Dennis Casselberry 1944-2005

I never thought I’d be writing about this. Certainly not here. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to. Or if I could. I guess I’m still not sure. But many friends have been checking in to ask how my father was doing, worrying about what was going on. I am grateful to each of you for that. And so is my father. I wish I had better news to share with you. Many of you already know what’s happened.

My father passed away last Friday.

What caused it? I don’t know. The pulmonary embolism? A stroke? The doctors can’t really say, and my mother wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of an autopsy to possibly find some answers. Given how my mother, sister, and uncle have been torturing themselves, wondering what could’ve been done differently with my dad’s treatment, maybe we could use some answers. But I don’t know if they really exist.

I think all of his various health difficulties over the past 10-12 years – the heart surgeries, the stroke, the irregular heartbeats, the internal bleeding, the poking, the prodding, the pain – it all finally caught up with him. He never once complained. He never once asked “Why me?” He suffered through it all and continued to live his life. But his heart gave out. His heart stopped.

Calling my sister in South Carolina to tell her our father was gone is probably the worst phone call I’ll ever have to make. Her crying, her weeping, her screaming – I hope I never have to hear my little sister suffer like that again. Along with my mother’s weeping, they were all the worst sounds I have ever heard. I feel like I have to be “the strong one” for my mom and sister. And I’m trying. I’m doing my best. When I have a moment to myself, I finally let go too.

As I write this, my father’s memorial service is almost nine hours away. It’ll be held at our church in Ypsilanti, a place that meant so much to him, yet I stopped going there years ago. Before typing this, I finished writing what I’ll say during the service. As soon as the Pastor asked if anyone would be saying anything, I told him I would. I have to speak. For me, for my family, and for my dad. If I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

I also wrote my dad’s obituary, something I hoped I wouldn’t be writing for another 20 years. I don’t know if you want to read it, and maybe it’s gratuitous (and morbid) to post a link, but you can view it here. 300 words doesn’t sum him up nearly enough, but I tried.

Over the past six days, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of a favorite memory of my dad. And I couldn’t do it. But this is what I kept coming back to: As I said, he’s been through a lot over the past 10-12 years. I know his life became more difficult as his health and energy faded on him. But when I look back on these most recent years, I feel good. Because he and I became closer. I got to know my dad, and he got to know me. We talked and we shared. And we found a lot of common interests – current events, politics, sports, film, literature, and music. My dad became so much more than my father. He became my friend. And I will always cherish that.

My dad knows how much this blog has meant to me. He was supportive of it all along, telling his friends and family to go read his son’s “web log thing.” (“Fried what? What do you mean by that?”) And that’s what I think about when I wonder whether I can go back to writing about all those things that right now seem so trivial. It might be a while before writing about severed fingers in food, my beloved Detroit sports teams, the media, or whatever else I noticed from the TV and newspapers strikes me as important enough to write about.

But I’ll get there. Because it’s important to me. And my dad would’ve wanted to talk about it. And also because I’m grateful to all of you who have cared and been interested enough to read this. Again, thank you for checking in to see if everything was okay. I promise I’ll get back to you soon. I’ve never even seen or met some of you, yet you were concerned. That means a lot to me. And it means a lot to my dad.

Dad, I miss you. And I love you.

Tom Petty had it right

The waiting really is the hardest part. After getting home from the hospital last night and searching for something to eat, I found some chili in the fridge. Mom told me it was almost two weeks old, so I tossed it down the garbage disposal.

“Wait, wait, wait! The garbage disposal doesn’t work!” my mother yelled.

Rats. So here I am, waiting for a plumber to come over and fix the #@$%ing garbage disposal, instead of spending the afternoon at the hospital with my father. Oh well, maybe he’ll get more sleep without me in the room.

