Adult Challenge: Invent a Teen Challenge That Will KILL TEENS RIGHT IN THEIR FACEs!

Posted on by beaker

Do you think the Cin­na­mon Chal­lenge or the Tide Pod chal­lenge were for sissies? You’ve come to the right place!

GROT1 Chal­lenges Inc. is a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed to thin­ning the herd. The aver­age teen is–let’s be can­did here–really stu­pid. GROT aims to raise teen IQs by remov­ing the ones dumb enough to eat laun­dry deter­gent or Car­oli­na Reapers or con­cen­trat­ed spices. The prob­lem is that they aren’t dead­ly enough.

We’ve includ­ed this free starter kit with sug­ges­tions to pur­sue GROT pol­i­cy a bit more aggres­sive­ly. Post these any­where dumb teens con­gre­gate: Tik-Tok, Insta­gram, and so on. Or print stick­ers with a chal­lenge or two and put them on their lock­ers in school.

If these inspire you to cre­ate any of your own GROT chal­lenges, post them in the com­ments. Every lit­tle bit helps!

  • Kool-Aid Chal­lenge: Scream “Oh yeeeeah­h­h­hh!” and run as fast as you can head­first into a brick wall.
  • Wood­chip­per Chal­lenge: Jump into a run­ning wood­chip­per. Extra points if you dive in feet-first.
  • Slid­ing Down the Razor Blade of Life Chal­lenge: See who can slide down the razor blade the most times while lis­ten­ing to Tom Lehrer’s “Bright Col­lege Days.”
  • Mad Max/Crash Test Dum­my Chal­lenge: Spray yel­low and black paint on your face and into your mouth, accel­er­ate your car to at least 100mph, then scream “Shiny and new!” before cross­ing lanes into a head-on with a semi.
  • Mean­er Than a Junk­yard Dog Chal­lenge: Infil­trate an under­ground dog-fight­ing ring with your friends and take turns attack­ing a pit bull.
  • Ulti­mate Taste Bud Destruc­tion Chal­lenge: Take shots of Car­oli­na Reaper pep­pers mar­i­nat­ed in a mix­ture of grain alco­hol, cap­saicin, cin­na­mon, crys­tal meth, papri­ka, nut­meg and ace­tone. The shots must be lit on fire before con­sump­tion.

All 241 Jokes in Top Secret!: The Greatest of All the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker Movies

Posted on by beaker

The ZAZ (Zuck­er, Abra­hams, and Zuck­er) movie Air­plane! land­ed in the­aters back in 1980 with the wet PLOP of an over­filled colosto­my bag, pos­ing ZAZ as the only con­tenders who ever got any­where near Mel Brooks’ bril­liant sendups of var­i­ous film gen­res (Blaz­ing Sad­dles, Young Franken­stein, High Anx­i­ety, Silent Movie, Space­balls, etc.).

The ZAZ group’s sec­ond film, Top Secret!, appar­ent­ly caught movie­go­ers off guard because it was noth­ing like Air­plane!

Air­plane!  spoofed the wild­ly pop­u­lar dis­as­ter movies of the ’70s: Air­port, The Posei­don Adven­ture, Earth­quake, Tow­er­ing Infer­no, etc.: huge ensem­ble casts, expen­sive spe­cial effects, pre­dictable-but-enjoy­able char­ac­ter arcs.

Air­plane! hijacked the genre with well-known actors who had lots of seri­ous films under their belts: Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Neil­son, Robert Stack, Ethel Merman–but had them deliv­er s0me of the fun­ni­est per­for­mances ever filmed drop-dead seri­ous­ly, with­out crack­ing a smile. But Air­plane! also spoofed a spe­cif­ic fla­vor of dis­as­ter movie: An air­lin­er that’s in seri­ous trou­ble. It’s a great for­mu­la for yank­ing at the heart­strings: Put a bunch of every­day folks trapped togeth­er in a plane and see what hap­pens when they all face pos­si­ble death.

