Category: Animals

Halloween, if little hallowed

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It’s positively pouring rain, cats, dogs, giraffes, and it is blustery, leaf-dislodging, noisy on multiple levels — water, wind, things blown over, gutters gushing — and it’s kind of great, though going outside seems like unnecessary peril. Thus: homebound. 

The day before Halloween — can you imagine the poor kids and parents braving this mayhem? — yet things look up for the big bloody day. The forecast is sunshine and 60 degrees. Boo-yah! as a ghost might cheer. 

Nowadays the most I do for Halloween is steal fun-size Reese’s from the brimming bowl meant for trick-or-treaters and the parents who steal Reese’s from their children. My Halloween dress-up heyday was when I was Paul Stanley from KISS one year and Gene Simmons from KISS the next. This was during the Reagan Administration, so slack must be cut. Like Marley’s Ghost, I wore metal chains as Simmons. Totally rock. 

Damn, it’s like a monsoon out there now. The skeletons on the lawn probably have hypothermia.

On my last blog post, I hinted that Cubby the dog would go well with some guac and salsa. Well, he’s since got a bath — no longer is his scent eau de tortilla chips — and a haircut. He now looks like Moe from the Three Stooges. He’s spiffy and perfumey and the groomer tied a natty bandanna round his freshly coiffed neck. It’s too late for a photo of the transformation; he’s growing out, the bandanna is gone, and already he’s starting to smell like a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme. 

Mexico City beckons. I leave in a week for seven days. As always before a trip, I’m angsty-excited, a nervous muddle of dread and joy. Like, what if I catch Montezuma’s revenge, or get mugged at the ATM? Flip side, what if the food  (tacos tacos tacos tacos) spirits me to rapture and the locals’ hospitality restores my faith in humanity? I’ll report later on this uncharted adventure. Bet you can’t wait. 

It’s been 20-plus years since I read two ecstatically received literary novels — Annie Proulx’s “The Shipping News,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and Ian McEwan’s massive seller “Atonement,” considered the prolific British writer’s crown achievement. (I’ve read seven of his novels. He’s spectacular.) 

Now. My response to both books, back then, was: meh. What a child I was. I just finished “The Shipping News,” and its deep-grained, lyrical, downright poetic and funny prose carried me along its often exotic world-scapes and among its colorful characters. It’s a trip, and one worth taking. There are a lot of fish.

With “Atonement,” a high-toned, very English story, I have only begun rereading it and already I’m snared by writing that seems crafted with a laser beam, so specific, rich and dazzling, you want to kill yourself, if you care about these things.

Unfortunately, I do. 

Good news, bad news. What’re you gonna do?

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

The dog smells like a bowl of stale Doritos. The nor’easter is splatting rain and blowing tree-tossing gusts. Our sociopathic “president” continues to appall on a daily basis (no, you’re not getting the Nobel, so shut up). And I have a zit on my forehead that’s festering like Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Otherwise things are just super, grand and dandy, unless you consider that Diane Keaton, one of the most charming and beautiful creatures ever to grace the big screen, has died. Crushing. Long live Annie Hall.

I go to Mexico City in precisely one month, though just days before that I have a dental appointment I’d rather not keep but will, because two of my teeth appear to be turning gray (this mad world!). I’m afraid I am becoming wizened.

If you squint really hard you can squeeze out some of the bad news and unfettered horrors — Gaza, Ukraine, the new Spike Lee movie — unfurling across the world. But it’s not easy, and almost certainly not possible.

But back to the one kernel of okay news, my vacation in Mexico City, a full week in November. I’ve been booking tours and making reservations with tentacular zeal. And I’ve also been uprooting prior plans. In an earlier post I mentioned that I registered for a tacos al pastor cooking class, a splurge and a mash note to my favorite taco. 

Well, I nixed the class (sorry, Anne R.!) for two expeditions: one a three-hour guided tour of the National Museum of Anthropology (sounds deadly, but I’m assured it’s essential) and the other a festive, three and a half-hour Tacos and Mezcal Tour, whose price tag I blush to share with you. Guess which tour I’m looking more forward to.

