ann arbor is overrated.

As soon as we heard about the film “Whale Rider,” which involves a Maori girl and whales, we knew it would be an instant hit at the Michigan Theater. Endangered wildlife and a different culture - what else could Ann Arbor filmgoers want? Also playing at the Michigan right now is “Winged Migration,” a French film about migrating birds.

But if you want to see “Capturing the Friedmans,” the documentary about a 1980’s Long Island sexual abuse case that has critics trotting out words like “devastating” and “masterpiece,” you’ll probably have to wait for your next trip to Chicago. Neither Mlive nor the Free Press list it as playing anywhere in Michigan. Perhaps we could convince the Michigan Theater that “friedmans” are actually a rare species of salamander imperiled by hunters seeking to capture them. Add something about the hunters working for a nefarious multinational corporation, and a group of indigenous people working to stop them - it’s pure A2 gold!

To-do List (via Arborweb):

1. Go to the Purple Loosestrife Pull at the Southeastern Michigan Land Conservancy and “pull invasive purple loosestrife from the wetland.”
2. See “Slithering Snakes and Terrific Turtles” at Hudson Mills.
3. Attend the 20th Annual Rabbit Show, featuring “food concessions and sale of bunny-related merchandise.”

Commie High graduation (at which each student was allowed to speak) by the numbers:

Instrumental Red Hot Chili Peppers covers: 1
Maya Angelou poems: 2
Shel Silverstein poems: 2
Girls in suits: 2
Girls in sparkly winged costumes: 1
Girls crying during their speeches: 3
Guys in black button-down shirts: 5
Students in graduation regalia of various colors, even though it wasn’t required: ~10
Mentions of working at Zingerman’s: 1

Note that these numbers are all lower bounds, based on the part of the ceremony we watched on public access. What, you thought we had time to sit around all day and find things to make fun of about A2?

A reader with one month to go of his three-year sentence in A2 writes:

I had heard such wonderful things about ann arbor from everyone before I came here, and had never been in Michigan before. I had an open mind when I first arrived, and was soon shocked to discover that Ann Arbor is the most overrated place I have ever been to in my entire life. All of the hype has been generated by imbeciles who have never left Southeastern Michigan…It would not be such an utter tragedy if people were more honest and realistic about the town, but it never ceases to amaze me, after 3 horrid years in this hell, that people consistently and continually act as if Ann Arbor is this paradise, as if there’s New York City, L.A., and Ann Arbor on the map of top places in this country.

And he’s got a new derisive nickname: “O-squared,” for “overrated, overpriced.”

For anyone who’s been living in a cave or a real city for the last few months, the Ann Arbor city council is considering a resolution under which the local police would not enforce parts of the U.S. Patriot Act (which parts, it’s been hard to figure out from the News’ coverage.) A forum to discuss this resolution, at which the Ann Arbor police chief and representatives from the Justice Department and the ACLU spoke, was attended by 130 Ann Arborites, presumably most in favor.

Because Ann Arborites are card-carrying ACLU members, civil liberties absolutists. Except when they’re not. Anti-panhandling ordinances are also targets of the ACLU, which holds that most panhandling is a form of protected speech. But we don’t recall any opposition to the recent step taken to tighten A2’s panhandling rules, other than the three city council votes against it (one of which was in fact that of the anti-Patriot-Act resolution’s sponsor.)

Police chief Dan Oates has said that the anti-Patriot-Act resolution would have no effect on the Ann Arbor police, since the Patriot Act doesn’t require them to do anything in the first place. Could it be that Ann Arborites embrace civil liberties when doing so involves largely symbolic actions, but not when it involves having to deal with icky street people on the way to Gratzi? Nah.

