We had a big-ass snowstorm over the weekend so I took the girlies sledding. It’s just a baby hill. No potential for injury or need for a helmet. Or so I thought. Then I ran across this poor little victim of an obviously horrific crash. Awful! Her face and skull looked like they were dragged under the sled for a few hundred feet. And that dislocated shoulder? My God!

Later that evening I had this niggling feeling that I’d seen that kind of injury once before. And it suddenly dawned on me. That’s the same injury that poor Ronnie Cox suffered in the movie Deliverance!

Speaking of movies, here’s why the Academy didn’t ask for my vote.

Amour. What is that? It’s about an elderly couple, right? I didn’t see it. And I probably won’t

Argo. Really good except for the contrived ending. Do you really think the Iranian militia chased a plane down the runway as it was taking off? I believe in giving a director full dramatic license but give me a break. Do you remember when Ben Affleck used to be a joke? Right after the Gigli fiasco and his marriage to Jennifer Lopez imploded, his name became a punch line. During that period, a play called Matt & Ben was a big hit at the Downtown Fringe Festival. The premise was that there’s NO POSSIBLE WAY Affleck and Damon could have written the Oscar-winning script for Good Will Hunting. The play fronted the theory that the script actually fell from the heavens and landed at their feet, which was depicted. A script was dropped from the theater rafters and landed at the feet of the two actors playing Affleck and Damon (who were women, by the way). Now look at Ben! Directing one great film after another!

Django Unchained. Didn’t see it. He’s a great director but I bailed out on Tarantino a long time ago because of his trademark unrelenting blood and violence. Did you see Reservoir Dogs? That scene where the cop’s ear was cut off? That sickened me. It’s a shame I’m such a big baby because I’d really like to see Inglorious Bastards.

Zero Dark Thirty. Didn’t see it. Won’t see it. I heard there’s a fairly graphic torture sequence. That stuff gets under my skin and stays with me for a very long time. During my long nights when I’m starring at the ceiling and being tormented by all the black muck inside my head, I start to imagine the people I love in the torture scenes. It’s just awful. I wish I was normal but I’m badly damaged.

Lincoln. Really Fucking Important. Really Fucking Boring. A dream sequence that included Spider-Man would have helped.

More later. Perhaps.

My disembodied spirit glided high above the burning Arabian desert sand. The Palm Jumeira passed below me and faded into a mist as I floated out over the cool blue Persian Gulf. The air was perfumed with saffron and deep lavender, the warm desert sun prickled my back.

My wife flopped her arm over and punched my chest. “You’re late. Oh…wait. It’s Saturday. Sorry.”

She fell back to sleep within seconds because that’s her superpower. I watched the shadows on the ceiling change shape as dawn broke.

I recently saw a piece of avant-garde theater that was directed by and starred Ethan Hawke. I can’t say it was the Worst Play Ever, but the parts that I didn’t nap through were pretty bad. Vincent D’Onofrio, another veteran who should have known better, was also in it. There wasn’t an intermission, which I believe was by design so that the audience couldn’t escape. Me no get.

I can appreciate that actors want to takes risks and shake things up once in a while. I respect that. But my tastes are mostly pedestrian. You can take the boy out of Ohio but, etc. For me, experimental theater always looks like self-indulgent, ak-ting 101, scarf and beret-wearing nonsense. Other actors might understand it, but I zone out. I have the same complicated relationship with jazz. Some of it is very beautiful. I feel it in my heart. But some of it is just a blob of formless noise. Musicians showing off for other musicians. I try to keep an open mind. I love Waiting for Godot and that’s a pretty out-there piece of writing. [This fall Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are doing Godot. Professor Xavier is Vladimir. Magneto is Estragon. Or, Captain Picard/Gandalf. Take your pick.]

It didn’t help that before the play I ate a pastrami sandwich that tasted like a rubber garden hose AND it was two below zero outside with a biting wind howling off the Hudson River and down 42nd Street. There are so many elements that factor into an actor’s performance.

And you thought you were having a bad day.

This is a dance piece. “Dance” is their term for it, not mine. I think it’s closer to performance art or theater. The Caravan Project was performed by kooky Japanese artists Eiko and Koma in a trailer parked in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. Stuffed with what looked like animal hair, debris and guts, the pair moved in super-slow motion climbing in and out of their lair. They wore what looked like mummified fabric and chalky, white make-up.

As usual, I have no clue what it all meant but it made me laugh. The best part was watching the horrified looks of patrons who unknowingly stumbled across it. This would have terrified my 6-year old.

