Showing posts sorted by relevance for query dog. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query dog. Sort by date Show all posts

Are Dogs the New Black Dudes?

Once upon a time in America, horror and war movies often implemented the Black Dude Dies First trope. But times have changed, for the better. Audiences won't stand for that racist bullshit. You can't go killing off Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman or Will Smith just because they're black. While this is absolutely a good thing, someone has to pick up the slack in these kinds of movies. Someone has to die in these movies.

So who suffers?

My family doesn't watch many scary movies because my older son Alex is a sniveling coward. Catherine, Ian and I like them, so it's always a treat when we get to hunker down and put one on. I'm definitely not a horror movie aficionado though. Usually when I mention a horror movie I've seen to someone who really likes horror movies-- usually one of my students-- she'll be like: "That's not scary!"

I get scared by pretty much anything (especially Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities).

The other night, Alex elected to go upstairs and pirate some Star Wars spin-off series called The Mandalorian (which sounds like a citrus fruit) so Catherine, Ian and I watched The Babadook.



It's really scary!

Terrifying.

It's the story of a mom who is possessed by the physical disembodiment of her tragic grief. And her super-creepy kid. And an even creepier children's book. There are some mean Australian moms, too-- a macabre Liane Moriarty milieu. It's well acted and vivid, and-- in the end-- profound about death and loss. A good scare and a good film.

My only complaint is the use of the dog.


There's all kinds of creepy shit happening around this house. Doors opening and closing, odd figures lurking in the shadows, sleepless nights, etc.  Most of the time, the dog is nowhere to be found. That's not how dogs are. They are investigative. They take up a lot of space. They are always underfoot. And whenever there's something weird happening, your dog is there. Loyal, curious, and wanting to be involved. But not this dog. Not Bugsy. Bugsy is rarely in the scene, and never when the shit is going down. And the boy and the mom aren't actively bringing the dog into the room when things get scary. 


One of the main reasons to have a dog is to ward off ghosts and demons. There's no better feeling than going to sleep on the same floor as a trusty canine. If a burglar, or -- far worse-- a shadowy death-creature arisen from repressed bereavement, comes a-knocking, your dog is going to get after it. Or at least bark and run around in circles.

Not only does Bugsy not act like a dog, there's also no accurate portrayal of dog ownership. No walking and feeding the dog, no picking up its poop and all that. 

Soon enough, you realize why the dog is in the movie. 

                      
To die. 

It's not that sad, because the dog hasn't been a main character. It's not like what happens in I Am Legend. That's tragic.

                                  

The death of the dog in The Babadook is more perfunctory. And inevitable. The dog is the new black dude. I guess that's progress, but instead of being racist, the movie is speciesist. 

Ian and I also had this complaint about another horror movie we loved, The Conjuring. Early in the movie, Sadie the family dog refuses to enter the new house . . . because she knows the house is haunted. At this point, the family should up and leave. Trust your dog! But instead, they leash her outside the house and enter. 

When they check on her in the next morning, she's dead.

                           

As if this isn't awful enough, they barely mention her death the rest of the movie. I actually think they wrote the dog into the script after the movie was finished and then added the scene in post-production, just so they could have an early death. 

If this were my family, and we spent a night in a spooky new house-- a house that our dog refused to enter-- and then the next morning our dog was dead, that's all we'd be talking about. We'd be broken up and upset and angry and investigative. Every time something weird happened in the house, we'd be bringing up Sadie and how she died and how she wasn't around the protect us. That would be THE topic of conversation.

I know it's tough to use children and animals in movies. Horror movies often employ both. The kids are great in both The Conjuring and The Babadook. And neither movie kills off any black dudes. That's great. But now it's time to show respect for our four-legged friends. They require a lot of work. They take up a lot of space. They investigate everything. And they will protect you from the supernatural like nobody's business.

It's Not Like I'm Letting My Seven Year Old Smoke Cigarettes

Last week, while I was biking with my dog, a woman in jogging attire, with a poorly behaved poodle, yelled to me, "You know, that's the worst thing you can do for your dog!" and so I circled my bike several times and politely listened to her explanation--she said she had a veterinarian friend who claims running along with a bike is bad for a dog's hips and that dogs need to stop frequently when they run and then she finished her lecture by challenging me to "look it up!" and I assured her that I would . . . though I know my dog and he loves biking with me and never has any trouble keeping up, but I humored her and "looked it up!" and there is nothing on the internet about how biking with a dog is bad for your dog (there are considerations, of course . . . your dog should be medium sized, you should avoid pavement when you can, and you should make sure your dog enjoys biking and can keep up . . . which my dog does easily because he can run . . . he begs me to take him out every morning) but this is all besides the point, the real issue here is why some people believe they can just yell out their opinions to a passerby . . .  I know how I should have reacted to this woman-- whose poodle was going bananas, yanking her around and rearing up, while my dog obediently followed my tightly circling bike as I listened to her lambaste me . . . after she said, "That's the worst thing that you can do for your dog," then I should have said to her,"The worst thing? If you think that's the worst thing you can do to a dog, then I have two words for you . . ." and then I should have said, "Michael Vick" or "bear-baiting" or "Vietnamese restaurant" but, of course, this "jerk store" theorizing is what the French call "the wit of the staircase," of which I have plenty, but in real time, I am a witless coward.

My Dog Is Like A Dog But I Am Like A Cat

Let me preface this by saying that my dog Sirius is a good dog, but sometimes good dogs do bad things . . . especially if there is a bunny involved . . . I was biking in the park with Sirius at my side, using a product called the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash, which is an innocuous enough sounding name for what is essentially a metal stick with a bungee cord running through it that clips under your bike seat and juts out perpendicular to your frame, but a better name for the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash would be The Sling-Shot Canine Powered Kiss Your Ass And Your Family Good-bye Because You’re Never Going to See Either of Them Again Unless There Is An Afterlife Rocket Bike Attachment, and as we were biking along using this inaptly named product, a bunny rabbit scampered across the bike path and Sirius-- who is a good dog, but still, when all is said and done, a dog-- jetted sideways after the rabbit, putting him on the right side of two garbage pails and my bike and me on the left side of the two garbage pails . . . and so the stretched bungee cord and the metal rod hit the cans, abruptly stopping the bike and propelling my dog's head right out of his collar; the two garbage pails flipped over and I shot over the handlebars of my new mountain bike (and as this happened, I thought to myself: why aren't I wearing that nice new helmet that I just bought?) and I flew through the air and landed on all fours, just like a cat-- completely uninjured, with eight lives to spare . . . a minor miracle if there ever was one-- but despite the miracle, I still had the awkward job of brushing myself off, righting the garbage cans, putting all the bottles and cans back into the garbage cans, getting my dog's collar back around his neck, getting my dog reattached to the Walky Dog Hands-Free Bicycle Leash, and all the while three women at a picnic table watched me do this, and I felt like Kitty Genovese because they never offered to help me-- nor did they applaud my agility or passionately swoon at my feet in celebration of my feline landing-- instead they simply chuckled at me once I got rolling again (which I needed to do quickly, because my six-year-old son was ahead of me and never saw the crash, so he just kept on biking).

Dog Thought #1

One of the ways I blow off steam is by walking around-- but I always feel a bit like a lunatic if I'm walking around completely aimlessly, without any ostensible purpose, so I usually "create" a perfunctory errand: I go buy cold cuts or a cup of coffee or some beer . . . but, of course, it's more about listening to my iPod and getting out of the house, alone and unfettered; one of the benefits of owning a dog is that now I don't have to invent a task for myself, I can just walk around aimlessly with the dog, and people look at me and think: he's not an itinerant wandering lunatic, he's just out walking his dog . . . but the only down side to this arrangement is that you have to talk to the Dog People you meet and I'm horrible at Dog Talk . . .

Dave: That's a beautiful dog . . . what is he, a Basset Hound? A Pekinese?
Dog Person: She's a Great Dane . . .
Dave: Oh, right . . . how about that one? A Shar-pei?
Dog Person: That's a cat.

Shooting the Shit (head) at the Dog Park




One of the joys of having a dog is visiting the dog park and chatting with the weird mammals that bring their pets; a few days ago, during an early morning visit, I spoke with a nice heavyset lady with a frilly white hat, who was accompanied by her demurely dressed teenage daughter; the nice lady with the hat informed me that her dog's name was Bash-- short for Sebastian-- and she said that Sebastian was the name the shelter gave this Bassett hound but that was NOT a good name, too long, but that Bash was a good name, so they shorted it-- but I thought to myself, that's not good name . . . a good dog name has two syllables, so when you call the dog you don't sound like an idiot: Lola is fine . . . LOOOO LAAAAAA . . . but Bash doesn't work . . . BAAAAA --  AAAAASH . . . it's awkward-- and then she alluded to their original idea for a name for their hound, and she called this original idea the "bad name" and she turned to her daughter and said, "Should we tell him the bad name? No, we probably shouldn't," and I left the comment alone-- it was weird-- but the lady in the frilly hat seemed determined to perseverate on this topic of the "bad name" and though I feigned disinterest, she told me anyway; "We were going to call him Blow-Dog but we decided that wasn't very nice," and then she turned to her daughter and said, "Right? Blow-dog wouldn't be a nice name . . . but it's funny!" and I didn't know how to react-- it was 6:45 AM and this nice lady in a frilly hat was talking about fellatio in front of her daughter, so I said, "Reminds me of the name of the dog in The Jerk . . . that movie with Steve Martin?" but the allusion was lost on them so Lola and I beat a hasty retreat out the gate.

You Talkin' To Me?

I was walking my dog in the rain, and as I passed the Stop and Shop parking lot my son's soccer coach stopped his minvan to talk to me about the dramatic double-overtime high school basketball game we both watched at the RAC on Friday night (East Brunswick vs. St. Joe's) and while I was chatting with him, a rather decrepit looking bag lady strolled by, pushing a cart full of stuff, with her wet and bedraggled dog, and my dog -- as dogs are wont to do -- sniffed her dog's ass, but apparently this was some holier-than-thou bag lady and she took extreme umbrage at my dog's canine perversion and so she yelled at me . . . though it's not like I sniffed her ass (nor would I want to) and I know that I am responsible for my dog's behavior, but I don't think I can get him to refrain from sniffing other dog's anuses, and so even though I was taken aback when the old hag yelled, "HEY! WATCH IT!" to me, I guess if you're possessions are limited and your main companion is a dog, you'd be very protective of him, rear end and all, and so if I see her again, and I am with my dog I will steer clear.

Analysis of The Ur Post (Dedicated to My Beloved Wife)

Eleven years ago, I started writing a blog called Sentence of Dave. The premise was simple: rain or shine, I would write one sentence per day. The sentence might be short and sweet or it might run on and on. And while I didn't initially recognize the pun in the title, I soon realized that I had committed myself to a weird sort of imprisonment of chronology and structure. I generally embraced and enjoyed my self-imposed sentence-writing experiment (and I was always inspired by my fans, commenters, and critics).

Recently, however, writing the sentence became onerous, another chore. And I felt limited and rushed. So I'm trying something new. I'm going to take it slow and write some longer posts. I'm going to revise, ruminate, and procrastinate. Move at my own pace. Stall. Use periods. Park the bus.

The first post I wrote over at Sentence of Dave was dedicated to my loving wife. Here it is, in its entirety:

I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.


For good luck, I am once again dedicating this first post at Park the Bus to my wife. She is a wonderful woman: beautiful, loyal, smart, funny, and adventurous. I am lucky to have her. Unfortunately, she is also reckless and irresponsible, something of a menace. I need this longer format to truly explain what I mean.

To all appearances, my wife seems to be a diligent and dedicated elementary school teacher and mother. She helps run the community garden. She's a great cook with a green thumb. She eats healthy, works out, dresses sharp, and donates her time to charitable causes. But she's also the kind of person who will leave you a car with an empty gas tank. Below the line. No fuel at all. Not because she doesn't care about you-- I think most people would agree that she's a caring person. She will leave you the car on empty because she drives it around on empty. She's too busy running important errands for our family and the gardening club and her students and the elderly to stop for gas. And if you switch cars with her, and nearly run out of gas on the way to work ( while you are sitting in traffic because of construction) and call her-- your tone a little perturbed-- and give her a piece of your mind, and later on, text her some information, some completely innocuous and objective information about the consequences of using an internal combustion engine with very little gas in the tank, information about burnt out fuel pumps and kicking up sediment, then, oddly, you're the one who's going to be in trouble.

I'm a high school English teacher and my students-- despite the fact that they don't always read the assigned texts-- are often wise beyond their years in the ways of relationships. They vehemently advised me against sending those texts about sediment and fuel pumps to my wife. They told me it wasn't worth it. I explained to them that our Honda CRV was the second most expensive item our family-owned (a distant second behind our house) and it was my responsibility to inform my wife about these sorts of things. Because she was reckless. Not that she was alone in this manner of recklessness . . . I did an informal poll and though my evidence is anecdotal, I'm fairly sure that the world is equally divided into two kinds of people: sane folks who gas up when their tank gets down to 1/4 full and lunatics who drive around on fumes until their anxiety finally gets the better of them . . . or they actually run out of gas.

I could go on and on. My wife fills her coffee up far beyond what is normal or necessary. She walks around the kitchen with a meniscus of steaming hot liquid sloshing above the rim of the mug. Drinking coffee is supposed to be relaxing, a morning treat. A warm and tasty pick-me-up. Not an invitation for second-degree burns.

She does something similar (but less dangerous) with the dog's water bowl: she fills it up until the water is hovering above the brim and then cavalierly carries it across the room. She fills up the recycling bin in our kitchen so far above the rim that it's impossible to pull out the garbage/recycling drawer. For many years, she put large knives in the sink amongst all the dirty dishes (because she likes a clean counter). I actually broke her of this habit (but it took some bloodshed). Why does she do these things? Because she's got an incorrigibly reckless soul.

A quick mathematical aside: the relationship between a person's sanity and the amount of coffee they pour into their cup is the same as the relationship between a person's insanity and the amount of gas they have in their tank. I know formulas can be off-putting, but I think these equations are fairly simple and common-sensical.

the percentage you are sane = amount of gas in tank/full tank of gas


the percentage you are insane = amount coffee in cup/full cup of coffee


Running on fumes? Mathematically, you are 1% sane. Coffee cup filled to the absolute maximum? You are 100% insane.

The camera on the roof of the car; the empty gas tank; the overly full coffee cup, the overly full dog bowl, and the overly full recycling bin: these should all be entered as background evidence. What I really want to discuss is something that happened a few days ago. I was about to start teaching class, when my phone buzzed. There was a text from my wife and an accompanying photo. The text explained that our dog Lola had chewed up a bunch of papers that she had in her school bag. Student papers. Graded student papers. Essentially, the teacher's dog had eaten the students' homework. Damn close to Alfred Harmsmith's dream headline: "man bites dog."

I informed my class of the bad news . . . which was especially bad for me because I am in charge of training our new dog and if she behaves badly then the responsibility is mine. This is not particularly fair-- I'm no dog whisperer-- but my wife does take on a lot of responsibility in the house, so I can't complain. If Lola screws up, I'm to bear the brunt of it. And my wife is still partial to our old dog, Sirius, who shuffled off this mortal coil last March. So there was no winning this one. Lola had screwed the pooch, and I was to take the heat for it.

The first text message my wife sent me about the paper-eating incident was light: she recognized and enjoyed the whole "our dog ate the students' homework!" aspect of the scene. But then she instructed me that if I left the house when everyone was still sleeping, as I did on Wednesday, then I should bring the dog back upstairs and close the gate so she couldn't roam the house and chew on things. She made it clear who was culpable for the chewing. Me.

The final reckless thing I'd like to discuss about my wonderful and loving wife is that she does not zip her bags. She does not zip her purse. She does not zip her school bag. She doesn't zip her laptop case. She doesn't believe in zipping. She likes the convenience of easy entry. (Insert filthy joke here).

I'm constantly zipping my wife's purse shut. Sometimes because it's hanging by a thread on a hook with seven other jackets. Or it's teetering over the center console in the car. She should have zipped her school bag shut. We have a young Rhodesian/lab rescue in the house, and she likes to chew things. When I noticed the unzipped bag in the photo, I asked my class if I should bring this to my wife's attention. This wasn't my fault! This could have been prevented! If she had taken precautions, if she had zipped her bag shut, if she had utilized Whitcomb L. Judson's marvelously pragmatic invention, then the dog wouldn't have chewed up her papers. I presented this argument. My students' answer was still a resounding "NO!" I should NOT text her about the unzipped bag.

I explained to them about the purse and the gas tank and the recycling bin and the coffee. They didn't care. It's not worth it, they informed me. Even my sophomores understood this. They were so adamant that I sort of followed their advice.

I am proud that I did not text my wife about the unzipped bag. I patiently waited to bring it up until later in the afternoon. It was Thanksgiving Eve, and once we had imbibed a bit, I pounced, the same way our dog Lola pounces on her rubber bone when you toss it across the room. It was a much better method than texting. My students were right. You can't text about something as delicate as this (I learned that during the whole gas tank incident). But I wasn't going to completely ignore the situation. I knew it wouldn't change anything, but my voice had to be heard. It's the same reason I sat down and wrote this long-winded post. It feels good to take notes, organize your thoughts, and get it all out. People need to know. My wife needed to know. And I will give her credit: she took it like a champ. She may have called me a few choice names, but then she was over it. We went out to the bar, saw our friends, and I had a story to tell.

I'd like to thank my wife Catherine for the inspiration and the material . . . your irrational behavior makes me love you all the more.