All right, this Hieftje thing is starting to be fraught with, um, pronounced confusion. One reader says it’s “‘Heft-yee.’ Kinda like Hefty garbage bags, with a Scandanavian accent.” Another proclaims, with debatable seriousness, “I cast my vote for ‘HIFE-jah’.” But the definitive answer appears to be that of Shmuel, who went and dug up an Arborweb page insisting that it’s “Heeft-yuh.” So everyone was close, and yet no one agreed.
Or is this just an attempt to embarrrass us when we call in to Hieftje’s show on public-access, causing us to be too flustered to ask the tough questions that need to be asked?

Here’s a revealing police log entry:

[block in a student area], 11:24 p.m. Tuesday. Room entered through a hole in the upper part of the wall; two guitars, an amplifier and computer taken.

Without knowing anything else about this crime, we can make a few educated guesses:

• The guitar owners were not the owners of the building.

• The owners of the building were supposed to fix the hole in the upper part of the wall.

• Many students in Ann Arbor live in unsafe, substandard housing conditions.

Of course, there could be some reasonable explanation for this, but housing with non-intact walls isn’t out of the range of the A2 renting experience. And does anyone think it’s strange that The Ann Arbor News lists “Break-Ins” in a separate area from the rest of the police log, as if the city has completely given up?

On the “Hieftje” pronunciation front: we’ve got one vote for “HEEF-tuh” and one for “HEEF-juh.”

To-do List (all from Arborweb’s June 18 events)

1. Make it out for “Champion Birding Big Days with Canadians with Attitude,” with three-time World Series of Birding winner Tom Hince. Hince also broke the North American Big Day record with his single-day sighting of 233 species.
2. Attend the 19th Annual Showcase of Homes, where for $10 one can walk through a “$1.4 million penthouse condo,” among others.
3. Learn all about “Quality Furniture” with “venerable farmers’ organization” The Grange.

Now all we need is an Arbor Stalker feature.

Insipid Nickname Watch. Alert reader Josh Steichmann just brought the A2 nickname-to-resident ratio up with this offering: “Ace-Deuce.” Learn it, love it.

He also offers a few rejoinders to the Ypsi-centric viewpoint we’ve been pushing here:

[D]espite the protestations of Ypsi proslytizers, Ypsi wouldn’t exist (at least in present form) without Ann Arbor.

…

I’ve lived in both Ann Arbor and Ypsi. I love Ypsi, but I’m back up on the north side of Ann Arbor, even though I still go to school out in Ypsi. The best thing that could happen right now is for young people to start getting into politics in Ypsi, and wrest control out of the old corrupt guard there. Well, that and get some decent fuckin’ schools. That’s the other reason why people move to Ann Arbor over Ypsi- the public schools in Ann Arbor pretty well kick ass, and the ones in Ypsi pretty well fuckin’ blow.

We’re willing to concede that Ypsi’s not necessarily better, but it outdoes Tree Town in a number of areas that Ann Arborites consider their own domain. And maybe it wouldn’t exist without A2 - Ann Arbor draws in young people with the promise of a hip college town with a thriving underground arts and music scene, then they get fed up and move to Ypsi.

On an unrelated note, does anyone know how to pronounce “Hieftje”?

Ever since the Detroit/Ann Arbor Craigslist made its debut, we’ve been monitoring it obsessively, hoping to write a “Week In Craig“-style column about it. In this column, we would make deadpan asides about all of the Ann Arbor hipsters waxing eloquent in “Missed Connections” about the Titian redhead they saw riding the AATA to Plymouth. We would, perhaps, even be the subject of nasty barbs from outraged posters, as the “Week in Craig” columnist occasionally was.

Instead, there appears to be not quite enough material to write a “Year in Craig” column. There’s the girl looking for the “unbelievably cute lil boy who nibbled [her] ear” outside of Pizza House. Two LA residents who miss Ann Arbor. (”In Ann Arbor I was special and so were you,” writes one. “i miss you nice michigan boys.. even with your nasal midwest accents.. how charming it all seems now….” wails another.) The guy listening to Interpol and Sly and the Family Stone who needs a “Girlfriend/Collaborator.” Come on, people, give us something to work with here.