Top Secret! is almost pre­cise­ly the oppo­site: It’s a bunch of obscure/unknown actors nav­i­gat­ing their way through a whole bunch of movie gen­res: Top Secret! spoofs WWII flicks like The Great Escape and Force 10 From Navarone; action movies cum musi­cals like a lot of Elvis Pres­ley movies; and action/spy movies like the James Bond fran­chise. Rather than an ensem­ble cast of stars, all the actors were lit­tle-known char­ac­ter actors or new­bies on their way up (such as Val Kilmer, obvi­ous­ly), with the sole excep­tions of Omar Sharif and Peter Cush­ing in brief bit parts.

YMMV. but I think Top Secret! is still the best film ZAZ ever made. I’ve always loved that they avoid­ed the Tyler Perry/Madea method of mak­ing the same film over and over, or even mak­ing the same genre of movies (i.e., dis­as­ter movies) over and over. But the main rea­son I love it is because they stuffed so many jokes and sight gags in the film you can hard­ly breathe, much less swing a dead cat, with­out being assault­ed by anoth­er dozen fun­ny things.

I recent­ly stum­bled across a Bullshit.IST arti­cle rank­ing every every sin­gle joke in Air­plane! They list­ed 178 jokes, and when I read the list I could­n’t think of any jokes in the movie they missed.

But it also raised a ques­tion for me: How many jokes are there in Top Secret! ?

It’s always seemed to me that Top Secret! had far more jokes than Air­plane!, but I did­n’t have any sol­id num­bers sup­port­ing my opin­ion.

Now I do. I present to you my list of all Top Secret! jokes, winks at gen­res, sight gags, fourth-wall breaks, and any oth­er laugh-induc­ing moments I could find. So far I’ve cat­a­loged 241 laughs as opposed to 174 for Air­plane!

I’m going to post this on Fark.com, so if you think I’ve missed any­thing or dis­agree with any of the jokes I’ve list­ed, please let me know in the Fark dis­cus­sion thread.

Now, with no fur­ther ado, here are the 241 fun­ny bits (so far)  I’ve list­ed from Top Secret!

===================================

  1. As Agent Cedric fights the Ger­man sol­dier atop the train, the Ger­man sol­dier demol­ish­es a bridge as the train pass­es under­neath.
  2. A sol­dier parks a motor­cy­cle, then ties its reins to a rail like it’s a horse.
  3. The sol­dier takes off his hel­met and the chin strap stays attached to his face.
  4. When Gen. Streck opens the telegram, the let­ter­head says “East Ger­many: Bet­ter Gov­ern­ment Through Intim­i­da­tion.”
  5. The “Find Him and Kill Him” rub­ber stamp.
  6. Major Crum­pler says Leonard Bern­stein had to can­cel his appear­ance at the cul­tur­al fes­ti­val.[1]
  7. Teenagers run­ning on the beach car­ry­ing surf­boards and shot­guns.
  8. A very brief glimpse of a dog pulling a young girl’s swim­suit down that looks like the Cop­per­tone sun­tan lotion logo.
  9. Girls on the beach throw­ing clay pigeons for the surfers—not from behind them, but in front of them and in the line of fire.

    Guns ‘n’ Ros­es ‘n’ Surfin’!
  10. A surfer shoots a beach umbrel­la between two sun­bathers.
  11. A surfer shoots down a man on a hang glid­er.
  12. A girl sits up on the beach, leav­ing holes in the sand where her breasts were.
  13. A surfer shoots down a fight­er plane.
  14. The Top 40 tracks list has three Nick Rivers songs (“Skeetin’ U.S.A,” “Skeet City,” and “Your Skeetin’ Heart”), along with sev­er­al more nonex­is­tent songs, includ­ing “Beige Tones” by Pro­col Harum, “Enough Already!” by The Rolling Stones, “Boy Is She Great” by Aretha Franklin, and “Theme From the Nose,” by Bar­bra Streisand.
  15. A surfer shoots off the top of a palm tree.
  16. Mag­a­zine cov­ers and head­lines include U.S. News & World Report (“Will Nick Rivers Take Over Amer­i­ca?”), and Guns & Bul­lets (“My Daugh­ter Is Dead, But So Is THE BURGLER”).
  17. In the crowd of surfers run­ning on the beach there’s an elder­ly woman in a blue dress.
  18. Madi­son Square Garden’s mar­quee says:

    NICK RIVERS
    ALSO
    STEVIE WONDER
    LINDA RONSTADT
    AND TIME PERMITTING
    FRANK SINATRA

  19. News­pa­per head­lines: “Rivers to Play East Ger­many Fes­ti­val,” “Sci­en­tists Pro­long Orgasm To Dou­ble Fig­ures” and “Mete­orite Lands Near Baby.”
  20. The land­scape Nick’s paint­ing from the train is blurred.
  21. Martin’s news­pa­per: The Dai­ly Oppres­sor, with a jack­boot logo.
  22. The Dai­ly Oppres­sor’s top head­line: “Die Fes­ta­latin Cul­turen Eine Big Dealen.”
  23. The Ger­man lan­guage tape phras­es: “A pen;[2] a table; the pen is on the table; there is sauer­kraut in my leder­ho­sen; I want a Schnau­zer with my Wiener Schnitzel.”
  24. Nick assures Mar­tin he’ll be a good cul­tur­al ambas­sador, and that he knows how to say, “Is your daugh­ter 18?” in Ger­man.
  25. When the sol­diers and dogs cor­ner a man on the train plat­form, one of the dogs is a Mal­tese, not a Ger­man Shep­herd.
  26. Right after the man is shot, it’s revealed that the sus­pi­cious pack­age he was car­ry­ing was just dog bis­cuits.
  27. Nick tells Von Horst he put Von Horst’s name on the Mont­gomery Ward mail­ing list, which appar­ent­ly is a dread­ful insult or some­thing.
  28. A sol­dier slams the com­part­ment door hard enough to shat­ter the glass.
  29. When the train plat­form pass­es by the win­dow it’s because the plat­form is mov­ing, not the train.
  30. When the train starts mov­ing, Mar­tin sees a tree mov­ing along with the train; a com­muter runs up behind the tree and jumps on it.
  31. The map scene shows the train trav­el­ing from France to East Ger­many and stop­ping in Berlin; then a car leav­ing the train sta­tion, stop­ping at lights while oth­er cars go by; then the map turns into a Pac-Man game.
  32. The East Ger­man Women’s Olympics team:

      1. The code phras­es for Agent Cedric and the Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor:
        Agent Cedric: “Do you know any good white bas­ket­ball play­ers?”
        Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor: “There are no good white bas­ket­ball play­ers.”
      2. Agent Cedric has to pre­tend he’s look­ing at the Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor’s prac­ti­cal jokes: A fake flower sprays his face with ink; an explod­ing cig­ar blows up in his face; and a can of whipped cream blows up in his face.
      3. Agent Cedric is ordered to meet The Torch at the Howard Johnson’s on the cor­ner of Der Fuehrer Strasse and Goebbels Platzen.
      4. Agent Cedric (bend­ing down to scoop some­thing off the side­walk): “Wait: You dropped your pho­ny dog poo.”
        Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor: “What pho­ny dog poo?”
      5. The East Ger­man nation­al anthem:

        Hail, hail, East Ger­many
        Land of fruit and grape.
        Land where you’ll regret
        Any try to escape.
        No mat­ter if you take a run­ning jump or tun­nel under the wall,
        For­get it, the guards will kill you, if the elec­tri­fied fence doesn’t first.

