One of Them, One of Us

Yes, for some unknown reason Steve and I continue to watch Heroes. To its credit, the last couple episodes have been far more focused, far less idiotic, and there is a small chance that the show will return to less suck with the full-on return of Mr. Brian Fuller (R.I.P. Pushing Daisies). The only reason I mention this now is because in the show, there are several repetitive mantras and one of those mantras is "One of Them, One of Us." I normally fall asleep before they finish explaining what it means, but I believe it has something to do with teaming up one person with super powers and one person with unsuper powers to do...something - maybe making babies I'm not too sure and I don't care if I ever figure it out. I prefer to think they're making babies.

A couple years ago, Comerica Bank gave Detroit the middle finger when it picked up camp and fled to the second or third nicest sand bucket in Texas, Dallas. They took with them some corporate jobs, an ages-old Detroit institution, and another handful of our local pride. Today, we return that middle finger back to Dallas when home builder Pulte Homes announced they would be purchasing Centex Homes (based in Dallas) to combine to make the biggest home builder in the United States. Shockingly, the home field of this combined corporation is going to be in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and retain the name Pulte Homes. In some respects, home builders carry some blame for the current economic malaise by producing far too many unnecessary homes, creating a glut of inventory, and driving down the price of your house. This is a bit of a shortsighted view because they would likely not have produced the homes if people who did not qualify for loans were offered loans. All of these issues aside, it's kind of cool to have the biggest home builder in the country based in Bloomfield Hills. Don't get too excited - with the way things are going, there's always a chance that the newspapers tomorrow will be like "April 8th Fools - Pulte's moving to Texas!" but it's one day of decent Michigan corporate news in a sea of less good days. Don't look now, but we have the biggest home builder in the country, the second biggest hub of the largest airline, Little Caesars and Domino's, and 48% of the entire domestic automobile market. With Hollywood essentially deciding that it's moving to Michigan (wouldn't that be awesome? Jerks everywhere - but also maybe a few more jobs) and my blog, Michigan is also well on its way to being the media center of the universe. Now if we could just corner the revenue-rich pornography empire, we'd really be moving in the right direction.