Spirit of Detroit: Of course, who needs The Wire when you have Detroit. John Conyers, Detroit's U.S. Congressman has long been known to be a high-end nut job, but his wife, president of the City Council, may take the cake, telling an aide to the Mayor that she would get a gun or get her brothers to whip his ass. The government of Detroit is about on par with some corrupt third world hellhole. And, of course, they have the standard of living that goes along with it. If it wasn't for fear of the country having enough and the National Guard taking over, Detroit would probably be engulfed in a shooting war between the Kilpatrick junta and the Conyers guerillas, with the BBC running videos of starving citizens begging for U.N assistance, and Bono flying in for a humanitarian photo op. It's that bad.

Last month I mentioned the infamous (alleged) party at the Manoogian Mansion, the Mayor's official residence, which (allegedly) featured strippers and catfights. It seems now there is a big to do about the (alleged) interference of the Mayor's office in the investigation of the drive by murder of a stripper who (allegedly) was at the party. A whistle-blowing ex-cop has suggested that she was killed by a Detroit cop at the behest of the Mayor or someone in his administration. Among other things, there was some confusion about whether she was shot three times or eighteen times. Easy to get those two numbers confused.

Of course, not even the city government could be as fundamentally fubar as the Detroit Lions. Matt Millen's picture is next to the word "assclown" in the dictionary. Or at least it would be if "assclown" was in the dictionary. Recently fired offensive coordinator and Super Bowl winning coach Mike Martz observed of the Lions management: "I can't explain anything they do. I can't." The team's response to being the whipping boys of the NFL for, oh, fifty years or so? Raise ticket prices. That, my friends, is Detroit logic.

I feel mildly ashamed at how fascinated I am by the slow, steady degradation of the city to depths unknown. I am anxious to see where the bottom is. I'm guessing it will be when there are only a couple dozen people left and they have to resort to cannibalism. But that's just a guess.