Other good news lurks. Fall has fallen, and despite the nor’easter, which is really quite mild in these parts, the weather is totally dreamy. Usually I’m abroad for Halloween — Europeans try very hard to get it down, though it’s still strictly amateur hour there — but I’ll be around this time and that’s a plus. 

I dig a good monster mash. I also like all the costumes that I can’t tell what the hell they’re supposed to be. Is that a ballerina werewolf? I hope some savvy kids deck out as Annie Hall: men’s tie, vest and khakis, and that wide-brimmed hat. Sartorial genius. They can flummox all their friends who still dress in Pokémon.

On a side note, what ever happened to the smashed pumpkins in the street? In my day, that was as mandatory as begging for goodies. Kids today. So thoughtful. Or clueless.

I guess in the end that’s also good news. Smashing Pumpkins is a great band — pay special attention to the superhuman drummer — but smashing pumpkins is just boneheaded vandalism. Thus I hesitantly cheer its extinction.

Good news and bad news will always share a table, so we’re kind of stuck. Israeli hostages are freed (yay). Diane Keaton dies (boo). Leaves are falling with the temperature (yay). Jeff Tweedy releases a solo triple album (boo). Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie, “One Battle After Another,” is an apparent masterpiece (yay). Oh, and the dog. Yes, the dog. He really needs a bath (self-explanatory).

Diane Keaton as Annie Hall

Buzz kill

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I try to prioritize my murderous impulses. I don’t kill much, and what I do snuff out tends to possess multiple legs, pincers and stingers, and the potential to bite me and make me very unhappy. Rashes, swelling, itching — don’t fuck with me. 

So this is wonderful: Numerous yellowjackets have found their way into the house. There’s a nest outside and the belligerent arthropods are zipping through a vent straight indoors, flying and buzzing and trying to find their way back out, which of course they can’t. 

The pests are a type of wasp, not a bee, and can sting repeatedly without dying, unlike the dumb, suicidal bumble bee whose guts pour out when it unleashes its stinger. Yellowjackets are also more aggressive and tenacious when in attack mode. They have nothing to lose. They’re winged terrorists, mini drones aimed directly at you. And they get pissed off easily. 

And so, when I spotted one banging against the window above the kitchen sink, I: 1) freaked, 2) swore, and 3) sprung into action. I slipped off a sneaker, zeroed in on my jittery, buzzy target, and smooshed it with heroic gusto. Twhack, plop. 

And yet. While the vibrating, yellow-striped beast quivered in its death throes, it sort of broke my heart. I adhere to no religion, including Jainism, which is dedicated to the non-injury of any living creature. A Jainist wouldn’t hurt a fly, literally. I would. I do. Flies are a pesky pestilence.

Despite the yellowjacket drama — a crime scene, really— killing bugs is not my thing. When I stumble upon a beetle, spider, cricket or other creepy crawler that belongs outside and not, say, in my bedroom, 99-percent of the time I’ll get a tissue and gingerly carry it first class to the front lawn where it hopefully gains its bearings and flies or waddles back into the verdant, perilous wild. (If it gets cute with me, it’s swirling down the toilet.)

I’m like the Saint Francis of Assisi of bugs, except I’m not from Italy, I’m not Christian and I don’t wear a brown habit with a rope tied around my waist, though that might make a fine fall fashion statement. Francis, among many things, is the patron saint of animals. Even now, World Animal Day, when all manner of creature and critter is blessed in churches on Frank’s behalf, is held on October 4. (I’d take Cubby the dog, but he doesn’t believe in that hocus-pocus either, even if they give him a cookie.)

I’m no fan of bugs, but I empathize and believe they deserve a shot in this big doomed world, which is as much theirs as ours. That’s why I feel bad about the yellowjacket I turned to gruel. It wasn’t his fault he winged his way inside, and he was plainly trying to get out. But he couldn’t, and he was too dangerous and elusive to snatch in a tissue and deposit outside. It’d be like trying to save an injured Great White in the ocean. Just don’t.  

