Judy McGovern comes out reluctantly against the idea that “that Ann Arbor install drawbridges at its entrances and turn away or charge nonresidents who want to get in.” No word on how such a scheme would affect David Brooks’ satirically proposed Liberal Air, which would feature “flights between Madison, Berkeley, Ann Arbor and the New School for Social Research.”
Just when you thought the food questions in the Ann Arbor News “Connection” couldn’t get any weirder, this week’s column comes along and outdoes, or at least matches, any previous inquiries about “oldie” sauerkraut salad or Old Country Buffet pudding: the writer wants a recipe for “a breakfast dish and the ingredients included 18 eggs, sour cream and ham.” News writer Marge Biancke obliges with two egg recipes, one calling for three eggs and the other for six - perhaps they’re supposed to be multiplied together. Is egg-recipe multiplication commutative?
The city may have found the answer to its budget woes - after the new obscenity guidelines for public-access cable take effect, they can release a “Too Hot for CTN” video series. Of course, it might be a little difficult to get anything taken off the air under the new rules - squeamish viewers offended by CTN content will have to fill out a form asking such questions as “Does the program contain images of masturbation? If yes, give a description and an estimate of duration.” We’re just grateful we didn’t arrive in A2 in time to watch 90s CTN offering “Sexy Minutes” (a companion show to Senior Moments?)
We were going to ask if anyone wanted to sponsor a “historical sign” in the Old Fourth Ward with us, but then we realized that the signs don’t carry the names of the sponsors. Talk About Town says of the signs that, as with so many other aspects of A2, “The payback will be in your mind.”
A News article analyzes why A2 appears on so many “best cities” lists. The conclusion: “There is a very broad recognition of the fact that Ann Arbor is undeniably one of the best cities in the country,” Mayor Hieftje says.
And an A2 landlord has figured out why students aren’t happy with the rental housing in this town. They “do not…understand a life of responsible independence. With their families’ average household income at $180,000 a year, one should not be surprised that many of them condescend to decent middle-class housing,” writes Christopher Heaton on the letters page.
Those hoping for an A2 victory on “Average Joe” were disappointed when U of M grad student Jennifer Lifshitz was eliminated from the contest. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick calls her “stunningly neurotic.” We know - a grad student, neurotic?
Also, it’s been pointed out to us that we didn’t mention Goodspeed Update’s second-place finish in the Current contest. That’s because we listed only the winners for whom we had a dismissive remark. Let’s see…
We’re not sure, but we think we’ve been accused of suffering from “hormonal overload.” The Business Direct Weekly article isn’t online anymore, but Common Monkeyflower’s post about it quotes the following: “[N]o cool city is truly cool unless it touts its unhippability and disdain for itself. For that, we turn to the ‘Ann Arbor is Overrated’ site. All of which is fine and good — the who’s-cool/who’s-not debate has raged since the hormonal overload called junior high.” “Unhippability,” a form of the transitive verb “to hip,” is a word that we don’t see nearly enough around here.
We hope this will be the last self-referential post for at least the next week.
The Current’s Best of Washtenaw County list is out. As usual, it’s A2-centric and necessarily suffers from the one-of-everything syndrome - it’s hard to find a runner-up in categories where we’ve only got three or four of the thing in question. The vote-counters also had to deal with “several rashes of ballot-stuffing” this year. Anyhow, the rundown: