It’s our first Independence Day on ‘Murrican soil since 2008 and it feels pretty great.
Firefly, the native-born dog, is celebrating the nation’s birthday with enthusiasm and teeth. Primo, the Italian, is still not completely accustomed to the ways of our people.
My brother, Rick, emailed me yesterday and said that he knew I was out of practice but that I couldn’t call it dog performance art if there were no costumes. So he fixed the pic from the last post for me.
Heh. Not many emails actually make me laugh out loud but that did it.
I really need to work on these two and their craft. I still have the bee costume, but it’s huge and I could only use it if I put both dogs in it at the same time. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be hip to that.
So it’s time to get resourceful. I’m an American, I should be able to innovate.
………
HA! Rick sent me another one. This is almost as good as putting an actual bee costume on her.
I turned 37, 38, and 39 on British soil and 40 and 41 on Italian, so turning 42 today is especially special for me because finally, a birthday in the land of my birth. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with birthdays in those foreign countries, except for one fundamental and catastrophic flaw: they don’t have Taco Bell. (Actually, the UK does have three of them but I would’ve had to take a many-hour train ride to get to any of them and I am 100% positive the food would not have tasted anything like that of the Taco Bells of my homeland.)
My birthday is not right if I can’t have Taco Bell for my private celebratory lunch and this has been the case since I was 16. Tell me I need “help” all you want, I know what I like and what I like is some gosh-damn Taco Bell crunchy beef tacos and a Nachos Supreme. So that’s what I had for lunch today and I feel pretty great about it even if it means there’s something deeply wrong with me.
Meanwhile, I’m being a spaz and checking my email every couple of minutes because I had a job interview last week that went great, and they sent me a test to do on Saturday (it’s an editing/proofreading job that I really want very badly extremely so much), and I’m waiting to hear back from them. I know it’ll probably take a few more days for them to evaluate a 15-page document with hundreds of edits (half of it was unintelligible jibberish that had to be completely rewritten and the other half was highly technical stuff with very subtle errors but plenty of them), but profound impatience is a weakness that dominates my soul so I’m horribly squirmy today. I want this job even more than I want birthday tacos every year AND THAT IS A LOT, MY FRIENDS, A LOT.
So if you have one birthday wish for me, let it be that I get this job or another one like it (I’ve applied to several in the last week). Also please wish me a bounty of tacos for the rest of my life. I really thought that my craving for those crunchy little bastards would diminish as I got older but the opposite is happening and it’s more than a little disconcerting. I mean, objectively, they aren’t that great of a food item, not sweet or salty or savory. They are little but grease and crunch, and full of truly disturbing low-quality ground “beef” product that probably directly causes colon cancer and dementia.
Tough shit, I’ll take my chances. I eat an excellent diet otherwise so I shall not question myself further.
And now some birthday dog performance art. Firefly doesn’t hold still long enough for me to get many good “ABBA” poses of her and Primo together but we’re working on it.
I’m just grateful she lowered her ears enough to allow Primo into the shot. She’s a good girl. And she does the marvelous stair-sit just like Primo, which makes me ha-ha-ha out loud every single time I see either one of them doing it. They don’t merely rest that way for a moment – it goes on for several minutes while they nearly fall asleep and I nearly black out from finding it so terrific.
If you’d told me 6 or 7 years ago that one day I’d not only be posting pictures of an Italian dog and a little girl in a pink dress, but that I would do it two posts in a row, I would have given you Extreme Side-Eye. But here we are.
I realize he is just a dog, and I have too much time on my hands to ponder certain things, but I would so dearly love to know about Primo’s life before we met him. I would pay a large amount of cash money to learn exactly how a gentleman like him ended up in a cold rainy outdoor dog shelter in Italy. You couldn’t possibly ask for a more pleasant indoor companion; he knew all his commands in Italian and quickly adjusted to them in English, he never chews anything, never poops or pees inside, never does anything bad at all except get abominably stinky sometimes. He sticks with you off-leash, he (usually) comes when called, he only barks when he’s playing, and best of all he is extremely human-friendly but in a dignified way. He doesn’t slobber and jump on you like a fool, he just approaches you with an approving air and sniffs you and likes you. He would like to enjoy your company and possibly have an adventure with you (a nice calm dignified adventure). Especially if you’re this child.
The photos in this post were all taken by my lovely sister Becki, a superior photographer and the grandmother of this little girl. She doesn’t especially like dogs but she still was touched by how sweet Primo was to Hay, how he followed her around all day and “protected” her from Firefly’s spasmodic bullcorn.