A Good Walk Spoiled (By My Dog's Anus)

My son Alex asked me if I could bring our dog Sirius when I picked him up from school on Tuesday, and of course I obliged him, as nothing is better for an eight year old boy than to be greeted by his loyal companion after a long day at school, and then we decided to hike over to "the secret path" and the sun was shining and the weather was warm and the day seemed idyllic-- a father, a son, and the family dog out for a walk on a beautiful day-- and once we got into the woods, Sirius crouched in order to defecate, which pleased me because it meant I could bury the poop under sticks and leaves and instead of having to scoop it up in a bag, but after pushing out a few clumps, Sirius couldn't seem to bring his business to an end . . . an oblong chunk of poop wouldn't dislodge itself from beneath his stumpy tail, and Alex and I decided that we needed to help him-- so Alex held him still and I scraped at the offending piece with a stick, but no luck, this was one stubborn piece of poop . . . and Sirius was doing his best as well, occasionally crouching and shaking, but this didn't work either, so Alex pulled up his little tail and I went at the poop with some leaves, but that didn't work either, and at this point we certainly had poop on our hands and there were little specks of it on his coat, and then I spied a crumpled napkin on the forest floor and grabbed that (without thinking: for what was this napkin used before it was tossed on the ground?) but the napkin didn't dislodge the poop either, and so Alex and I gave up and decided we would take him to the dog park and let him run around, as we were certain the poop would come loose then, but after a couple laps around the dog park, the poop was still there, and so I decided to take matters into my own hands-- literally-- I took one of the bags from the gratis poop-bag dispenser and put my hand inside it, to use it like a glove, and then I got right up in there . . . and as I felt the consistency of the thing protruding from my dogs anus, I had an epiphany: two days before Sirius tore up a mitten and ate some of the stuffing inside it, stuffing that was long and stringy and white, and about an inch of this stuffing was sticking out of my dog's butt-hole-- covered in fecal matter-- and that's why it wasn't going any where, because the rest of the strand was inside my dog's colon, and I realized that it was my job, as the master of the dog, to pull out the remainder of the stuffing, which I did, and it came out rather easily, as it was lubricated by fecal matter: a six inch piece of stuffing, and-- as I'm sure you've guessed-- it was no longer white.

Park Rangers: Do Not Read

Yesterday afternoon, I took the dog for a spin around the park adjacent to my house on my new rollerblades and I'm pleased to report that she was very well-behaved-- to celebrate, I stopped back at the dog park for Dog Park Happy Hour . . . while I cannot reveal the name of the park that hosts this Dog Park Happy Hour, for fear that the park rangers might descend upon it, apparently every Friday afternoon (once it gets warm) the dog park crew brings coolers of beer and wine so that they can imbibe while the canines frolic; a retired teacher from Staten Island offered me a Long Trail IPA-- my favorite!-- so I couldn't refuse . . . a few moments later my son Alex called me, asking for a ride home from tennis practice and I told him I couldn't get him for a while, and so he should either start walking or call his mother because someone had given me a beer at the dog park and I hadn't finished it yet; he said: "Dad, they told us in Health Class that you should never accept alcohol from strangers" and I told him that was very good advice (with the exception of Dog Park Happy Hour).

Dog Jenga? Dog Tetris?

The mud season is here (and the rain along with it) and the dog park has quickly transformed from a winter wonderland into a swamp-- but the larger snowbanks remain-- so in my small, densely populated town, when the rain lets up and everyone takes their dog for a walk at once, there's quite a bit of strategizing and maneuvering on the streets and sidewalks-- no one wants to walk their dog head-on into another dog on a strip of sidewalk surrounded by snow; there are starts and stops, sallying forward and turning tail, heeling and pulling, hopping from the sidewalk to the street and back again and I'm not sure what this is like . . . Frogger? Jenga? Tetris? . . . I don't know-- but it's like something other than walking the dog.

Jersey Vernacular

I took a day off from school Thursday, and so I was able to walk the dog at a reasonable hour (7:30 AM) and on my return . . . on my way down South Third Avenue . . . I saw another guy walking a dog -- and he was coming right towards me -- and it's always easier to avoid other dogs, because Sirius can be annoying when he's on his leash and meets and greets another dog, because he'll want to posture and play, but as I started to cross the street, the guy -- in his twenties -- said, "Don't worry, I'm going in," and then he walked up onto his porch with his dog, and so I said, "Yeah, my dog can be annoying when he's on leash, he'll drag you . . ." and before I could finish my sentence, he yelled to me: "My dog is an asshole too . . . come on puppy" and then he went inside his house -- and he said this loudly and clearly, and in a perfectly friendly way that only someone with a lifetime of using profanity in public could pull off . . . and maybe he said it because it was raining, and so there weren't any children or old ladies on the street, or maybe that's just the kind of language you can hear early on a Thursday morning if you walk your dog in Central Jersey.

He's Fleeing the Interview . . .


I've been walking Lola exclusively in the snowy fields in the large park adjacent to my house-- because of salt-covered roads and icy sidewalks-- and I generally just let her loose so she can romp in the snow and then we make our way over to the dog park . . . this way she never has to expose her paws to the road salt (which burns her paws and allows liquid water to descend below the normal freezing point, freezing her pads) but the other day while I was tramping through the snow, watching her frolic, I heard a single "WHOOP" from the road-- the Park Ranger had observed a dog off-leash, which is forbidden, and was alerting me of my infraction from his vehicle; the last time I had an off-leash run-in with the ranger he REALLY wanted to give me a ticket (and Lola was hundreds of yards away from me-- she was chasing squirrels-- so I didn't have a leg to stand on) but, fortunately, I was walking with a nice lady and her nice dog and I think my company saved me from an expensive fine; this time, I was a couple hundred yards away from the ranger, across a a soccer field covered in a foot and a half of snow, so I decided not to look in the direction of the ranger and instead slowly wander towards the dog park . . . Lola was ahead of me and it took me a while to get her back on the leash, meanwhile the ranger was driving slowly, parallel to us, on the road-- we were going to intersect at the dog park-- so I had to decide if I was going to head in the opposite direction, into the trees, and actually flee the possible interview . . . but I waited out the ranger in the snow, he drove the loop by the dog park and headed back the way he came and that's when I darted through the gate and into the fenced confine full of canines-- and I'm pretty sure that once you are inside the dog park fence, it's some kind of sanctified ground (this might not be legally correct, but it's morally sound) and now we've got another walking alternative: Lola has her own hiking booties, so she can walk on the roads-- she took a little while to adjust to them, but then she started trotting along in them, sounding like a little horse.