A touch of class

What Pistons coach Larry Brown did at the end of last night’s Game 6 with the Pacers was one of the classiest, most respectful gestures I’ve ever seen in my lifetime of watching sports. With Indiana about to lose the game, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle took the soon-to-retire Reggie Miller out of the game so the Indianapolis crowd could acknowledge the 18 years he’d played with the Indiana Pacers. Knowing that the ovation would end as soon as play resumed, Larry Brown called a time-out so the cheers could continue. He also told his own players on the Pistons’ bench to stand and cheer for Miller, whom Brown coached from 1994 to 1997.

It was a great example of sportsmanship, and probably the perfect end to games between Detroit and Indiana in 2004-05, which will likely always carry the taint of last November’s brawl. (And as a Pistons fan, I think it was the exact opposite of an incident at the end of the 1991 season that has always bothered me, in which the Pistons – about to lose to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls – walked off the court before the game officially ended, rather than shake hands.) Here’s more from Terry Foster.

Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press

Don’t worry, Reg. Come over and watch the rest of the playoffs at my house.

I’m not a huge fan of Reggie Miller. I always thought he received all the acclaim and fame that should’ve gone to Detroit’s Joe Dumars, whom I will argue was a much better and more complete player until the day I die. But 18 years is 18 years, and Miller was a lethal jump shooter, especially from three-point range who won a hell of a lot of games for the Indiana Pacers.

Here’s the hometown take on Miller from Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star. Me, I’d rather read about how the Pistons will play the Miami Heat in the next round of the NBA playoffs. 8 down, 8 to go.

Every time I think I’m out….

My two-day career as a personal nurse took a rather serious turn yesterday when my father said he was having trouble breathing. After I foolishly let my dad convince me to wait until we heard from my uncle (who used to be a real nurse) and the doctor’s office, I called an ambulance and he was taken to a hospital.

Hours later (and you know I’m not exaggerating), the diagnosis finally came down: my dad had a pulmonary embolism. When I looked at the doctor like he was speaking Chinese, he dumbed it down for me – my dad had a blood clot in each of his lungs, and the lower lobe of his left lung had collapsed.

I’ve spent most of the last 36 hours at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, a place which has become all too familiar to me. I’ve been there way too #@$%ing often, checking in on various members of my family. Heart surgeries, strokes, depression, cancer, drug overdoses, and even a brain operation have all brought me to St. Joe’s over the past ten years. I’ve watched two people die in that building.

But my dad is getting great care and his condition is stable. Of course, I’m beyond grateful to the medical staff at St. Joe’s, but I’ve really grown to resent that place.

How do you know you’ve visited a hospital too often?

▪ You look around the ER and think, “Wow, they’ve done a lot of work on this place. It looks nice in here.”

▪ The woman at the front desk says your father has been moved to the medical intensive care unit and you say, “Oh, I know exactly where that is. Thanks.”

▪ You can navigate your way from the ER to the cafeteria to the radiology wing to the medical intensive care unit all without looking at a single sign or arrow.

▪ You see that the main hospital entrance now closes at 10:30 pm and say to yourself, “It used to be open 24 hours a day! When the #@$% did this $#!+ start?”

▪ You remember the hospital cable system doesn’t carry Comedy Central. (No ‘Daily Show’ for me last night. I did, however, get to see some of Pistons-Pacers on TNT.)

▪ You know that Wednesday is “Italian Food Day” in the hospital cafeteria.

▪ You hear the sentence “Mr. Casselberry, I’m sorry that your father’s back here” ten #@$%ing times from ten different doctors or nurses in an six-hour span.

▪ On your way to buy a magazine from the hospital gift shop, you remember that you don’t like the magazine selection in the hospital gift shop.

▪ You know that the waiting lounge in the critical care wing has more comfortable chairs and sofas to sleep on than the other lounges.

▪ Somebody asks where’s a good place to eat near the hospital and you can rattle off at least six or seven restaurants.

▪ A nurse says to you, “Oh, I thought you looked familiar. How’s Iowa?”

You think Op-Ed columns grow on trees?