      6. Agent Cedric’s taxi is smashed into a cube with Cedric inside, a la the James Bond movie Goldfin­ger.
      7. Nick has din­ner at Café Gey Schlüf­fen, in the Hotel Gey Schlüf­fen.
      8. Nick sticks his gum to the under­side of a waiter’s tray.
      9. When the restau­rant pro­vides Nick with a suit and tie, they strip him down to his under­wear in a foy­er in full view of every­one else.
      10. Nick’s manager’s voice is heard, echo­ing, as Nick reads his note; it turns out he’s sit­ting next to Nick speak­ing through a mega­phone.
      11. Mar­tin orders the ’84 Rip­ple Blanc for Nick (the movie was released in 1984, so ’84 Rip­ple Blanc would be mighty nasty).
      12. More code phras­es:
        Hillary: “Who do you favor in the Vir­ginia Slims tour­na­ment?”
        Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor: “In women’s ten­nis I always root against the het­ero­sex­u­al.”
      13. Hillary gives the Blind Sou­venir Ven­dor a let­ter that has to be in New York by Tues­day, which turns out to be a Publisher’s Clear­ing­house sweep­stakes entry.
      14. The ’84 Rip­ple Blanc has a soda bot­tle cap instead of a cork.
      15. The som­me­li­er hands Nick the ’84 Rip­ple Blanc cap to smell it like it’s a cork.
      16. The ’84 Rip­ple Blanc eats through the glass.

        sssssssssss!
      17. As Nick and Hillary dance, the dance gets weird­er and weird­er.
      18. Hillary’s uncle escaped from the U.S. in a bal­loon dur­ing the Jim­my Carter pres­i­den­cy.
      19. “I know a lit­tle Ger­man; he’s sit­ting over there.”
      20. The wait­er rec­om­mends pork bel­lies mar­i­nat­ed in pig entrails or the roast swine knuck­les poached with flam­ing hog balls.
      21. Hillary’s name means, “She whose bosoms defy grav­i­ty.”
      22. Nick’s name is just some­thing his dad thought of when he was shav­ing.
      23. Hillary: “Some things are bet­ter left unsaid.”
        Nick: “Like what?”
        Hillary: “You know, some­times when you blow your nose into a tis­sue and you put it in your purse, then a lit­tle while lat­er you have to reach in there for your lip­stick or some­thing and your hand goosh­es into it and it goes all over…”
        Nick: “Okay, okay; you’re right: Some things are bet­ter left unsaid.”
      24. Var­i­ous shots of the orches­tra look­ing con­fused and play­ing a mile a minute while Nick sings “Tut­ti Frut­ti.”

        The Dev­il Went Where?
      25. Three elec­tric gui­tar play­ers and two sax­o­phone play­ers sud­den­ly appear in front of the orches­tra.
      26. The kitchen staff, includ­ing a chef with a meat cleaver and a dead chick­en, danc­ing to the music.
      27. The piano play­er puts his foot on the keys like Jer­ry Lee Lewis and the bass vio­la play­er plays on his back with his feet in the air.
      28. At the end of “Tut­ti Frut­ti,” an elder­ly gui­tarist wear­ing a red ban­dana smash­es his gui­tar and amp.

        Take that, The Man!
      29. “Your hog balls, sir.”
      30. Agent Cedric shows up in Hillary’s hotel room; he’s trapped inside the smashed taxi with his face stick­ing out of one end and his feet stick­ing out of the oth­er.

        Got any aspirin?
      31. Agent Cedric starts cough­ing; Hillary opens a can of Hawai­ian Punch and pours it into the cube.
      32. Agent Cedric tries get­ting into the glove com­part­ment of the smashed taxi; he honks the horn and sets off the wipers and wind­shield sprayer, both of which hit him in the face.
      33. Hillary leans over Agent Cedric with her breasts push­ing into his face; the taxi’s anten­na rais­es and the horn honks.
      34. The male bal­let dancers have huge pro­trud­ing bulges in their tights.