Park Rangers: Do Not Read

Yesterday afternoon, I took the dog for a spin around the park adjacent to my house on my new rollerblades and I'm pleased to report that she was very well-behaved-- to celebrate, I stopped back at the dog park for Dog Park Happy Hour . . . while I cannot reveal the name of the park that hosts this Dog Park Happy Hour, for fear that the park rangers might descend upon it, apparently every Friday afternoon (once it gets warm) the dog park crew brings coolers of beer and wine so that they can imbibe while the canines frolic; a retired teacher from Staten Island offered me a Long Trail IPA-- my favorite!-- so I couldn't refuse . . . a few moments later my son Alex called me, asking for a ride home from tennis practice and I told him I couldn't get him for a while, and so he should either start walking or call his mother because someone had given me a beer at the dog park and I hadn't finished it yet; he said: "Dad, they told us in Health Class that you should never accept alcohol from strangers" and I told him that was very good advice (with the exception of Dog Park Happy Hour).

Bad Smells Come in Threes

I took a day off last week, in order to get a few things done, and one of those things I needed to get done was the pickling and preserving of all the peppers from my wife's garden, and this turned out to be a more time-consuming and difficult job than I imagined, because the pressure cooker and canning set I ordered from Amazon contained a broken pressure cooker (I should have opened the box ahead of time) and so in order to sterilize and seal my produce, I had to do it the old-fashioned way and boil the jars in pots of water . . . and the canning process is grueling and rather smelly -- lots of boiling vinegar and capsicum -- and once I finished I thought I had made my quota for bad smells in one day, but that was not how things went down . . . I had barely any time between canning and practice, just enough to walk my dog -- The Best Dog in the World -- and because he is The Best Dog in the World, I let him off leash in the park, and he immediately took off running towards a specific spot of grass and began intently rolling on this patch of grass, as if he wanted to absorb the very essence of this patch of grass -- and I thought: what could smell so good that you want to embody its essence? and the answer to that question, if you are a dog -- even The Best Dog in the World-- is rotten meat; some wild animal must have raided the park garbage and found some uncooked chicken thighs and ribs, as that's what Sirius was rolling in, and he was also gnawing on a meaty bone -- which I yanked from his mouth-- and then the stench hit me, and amazing palpable stench, invasive and offensive, a wet stink of decay, and so I dragged him home and tried to clean him with wet-wipes because I had to get to practice, but wet-wipes didn't even dent it . . . so I had to give him a bath-- which he hates-- but even after soap and warm water, he still reeked . . . but I had to leave for practice, so I put the cushions up so he wouldn't befoul the couch and left (when my wife came home, she immediately noticed the awful stench emanating from him, and promptly sprayed him with Febreze brand air-freshener . . . please don't tell the Humane Society) and even when I got home from practiced, I could still smell something nasty -- while I sat at the very desk where I wrote this very sentence-- but I had to go to my next soccer practice, so I couldn't wash the dog again, but then when I got home from Soccer Practice #2, I realized that the smell was emanating from my right cleat, which had fecal matter caked between the studs, so I used Windex Vinegar Spray (ironic!) to loosen the shit and clean the bottom of my cleat, and I don't think there's a moral to this story, but I still wonder why my dog wanted so desperately to roll around in a pile of rotten meat.

More Dog Shit

If you live in New Jersey, today is not a good day to own a dog-- the rain is torrential and not letting up anytime soon-- but if you do own a dog and you need to step out for a while and leave your dog at home, then you might want to put on "Jon Glaser's Soothing Meditations for the Solitary Dog" so your dog can have a stress-free meditative rest while you are gone (actually, you'll probably want to listen to this brilliant piece of sonic art with your dog . . . but maybe don't listen with young children, as there's quite a bit of profanity).

Please Do Not Tell My Wife About the "Send Audio Clip Over SMS" Feature (A Close Reading of an Irate Text)


My students have informed me that you can send an audio clip via SMS on an Android phone. Please do not inform my wife about this Android feature. I'm afraid she will use it.





I should preface this story with the fact that our dog Lola sheds a lot. And my wife drives a car with a black interior. And our dog is light brown.









More of a honey gold really. With some white spots. And she's a shedder. Drives my wife crazy.





This morning, I received three text messages in reference to an incident that happened yesterday afternoon. My wife discovered the evidence of the incident while driving our kids to school this morning. Apparently, she dictated the text to my son Alex as she drove. Then she asked him to read it back, to ensure that he captured her tone.









A couple things here.





First of all, I love that my wife used "fricking" instead of "the queen mother of dirty words." I think this is because she was dictating the message to our fourteen year old son. I asked Alex about this. He said that mom did use the word "fricking" and that he thought it was inappropriate to text his father the f-word anyway.





Second, despite the text format, my wife and Alex were fairly effective at yelling at me. I got the message loud and clear. They made liberal use of exclamation points and all caps, and there's even a sinister ultimatum. What the fuck might happen to me if I don't vacuum the car this weekend? I'm not going to chance it. If you seek me, I will be vacuuming the car.





This next line really resonated with the women in my office:





It's so unsatisfying yelling at you through a text.

My wife




And then she yells at me some more! She's "so mad" that her diction literally falls apart. Even though this is actually only poor typing on Alex's part, it's a happy accident. Form fitting function. Sound equals sense.





Finally, the existential "WHY?" Though it's not in my best interest, for the sake of accuracy, I will elaborate on this. Thursday afternoon, as I was coaxing the dog into the back seat of her car, I did indeed think to myself:





Why? Why am I doing this? I know our dog sheds. I know she's going to shed all over the black interior of my wife's car. I know I'm going to get in trouble for this . . . why? why don't I walk across the street to my car?