Block party, year 48

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It’s 6:45 p.m. and they’re still slinging burgers and hot dogs during what is officially the neighborhood’s 48th annual block party on a cool pre-fall eve. 

Forty-eighth — how is that even possible? There’s no one alive who’s that old. That means the block parties started in, like, 6 B.C. 

My math is fuzzy. What do I know. I just know the food spread bestowed by the locals is stupendous: Asian noodles, chicken empanadas, homemade guac, spicy pulled pork, eggplant parmesan and, inevitably, simple bags of neon-colored Doritos (party size!), and so much more. (Wait, no deviled eggs?) It’s a smorgasbord and you’ll never see me type that word again.

I don’t know one person at this asphalt shindig. I’m barely — barely — acquainted with my next-door neighbors and the people across the street. And the next-door neighbors didn’t even show at the block bash.

I met one of the guys across the street at the keg, which was lamentably undernourished, and we shook hands, made introductions and proceeded to flaccid small talk before I split. He’s lived across the way for at least four years. We’ve never exchanged a wave. Now we’re chatting over Budweiser in red Solo cups. 

And now I’m gone. Pulled pork beckons.

These block parties are never huge; only three blocks are invited. But they gather a decent melange of folks, a hundred or more. It’s a good blend — florid artsy types to troglodyte Trumpsters — that could use a healthy dose of diversity. Alas, this isn’t Berkeley.

Children. Why does everyone have two or three clinging, clamoring rug rats, pesky tweens or teens, boisterous broods of brats? It’s a nightmare. While the tots whine and cry, the tweens peacock on electric scooters, slaloming perilously around standing diners with an aren’t-I-cute smirk, hair billowing. I need a large hockey stick.

Dogs. Dogs are good. And there are at least six or seven, all leashless, roaming about, panting, grubbing for cheeseburgers and wieners. Cubby the magic mutt joins the canine convention, but his indifference towards other dogs is like Marvel fans to real movies. He does a quick sniff then mutters, “Get me the hell out of here of here. I’m bored. I smell Doritos.”

By now I’m pickled in boredom, too. I hit the keg for a second time and of course it’s dry. A guy is pumping it like mad, desperate for a last drop. His reward is a fizzle of foam. We look at each other and loudly commiserate.

I may have just made a friend.

Dog 1, me zero

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A clank — the neighbor dispensing with wine bottles in the recycling bin. A thick rain falls and wind blusters the trees, making the dog’s ears perk up and eyes go wide. He bristles at the sound of heavy winds, and often pleads to get on my lap if it’s all too much out there. Rustling leaves — Cubby’s nemesis.

Now a jet plane roars above and the local commuter train blows a curt toot, last call for the suit and briefcase brigade. The rain gutters rattle with liquid bloat. For a couple of days, the water extinguishes the August heat. I couldn’t be happier. 

Summer’s almost gone, finished marring, charring the days with high 80s and 90s, sometimes more. Who likes this rot? Most people do, but, as my opinion abides, most people are maniacs. Melanoma. Enjoy.

I detest sweat as well, and shorts are the devil’s attire. But whoosh, the gusts flurry again and now the dog is on my lap, plop, an impossible tableau: dog jostling the laptop computer, making this task either funny or furious. Since it’s the dog, I’ll take the former. 

So now, typing one-handed, I’ll wrap this reverie of sight and sound, a mini-experiment in writing live, as the world unfurls, realizing once again that the damn dog always wins.  

Newsflashes

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Keeping it light, some recent news plucked from the headlines …

RIP Ozzy Osbourne, madman and mensch, who amazingly didn’t die of rabies. He was the gentle, doddering Prince of Darkness, whose live shows brought out the crowd-pleasing celebrant, all cackles and hand claps. He would hop like a pogo stick. I saw him in concert when I was 13, my first metal show. I can’t shake it decades later. Satan is smiling. 