Remember the scene in Trading Places when Dan Aykroyd’s character is trying to hock his $6,000 Swiss watch in a pawn shop? What does the pawnbroker say to him?

“In Philadelphia, it’s worth 50 bucks.”

Would you pay 50 bucks a year to read the New York Times op-ed page online? Beginning in September, you’ll have to. Reading Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, and Paul Krugman is gonna cost you, Jack.

I suppose the luxury of reading newspapers like the NY Times and Washington Post online for free is something we’ve all taken for granted. Newspapers need to make money, just like any other business. But I think this move will end up backfiring and result in fewer readers checking out the op-ed page.

Andrew Sullivan sums it up nicely on his blog:

“By sectioning off their op-ed columnists and best writers, they are cutting them off from the life-blood of today’s political debate: the free blogosphere. Inevitably, fewer people will link to them; fewer will read them; their influence will wane faster than it has already. The blog is already becoming a rival to the dated op-ed column format as a means of communicating opinion journalism. My bet is that the NYT’s retrogressive move will only fasten the decline of op-ed columnists’ influence.”

I’d probably read the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page regularly if it didn’t require a $80 yearly subscription fee. Something I do pay for (somewhat reluctantly) is Salon, though I think the site really hurts itself by charging $30 a year to read most of its content. I’d link to its articles a hell of a lot more if I knew everyone could read them. (Speaking of Salon, here’s its take on the story, by Farhad Manjoo.) Ultimately, I pay the $30 because I enjoyed its coverage, columnists, and overall politics back when it was free and didn’t want to miss out.

Obviously, the New York Times is hoping plenty of its readers feel the same way about its columnists. I don’t think I’m among them, however. Maureen, David, Paul, and Thomas – it’s been fun – especially when you rip ol’ George W. But come September, I’ll wait to see what the blogs have to say about your stuff – if they’re willing to pay to read you.

Everybody Loves Mitch — well, maybe

Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press appeared to close the book on its investigation into Mitch Albom, with a large report that detailed its findings and determined Albom’s now-infamous April 3 column was an aberration. He didn’t escape completely unscathed, however. It seems Mitch has a bit of a problem with lifting quotes and properly attributing their sources. Here’s a snippet from the article:

“… the inquiry found that Albom at times has used quotes from newspapers, TV programs or other publications without indicating that he did not gather the material himself, in violation of Free Press rules on crediting sources. In several instances, Albom did not credit quotes exclusively gathered by another media organization.”

Depending on who you talk to, this ranges from nitpicking to a potentially serious breach of ethics. If Albom got a quote for a story from the Today show or another newspaper, should he say so? Some writers might say that leads to clunky, cumbersome prose. Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser (an admitted friend of Albom) said just as much on his radio show this morning. To me, it’s straight out of Journalism 101 – if you did not directly acquire quotes or information in an article you wrote, you give credit to the source of that material. Hell, I even do that here on this blog. It’s an extra four or five words: “he said on the Today show.” If anything, it’s a professional courtesy.

What’s even worse is that Albom appears to have occasionally embellished quotes.

“At times, quotes cited by Albom were worded slightly differently from how they appeared elsewhere in the media, with the quotes seeming to be livelier in some cases. Asked about those quotes, Albom insisted the passages were ‘essentially accurate.’”

How about that one, kids? “Essentially accurate.” I might use a variation of that with the ladies. “C’mon, I’m essentially good-looking.”

There are a few other questionable instances mentioned in the article, such as Albom writing about a Lions-Bears game he watched from home and taking quotes for a Tigers game from TV and radio interviews during the commercial breaks of his own radio show. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people, especially when compared to what’s happening at Newsweek . But I think it’s a bit shady to portray yourself as having attended an event when you actually didn’t. I can just imagine trying to justify that tactic to one of my journalism professors. Guess what grade I would’ve received for that assignment? Just because you’re Mitch Albom doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply.

