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The publisher of the Register Star, my hometown newspaper and my former employer, resigned yesterday.

Newspapers are in a tough spot with the economy in the tank and internet advertising platforms undercutting their revenue.

But when a publisher lasts less than two years — especially an insider like Scott — I kind of wonder what’s going on. Especially when he’s only the second publisher to bail since a new corporation took over three years ago.

GateHouse Media bought the Register Star in 2007, when I still worked there. Veteran publisher Fritz Jacobi stuck around, but left a year later to retire early to a house on a Wisconsin lake. A couple months later, the paper laid off staff for the first time in decades (it had already done voluntary buyouts near the end of Jacobi’s tenure). I don’t know if it was true, but there were rumors that he left rather than hand out the pink slips.

Just a few years ago, GateHouse was the Great White Hope of a flailing industry. Now it’s hemorrhaging money like every other newspaper company.

Word around the campfire is that Dick Wolf is trying to negotiate a 21st season. NBC is keeping Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and also rolling out a Law & Order: Los Angeles. Just what we need, another television program about life in L.A.

But in honor of television show that started it all, I give you my list of Law & Order spin-offs that never made it to prime time:

Law & Order: Traffic Violations Unit
Law & Order: Dismissed!
Law & Order: Jury Duty
Law & Order: Crimes of the Heart

I feel like I’ve made it out of the woods now. The hard part will be avoiding that “just one” cigarette. Kiss of death.

So I started buying fancier fresh-roasted coffee and making it slowly. Boiling water, grinding beans and waiting. First, waiting for the water to heat up. Then, waiting for it to steep with the coarse, chunky beans.

The result is two amazing cups of coffee. And I’m reminded why I love the stuff in the first place. No, I don’t get a lot of volume out of the process, but the two cups equal a pot of my regular stuff.

And while we at The Institute are an impatient lot (because our very mission seeks faster and more comprehensive delivery of caffeine to the central nervous system), it’s clear that Angela’s preferred method produces most excellent coffee.

Although our keynote speaker, Mr. Iowa Law herself, D’Arcy, sounded the alarm about a grim future without upper lip facial hair, the club resolved to prevent that dystopian nightmare and instead bring an veritable Pax Mustacha to our land.

Below is video of her speech, followed by a transcript of the same.

Transcript:

I’m so sad to say, the future is bleak. When one googles “the future of the mustache,” one gets no returns. How is that possible?

So I dug deep into my vast, vast repertoire of cultural knowledge and the only mustache of the future I could come up with was Cosmo Cogsworth,¹ the dastardly boss of the Jetsons.

And I thought, oh wait, oh wait, Lando Calrissian! Lando Calrissian can protect us in the Skyworld² – in the opposite way he did for his friends. Then I thought, Star Wars takes place a long, long time ago.

I’m not one of these people that believes in predetermination. I believe that we can change the future; That this small group of determined people can come together and I ask each of you to do what you can to change that future so that in 50 years, when another student is sitting in cyber-employment law, I want them to be able to search “the future of the mustache” and get 3 million hits so they no longer have to play Treasure Madness for an hour.

So I send you out into this dark, cold world with only the light of our mustaches.

¹ Although our esteemed speaker refers to “Cogsworth,” it  is likely a mistaken reference to Cosmo G. Spacely, owner of Spacely Sprockets and George Jetson’s tyrannical boss – a man whose thundering bellows of “JET-SON!” were made that much more terrifying by the quivering of his lampshade-style mustache.

Cogswell, on the other hand, is owner of Spacely’s chief competitor, Cogswell Cogs, and as this photo reveals, is a clean-shaven, hairless chap (right).

This clarification in no way impugns the majesty and raw power of Ms. D’Arcy’s speech, but merely attempts to credit the proper mustache enthusiast of the future.

² Or, Cloud City.

But anyway, Chandler’s characters are all hard-boiled police detectives, private eyes, hotel dicks, you name it, occupying the seamy underworld of post-war Los Angeles, a city exploding in size and teaming with graft and corruption. The heroes — noble joes, all — are constantly being shot at and cracked over the head with all manner of objects, mostly whiskey bottles, gun barrels and my favorite, the sap.

Chandler’s world is populated by thugs and chiselers and the hero is quickly implicated in the sordid tale — for instance, awaking next to a dead body seems to be a common problem for sapped private detectives. Thus his job becomes extricating himself from the crime(s) while protecting his client and avoiding indictment and/or death by gunfire.

Chandler’s stories are only possible in the world he lived in – one where a Hollywood starlet would shell out thousands of dollars in blackmail money to keep her adulterous affair out of the newspapers. Keeping unseemly topics under raps is the chief concern of most of Chandler’s detectives and their clients. Even the police and state’s attorney are willing to cooperate with cover-ups to avoid scandal. It’s a world where shame exerts a powerful reign.

But that world is gone. Shame? When was the last time entertainment folk worried about their reputations being damaged by their dalliances, drinking habits or naked photos? Sex tapes are now the quick way to reach a certain low level of celebrity (see Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, et al.)

The apparent blackmail attempt against David Letterman is a good example. Here the chiseler demanded money or he’d reveal Letterman’s affair(s) with staffers. So what does Letterman do? Go on his show and announce the entire thing to his audience of millions. Kind of takes the sting out of any blackmail operation…

I wonder whether either world has much moral authority over the other. I doubt it. Still, the differences are striking.

Because I’m pretty good at growing a mustache.

Once a day I would examine its reflection for a few minutes and tend to it, making sure its edges stayed within boundaries. The rest of the time I would just wait and everything would flourish.

Maybe something about that last post got to me. But I haven’t had a cigarette in a week. I’m tired of quitting and starting again, which I’ve been doing for the last six years now. This time it’s just cold turkey; no more stupid nicotine gum, which preserves the physical addiction.

Actually, what happened was I was staying at some friends’ house last weekend and I stepped outside in my pajamas to have a smoke. It was 9 a.m. and about 40 degrees. I was standing barefoot on the concrete walkway. My feet were freezing. I thought, this is insanity; I’m enduring discomfort just to quench this addiction. So, I decided to quit.

The problem with quitting is that the longer you get away from the last cigarette, the more nostalgic you become about the habit. You forget your scratchy throat, the persistent cough, the stench that sticks to your fingers. All you remember is the sweet first drag and the satisfying way the smoke pours out of your lips when you exhale.

Stupid addiction. I made sure to smoke the rest of my pack inside a friend’s apartment last Sunday, just so I would reek like it and be disgusted. So far, it’s working…