        Is that a foot­ball in your tights or are you just hap­py to see me?
      35. A man in Nick’s box seat hands out sodas and hot dogs.
      36. The male bal­let dancers lift the female dancers, who stand on the men’s huge pro­trud­ing bulges.
      37. The male bal­let dancers stand in two rows so the female dancers can run along their giant pro­trud­ing bulges.
      38. Nick’s hand­print dis­torts the policeman’s face even after the police­man push­es him away.
      39. When the police­man falls into the audi­ence, a male bal­let dancer miss­es a cue; a girl sails over his head with a scream and loud­ly crash­es off­screen.
      40. In the audi­ence a man gets his face stuck in between a woman’s thighs.
      41. Jan­i­tor clos­et with a jan­i­tor stand­ing inside.
      42. The Prop Room is full of pro­pellers.
      43. When Hillary looks down from the bal­cony at the traf­fic below, it’s minia­ture cars with mice caus­ing traf­fic acci­dents.
      44. When police try to get into the Prop Room a pro­peller is block­ing the door.
      45. Nick scratch­es the 20th hash mark on his cell wall and tells Mar­tin he’s been locked up for 20 min­utes.
      46. Mar­tin: “I’ve tried every­thing: The embassy, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment; the con­sulate; I even talked to the UN ambas­sador. It’s no use: I just can’t bring my wife to orgasm.”
      47. Nick gives Mar­tin a box labeled “Anal Intrud­er,” which con­tains a small jack­ham­mer and sev­er­al attach­ments.

        Com­e­dy is not pret­ty.
      48. Nick’s cell has a food proces­sor on a shelf above the sink.
      49. The Priest at Nick’s exe­cu­tion: “In nomine Patris, et Fil­ii, et Spir­i­tus Sanc­ti, Omni Gal­lia divisa est in tres partes, Cor­pus delec­ti, Quid pro quo, Veni, vidi, vici, Nolo con­tendere, Habeas cor­pus, Rick Dureus, Ipso fac­to, Pro for­ma, Pari-pas­su, Hic, hec, hoc, Huius, huius, huius, E pluribus unum, Ouriyay oin­gay ootay etgay ied­fray in the air­chay, Tem­pus fugit, Caveat emp­tor, Coitus inter­rup­tus, Mitzi Gaynor ad nau­se­am, Amen.”[3]
      50. The guards exe­cute the Priest, not Nick.
      51. Gen. Streck (talk­ing on the phone): “What is the con­di­tion of Sergeant Kruger? Yes, I see. Very well, let me know if there is any change in his con­di­tion.” (Hangs up.) “He’s dead.”
      52. Nick’s tor­tur­ers: Bruno, who is almost blind and has to oper­ate whol­ly by touch; Klaus, a moron who knows only what he reads in the New York Post.
      53. Klaus is hold­ing a copy of the New York Post with a head­line read­ing “Mani­ac Stalks Olivia New­ton John.”
      54. Gen. Streck tells Nick that Mar­tin did­n’t know Ger­many has 220-volt cur­rent instead of 110-volt cur­rent; Von Horst holds up the dam­aged, smok­ing Anal Intrud­er jack­ham­mer.
      55. Gen. Streck: “He was found in his hotel room impaled on a large elec­tri­cal device. Our sur­geons did what they could, but it took them two hours just to get the smile off his face.”
      56. When Nick spits at Gen. Streck there’s a shot of the spit fly­ing clear across the room.
      57. Nick dreams he’s back in high school and has missed his final chem­istry exam; he runs away, say­ing, “Oh no—I’m back in school!” When he wakes up to find Bruno and Klaus are whip­ping him, he smiles and says, “Thank God!”
      58. Gen. Streck is read­ing Her­man Goering’s Work­out Book.

        I don’t judge.
      59. Von Horst: He won’t break. They’ve tried every­thing. Do you want me to bring out the LeRoy Neiman paint­ings?”
        Gen. Streck: “No; we can­not risk vio­lat­ing the Gene­va Con­ven­tion.”
      60. Gen. Streck’s feet stay propped up on his desk when he stands up.
      61. As Bruno and Klaus drag Nick down a hall­way, Bruno bumps into the wall and wan­ders away.
      62. When Nick tries to escape his cell, he finds a crow­bar sit­ting on the toi­let.
      63. Nick crawls into a vent, then slides back into the cell from a dif­fer­ent vent.
      64. Nick crawls into a third vent, then finds him­self in the med­i­cine cab­i­net, then the toi­let. He final­ly slides out of a vent in Dr. Flammond’s lab.
      65. Dr. Flam­mond: “A year ago, I was close to per­fect­ing the first mag­net­ic desalin­iza­tion process so rev­o­lu­tion­ary, it was capa­ble of remov­ing the salt from over 500 mil­lion gal­lons of sea­wa­ter a day. Do you real­ize what that could mean to the starv­ing nations of the earth?”
        Nick: “Wow! They’d have enough salt to last for­ev­er!”
      66. Dr. Flam­mond: “Then one night, the secret police broke into my house, tore me from my fam­i­ly, ran­sacked my lab­o­ra­to­ry, and brought me to this dun­geon.”
        Nick: “That sucks!”
      67. Dr. Flam­mond: “If they find out you’ve seen this your life will be worth less than a truck­load of dead rats in a tam­pon fac­to­ry!”[4]
      68. When Von Horst is try­ing to call the fir­ing squad that’s about to shoot Nick, an old woman using a walk­er very slow­ly is approach­ing the ring­ing phone,  spoof­ing a pop­u­lar com­mer­cial at the time.

