reports to their YouTube channels on the event. The most came from WXYZ,* who began hyping it a week in advance with Motor City Comic Con 2016 to be held May 13-15 in Novi.
BAM! POW! WOW! Motor City Comic Con 2016 gears up for its 27th annual, three-day, celebrity-filled metro Detroit comic event.
Video in this story comes from http://MotorCityGeek.com.
In the previous installment, I described how Oak Park's "War on Veggies" went viral. The resulting brouhaha had the effect it intended--the prosecution against Julie Bass for her raised garden beds in her front yard--but Oak Park has found another way to continue waging war against her for daring to fight city hall. Watch.
So the good news is that Julie Bass is no longer facing charges. All of you who raised a stink by reporting and blogging on the issue, commenting on blog and news posts, signing the petition, and sending in letters and emails to the city of Oak Park can pat yourselves on the back. Your efforts succeeded.
The bad news is that the way the story is being reported, not only in the Fox 2 Detroit clip above, but also in the Detroit News article and on Julie's own blog, indicates that the city dropped the charge by asking for it to be dismissed without prejudice. That means that that the city could reinstate the charge any time before the statute of limitations ran out. Note the coda of the report was that the city prosecutor was going to re-examine the language of the statute. If he figures out a defensible reading of the statute that allows him to go after Julie, he can file those charges again. As Julie herself describes it, it feels like her own Sword of Damocles hanging over her.
The ugly news is the city resuming their prosecution of Julie for her dogs. The sequence of events makes it look like the city is being, as Julie wrote in her most recent post, "malicious." Julie's lawyer Solomon Radner elaborated in this quote from the Detroit News, "This is really nothing other than a personal vendetta against the Basses either because somebody doesn't like them, or because they had the nerve to fight this unjust prosecution." I think the answer is mostly the latter.
Since I believe in closing circles, I think the good news is that Julie and her lawyer will appear in court on July 26th, present the proof that the dogs are licensed, and those charges will be dismissed. Even so, this entire affair has made the city of Oak Park look even worse in my eyes than it already did.
When my wife and I were looking for places to live in Oakland County, my co-workers who lived in Oak Park tried to convince me to move there. Unfortunately, when my wife and I looked at houses in the city, we were less than impressed. We got a very conformist, unfriendly, and not-at-all fun vibe from the place, so we decided to look in Ferndale and Royal Oak, which were more to our liking.
When I played the Fox 2 Detroit clip to my wife, she said that we were never going to live in Oak Park. She didn't care if we found the ideal house there at a perfect price in a great neighborhood, we won't move there. I completely agree.
