Detroit News Weblogs

What do you believe?

I love this monologue. It's from the movie "Signs," near the end, when it's become obvious Earth is about to be invaded by aliens.

The person who says it, Graham Hess, is an ex-priest who quit on God after his wife was killed in a freak accident. Graham and his brother, Merrill, are watching TV news coverage of 14 spaceships hovering over different parts of the world and struggling to find meaning in it:

"People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there's a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is, what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"

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Running man

I did the Google Map thing the other night, after the local headlines finally made me sick to my stomach:

Ten shot in a single night within Detroit's borders. Guns, drugs and knives found in Harper Woods schools. A car-jacking/shooting on 8 Mile Road, a tad north of Gratiot ... just to name a few.

Google says my family's current home is just 9.5 miles from Ground Zero, Dobel Street, where it all began for me and the epitome of hopelessness today. From my porch, I could literally throw a baseball into the city -- without the help of a relay man.

It's all too close, conjures up thoughts and images of our final year on Dobel. My parents couldn't, wouldn't take anymore back then and got us out.

I'm having those feelings now, too.

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Stranded

My telephone rang about 6:20 this morning, and my heart sank.

Rarely does good news arrive with your morning coffee.

Thankfully, nobody's dead, dying or in the hospital.

Still, the news from old neighborhood resident Edith Floyd wasn't nice to hear -- STRANDED.

It's something we've talked about time and again, especially early on in the life of this blog. Because the neighborhood is surrounded by an airport and a cemetery to the east, another cemetery to the west, and train tracks on two points of Van Dyke and across McNichols to the west, all it would take to cut off the neighborhood would be a long train that hit all three points on the track simultaneously.

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Super bore

Last night's Super Bowl was a super bore to me.

I couldn't care less about the Giants, the Patriots or a 53-year-old Madonna strutting her surgically-enhanced body around the halftime stage.

I was, however, interested in seeing what Chrysler would do for an encore, how the company would follow up on last year's Super Bowl ad featuring Eminem -- the commercial that had us all feeling proud of our Detroit roots the next day and beyond.

Unfortunately, Chrysler's 2012 kick went wide left. Clint Eastwood and the "Halftime in America" stuff were lame and sappy.

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