Respect Authority

So much going on in the news these days, like Obama schooling Chinese children on how awesome it is to live in an uncensored country, and three-year-old Suri Cruise already being more adept at wearing heels than I am.  Here’s a Monday morning roundup.

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Megan Fox managed to once again perpetuate the idea of herself as an intellectual and under-challenged actress who was duped by the type-casting slobs of Hollywood into limiting herself career-wise to Michael Bay action flicks and thinly veiled soft-core porn horror films. Sorry Megan, you can talk to as many New York Times reporters as you want, women will still hate you.

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Time Inc. is sponsoring “Selling Detroit,” a contest in which five advertising agencies are producing campaigns to encourage young and creative types to consider Detroit as a place to live/work. Somehow I feel like they’d have better luck just…actually selling Detroit.

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Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell are all on board for Scream 4, written by Kevin Williamson, the genius behind Scream and Scream 2 (not sarcasm, I love those movies). I’m just not sure which is more indicative of a career plateau–starring in an ABC show about an older woman gaming on younger men, or returning to the same role you played 13 years ago.

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Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who went down in flames after revealing an extra-marital affair with a man (and who also wrote a book where he admitted to doing dudes in “book stores and rest stops”), is currently training to become an Episcopal priest. …No commentary necessary.

Major developments are in the air. In previews for tonight’s season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, there’s a fight! A big ole Jersey-style screaming match that I’m really hoping devolves into arguments over whose jeans are the most stone-washed and maybe the pulling of some big-ass hair. But in the meantime, until the lovely hour of 10 p.m. Eastern Time rolls around, we’ll have to amuse ourselves with actual news. Well, “actual.”

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FOLLOWING THE TREND set forth by Al Gore, John Kerry has apparently asked the Senate ethics panel if he can use $300,000 from his (pointless) campaign funds to invest in a documentary about injured Iraq war veterans. Because “documentary filmmaker” is apparently every presidential hopeful’s second choice of career.

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SPEAKING OF PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls, everything about this headline struck me as wrong. Not only should John McCain probably not be driving (at least not without Solar Shield sunglasses) but he definitely shouldn’t be tweeting. Luckily, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is less than 140 characters.

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PROCTER & GAMBLE’S TAMPAX is reportedly behind a new series of viral videos about a boy who wakes up one morning to find his “boy parts” are gone, replaced by lady ones. …No commentary necessary.

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A&E FINALLY CANCELED Patrick Swayze crime show The Beast. I’m more upset that I can’t in good conscience make fun of the show’s cancellation than that it was actually canceled.

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IN A HOPELESS case of short-sighted thinking, the Detroit City Council is expected to consider a crackdown that would ban alcohol at clubs that offer topless dancing. Because if there’s one thing more depressing than watching topless dancing at a strip club in Detroit, it’s doing it sober.

This isn’t supposed to be a column about photography of urban decay; it just so happens that images of decomposing modern ruins compliment dark visions of the future particularly well. Still trying to figure that one out.

Late last week, TIME ran a photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre about Detroit’s golden oldies. This is the same glistening point on the map where earlier this winter a dead body was found encased in a block of ice inside an elevator shaft, where he had been for months. So yeah, Detroit… nice place to visit and all… only, um, not.

This was once Detroit’s main train station; today it has been converted into Detroit’s main source of tetanus. Seriously, no wonder Eminem is so pissed off coming from this place. Not only do you probably have cancer from the city’s proud collection of asbestos, but worse yet, there’s not even anything to do on the weekend.

In a way, Detroit functions as a sneak preview for any city in its decline. In a time when old industries and business models are showing their age and failing to keep up with technology’s exponential progression, any city that can not adapt to the demands of the present will inevitably regress exponentially.

And in a city that is increasingly resembling a ghost town, it’s hard not to believe in hauntings. Nonetheless, watching America’s ruins form before your very eyes is quite frightening all on its own.