Goodbye, Honey Parker

The biggest con job life ever pulled on us is the utter gracelessness, the iniquitousness – the ugliness – of old age and death. If it’s true that death is the opposite of birth, not life, then I suppose perhaps there’s some balance to be found. Because despite the stern avowals of middle-American, mundane, Dockers-wearing, soulless, thoughtless dads in the lower 48 that childbirth is miraculous and beautiful, the truth is a little more unpleasant: childbirth is a bloody, ugly affair. Nasty fluids, torn skin, fecal matter, screaming… and people film this crap for posterity?

Such is the case with death.

It’s such a cosmic injustice, so patently unfair that we’re on the downhill slope by the time we hit our 40s – for a lot of us, there are still another 40 years to go – that I have an odd sympathy for people who believe in a higher power. How do you square such unfairness with your goals, your hopes? Unless you’re one of the chosen few who ages gracefully, who avoids debilitating health problems, then the aging process is one of diminishing returns. Wrinkled skin, sunspots, thinning hair, weight gain, poor eyesight and hearing, osteoporosis, walkers and wheelchairs, and then the ultimate indignity of memory loss, and a final few years at home or in a home, as the friends and family come around saying their goodbyes, the body shrinking, shriveling, and finally silently collapsing. Such damn ugliness.

Yet, for the majority of us, the psychic toll of aging is the more malevolent bugbear. Despite evolving intellectually to the point where we can split the atom, nearly wipe small pox off the face of the earth, and launch giant telescopes into space, brazenly peering into the face of god itself, we simply were not given the tools, the emotional resources to deal with the awareness of our own mortality. It’s a hard line to toe, balancing responsibilities with the need for spontaneity – trying to build a life – knowing that all this will be over sooner rather than later. The logical person, perhaps, would turn this knowledge around, use it as an excuse to work harder, construct a more solid legacy. Something to be proud of.

But humans aren’t logical. And more often this psychic toll brings a terrible sadness, a crippling paralysis in the face of approaching nonexistence, and finally, a distasteful irony: the towel is thrown in so early that years are spent wasted, years that – even though they constituted life’s final act – still could’ve been creatively fertile, if we’d just taken a little care with ourselves.

***

The L.A. Coroner estimates Yvette Vickers was dead for close to a year before neighbor Susan Savage, noticing the mail piling up in her mailbox on Westwanda Drive, above Hollywood, let herself into the aging actress’ modest home. Savage found a body that was, for all intents and purposes, mummified. In a full year, there was no one in the world who thought to check on Yvette and see how she was doing.

For those of us who grew up with a huge crush on this beautiful woman, it was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow that the floozy from Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, the bewitching blonde in the sexy dress who seduces William Hudson, died forgotten, with barely a trace of dignity.

But Yvette Vickers was not equipped to cope with growing old. The psychic toll was too much for the kid from Kansas City, MO, who at one point was directed by Cagney, and thought she was on her way to stardom. Instead, a short career consisting mostly of bit parts led to a different sort of immortality; she is remembered not by the general population, but by fanboys and sci-fi geeks for playing home wreckers in Woman and 1959’s Attack of the Giant Leeches.

An appearance in Playboy’s centerfold as the July 1959 Playmate of the Month failed to interest Hollywood producers, and Vickers' career frustratingly stalled. She married twice, and had numerous flings, most notably with Cary Grant, and settled into a career in real estate.

I suspect somewhere along the way Yvette realized she’d played her hand wrong, being a sex kitten to the stars instead of really working on her craft. Although she happily attended fanboy conventions in the 90s and 2000s, an undiagnosed mental illness, no doubt exacerbated by heavy drinking, made for a dark final act. Certain she was being stalked, and delusional that the conventions were cutting her off, Yvette drank hard, put on so much weight as to be almost unrecognizable, and systematically slammed the door on what few friends she still had. Her Benedict Canyon neighbors didn’t think to keep tabs on her. "We're all longtime neighbors here and we respect each others' privacy," said one. “Perhaps too much."

***

In a more perfect world, death would be easy, a peaceful thing. Maybe even poetic. But we are stuck on a planet short on perfection. And when someone you love goes out as badly as Yvette Vickers did, you have to remind yourself that death is so often an ugly thing, and when you think of Yvette, her free fall into the abyss shouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind. Those final years were a small part of a longer journey, and even if she did play her hand wrong, it’s ok; we all do that at least from time to time, if not more frequently. And there was a time that this magnificent woman was young, beautiful, and seized our imaginations as we flipped through the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, or caught a midnight showing of Attack of the Giant Leeches. Her first appearance in Leeches – clad in sexy robe while seductively brushing her teeth, if such a thing is possible – is every bit as show-stopping as Lana Turner’s first scene in The Postman Always Rings Twice. I wish she could’ve been happy enough with that.

Facetious Fortunes

Like a rubber neck slowing down to a crawl as he passes a four-car pile up, pissing off everyone behind him who’s actually trying to get somewhere, just so he can get a serious look at the twisted, shattered bodies, I logged on to facebook last week to see what everyone was saying. There was a message from a friend of mine in Michigan.

“Did you hear which member of the Fantastic Four got killed off for good?”

“I didn’t,” I wrote back. “Who kicked the bucket?”

“The Human Torch,” came the swift reply, “saving Reed Sue and Ben from being trapped in the Negative zone...it comes polybagged!”

It’s hard to imagine people getting worked up in any way by yet another shameless ploy to generate sales – especially anyone over the age of 17 – but what the hell. I haven’t collected super hero comics for twenty years, so no biggie.

A couple of days ago I saw the article online: “Spider-Man Replacing Human Torch on new ‘FF’ Team.” In this new story arc, that’ll probably last about a year before even longtime fans can no longer bear the stupidity of it all, they’re no longer the Fantastic Four, they’re the “Future Foundation.” Whatever the fuck that is. They no longer wear cool costumes, they wear all white. And Spider-Man replaces the Human Torch.

In all white.

I feel sorry for writers at Marvel and DC nowadays. I really do. By the mid-1990s, comic book sales shrank to a trickle of what they were in the glory years of the 40s (and even the 80s), and since then, writers for the two industry giants have been tasked with dreaming up ever more outlandish, inane storylines in a desperate attempt to shift some units. That their gut instinct with this dilemma is always to kill off one iconic character or another is testimony to how few creative minds are at work here. We need higher sales. Ok – who do we kill? Aunt May…? Yeah, that may turn some heads… How about we kill the Phoenix? Kill Captain America? Kill Superman? Reveal that Spider-Man was a clone these last 20 years?

The floodgates to this kind of foolishness opened in 1992 when Superman “died” in DC’s “Death of Superman” storyline at the hands of the evil Doomsday, a cynical, absurd marketing drive that leaves me cold to this day. It laid the groundwork for subsequent “death” story arcs, all of which followed the same template as the Superman story: generate press – and sales – by announcing to the world you’re killing off a major character. Keep an inane “post-death” storyline running for a year, then bring back dead major character in a miraculous re-birth story.

The notion that DC would “kill” their franchise player, the most famous superhero of all time, the face of their company, the superhero whose debut comic was – and still is – the most valuable comic book of all time, was patently ridiculous. Yet, there it was, in 1992: The Death of Superman, a story arc that wound through all four Superman comics, climaxing in Superman (vol. 2) #75, where the Man of Steel “dies.” While thousands of thousands of people who weren’t even comic book collectors snatched up Superman comics and drove up sales, veterans of comic book fandom slowly shook their heads at the spectacle of it.

It worked. At least in the short run; DC’s coffers overflowed with greenbacks as Superman #75 sold out all around the world. It was a good time to be on the ol' DC payroll.

And then, a year later, Superman was back. He hadn’t died at all, of course, because DC needs to keep their doors open. The thing is, everyone with an IQ over 80 knew that DC had no intention of Superman “dying.” He had to come back, probably sooner than later, because he’s the most popular, famous, recognizable super hero in the world, and who gives a flying flip about the Reign of the Supermen anyway? So Superman was really alive and well.

But the damage his “death” and resurrection did to the industry lingers today. Many insiders – including Mile High Comics’ excellent Chuck Rozanski – have since pointed out that the industry tanked after Superman #75, in part because the hoopla surrounding Superman’s “death” drew in scores of non-comic book collectors who drove sales up for one month, thinking that if they bought one, two, even three copies of Superman #75, bagged & boarded it, and kept it in a vault for five months, they could then sell it for thousands of dollars. “…It became,” Rosanski wrote, “a common delusion for a while that you could make a fortune investing in comics. Greed, more than any other factor, is what inspired so many consumers from outside of the traditional comics worlds to chase after Superman #75.”

Bloody geniuses – that’s what happens with comic books, right? Isn’t it just like playing the stock market? Wasn’t Action #1 worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 in 1992?

And indeed it was, going by Overstreet estimates. There were, however, two factors these geniuses hadn’t taken into consideration: 1) Action #1 was 54 years old at that point, and 2) only a handful of copies existed.