        I’m com­ing! I’m com­ing!
      69. The audi­ence at Nick’s con­cert holds up signs read­ing “Vel­come Neek.”
      70. As Nick sings and approach­es the edge of the stage, his micro­phone stand gets longer and longer.
      71. Nick throws his under­wear at the girls in the audi­ence (as opposed to women throw­ing their under­wear at Elvis or Tom Jones).
      72. Nick pulls a girl out of the audi­ence and sings to her; she faints and Nick lets her crash down on the stage.
      73. Dyan Can­non is lick­ing her lips at Nick from the audi­ence.
      74. Nick’s back­up singers have to restrain him from com­mit­ting sui­cide by hang­ing him­self, stick­ing his head in an oven, and lying down on a rail­road track.
      75. Hillary res­cues Nick by using a sus­pend­ed gui­tar to lift him off the stage.
      76. Nick yells at a bunch of parked bicy­cles to scare them away, as if they were hors­es in a West­ern.
      77. Streck’s car­ri­er pigeon has a leather fly­ing hel­met and a tiny brief­case to hold its mes­sages.
      78. Hillary tells Nick she once taught a course on Black His­to­ry in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Blaupunkt.
      79. Hillary’s pic­ture of her father shows him water­ski­ing with a woman on his shoul­ders.
      80. When Hillary and Nick are kiss­ing in the park there’s a large stat­ue of a pigeon behind them, which gets peed and pooped on by peo­ple who fly in.
      81. The pigeon stat­ue poops a huge poop too.
      82. The entire Swedish book­store scene is filmed back­wards.
      83. The Swedish book­store own­er’s left eye stays huge after he stops look­ing through the mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

        What has been seen can­not be unseen.
      84. The Swedish book­store own­er’s glass­es also have a huge left lens.
      85. Hillary tells Nick it’s okay if he couldn’t get it up, but it turns out she’s read­ing a book to him.
      86. Hillary tells Nick her sto­ry about being strand­ed on an island with Nigel, spoof­ing Blue Lagoon.
      87. Nigel appears to be spear­ing a fish, then throws bananas to Hillary.
      88. Hillary takes oranges off a tree and puts them in a bam­boo shop­ping cart.
      89. Hillary and Nigel’s house was held togeth­er with dried sea­weed and snot.
      90. Their house has a remote-con­trolled garage door and a mail­box in the front yard.
      91. Their trop­i­cal island is affect­ed by San­ta Ana Winds?
      92. A long, slow pan of Hillary and Nigel kiss­ing on the beach shows many extra hands, feet, and oth­er body parts.
      93. Nick became an orphan when he got sep­a­rat­ed from his moth­er at a depart­ment store and she nev­er came back for him.
      94. The store had a semi-annu­al Lincoln’s birth­day sale.
      95. And a pre-teen mater­ni­ty depart­ment.
      96. When Nick plays the com­mer­cial jin­gle he’s just wav­ing his hand around in front of the gui­tar.
      97. Nick’s Macy’s song:

        Are you lone­some tonight?
        Is your kitchen a sight?
        Is your wardrobe all run­down and bare?
        Is your lip­stick all smeared?
        Are your stock­ings not sheer?
        Do they make your legs show all your hair?
        Do the tears on your pil­low roll down as you turn?
        Do they short out the blan­ket and make the sheets burn?
        Is your heart filled with pain?
        Will you come back again?
        Shop at Macy’s and love me tonight!