Trump can’t elude the loaded Epstein case, and he’s shaking in his loafers and pissing his pants as he tries to deflect the pressure. Wipe your brow, sir; the flop sweat is showing. And on a scathing “South Park,” so is your talking micro-penis.

The New York Times posted its 100 best films of the past 25 years just to tick me off. While I agree with the bulk of the choices, if in different order, some make me want to throttle the voters. For starters, “Parasite” (#1 ?!), “Mulholland Drive” (#2 ?!), “Inglourious Basterds,” “Hereditary,” “The Master,” “Amélie,” and I’m just getting going. But bless them for including “Melancholia,” “The New World,” “Grizzly Man,” “School of Rock,” and so many other gems. Still, I don’t know why I read such lists. I don’t need the aggravation.

She perched gracefully atop sign posts, fences, rocks and cars, like a canine ballerina, poised and pliant. Maddie the spotted coonhound was the subject of her owner’s lustrous photography, clearly in the spirit of William Wegman’s whimsical photos of his preternaturally patient Weimaraners. Maddie’s charming pictures boast 1.2 million Instagram followers and comprise two books. But there will be no new pup pics, as Maddie died this week at age 14. I just got acquainted with her visual poetry, and still I’m crestfallen. Her loving obit.

Chuck E. Cheese got mouse-trapped. “Come with me, Chuck E.,” said the policeman who arrested the human-sized mouse — er, a human in a mouse costume — at the children’s pizza chain in Tallahassee, Fla., this week. The un-mousey behavior? Credit card fraud. Somewhere Mickey Mouse is blushing. “Astonished children wondered why the restaurant’s mascot was seemingly done for the day even as they continued to eat pizza and play arcade games,” said one report. “How do you explain this to a 4 and a 6 year old?” asked a witness. A youngster wanted a photo with the mighty mouse, but “a cop out of nowhere grabs his arm and says: ‘Chuck E.’s busy right now.’” Dying to know how his fellow inmates take to his gaudy outfit, big plastic head and all.

Hulk Hogan, a hideous human being, did the world a favor — he died. 

Midsummer miscellany

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Four mini-blogs, bite-size essays, from eyewear to dog hair …

Shopping for new eye frames is about as thrilling as shopping for underwear — a little fun, but mostly a utilitarian ritual for a deadly pedestrian accessory. I got new frames this week to go with new prescription lenses, making me feel very old. I’ve had my current blue frames and lenses for two years and I felt like underwear shopping. Yesterday I took my new (burgundy) frames to the optician to get the fresh lenses. The whole deal cost an eye-singeing fortune — around $1,200 for frames, lenses and exam. The nice guy helping me said, “You don’t seem old enough for progressive lenses.” I sort of thanked him, then thought to myself, ha!

When it comes to a big juicy novel, I’m a restless reader. My standards are unreasonably high, and if a book hasn’t hooked me by page 70 or so, I close it and move on. I am not one of those chumps who strains to finish a book once they start it, no matter the quality. That’s obscene. I just closed Rebecca Makkai’s wildly praised novel “The Great Believers.” The Pulitzer finalist about a group of friends impacted by the AIDS crisis was worse than overly familiar and a mite trite, it was dull as dirt. So I started the also-acclaimed Adam Haslett novel “Imagine Me Gone,” a substantial (356 pages) story about a family of five facing mental and physical challenges that upend the unit and try the bonds of love. On page 89, I’m with it for now. But every so often it sags and I give it the stink-eye. Book, you are on perilous ground. Watch it.

Puffs and curlicues erupting over his face and body, the dog at last got a summer haircut. A professional groomer came to the house, bathed him in the sink, then took the razor to him good for more than an hour. Cubby now looks like a bewildered sea otter and it’s fabulous. Everything about him has shrunk — my, what tiny ears you have! — and it’s adorable. Thing is, now he’s licking his butthole and nether regions with frantic intensity, like he’s infested. It’s merely razor burn and getting used to the lack of locks, and if the past is any indication, he’ll stop licking presently. But it sort of drives everybody crazy, not least of all himself. Why are haircuts such trauma? Cubby and I both want to know.