Kind of different from Superman #75 in 1992. The problem with trying to sell your 10.0 copy of Superman #75 in 1993, less than a year after it was printed, was that there were 1,000,000 other 10.0 copies floating around out there, making it worth roughly its cover price. Which is to say, not much at all.

And so the greedy creeps who jacked up sales for one glorious month in 1992 went back to their lives, betrayed by the funny book industry, abandoning their grandiose get-rich-quick schemes of buying important comic books and then selling them a year later for obscene sums of money and retiring to the Bahamas. And those of us who’d been collecting comic books for years, even decades – the ones who did so out of love of comic books, love of our favorite artists and writers, love of the characters, a love that had seized us by the lapels as little boys, as we excitedly flipped though Spider-Man and Superman comics at the drug store, overwhelmed by the colors and characters – watched as the industry we’d loved for so long morphed into something that much more cynical and desperate, one where the bottom line was the only thing Marvel and DC cared about, and were willing to do anything to improve.

And no, I’m not that naïve. I’m well aware that the bottom line has always been everyone’s concern, from the days of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and Martin Goodman to Victor Fox and Bill Gaines, all the way to the present. But the “Future Foundation?” White costumes? How utterly clueless can you be about what attracted everyone to these characters in the first place? Spider-Man’s red and blue costume was a source of wonderment for me as a child. Now he’s wearing white? In the Future Foundation??

In a year’s time, when the Human Torch is resurrected and the original, way cooler costumes are back, I’m sure the folks at Marvel will be happy to tell us how many more books they sold, and how much more money they made than if they’d tried to think of a genuinely interesting story arc. Or maybe not. How much more of this shit can everyone take?

Hunt for the Sane People

Towards the end of Colm Kelleher’s and Goerge Knapp’s Hunt for the Skinwalker, after the two men have spent 256 pages doing their damnedest to convince everyone that their studies of, amongst other things, UFOs, invisible beasts, Bigfoot, inter-dimensional doors, and ginormous, bullet-proof wolves on a remote ranch in Utah are in fact done under the scrutiny of true science – and you should be taking them seriously – they finally throw in the towel and wrap things up with a chapter entitled “Revolutionary Science.”

Up until this point they keep their bitterness in check, pausing only every now and again to criticize what they call “normal science,” and the mainstream’s propensity for not taking seriously people who insist they’ve had extraterrestrials probe their anuses. This criticism usually follows a particularly far-fetched episode in the book, like when one of their fellow “scientists” freaks out whilst watching a large creature crawl out of an inter-dimensional doorway, and skulk off across the ranch. At night. And the pictures they take don’t come out. And the creature leaves no proof it was ever there.

Typically at such points in the narrative, they remind the reader that even Galileo was considered crazy, so it’s bad form for any of us to consign their tales of telepathic ETs and blue, spherical UFOs to the This Is Total Rubbish file. At any rate, the “Revolutionary Science” chapter contains the following passage:

“People cannot help but wonder at the truth capacity of science if it completely denies the reality of a large number of their own experiences. Public opinion polls show that science and scientists are increasingly out of step with the people’s worldview.”

It’s hard to gauge the latter of the two sentences. You get the sense that they’re finally at their wits’ end and have decided, after staying up for 40 hours writing their book, fatigued and exasperated, to simply indict all of science for their inability to get anyone (outside of conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs) to take them seriously.

At the same time, you wonder if they have any idea how that one sentence so succinctly sums up the total insanity of the UFO/alien abduction/Bigfoot/Men in Black culture in America. It serves as a made-to-order bookend to Dover, PA Pastor Ray Mummert’s assertion that “we’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.” The Pastor was referring to proponents of evolution who, in 2005, succeeded in blocking the Dover school board from teaching intelligent design in science classrooms. Stephen Amidon wrote that the Pastor’s statement “cut straight to the heart of America’s culture wars.”

I wonder if the Pastor knows he has close allies in two men who spend their days hunting Bigfoots from Other Dimensions, and invisible monsters that stampede entire herds of cattle. One guy thinks the Earth is 4,000 years old; the other two think that Bigfoots do the bidding of “short, almost effeminate” ETs “with large eyes and blonde hair.” All three charge that The People – The Majority – know what’s right and best, and science, with its attendant educated, intelligent, elitist scientists is malevolently preventing us from knowing The Truth.

I suspect these three men are largely the reason John Adams didn’t trust the salt of the Earth to hold high positions in the government. I don’t know if it’s possible to point to a date in American history and say, here is where we began heaping scorn on our universities and people who actually know what the hell they're talking about, and pushing to have the uneducated and disturbed run our affairs, but Hunt for the Skinwalker, as entertaining as it is, proves that it’s not just whack-job fundamentalist Christians who employ this ideology.

"Scientists are out of step with the people’s worldview." The same people, I’m assuming, who can’t even name all the American presidents? The same people who think Barack Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen? The same people who are hunting lions to extinction as we speak? The same people who rape and mutilate each other in the name of the invisible man? The same people who think aliens crash-landed in New Mexico even though there are, at last count, five different crash sites? The same people who thought, once upon a time, that the earth was the center of the universe? The same people who are forever adding the word “of” after “myriad?” The same people who think “irregardless” is a fucking word?

It’s a slippery slope pointing to “the people” as the last bastion of truth in this world, because “the people” are completely and hopelessly full of fucking shit. That’s why experts are important. That’s why we go to the educated “elitists” when we need help; it’s why we go to a mechanic when our car breaks down, and not a file clerk, and why we go to a doctor when we’re sick, and not a freakin’ campanologist.

I’ve done my part. I haven’t procreated. I’ve ended the bloodline. A toast to me.

Good old American Bullshit

I am not going to make everyone roll their eyes by dredging up the predictable liberal response to Gabrielle Gifford’s near-assassination, and say that we need to ban guns, or at least ban certain types of guns and magazines.

Even I can see, after thirty years of watching this argument, that it is, at best, a losing battle, and at worst, the kind of unnecessary rhetoric that only inflames and agitates America’s sizeable population of right-wing conspiracy nuts who shriek hysterically about socialist liberals who want to destroy the 2^nd Amendment, and then stockpile eight tons of machine guns and bullets to fight off evil government agents who will use Black Helicopters to herd them into FEMA concentration camps. There is no other western nation so bafflingly obsessed with and fixated on guns than the United States. Mass shootings occur with what any reasonable observer would consider to be alarming frequency in this country, yet the typical NRA member’s response is, now see, if everyone packed, then the good citizens of our great country could simply fire back in these mass shooting situations, and everything would be hunky dory.

I am not going to attempt a rational debate with that mindset. If your solution to these kinds of ugly, ugly episodes is working to arm everyone to the teeth, and you can’t see what kind of even uglier trouble that invites, then count me out of the argument. You guys all load up and enjoy shooting each other; I’ll stay at home with the girlfriend, dogs & cats, and watch some cool movies. Knock yourselves out.

But truly asinine analogies deserve to be called out, such as the one espoused by Gun Owners of America spokesman John Velleco. Despite the carnage last weekend, the “Crossroads of the West” gun show convened outside of Tucson this Saturday and Sunday. Defending the decision to carry on with the show, Velleco noted that no gun law in the world would’ve stopped an individual as deranged as Jared Loughner, and the notion of canceling the gun show was nonsensical anyhow.

“It would be like if someone drove a car into a schoolyard,” he said, “and then you canceled a car show.”

So, for the record, my paranoid, obsessed-with-guns fellow citizens, there are certain flaws with that analogy. They’re so elusive and abstract as to be nearly indecipherable to the common layman – or Gun Owners of America spokesman – but I’ve got a bead on it. Dig it:

Guns and cars are different.

I shit you not. Wrap your head around this: cars are transportation, a way of getting you from point A to point B in a timely manner; guns are for destroying things.

A car can destroy things, for sure. It’s two tons of metal, and if it is mis-used, it can cause serious damage. It’s purpose, however, is to transport people and goods from point A to point B.

A gun’s purpose, on the other hand, is to destroy things. Whether it’s cans on a wall, a deer when you’re hunting, or your enemies in war, guns are designed to fuck shit up.

When some idiot gets drunk, drives his car through a storefront window and crushes two consumers shopping for underwear, an auto mechanic will tell you, Jesus, what a terrible perversion of what our automobiles are designed to do for us. These things aren’t built for destruction.

Conversely, when some idiot shoots his ex-wife with an AK-47, a gun expert will tell you, that gun did exactly what it was built to do. That’s precisely what an assault rifle does when it's doing its job: it obliterates whatever you shoot. These things are built to tear shit apart.

What’s insulting after all these years of the tired gun control debate is when a gun freak says “It would be like if someone drove a car into a schoolyard, and then you canceled a car show.”

Actually, no – it wouldn't be anything like that at all. Cars are for driving – guns are for killing. Very simple thing. Stop comparing the two as though they perform even remotely similar functions. The inability of gun freaks to cop to that simple logic betrays an unspoken admission on their part that they love these things that are, in fact, designed for violence and carnage. I wish I knew why they feel compelled to hide this admission and engage in subterfuge, but I don’t, so instead of the inane car analogy, why not just take the literal approach? “Yes, guns are used for fucking shit up, but we’re not going to cancel our show just miles away from where a nine year-old girl was mowed down. We love these damn things.”

A little honesty goes a long way, folks.

Newsweek, 9/20/10

Only an arrogant, obtuse, dogmatic egotist like George Will could mock (once again) the seriousness of global warming and then, in the same piece, glibly point out that, in fact, "extinctions result mostly from human population pressures - habitat destruction, pesticides, etc" without batting an eyelid. 

Quoting physicist Robert Laughlin - "slowing man-made extinctions in a meaningful way would require drastically reducing the world's population" - Will points out, simply, with a shrug, that population control "will not happen." 

Amazing what you can get away with when you get paid to be pompous, judgmental creep. Why bother trying to concoct a sustainable energy strategy, folks? Some scientists say global warming is bogus. And anyway, overpopulation is the real boogeyman, so don't sweat it. 

At any rate, George, thank you for finally putting the word "population" into print in a mainstream American publication. So: when do we start the conversation about overpopulation? 

The answer is: never. There isn't a politician in the United States, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, crude or eloquent who will touch the issue of overpopulation. You can't say - hell, you cannot even in some roundabout vaguely esoteric way politely suggest - that perhaps the thousands upon thousands of voting constituents in your district who are thoughtlessly, ignorantly, even unhappily pumping out baby after baby after baby are behaving like losers of the world, permanently mucking up the works. That definitely ain't a recipe for re-election. Calm down, tea-baggers: I don't think Washington is broken. I'm not bagging on politicians for being obsequious cowards who are only interested in their own jobs (and anyways, you idiots are largely responsible for the laughably misguided notion that babies are special). No, I think we are broken. Humans. We are simply, by our nature, selfish, thoughtless, greedy and ignorant. 

Before you write me off as the stereotypical old curmudgeon who longs for the days of yore, and wonders what's wrong with the youth nowadays, rest assured: I don't think this is a recent occurrence. I don't think the years I grew up in were better than the present lot. There isn't a century in our species' existence that isn't marked by greed, war, and a thirst for power. Same old shit with this crowd. What I find insulting is that the same people who write off global warming as a hoax, and dodge the issue of overpopulation as unworthy of our attention are the same people preaching love and happiness in the name of christianity and capitalism - two forces with as much destruction and bloodshed in their wake as islam and socialism. Their complete lack of responsible thinking, and intolerance to other points of view, betrays a hypocrisy that I can't even fathom.

So, a couple of points to ponder for the first time in your life:

1) Babies aren't special.

2) Your baby definitely ain't special.

3) The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis is, at best, patently absurd. There's nothing remotely divine about it. It smacks of human convention.

4) It isn't written anywhere that you must procreate. Try doing something more creative with your time. 

5) "The miracle of life" is one of the biggest lies perpetrated on humanity, and ought to be abolished as a phrase. A "miracle" is something that rarely happens, that is, in fact, supernatural and divine by nature. 74 million people are born every year. How exactly is this "miraculous?" It's the most common occurrence on the planet.

6) If you spend time on facebook informing people that you have a headache, or are eating out tonight, you are taking advantage of about .001% of what life has to offer. Go travel or read a book, but for God's sake, stop being so shallow.

Ghosts of Los Angeles I

History’s randomness is what haunts; the way two unrelated stories immersed in shadow and question marks collide in some tangible way, totally unexpectedly, thrusting pathos upon the ordinary and the mundane, somehow leaving you with no answers even after the curtains of shadows are opened, often only momentarily, affording a glance of something you thought you’d never see.

More and more I feel like Los Angeles is America’s great undiscovered city. The conventional wisdom is that there’s no there there (Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, often erroneously attributed to Los Angeles, when in fact she was referring to her hometown of Oakland), a state of mind prevalent among even those who grew up there. Yet, the city’s shadowy history is enough to suck in thousands who have a hard time explaining – even coming to grips with – its relentless pull. Bunker Hill. Skid Row. The Black Dahlia. Ed Wood, Jr. The Manson murders. George Reeves. Film Noir. Robert Kennedy. Richard Ramirez. Even East Hollywood and Charles Bukowski.

At 5533 Hollywood Boulevard stands the Gershwin Hotel, formerly the St. Francis Hotel, built in 1926 near Western Ave. It’s the kind of pre-Depression throwback that adds so much character to a city –bricks, outdoor fire escapes, arched doorways, old windows. A prime candidate – if there ever was one in this city that cares so little for its history that you get the feeling it actually hates it – for the wrecking ball. I’ve snapped many a photo of it myself for no other reason than it’s a great old building, and I worry on every trip to L.A. that it may not be there the next time I come back.