I know many dogs are also perfectly friendly with little kids and this isn’t exactly remarkable. But it still moves me. It still makes my heart twitch a little bit, just like when he welcomed Firefly into his territory and gave her his bed and his food and his humans without a single bit of protest or weirdness, because the more I realize how tender and sweet and loving this dog is, the more I ache at the thought of him in that shelter. He must have suffered so deeply there, not only because he was alone and cold and terrified but because it seems immensely obvious to me that he had a loving home before that.
His trusting personality along with his obedience make a pretty convincing case that he was in the shelter because something tragic happened to his humans, such as he had an elderly owner who died. I just don’t believe he was with irresponsible or neglectful people that dumped him there because they didn’t have enough time for him. And somehow it is more heartbreaking to think of him losing a good family than to think of him being surrendered by shitheads. At least if he had shitheads before, he was better off at the shelter where he could be adopted by people like us. Not that he’s worse off now with us than he was with the presumed wonderful previous humans; I just think about what it must have been like for him, to suddenly go from his safe, loving family into that shelter.
Or maybe it’s all a stupid train of thought, because almost every dog I’ve had as an adult came from a shelter and they have all been sweet. I’m sure many of you can say the same. Firefly, for example, is sweet and trusting (once she knows you – strangers, we’re still working on), but I know for a fact she was surrendered on purpose because the Humane Society’s files said it. Dogs are naturally trusting of humans, I think. Something just seems different about Primo, to me.
I know, I know. I think about it too much. He is a dog. They have short memories and live in the moment. It’s just that he is so damn wonderful and I’m so glad that he’s part of our lives because he makes every single person he meets smile. There’s so much value in that.
I promise the next post won’t be packed full of cuteness and hugs. I think I’m going to post pictures of our new shotguns. Aw yeah baby.
My grand-niece, who we call Hay and who turned 4 a few weeks ago, first met Primo soon after I brought him over from Italy, when we were staying at my parents’ house. My mom had Hay come stay for a few days and Primo did nothing during those days except follow Hay around and tilt his head and stare at her until she would pet him, but I guess “until” is the wrong word because it implies he stopped following and tilting and staring when she petted him, which he did not. He had decided to love her, and love means being creepy.
That was 8 months ago and they hadn’t seen each other since, but Hay’s mother tells me the kid talks about “Peemo” all the time. So when we finally had Hay over this weekend while my sister (her grandmother) was here visiting from out of state, it was love renewed. Primo resumed his gaze of admiration, and nearly ripped Firefly’s throat out when she barked at Hay. But it was a hot day so after a few hours, he was crashed out in the shady grass, which must have made Hay think he didn’t love her anymore so she picked a dandelion (I told her it was a “pretty flower” – kid can learn the truth when she’s older) and offered it to him. He sat up for a minute to sniff the bounty…
And then his head flopped to the ground again because who’s a sleepy boy? and that’s when Hay began to worry that he was never going to arise.
“Why isn’t Peemo beathing?”, she asked, and I assured her he was breathing, just not moving. She was unconvinced even though his ribcage was moving up and down, but she’s barely 4 so expectations should be low regarding her medical diagnostic talents.
She looked back and forth from him to me, looked at the dandelion, and started whispering while caressing him. “Peemo, wake up…Peemo. Peemo. Peeeeemo. Peeeeeeemowwwwwwww.”
It turns out she does possess the deductive skill to reckon that my sister and I wouldn’t be laughing and merrily taking pictures while cooing “OH MY GOD HOW CUUUUUTE” if the dog was in fact dead so she decided to accept Primo’s determination to have his nap.
Even Rupert-not-his-real-name thought this was cute. He usually doesn’t think anything is cute but even the hardest-assed hard-ass has a soft spot and I guess Rupert’s is Primo being adored by a curly-headed 4-year-old.
You’d think he was being murdered by Firefly, brutally murdered. This is why I take videos of them playing too, as evidence that he puts her on the ground as often as he likes, and in fact he taunts her into chasing him, and in further fact he loves every moment of it because who’s a good boy.
I was 12 years old in 1984 when “Born in the U.S.A.” came out so it’s understandable that even if I had been physically capable of understanding the largely-unintelligible bellowing of Bruce Springsteen on that particular recording, I would have had no idea what any of it meant conceptually. What I did think was that it was a song about ‘Murrica, and that Mr. Springsteen was quite pleased indeed with his good fortune to be born here. All my life, if asked to sing along with this song, here’s what I would’ve hollered out:
Born down inna didnesh town
The first kipabook was when a hid a grandma
Then a block a dog that’s a pee too much
Then you spend half your life just to cover him up now
BOOOORRRRRRN in the U.S.A., I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A.,
I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A., BOOOORRRRRRN in the U.S.A.!! now
God ibbadibba hogtie jam
So they put a raffle in my hand
Simma yah to a four and land
Da gonk eh the yellow maaaaan
BOOOORRRRRRN in the U.S.A., I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A.,
I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A., BOOOORRRRRRN in the U.S.A.!!