I had these thoughts, and I did it anyway. I loaded Lola into the back of my wife's car. It was so cold out. Frigid. And I was dying. I had a runny nose and a scratchy throat and my eyes were glassy. I was sick. And I was heroically taking the dog to the dog park so she could run around. And my van, my filthy smelly dented van, my van that was full of dog hair (which doesn't really show because the interior is light gray with lots of dirt stains) was across the street. And it was so cold. I didn't feel like walking the extra twenty yards. That's why I did it. Laziness. But laziness for good-- or at least reasonable-- reasons. It was cold, and I was dying. I may have saved my own life. I'm forty-eight years old. I can barely deal with a cold. How could I handle pneumonia?





Anyway, I read this text strand to my students and one of them immediately yelled: "She can yell at you through a text! She can send you an audio clip!"





I hope my wife doesn't start utilizing this Android SMS feature. Actual angry audio can be pretty intense. It would be a lot to handle at work. And then would I have to send a sincere audio apology? I'm not a voice actor! What if some sarcasm leaked into my message?





I think text is a better medium for yelling at someone than actual live full volume yelling. Real yelling is loud and scary, but with texting, you have a moment to respond properly . . . which I think I did. By the time we both got home from work, my wife was no longer angry. In fact, she agreed to let me use a "screenshot" of the text strand. My students had to teach me how to take a "screenshot" on my phone. They're very clever. They also taught me where to find it. In my "gallery." I had never used this Android feature before, but now that I know about it, I'm sure I'll use it again (unlike the send audio clip function, which I'm never going to use . . . I thought we invented texting to avoid talking).






New Paltz with No Kids: A Study in Words and Photos

Just after Christmas, my parents took our two boys to Florida with them. This afforded me, my wife, and our dog Lola a chance to take a kid-free vacation in the Hudson Valley. My kids got to relax and live it up with their grandparents in Naples. Their trip looked like this:



This is NOT their story. Theirs is a story of balmy weather, good eating, and luxurious living. They had a wonderful time and my wife and I are much obliged to Grammy and Poppy. But it's boring stuff.

This post is about what to do in New Paltz if you're lucky enough to go without your kids. In December. In all sorts of weather. In a tiny cabin. With a dog. And a sick wife. Not only will I regale you with my eloquent prose, but I'm also going to include a visual feast for the eyes: digital photos! I will save the best shot for last: during a chance wildlife encounter, I actually had the wherewithal to snap a picture with my cellular phone. I generally forget that my phone has this capability, but now I'm emboldened. Now I'm a photographer (as well as an expert at indoor plant installations . . . but that's for another post).

Two days after Christmas, we dropped the kids at my parents and headed to New Paltz for our romantic getaway. The dog traveled in the crate, which turned out to be a godsend. Lola normally pukes on longish car-rides-- which is not very romantic. She had recently puked directly into our tennis-ball hopper. The hopper contained at least forty-five tennis balls. Tennis balls have a radius of 1.25 inches, so if you multiply that by 4Ï€ then you get nearly twenty inches of surface area per tennis ball. There was dog vomit on most of the balls, hundreds of inches of vomit covered surface area. Really gross. But in her crate, she lay down and slept. Vomit-free trip. Very romantic.

While we were traveling northbound on Route 1, we saw something kind of sexy on a Sonic sign (if you're into carnivorous bestiality).

This is not the actual sign we saw, but apparently Sonic restaurants across the nation use this obscenely anthropomorphic/cannibalistic haiku as a marketing gimmick. The chicken strips in central Jersey go for $5.99.

Two hours after we imagined a pullet performing at a gentleman's club and then promptly being thrown into the deep fryer, my wife and I arrived at our cozy and dog-friendly Airbnb cabin on the Rail Trail, less than a mile outside of downtown New Paltz. The location couldn't have been better. You could hike the Rail Trail for miles into the wilderness, or you could go the opposite direction and stroll into town, passing through scenically historic Huguenot Street. We unpacked and got ready to begin our (moderately) romantic kid-free vacation. Moderately romantic because-- unfortunately-- my wife was recovering from strep throat and also had a nasty cold (and accompanying cough). Phlegm makes things a little less romantic than lack of phlegm. But despite this, to her credit, she never complained once . . . she just blew her nose a lot.

Our little cabin
It was a beautiful afternoon.We took the dog for a long hike down the Rail Trail and then pondered where we should go for an early dinner.

My wife looked over her handwritten list of great things to do around New Paltz, provided by her friend Kristen. Kristin highly recommended an Irish bar/restaurant called Garvan's. We checked the map and learned that while downtown New Paltz was nearly a mile from our cabin, Garvan's was only a few hundred yards. It was just across the Rail Trail, by the golf course. We were walking distance to a bar! On a vacation without the kids! Pretty sweet. And it had a fantastic happy hour.

Garvan's is in an old building near the club house of the New Paltz Golf Course. It's the most Irish place I've ever been (I've never been to Ireland). The owner-- Garvan-- was very friendly and very Irish. Thus I decided to go with the Guinness. It tasted especially good, which I mentioned to the bartender. It was the end of his shift, so he might have been a little more brusque than normal, but he basically told me that it had better taste good, since Garvan's was one of the few places in the country where Guinness had installed the tap, so the blend of nitrous oxide and CO2 was perfect. Okay, I said, that explains that. What else could I say?

Catherine went with a half and half (also known as a snakebite or a poor man's black velvet). It consists of half cider and half Guinness. We also had the beet and jicama salad, some truffle fries, and some sliders. And some fish and chips. Very Irish and very delicious. The place is awesome, especially for happy hour.

Then we walked back to the cabin, walked the dog, and watched Derry Girls. If you haven't seen it yet, Derry Girls is the perfect show to watch after going to an Irish bar. It's an Irish Netflix comedy; essentially Mean Girls meets Adrian McKinty's "Troubles Trilogy." Catholic school girls (and one boy) amidst the political/religious conflict in Northern Ireland. In the '90's. It's fabulous. (Also, I'm good buddies with Adrian McKinty, so I don't use him in an analogy unless I'm dead serious . . . check the comments).