The hotel, however, boasts a couple of celebrity guests. Although this hasn’t been verified, a woman working at the Gershwin in 2003 told author Matt Dukes Jordan that Bukowski stayed there a couple of times while he still lived in East Hollywood.

What has been verified is the presence of James Earl Ray, who arrived in Los Angeles in his white Mustang on November 19^th, 1967, with a spare tire full of Mexican cannabis and dreams of producing pornography. In less than five months, the spectre-like Ray would assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr. from the bathroom window of a Memphis flophouse, but in late ’67, the 40 year-old southern racist was a character straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel: an awkward, angry, hypochondriac speed-freak who had spent as much time in jail as in the real world, comfortable only with prostitutes and down-and-outs, drinking and shooting pool in seedy dive bars. During his stay in the City of Angels, Ray got into a bar room brawl on Hollywood Boulevard, graduated from bartending school, took dance lessons in Long Beach, and had his nose altered by a plastic surgeon. For half his stay he lived in room 403 of the St. Francis Hotel. He checked out on March 18^th, 1968, and drove into history.

Strangely, Ray is exactly the kind of man Bukowski crossed paths with every week. It’s enticing to think that perhaps the two men bumped into each other during those four months in late ‘67/early ’68. Bukowski was living in his bungalow at 5124 DeLongpre at the time, and occasionally visited Le Sex Shoppe at 5507 Hollywood Blvd – just a few doors down from the St. Francis. At any rate, it’s the kind of fascinating historical footnote that most people visiting Los Angeles are utterly oblivious to, preferring instead to spend their time and money at Hollywood and Highland, an area where all history and heritage has recently been obliterated in the name of mega entertainment complexes and chain stores. I suppose you can’t force people to see the stuff that's genuinely interesting. And probably the story of the St. Francis Hotel wouldn’t interest them anyway. It’s a bum rap Los Angeles is stuck with – an ignorant, shallow population of locals and tourists, caught up in the tragic notion that L.A. is all about the Chinese Theater, and the Walk of Fame. And little else.

Sometimes life throws you a hard curve.

            I never wanted a dog.

            It’s got nothing to do with not loving dogs. Truthfully, I find animals infinitely more interesting, beautiful, graceful, intelligent and dignified than the whole of humanity. You can throw insects in there, too. I always find it much sadder when an animal dies than a human, and I find it particularly pathetic that selfish, thoughtless, greedy humans continue obliterating their habitats and wiping out entire species of wildlife, all in the name of sprawling forever outwards, blading everything in sight so that greedy developers and contractors can build ugly, cookie-cutter, pre-fab homes and strip malls and support their decadent lifestyles.

            But I never wanted a dog. My girlfriend worked on me for years, but I wouldn’t allow dog one into our house. Simple reason, too – I despise responsibility.

            And so does everyone else, if he or she is being honest about it. Personal space and a lack of stress in your life are important, but no one gives any thought to this. Instead, the vast majority of men and women have decided by their teens that they must 1) get married, 2) get a job, 3) buy a house, and 4) raise children. They do this because TV and religion – two of the most vapid, shallow, unenlightened forces on planet Earth – tell them that they’re losers if they don’t. A few years later, with screaming, out of control kids running amok, a 30-year mortgage, and a nagging spouse – and how can there not be nagging? You see each other every damn day of your life – they’ve had it. Enough shouting matches, and enough working a job you hate but have to fucking stick with because if you quit and try and enjoy life, your house is foreclosed upon, and your kids have no money for clothes and school. It’s just TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY to actually enjoy life on Earth, so lawyers are paid to handle the inevitable divorce. That’s why the divorce rate is so high in this country. Religious leaders, shoveling their special brand of total horseshit down everyone’s throats, insist that it’s because America has lost its moral center, and if we’d all just worship the invisible man in the clouds every Sunday, everything would be hunky dory. This is, of course, complete hogwash; humans simply aren’t built for precisely the kinds of lives that our lying religions foist upon us. No one, and I mean NO ONE is ready to settle down into a monogamous relationship in his or her 20s, and I’ll go one further: no one is ready for monogamy in his or her 30s, either. There are exceptions to this rule, but why do you think people who’ve been together for ten years argue so much? Why is there less and less sex and intimacy in long term relationships? Why do so many people get divorced? Simple, folks: because you’re young and have many, many wild oats to sow, and being with the same damn person year after year is friggin’ boring. It’s too much responsibility for a species that is inherently selfish. We crave spontaneity in our lives, and that’s the first thing to go out the window for good when you’re married with kids.