Go back home to uh find me
Had a man say someone was up to me
Went down to see my V-8 man
He said son! dutcha un uh sand now
I had another ah-kay song
Fah nah ah V-8 cawwww
Yeah still there heesa gahhhh
He had a woman and he lived inside aw
I gotta picture of him in our arms now
Down got all the pin a century
I find a gas, tires, and a lil’ finery, mama
Sin years bunna down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go
BOOOORRRRRRN in the U.S.A., I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A.,
I was BOOOORRRRNNNNNN in the U.S.A., I’m a long dong daddy in the U.S.A!!!
(and so on)
I’ve probably heard that song a thousand times in my life, the vast majority of those times being when I was 12 or 13, when I was used to not having any idea what certain singers were yabbering on about. This is probably why I worshipped George Michael, for his perfect diction and easy-to-understand simple concepts like never dancing again or having a girlfriend who wants everything.
“Born in the U.S.A.” was one of those songs that, when I heard it as a youngwe adult, I tuned out because I really goddamn hate Bruce Springsteen’s voice in that song. It makes me picture his vocal cords literally exploding and him coughing up blood and esophageal tissue.
But lately I always listen to station 100.3 in Dallas when I’m in my car because they play songs from the 80s and 90s, which brings great memories and also spares me from some of the horrific, catastrophically terrible “music” that’s popular right now. Get off my lawn, etc etc. Well today they played “Born In The U.S.A.”, and I am now 41 and have learned a foreign language so my ears are more finely attuned, and I have a great sound system in my car, and I’m so happy to be back in America that when I heard the first notes of this song I cranked it up and prepared to rock out.
And for the first time ever, I understood half the words. And…
I still couldn’t understand all the words, of course (have you listened to it lately? he doesn’t even try to make himself intelligible), but I picked up something about a dog being beaten too much, and having a rifle and killing the yellow man, and Viet Cong and Saigon and just what in the hell, man? I had no idea. My whole life, I thought this was a shit-stompin’ America, Fuck Yeah! anthem, except earnest and not tongue-in-cheek. In fact somewhere in the back of my dense, addled mind, I even thought “America, Fuck Yeah!” might have been mocking “Born in the U.S.A.”
Ashamed, I Googled it when I got home to find out if I’m the only dipshit on earth who was thus mistaken; to my relief, I’m not. Indeed it seems that one Mister President Ronald W. Reagan and many of his staff were similarly confused (if you believe Wikipedia). At least I’m in good company.
Here are the lyrics in case you haven’t already known them for 30 years and so you don’t have to click over to one of those wonky ad-spastic lyrics sites:
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the groundYou end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering upBorn in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man[chorus]
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “son don’t you understand now”Had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there he’s all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms nowDown in the shadow of penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go[chorus]
I’m a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I’m a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A.
This isn’t like thinking you know a certain lyric in a song but finding out you were wrong, this is thinking for 30 years that a very famous song is a positive, kick-ass tribute to your homeland and finding out it’s instead about childhood trauma, war, killing, death, unemployment, alienation, and despair.
The “funny” part is that I still never figured this out even after learning years ago that Bruce Springsteen is a hardcore liberal and knowing that hardcore liberals rarely write kick-ass pro-America anthems. I’m slow on the uptake sometimes or all of the time depending on who you ask.
To cleanse the palate, here is something that doesn’t pulverize long-held positive delusions and make one’s childhood feel like it got stabbed in the heart. Just good clean fun.
Got that quote from this poem, which is actually sad if you read the whole thing so don’t read the whole thing because IT’S SPRING! And it’s my first spring in ‘Murrica since 2008, the first spring in five years that I have a yard, and over the last week or so all the things in that yard have started to sprout into new green glory. I go out there earlier every morning just to see what has budded overnight, and every morning it’s more and more, and I’m discovering plants I didn’t even know we had because we moved in in early autumn.
I love it so deeply and so thoroughly that I get the same feeling, when I’m out there poking around the shrubs and inspecting the trees and the crepe myrtles, that some people get with the endorphins of good exercise or good food or whatever makes people feel that rush of joy. Those tiny little bits of bright green growth poking out all over the branches of our smallest Live Oak tree (low enough to the ground for me to be eye-level) are like actually seeing music.