Free Press publisher and executive editor Carole Anne Hutton wrote a mea culpa today, explaining the paper’s new system of checks and balances that should prevent this sort of thing – which apparently is running rampant among Free Press columnists – from happening again. But given her past history of coddling Albom, I wonder if she’s more interested in just getting past this incident and hoping this all goes away quietly.

I’m not sure it will, though. One of the reporters who contributed to the Free Press investigation, David Zeman, is already disputing how the story was edited for the paper. According to this story in Editor & Publisher, Zeman thinks the article’s headline – “Albom probe shows no pattern of deception” – is, well, deceptive.

“‘I think some people may find a disconnect between what the headline says and what the story below lays out,’ Zeman said…

[He] also contends that the investigation found that Albom more frequently used quotes without credit than did other columnists. ‘I think it is unfair to give the impression that any of our columnists have been shown to be lifting quotes to the extent that Mitch has,’ Zeman said. ‘I would hate to see all of our columnists lumped in to the same group as Albom.’”

Hutton told the Detroit News that the story and headline were edited “to be more clear and more newsy.”

Hmm… is this really the end of this story? I’m not necessarily saying Hutton will be fired eventually, but doesn’t someone’s head have to roll for this – especially given the current mistrustful climate the media finds itself in with the public? Check back to see if she has the same job a year from now. We know Mitch Albom will.

Never underestimate the need for "me time"

My ruby-tressed blogging buddy, Raging Red, has been following the recent Dave Chappelle news pretty closely (i.e., she wrote about it before I could), but this story in yesterday’s New York Times was still pretty surprising to me. Check out this quote from Doug Herzog, president of Comedy Central:

“We’re now approaching life and the year as if the Dave Chappelle show doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t. We don’t know what to plan for, so we’re not planning for it. I keep on telling my guys that we’re now the San Francisco Giants, and Barry Bonds, our cleanup hitter, is not available.”

It’s like a line from The Sopranos – “Dave Chappelle, that #&$%er’s dead to me.”

But Chappelle has returned from his sojourn to South Africa, and quickly tried to shoot down any talk about him being crazy or a drug addict. Here’s what he said in an interview with Time magazine:

“Let me tell you the things I can do here which I can’t at home: think, eat, sleep, laugh. I’m an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here.”

Chappelle sounds like a guy who’s disenchanted with all the “yes men” around him, people just nodding and smiling, afraid to cancel their meal ticket. Even worse, some of them might be pushing him to produce sub-par material, so those big Comedy Central paychecks can be cashed.

That’s certainly nothing I can relate to, nor is flying to South Africa to clear my head, but on some level – narcissism alert! – I understand the frustration of trying to create something good, questioning its merit, and wondering whether you’re getting the kind of feedback you really need or people are just being polite to you. I’m lucky enough to have a circle of friends who I trust to give me good criticism, who will let me know when something’s not quite working. (Once I’m famous, however, they’re not allowed to say anything negative. “Oh yeah? My one million green friends here say the novel is just fine.”) Maybe I should pass their e-mail addresses along to Chappelle.

By the way, do you think Simon Robinson, the Johannesburg bureau chief for Time magazine, ever thought he’d hear the words “We need you to find and interview Dave Chappelle” from his editors?

The future is now

I remember when Mis Hooz showed me her coffeemaker with a timer that started brewing coffee at 7 am. I thought our society had reached a pinnacle of technology.

“It brews for you?” I asked, stroking the coffeemaker and jumping up and down, much like the monkeys at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It brews by itself, mother#&$%er! Brilliant!

But that was just the beginning. Now, thanks to Wolfgang Puck, we have cups of coffee that can heat themselves. Who has time to stand in front of the coffeemaker, waiting for the brew to drip into the pot? Pod coffeemakers? Soooo 2004!