            So I never wanted a dog. I now have two. This is not because I finally sold out, caving in after years of browbeating from my battle-axe girlfriend. She’s not a battle-axe, and I’m never browbeaten. It happened because, on a cold, overcast day in November 2008, while suffering from a mild case of the flu, what appeared to be a four week-old puppy ran in front of my car in Peach Springs, AZ.

I was on my way to Los Angeles, taking some detours along the way. The main attraction was driving the old Route 66 from Seligman AZ to Kingman AZ. Peach Springs is on the old Route 66, part of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. It’s tiny and poor. Old, derelict buildings always follow a nonexistent economy, so I got out and snapped some shots of the buildings on the main drag. I walked around for 20 minutes or so, and noticed that Diamond Creek Road left the highway to the north, going up a gentle hill. I got into my car, turned onto Diamond Creek, and a Haulapai police car followed me. Naturally paranoid, I assumed he was keeping tabs on this white dude who was skulking around their turf, taking pictures of buildings that they would certainly fix up if they had any money. I felt like a fuckin’ idiot. What the hell was I doing, taking pictures of the plight? These people lived here, for fuck’s sake. I slowed and went 24 mph, and he slowed with me. Shit, I thought, he’s going to pull me over…

            About twenty yards ahead, running in my direction along the shoulder of the road on my right, was a tiny little puppy. It was running hard, saw me, and changed course, heading straight into the road. It was still running full-boar, so I slowed to a crawl, and still the little thing came at me. I stopped the car; it disappeared underneath. I turned the engine off, got out, and heard the puppy crying. It emerged from under the car, looking up at me, still crying. The cop pulled up on my right as I scooped the thing up. Still crying, it sucked on one of my fingers, looking for milk. It was cold, shaking the whole time. And it was pretty damn cute.

            “It ran under my car,” I said to the officer.
            “I saw it,” he said. “Is it ok?”
            “Yeah. Very cold, though.”
            Walking towards us, from the direction I had been driving, was a 40-ish woman. There was a lot of mileage in the wrinkles on her face. Must be the owner, I thought. Why would she let it get so far ahead of her? And why would she be walking a four week-old puppy?
            “Is this your pup?” I asked her.
            “No,” she smiled, petting the puppy. “I saw it running down the road. I don’t know who it belongs to.”
            We stood there. The puppy whimpered and I scratched its tiny ears.
            “What do you think?” I asked the officer.
            “The pound is down the road,” he said. “I can take it there for you. Unless you want to keep it.”
            “Will it get adopted at the pound?”
            “With all the strays around here,” he said, matter-of-factly, “it’ll probably get put down in a week.”

            I didn’t take the bait ignorantly. I figured this guy was probably pulling my chain, just wanting me to take the dog and be done with it. But in a moment of spontaneous, why-the-fuck-not? impetuousness – or idiocy, take your pick – I thought about my girlfriend and figured, fuck me. She’s always wanted a dog. I couldn’t live with myself leaving this creature here and never knowing its fate.
            “Look,” I said, “I’ll take it, but I’m on my way to Los Angeles, with nowhere to keep it. I’ll be back this way in five days, on Saturday.”
            “I’ll drive it to the shelter,” the officer said. “Give me your number, and I’ll have them call you. If they know you’re coming back for it, they’ll keep it for you until you get back. Just let them know what day you’ll pick it up.”
            I gave the officer my name and number, and handed the puppy to him.
            “Thanks,” I said. “No, wait!” I got my camera out of my back seat. “I want my girlfriend to see what we’re getting in to.”
            The officer held the tiny thing up, and I quickly snapped a photo that’s become iconic amongst my family: a down-and-out puppy in the hand of a kindly police officer in Peach Springs, AZ, wanting a home. The skin on its underside was wrinkled and unhealthy looking – this little guy had obviously been dumped when he should’ve still been suckling at his mother’s teat – but it appeared to have a penis. It also smelled bad, like it had stepped in shit. Not surprising for a stray. I looked at him and didn’t see poop anywhere on his body.
            “Where are you from?” the 40-ish woman asked me.
            “New Mexico,” I said.
            “New Mexico…” she smiled. The officer drove away, the woman walked on, and I got in my car and headed west on the old route 66.