But instead of taking pictures of all of that, I took pictures this morning of Primo and Firefly during their regular after-breakfast Backyard Spaz-Out Romp Time. The only bad thing in all of this is how I feel about making Primo wait this long for a playmate – he must have been so unbearably bored before Firefly, but he never pouted about that. He’s just enjoying the good times now, as dogs do.
It is amazing that dogs play like that and don’t injure each other. I’d love to know what’s in their lime-sized brains, telling them to hold back, don’t chomp down just apply teeth this much and no more. Once in a while one of them will yelp because it gets “too real”, which always makes the offending chomper cool out and even be a little submissive for a minute.
With these two particular dogs, it’s usually Firefly who gets too chompy and Primo has to correct her, and her way of apologizing is sometimes to go get a toy and bring it back to him for taunting purposes. Today she brought the red-bandana ball and he took it from her…
…then she brought the stuffed Christmas bear, dropped it near him, and sprinted away…
….then she brought a stick and dared him to come get it.
He was too tired to care.
Sorry about the snow some of you got in the last several days, by the way. Your spring is coming and you’ll probably love it even more than I’m loving mine even though you might not have delicious nachos with peppers on them. I don’t know where that came from.
We brought Firefly home from the shelter five weeks ago today and the adjustment has been painless for all of us because she and Primo are both such good dogs that there hasn’t ever been any doggie bullshit like fighting over food or attention. About two weeks ago, they started really romping in the back yard for hours every day, which is when I think they truly bonded, but whenever that bond happened, apparently it made Primo decide he was okay with Firefly humping him constantly because for the last week or so, she has been exploring all the possibilities to that fine art. The other morning I looked out the kitchen window and she was doing this for so long and he was tolerating it so patiently that I was able to get my camera from the other room, switch it on, and record the final moments of the crime.
Don’t feel sorry for Primo. This is karmic retribution for all the dogs back in Italy who he did that exact same thing to while playing in Parco Valentino. I’d seen puppies face-hump older dogs but Primo was the first adult dog I’d seen do it, and the dogs he did it to always seemed startled and confused, and apparently even in Europe such things are odd because more than a few of the Italian humans present seemed rather appalled. But also amused because come on, if you don’t think that’s funny, at least a little funny, then I don’t know what you possibly could find funny on this planet. I mean it is a dog humping another dog’s face. It’s obviously not sexual and therefore it’s not creepy or dangerous, it’s just straight-up funny.
Here’s a classic performance of the hump-craft from 2001, Sunny and Digger:
I can’t find the link now but this morning I was reading another (allegedly) serious news article which predicted that, in this (allegedly) advanced civilization that is supposed to contain a certain number of rational adults, the two main contenders for the (allegedly) most important job on Planet Earth in 2016 will likely be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. So either another Bush or another Clinton president.
That’s all. I’m just amazed we pretend to be a serious country anymore.
If those two are my choices on the ballot, I’m writing in Nachos Supreme With Extra Cheese.
That quote seems lame until you hear it sung while watching dogs sniff each other’s butts. Then it’s fantastic.
There was a viral video recently of strangers kissing for the first time, which was full of hipsters and turned out to be an ad for pants or something. I watched half of it but as free-wheelin’ as I am on social issues, it still grossed me out because who sticks their tongue in a total stranger’s mouth? That is foul. Also it was cloying and I felt like some sort of political message was being peddled (OF COURSE), and seriously, enough with the hipsters, man. Dang.
But the video did a great thing and that thing is it inspired many parody videos, of which I have just discovered this gem thanks to my friend Marne.
The scruffy little terrier is a wonder and a delight, and needs to come live with us right now.
Speaking of scruffy terriers, here’s another one I put on my Facebook page thanks to the lovely Evelyn F., but if you are anti-Facebook then I’d hate for you to miss out on this one, made by the same people who made the most perfect thing that ever happened on the internet (the “talking” dog who really wanted bacon real real bad).
That’s what Firefly does after a bath. It’s cute but also disturbing. I mean, she will wade through mud and foul river water with glee, but you put some warm soapy nonsense on her and it is GAME ON with the psychotic episode. She’s great during the bath/shower itself but after, my god. She could plow a field with the energy she puts into freaking entirely out.
Firefly was rolling around in the grass being adorable for the camera when she spotted that stick at the 8 o’clock position, and then she did a serpentine crawl over to it like she was in Marine training, and then she ate it.
And then she lay like this for an hour, presumably to ensure nobody shut the door before she was finished enjoying the beautiful day. Crafty little bugger.