The bed was a bit soft and there was some coughing and snoring from my wife's side of it, but I had consumed enough Guinness to sleep through the sniffling.

The next morning, I walked the dog down the Rail Trail again (while my wife slept). And I realized that while the location of the cabin was great, the cabin itself was not perfect. It was clean, and it was cheap, but it was cozy. I am a solidly built American male, so when I say the cabin was "cozy," I actually mean claustrophobically small. Normally when we travel, we make some coffee and grab a light breakfast at home, then do something active, eat lunch out, and then-- at least a few times-- we cook dinner back at the ranch. This is the most economical way to do it. Lunch is the cheapest meal to eat out. It's also nice to get back to home base for dinner. You can drink as many local beers as you desire, without worrying about driving under the influence in a new locale. And going out for breakfast is just stupid. Pay for eggs? I can make eggs.


This photo makes the kitchen look bigger than it actually is.

On this trip, our normal schedule got turned on its head. The first morning, I tried to make some coffee, but I kept banging into things in the kitchen. The kitchen was too small to make coffee in. I made an executive decision and told my wife we were going to the Mudd Puddle for coffee and breakfast. She readily agreed. She loves to go out for breakfast but recognizes that going out for breakfast defies all my logic and reason. Lunch food is better than breakfast food. I hate to eat before I do some exercise. If you eat breakfast out, then you're not hungry for lunch. If you eat breakfast out, then you're not ready to snowboard, ski, hike, run, etc. It's completely insane to eat breakfast out. But my claustrophobia (and the lack of children) overrode that decision.

We had been to New Paltz once before-- with the kids-- and remembered that the Mudd Puddle had the best coffee in the universe. While we would never bring the kids to a local coffee shop for breakfast-- the place was too small and slow and local-- we realized that we did not have the kids with us. We could bring our books and read while we drank coffee.

So we went to the Mudd Puddle, got coffee, read our books, and I ate a James Special sandwich, which involves eggs, bourbon-soaked bacon, balsamic caramelized onions, and some kind of homemade bread. It was wild! It was crazy! We were eating food before doing exercise. The sandwich was the best thing ever. I had one every morning for the rest of the trip.

Then the rains came. We beat a hasty retreat back to our tiny cabin. Catherine, still nursing her cold, fell fast asleep. I took the dog for a long walk down the Rail Trail in the rain. It was gross. Hugeonot Street was historical and scenic, but I was full from breakfast. It's hard to appreciate 17th century architecture when your is stomach is full and your socks are damp. I got back and we watched "Bandersnatch" on Netflix. It was fun to choose but the plot was only okay.

It was pouring. The kids were sending us pictures. Ian caught a lizard. They were lounging around the pool. What the fuck were we going to do? The cabin was tiny and it was raining cats and dogs. Once again, it took a moment to realize that we didn't have to amuse the kids. They were in Florida. We took a ride to the Yard Owl Brewery. It was run by James, the guy who owned the Mudd Puddle. The beer had to be good.

It was. But playing Bananagrams in a small craft brewery on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail with my beautiful (but phlegmy) wife was even better than the beer, though. Very relaxing. Time seemed to stand still. And you could blame it on her illness, but I kicked her ass three times in a row (which doesn't usually happen).




The best beer at the Yard Owl was the Chouette D'or. It was divine! Divine I say! And that means a lot, because I hate eating, drinking, and enunciating anything French. The Owlet was also tasty (and very cute). We also had a cheese plate with red onion relish. The red onion relish is to die for. To die for! And it doesn't have a French name.

Catherine also liked the local cider.

The next day the rains let up. We went hiking in the morning on one of the trails in the Mohonk Preserve. We wanted to see the Mohonk Testimonial Gatehouse up close. It was built in 1908 and apparently, it was in a 1985 horror movie called The Stuff.


The Mohonk trails are beautifully maintained, but there is a $15 dollar fee daily fee per hiker. Fuck that! We trespassed.

After going for a hike, we headed over to Mid Hudson Sporting Clays to shoot some shotguns.


This was harder than I imagined. Catherine was pretty good, but I kept picking my head up. Also, Steve-- our instructor-- gave me a "man's gun." A 12 gauge. Catherine got to use the 20 gauge. Every time I picked my head up to watch the shot fly, the gun kicked and hit me in the cheek. This hurt like hell. We shot fifty rounds. Forty of them whacked me in the cheek. Ouch. If you look closely at the picture, my cheek is swollen. I would have not made it very far in the Wild West. Clint Eastwood would have shot me while I was rubbing my swollen cheek.

Over the next few days we did more of the same (aside from the shooting). We visited Catherine's favorite cider house: Bad Seed. They had a lot of interesting ciders on tap. There was also a wild double birthday party going on in there. A gaggle of women in their mid-fifties dressed in 70's style clothing. Apparently, this is what you do around New Paltz. Drive out to breweries and cider houses and have a good time. They are spacious places. You can bring kids and dogs. It's a sweet set-up.

Here's a shot of historic Huguenot Street. If you look closely, you can see that I am balder than I think I am. If you look very closely, you'll see my dog's anus.
One morning we drove out to Lake Minnewaska and hiked from Awosting Falls up to the cliffs around the lake. It's a spectacular place.

Here's a shot of Awosting Falls. The falls were really running because of all the rain.