            There was no cell coverage in Peach Springs, and for some time after that. Finally, on approach to Kingman, a couple of bars showed up on my trackphone. There was already a message.
            “Hello,” the voice said, “this is John at the Peach Springs Animal Shelter. We have the puppy you found, and if no one claims him, we’ll hang on to him until you pick it up on Saturday.”
            He gave me their number and told me to call him to confirm. I called him, then called my girlfriend at work.
            “What’s up?” she said.
            “Listen, do you still want a dog?”
            “DID YOU FIND A DOG?” she asked. Just the mention of it made her nearly lose her head; she sounded like she was freaking out.
            “A little puppy – he didn’t look to be more than four weeks old to me – ran in front of my car in Peach Springs Arizona.”
            “BRING HOME THE PUPPY.”
            “I don’t have him now, but the local shelter said they’d hang on to him until Saturday.”
            “BRING HOME THE PUPPY,” she repeated.
            “What if the cats don’t like him?”
            “THEN WE’LL FIND A HOME FOR HIM. BRING HOME THE PUPPY.”
            I didn’t feel like she was really listening to me.
            “Alright, I’ll pick him up on my way back. I snapped a shot of him – I’ll email it to you when I get to L.A. But this is going to be a big change.”
            “I DON’T CARE. I’LL BUY WHATEVER WE NEED. BRING HOME THE PUPPY.” And that was that.

Whatever I had got way worse in L.A. The coughing would not stop and my head was killing me. I decamped from my good friend’s downtown loft to the Highland Gardens on Franklin for 24 hours, just lying in bed. I was in a hallucinogenic state, somewhere in between consciousness and unconsciousness. My whole body ached. It was a fucked up scene: I had gone on a week-long vacation to L.A. for mental health purposes, to hunt for books and CDs, and couldn’t even think straight. After a little over three days of not even having the energy to walk 100 feet, I apologized to my friend and started back to New Mexico a day early. I left on Friday afternoon, and stayed that night at a Super 8 in Kingman. The next morning was an improvement – I didn’t feel like death. The girl at the counter directed me to a locally owned pet store in the northern part of town. Not the cool, historic part of Kingman, but the unending sprawl you see from the interstate. I bought a good-sized cage, a tube of treat-stuff they told me was high-calorie, a can of wet food, and a towel for the bottom of the cage. At noon sharp I met the gents from the pound in Peach Springs, took the puppy, and headed east.

After many naps, barking, peeing in the cage, and pit stops off of interstate exit ramps, we made it home. It was nighttime. I walked in the door, put the cage on the floor, and opened it up. Our three cats were not at all impressed (or happy), but the puppy jumped out, huge smile on its face, and ran all over the house. I swear it was as though this had been home all along, and he was simply returning from a long trip. He was instantaneously right at home. And my girlfriend hadn’t been blowing smoke out her ass when she said she’d buy “whatever we need;” there was hundreds of dollars of food, bowls, collars, etc waiting for the new pup. He also had a name: Angus, after AC/DC’s Angus Young. Angus was so tiny he struggled to get up the step and into our house from the backyard.

            On Monday we took him to the vet. He still smelled, and the claws on his right front paw were dark red; they looked like they had filled up with blood.
            “We think he’s got something…” we told the vet tech, showing him the claws. “THE ONLY THINGS HE’S GOT IS A TERMINAL CASE OF CUTENESS!” he said, and called all the other employees in to see the puppy.

            The claws had red nail polish on them. We never figured that out. There were other issues: a belly button hernia, worms (this is where the mysterious smell came from; it was his breath), and an infection. The infection was, in fact, vaginitus. Angus was a she. Her vagina was so swollen we mistook her for a boy. "Ok," My girlfriend said. “So we name her Agnes.”

***

The vet fixed her up, and thus commenced exactly the sort of headache that I worked so hard avoiding in life: the house training and obedience training of a puppy. Every Saturday to the puppy training classes. Frantic winter nights trying to get her to poop and pee when it was bed time, and we were exhausted, out of our brains. Getting the cats used to her. We took turns the first few months on puppy duty: from six to eight my girlfriend watched her, and I took over from eight until bedtime. It was like having a child. More than once I found myself wondering what the hell I had gotten into, not unlike a first-time father. But never once did I regret it; there was no way I was leaving a puppy that ran in front of my car in Arizona to an uncertain fate. Agnes was a member of the family now, and nothing was ever going to change that. Like so many dumbass accidental first-time fathers, I quickly fell in love with the girl. Life certainly wouldn't be a complete picture without her.

***

POSTSCRIPT

During week days, Agnes tore up anything we left out in the backyard. She needed a playmate. This time it didn’t faze me. We already had one dog; what difference did a second make? (I quickly found the answer to this question: checking account balance. Two dogs eat a lot of damn food, and have big medical bills when they have to go see the vet.) We took Agnes to the Animal Shelter and she played with five different dogs. The fifth, a sad, sad six month-old Shepard/Lab/Chow mix, hit it off famously with her, and we brought him home the next day. A Shelter employee named him Bomber, and it stuck.

This is it, though; no more damn dogs.