My brother’s radar is exquisite. He knows my dubious tastes, my oddball obsessions, my disgusting fetishes. So it was Christmas in July when he recently gave me a gift of surpassing thrillingness: an immaculate wax double-wick candle of deformed conjoined twins skulls. Craig, my only sibling, said he got it for a Christmas present but couldn’t resist bestowing it now. He bought it at a local taxidermy/tattoo shop called Unlucky Rabbit that deals in deer heads to “Lesbians and Taco Trucks” bedroom candles. My kind of place. I’m a freak fanatic, sideshows, medical curiosities, monsters on down. For now, the Siamese twins skulls are on proud display, and I have no plans to torch them, they’re so gruesomely perfect. Still, lighting them and watching them melt into bone-colored goo would be its own grotesque beauty. Where’s the matches?

The terrible twos


Prozac for the pup

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Last night, as the boom boom booms went off in the comfortable July 4th gloom, my brother and I sat on the patio, sipping whiskey and smoking Cuban cigars we paid $25 a piece for in Hong Kong last January, and listened to the brooding-funny music of Nick Cave and blew smoke rings and coughed and giggled.

Then the dog showed up.

Poor Cubby was terrorized by the hiss and bang of the nearby fireworks and needed a friend. Quivering and panting, he leaped on my lap, sitting upright, Sphinx-like, sporadically craning his neck back at me to make sure I hadn’t abandoned him in his spasm of fear and trembling. 

Cubby’s a smallish hound, but a whisper too big as a lap dog, especially when you’re wearing shorts and his nails dig into bare flesh. He was antsy as hell and we decided to slip him a Mickey, a harmless prescription doggie sedative. I would have shared my hooch and stogie, but he was having none of it. I am agitated and afraid, he seemed to be saying, and your vices are but futile distractions. Away with them!

At about age 10, the dog is becoming more and more neurotic, and it’s a bit of a pain in the ass. He pees on the rug when we vacate the house, leaving him alone. He barks at nothing in the same situation, as though crying for the humans’ return. His need for affection is amplified and his weird, random panting makes him a freak of nature. He’s been suffering stress-related diarrhea. He’s devolving into a nervous Nellie, unmoored and a little loopy.

Enter the doggie Prozac. The vet wants to try it, see how it goes. I took Prozac eons ago, so I’m not worried about Cubs taking it. If it helps him, it helps me. He is my unofficial therapy dog, my best buddy and furriest friend. Need to get him balanced and happy. We can’t, after all, have two kooks knocking around here.

Pills please, Papa.

Revving up for Mexico

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

With a trip to Mexico City planned for early November, I’ve been flipping through a couple of travel guides to see what I’m in for. (I smell tacos al pastor. Dog-ear that page!)

The place is ginormous, the sixth largest city in the world and the most populous city in North America, with 22 million people. I plan to weep as I inevitably get lost in the grand sprawling Spanish-speaking metropolis. What’s the Spanish word for “mommy”?

Yes, I am going to eat tacos on an epic scale and drink tequila and mezcal with stupid abandon and avoid the sun while lapping up kaleidoscopic art and archeological thingamabobs and trying to figure out why everyone’s so batshit about Frida Kahlo. 

There’s a Kahlo museum set in her childhood home or some such, but I’m more interested in the massive murals painted by her lecher hubby Diego Rivera — he had more mistresses than murals. Either way, it’ll be an art orgy.

I’m staying in the leafy, shady, unspeakably bougie La Condesa neighborhood, where a gorgeous park resides and is evidently the city’s dog capital, which makes me serene about the fact my hotel is charging me two year’s salary for a six day stay. Perros! 🐶

But my canine pals are just a bonus on a trip that promises heaps of highlights, be it the spectacular, art-stuffed Palacio de Belles Artes or insane, masked Lucha Libre wrestling; the lavish Catedral Metropolitana or self-explanatory Museum of Tequila and Mezcal. And, of course, street tacos out the wazoo.  