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Just push a button on the bottom of this sucker and six minutes later, you’ve got a cup of 145 degree coffee. Heating through chemical reaction, people! That has to be better than the 15-20 minutes in line at Starbucks in the morning. And it beats my routine: boiling water, and then pouring it through a small drip cone. (Or even worse – using those coffee “teabags.” Ugh.) The waiting! Oh, the #&$%ing waiting!

It’s not just stopping with coffee, either! Hot chocolate! Oatmeal! Baby formula! Sake! Sake? Yes, sake! Microwaves? They’re for pussies, my friend. Give ‘em away now; you won’t need ‘em. That’s the past, man. The future is self-heating food. I’ll be able to bring a Tombstone pizza on a road trip with me, hit a button and – whoosh! – a cardboard-crusted pepperoni pie ready in minutes, right there on the passenger seat. (Hopefully, the upholstery won’t be affected.)

Of course, it’ll all taste like $#!+…

Back in Michigan

Well, I’m back in Michigan a bit sooner than I anticipated, and will probably be here for a while. After finishing school in Iowa (not to be confused with Finishing School – I did not spend the last two years learning how to properly set tables, drink tea, or walk in heels with a book balanced on my head – though I would be an outstanding society wife), Mama Casselberry asked if I could come home right away to help out with my father, who was released from the hospital last Thursday.

So for the next two weeks or so, I’ll be playing the role of Dad’s personal nurse. Fortunately, Dad doesn’t share Jack Byrnes’s opinion of male nurses. No, we’re more like Jason Robards and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Magnolia.

Don’t worry, Dad – you’re looking much better than Jason Robards.
Thanks, son. Why the hell are you wearing that hat?

Okay, it’s not that bad. But Dad’s in pretty rough shape right now. He’s still quite weak; just getting up to use the bathroom is a big physical exertion for him. (Thankfully – at the risk of sounding shallow – he can use the bathroom by himself. We did not have to see just how far a son’s love stretched.) But he’s slowly – slowly – getting a little stronger each day. Most of the time, he sleeps, which leaves plenty of time for a young blogger to frolic across his keyboard.

Alas, my two-week farewell tour was scrapped – or more specifically, crammed into one night. (If you’d like to know how that went, just refer to any Kid Rock video. I will say, for the record, that nothing was ingested that would require the use of The Original Whizzinator for the next couple of weeks.) Save your goodbyes for a couple of weeks, fellow Hawkeyes. My loose ends in Iowa will have to be tied up over Memorial Day weekend.

Mr. Whizz-ard

I imagine some of you have heard about this already (I caught it on yesterday’s Pardon the Interruption), but for those of you who haven’t, you can thank me later. While searching through the luggage of pro football player Onterrio Smith, airport security found vials of white powder and a prosthetic penis. Hey, someone’s going to a party, right? Well, no.

The white powder in those vials was dried urine. Seriously. Smith told the police that the urine and fake penis were parts of a kit called… “The Original Whizzinator.”

No, Smith wasn’t high at the time. There is really something called “The Original Whizzinator.” Check it out. (Remember, a fake penis is part of the device, so you might not want to check this at work.) It’s used to pass drug tests. Well, I hope that’s what it’s used for. If you’re creative enough to find other uses for it, maybe you should be working for NASA or making gadgets for James Bond.

So this is how the Whizzinator, um, whizzes: The prosthetic penis is attached to a jockstrap and a plastic bag. Mix the dried urine with water, put it in the bag, and voila – you’re passing a drug test, Cheech.

Friends, the Whizzinator is also an equal opportunity device. You can order penises in either white, tan, latino, brown, or black. (Maybe you shouldn’t order one while you’re high. “Sure, that’s mine. It’s that color because I have a skin condition.”) And Whizzinators aren’t just for the guys. The ladies get one too.

These guys have all the bases covered. Dried urine can be ordered separately, if that’s all you need – or if it’s time to restock your supply.

By the way, Onterrio Smith has tested positive for marijuana twice in his two-year NFL career.