My bride and I abandoned our children for the weekend to attend a wedding in downtown Brooklyn. It was a beautiful affair. The ceremony was at St. Agnes, a church built in 1904 in the Boerum Hill section, just two blocks from where I lived when I first set foot in New York. The reception was in the neighborhood down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass, affectionately referred to by real estate agents and trust fund kids as DUMBO. Seriously. I hadn’t been there in about 15 years and was genuinely aghast at what I saw. Gentrification is the oldest story in the oldest city, but when you see its results before your very eyes, it has the power to shock. The last time I walked those streets, it was all artist studios with great light and dirty windows and abandoned warehouses. The neighborhood didn’t have a cute name. Now it’s residential with a Chase Manhattan Bank branch. It blew my mind.

We stayed in a fancy, new, boutique hotel that didn’t have heat because of a steam pipe explosion. They gave us a space heater instead. We didn’t mind. We’re not babies. On Sunday morning, I walked up Smith Street to buy The New York Times. When I lived there, Smith Street wasn’t so nice but now it’s become a destination. We had a scrumptious lunch at a Portuguese restaurant the day before. En route to get the paper, I saw no fewer than four strollers. Those expensive Quinny models. It would seem that even at that young age, there’s a strict hipster dress code that must be adhered to. I wonder what happened to all the Latinos who lived there?

I saw Zadie Smith read a couple of months ago and she was discussing the gentrification of Holborn, her old neighborhood in London, as it relates to a plot device in her new book NW. She had this to say, and I quote:

(Gentrification) is a global experience. People get priced out of their own neighborhoods. The thing I find funny is that there are all different waves of immigration but there’s only one community who moves into an area and feels they’re a great boon and that’s middle class white people. They always think that everybody should be so happy that they’ve arrived in droves with their cupcakes and all the rest of it. And that interested me, that state of mind that imagines that when you arrive en masse that you’re only bringing good. That you’re a benefit to an area. That was always quite funny to me.

She’s right, you know. Sorry, cupcake-bearing middle class white people.

The title of this post is misleading. Our dog is not dead. But if it were up to me, she would be. Look  what that little bitch did to my bride:

When I got home from work I blew my top and insisted we get rid of the dog immediately. I wouldn’t spend :10 seconds missing her but 11-Year Old Daughter had a meltdown and tearfully begged me to keep her. My hard, poisonous hart was melted by the oldest antidote known to man—a daughter’s tears—and the dog won a reprieve.

The dog’s behavior is inexplicable. She’s a friendly, pleasant mutt (albeit, an $850 mutt) who thinks that everyone wants to be her best friend. She’ll roll over on her back in a submissive position so people can give her a scratch. She’ll go weeks and weeks without any sign of canine insanity and then, out of nowhere and without provocation, growl and snap. It’s only happened a couple times and it’s usually at night when she’s at rest, but it’s a pretty impressionable event. It stays with you.

We’ve taken her to training classes and had a trainer come to our home for one-on-one sessions (at no small expense, I might add). The trainer’s diagnoses is that she has occasional “resource guarding and body handling issues.” He assures us that it’s not the result of anything we’ve done. Well, thank God for that. I’d hate to think we’ve hurt her feelings. He assured us that if Coco really wanted to hurt someone, she would’ve taken a finger off with little effort. He’s coming back and is having mercy on me by not charging for subsequent visits.

I’ve never like dogs and this isn’t helping the cause. It’s as if God gave them the most unattractive aspects of human nature. I am annoyed by their bottomless reservoir of need and their unending demands for attention. I find their inability (or is it an unwillingness?) to keep themselves clean off-putting, and the incessant barking is grating. They’re not discriminating with what they eat or are mindful of quantity. It doesn’t necessarily have to be food. Even shit is a gourmet treat. (Sorry, Daisyfae. That’s just how I feel. Especially this morning.)

If she ever seriously bites one of my little girls or my bride, not only will I not have any compunction or residual guilt about having her euthanized, I will take uncharacteristic dark pleasure in pushing the plunger myself. We have done nothing but give her a loving home and treated her with kindness. She’s got a pretty great gig here but if she doesn’t mind her manners she’s going to meet a bad end. Tears or no tears.

I wanted a cat but was outvoted 3-1. I’m not very good with the written word but do you know who is? Charles Bukowski.

exactly right

the strays keep arriving: now we have 5
cats and they are smart, spontaneous, self-
absorbed, naturally poised and awesomely
beautiful.

one of the finest things about cats is
that when you’re feeling down, very down,
if you just look at the cat at rest,
at the way they sit or lie and wait,
it’s a grand lesson in preserving
and
if you watch 5 cats at once that’s 5
times better.

no matter the extra demands they make
no matter the heavy sacks of food
no matter the dozens of cans of tuna
from the supermarket: it’s all just fuel for their
amazing dignity and their
affirmation of a vital
life
we humans can
only envy and
admire from
afar.