I really don’t know what to expect. When I was 14 we took a cruise down the Pacific Coast of Mexico, strictly beach stops — Cabo, Mazatlan, Acapulco. But Mexico City is a landlocked, high-altitude megalopolis teeming with fine dining, clubs, bars, galleries, museums and such. (Like any major city, it also has unfortunate pockets of crime and squalor that shouldn’t be ignored.) 

Mexico City. What am I doing? I ask that before almost every journey — Budapest, huh? — and almost always return enlightened, brightened. It’s about discovery, learning, seeing, and in this case, a lot about tacos al pastor. I’m seriously considering taking a $70 class on how to make these scrumptious finger foods while I’m there.

That sound you hear is me turning pages in my guide books with increasing excitement, the revelations and expectations. It’s all part of the trip — an expedition of the known and the unknown blended in a zesty imperative: show me what you’ve got.

Palacio de Belles Artes

Busload of memory

~ Chris ~ 1 Comment

In grade school, my friends and I would take one of those long yellow school buses that picked us up at the bottom of our street. The interior of the bus was lined with green leather benches — they fit three kids, to hell with seatbelts — and it smelled funny. A little sweet but musty, like diesel and kid funk.

The bus driver was an amiable but firm 50-ish woman named Mrs. Pelton. She had short dark hair and wore a yellow polo shirt everyday like a school-district uniform. 

I don’t know what her pants were like because she was always sitting down in that lone, boxed-in driver’s seat, the one with the huge steering wheel and hissing, hydraulic lever that operated the folding door we kids clambered through.

I don’t recall Mrs. Pelton ever hollering at me to settle down and be quiet or anything like that, but once she alarmed me in a way I can’t forget. She was driving down a sloped street and something happened — what, I’m not sure. She didn’t crash or swerve or brake hard. 

But she was shaken, and she said, “I’d rather hit a dog than a child.” A cannonball hit my belly. I couldn’t believe it. Rather hit a DOG than a child? I was stricken, my callow little head not appreciating the value of human life. Like now, I was partial to animals, loved and worried about them unabashedly. 

“Rather hit a dog than a child.” I suppose I thought she should run down some snot-nosed kid instead of a poor, innocent pup. What a guy. That moment has followed me all these years. It’s the biggest thing I remember about Mrs. Pelton, who has surely passed on by now, unless she’s like 250. 

Memories, good and bad, are strange like that — random, sticky. I have a storehouse of them, and many seem to pop up daily. Like when Tom Rainbolt peed all over my back in the boy’s bathroom in third grade, or when I learned to ski, or when I kicked a hole in our hallway wall (so busted), or when my best grade-school friend, reckless Gene, hurled live shotgun shells into a bonfire, or working at the exotic dance club or landing my first newspaper job, or …

Often, when whacked with insomnia, a dusty reel of life memories unspools in a long, disjointed movie of the irrepressible past. Some of it’s joyful, a lot of it’s painful. The things done right and the endless bruising regrets. It’s the id unleashed. (Of course everybody does this.)

I have a strong memory muscle — I recall much of my childhood in blinding Technicolor — marred by minor spells of amnesia. It’s not like I forget who I am — though that would be tremendous (temporarily) — but more like I’m not as mindful, drifting off. This is bad. Memories are magic, if I can be any cornier, a pass key to the past, illuminating the present (lessons learned, etc.). Attention must be paid. OK, the homily is over.

Beyond the life-molding experiences — playing in bands, fizzled romances, getting peed on — it’s the people from the past who stand out: Mom, Dad, first-grade teacher Ms. Brose, Brandon, Janice, Roxanne, high school English teacher Mrs. Condon, Guen, Sativa, Nettie, Shannon, Laura, Nicky the dwarf — and, of course, ole Mrs. Pelton, who’d rather hit a dog than a kid, bless her sweet, sensible heart. With those few words, she locked a place in my long, crowded bus of memory.