There were a couple of other excellent spots. Arrowood Farm-Brewery is scenic and has great beer. Another big open space that is dog and kid-friendly. The Main Street Bistro serves vegetarian food good enough to make me a vegetarian (at least for a little while, later in the day I couldn't pass up short rib sliders at Garvan's). We had one fancy meal at a place called A Tavola and it was worth it (and I hate expensive restaurants). Then we went to the Denizen Theater and saw a play called "Adaptive Radiation." The play was very experimental, as was the performance space. It's called intimate black box theater and it's cozy. By cozy, I mean claustrophobically small. We were right on top of the four actors; the stage and seats were in a sort of an alley set-up: the seats rose up on either side of the stage, so you were staring at half of the audience (I enjoyed seeing their reactions to all the weirdness in the play). The play was more professional than I thought, and it was also louder than I thought. I also think that theater should happen before dinner. As I pointed out, The Denizen Theater was a cozy space, and I had just drank quite a few Molly IPAs and eaten a heavy meal. There was certainly something brewing in my belly, and a brisk walk in the air would have been more appropriate than sitting very still in a small black room in close proximity to a bunch of strangers. I managed to curtail any flatulence, but it wasn't easy. I had to sit very still.

And now, as promised, I'll show you the pièce de résistance . . . some stunning wildlife photography. I was out walking with the dog at dusk, on the Rail Trail, and I felt a presence. Something looming over me. It was an owl! A very appropriate animal, since we had been to the Yard Owl Brewery (where Cat bought an owl hat). And the owl is the Highland Park mascot (Highland Park is the town in which I live and coach).

Because of all this heaping significance, I actually remembered to pull my cell phone out and snap a photo. A few people who saw the photo were curious as to my equipment: I used an LG Harmony phone to take this picture. It costs twenty dollars when you sign up for Cricket. I don't think I had it on the highest resolution. Here is the photo. It's a keeper!

Let me zoom in. This is the stuff of National Geographic.


A vivid memory from a fantastic trip.

We had a smooth ride back to Jersey, hosted a small New Year's Party/game night, and picked up the kids at the Trenton airport on New Year's Day. The kids were fat, happy, and tired. Alex had gained 8 pounds and Ian had put on 5.

Once we got home from New Paltz, the dog seemed pretty depressed but then when Ian walked in the house she went totally bananas. It was like a miniature version of the end of the Odyssey; Odysseus returns home after his twenty-year voyage and his dog Argus sees him and gets so excited that he dies. Lola did not die (nor did she pee in the house) but she was pretty damned excited to have the kids back (and so were Cat and I . . . especially because they had followed our instructions and watched Derry Girls, so we had a lot to discuss).


Dave Has a Miraculous Post-Christmas Vision!

When your mind strays outside the established box-walls, then you will certainly suffer disdain and criticism, even from those who profess to love you . . . but you must carry on, bravely,  faithfully, into the pale; so let it be know that upon the 26th day of the twelfth month of the Year, 2014, the day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (or maybe not, but that's a whole other historical conundrum) I was delivered a post-Christmas vision in the form of a mini-van packing strategy: instead of building upwards in the back section of the van, the way I would normally stacketh our belongings, leaving a small "cavern" for the dog-- instead of this precarious and vision-obstructive pile of luggage, I would buildeth horizontally and create a "floor" of luggage, coolers, equipment, instruments, and victuals and I would layeth the dog's bed and a blanket on this "floor" of stuff and then the dog would have much space in which  to cavort and frolic and the driver would also be able to see out the rear of the van . . . and when I announced this vision to my wife, she said unto me, "I don't want the dog lying on my bag!" and I pronounced to her that I would bury her bag deep in the "floor" of mine own construction, under a blanket so that our dog would not lieth on her bag (despite the fact that our dog is liething all over everything in our house) but then when she saw my handiwork, she pronounced it good and renounced her doubt in my vision (for this particular incident) and the family did rejoice (until we were fifteen minutes down the road and my wife announced she forgot her sunglasses, so we had to turn around and get them . . . which raises an interesting philosophical question: how far down the road do you have to go before you don't turn around and go back for sunglasses?)

Fourteen Years of Home Ownership and Ian

My younger son turned fourteen today and his birthday also commemorates the approximate purchase of our current home-- and what a fourteenth year of home ownership it's been; this year we had to replace our washer/dryer, our dishwasher, our ductless mini-split air-conditioner, the ceiling tiles in the basement, and our dog . . . and speaking of dogs, I had a miraculous revelation on the way back from Ian's birthday dinner at Shanghai Dumpling (which was a miracle in itself: no wait!) and this revelation occurred while we were discussing our eventual return from our trip to Costa Rica and just how insanely happy our dog will be upon this return-- if and when we do actually return-- and so I told Ian about my favorite moment in the Odyssey, when Odysseus returns home in disguise after being gone for twenty-years of epic adventures and he runs into his dog Argos, who was obviously a pup when he left Ithaca, and-- despite the disguise-- Argos recognizes his master and dies of happiness . . . and it always struck me as odd that a dog would live for 20+ years, as that's highly unlikely, but I just recognized that this is an ancient Greek dog, and so it was probably not bred very much, unlike our genetically stunted purebreds of present times, so it was closer to a wolf than a dog and had a much longer lifespan.

What Do Francis Ford Coppola, My Dog and I Have In Common?


I love the smell of dog poop in the morning . . . and I'm pretty sure my dog loves the smell of dog poop any time at all; my dog and I also love the documentary Hearts of Darkness . . . he loves it because of the behind-the-scenes look at puppy-sampan scene, where a boatload of Vietnamese civilians get slaughtered, but the puppy survives, and I love it because I can see myself in the hyper-driven genius auteur Francis Ford Coppola; the parallels between Coppola and me are fairly obvious, but I'll point them out for you anyway: just as Coppola completed his great but flawed film Apocalypse Now despite weather, creative problems, and a drug-addled staff -- just as he illustrated that at the hearts of all men, no matter how civilized,  there is a dark jungle creature . . . in the same manner, against all odds, in all sorts of weather -- even rain!-- I pick up my dog's poop -- and though my attempt to scoop all the poop is usually flawed and futile, as you can never get all of it into the bag, some always returns into the earth from which it came -- I still try to capture it as best I can, I try to remain civilized and keep the heart of darkness at bay and I do this rain or shine, wide-eyed or hungover, in darkness and in light, taking some stab at civility, but knowing I am one step away from a shit-stained sneaker.
A New Sentence Every Day, Hand Crafted from the Finest Corinthian Leather.