      98. Nick and Hillary embrace and smash the gui­tar between them.

        Pag­ing Pete Town­shend!
      99. Nick and Hillary, kiss­ing and grop­ing each oth­er, roll left to right across the floor past a fire­place, then past anoth­er iden­ti­cal fire­place.
      100. Nick and Hillary are hid­ing under a pile of hay in a horse-drawn wag­on while we hear some­one singing part of an opera in Ger­man. As the wag­on comes clos­er we see the horse, not the wag­on dri­ver, is doing the singing.
      101. When the horse starts cough­ing, Hillary asks the dri­ver if the horse is all right. The wag­on dri­ver says, “He caught a cold the oth­er day, and he’s just a lit­tle hoarse.” (rimshot!)
      102. As the wag­on leaves the horse starts singing “A Hard Day’s Night.”
      103. Nick: “Is this the pota­to farm?”
        Albert Pota­to: “Yes; I am Albert Pota­to.”
      104. Albert Pota­to opens the peep­hole at the top of the door, then clos­es the peep­hole; when he opens the door, he’s about 4 feet tall.
      105. As we pan over the French Resis­tance, most are point­ing guns at Nick and Hillary, but one is point­ing a can­non; anoth­er has a leather vest with numer­ous throw­ing knives and the next is wear­ing a vest loaded with sil­ver­ware (he’s bran­dish­ing a soup ladle).
      106. When Nigel appears, he’s wear­ing a loin­cloth and a cut­tle­fish neck­lace, and he’s glis­ten­ing with oil.
      107. Hillary grabs a tape mea­sure and mea­sures Nigel’s bicep (he help­ful­ly flex­es it); then as Nigel talks to Nick, she stands up star­ing in awe at the mea­sur­ing tape, hav­ing clear­ly just mea­sured his tal­ly­whack­er.

        Jack­pot!
      108. The French Resis­tance mem­bers’ names: Du Quois, Cheva­lier, Mon­tage, Detente, Avant-Garde, Déjà Vu, Crois­sant, Souf­flé, Escar­got, Latrine, and Choco­late Mousse.[5]
      109. When Déjà Vu is intro­duced, he says, “Have we not met before, mon­sieur?”[6]
      110. Choco­late Mousse is smok­ing a cig­ar; when he’s intro­duced he eats the cig­ar like it’s a pret­zel stick.
      111. As Nigel orders the men to pre­pare for action they excit­ed­ly toss around irrel­e­vant French phras­es (“Arc de Tri­omph!”, “Cor­don Bleu!”, “Zut alors!”, etc.)
      112. Hillary: “Nick, I want to explain…”
        Nick: “What’s there to explain?”
        Hillary: “But I just want to say that…”
        Nick: “Look, Hillary: I’m not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restau­rant who turned out to be the daugh­ter of a kid­napped sci­en­tist, only to lose her to her child­hood lover who she last saw on a desert­ed island, who then turned out fif­teen years lat­er to be the leader of the French under­ground.”
        Hillary: “I know. It all sounds like some bad movie.”
        (They both freeze, then very slow­ly turn to look at the cam­era).

        The hor­ror, the hor­ror.
      113. Nigel: “Come, my dar­ling. Let me show you what I’ve done with the fall­out shel­ter.”
      114. Choco­late Mousse uses a pow­der horn to pour pow­der in the bar­rel of a machine gun.
      115. Déjà Vu is pack­ing a knap­sack with a bot­tle of Head & Shoul­ders sham­poo, Pep­to Bis­mol, a hair dry­er, and a base­ball and base­ball glove.
      116. Déjà Vu: “Do not take it so hard, Nick. Life is filled with its lit­tle mis­eries. Each of us, in his own way, must learn to deal with adver­si­ty in a mature and adult fash­ion.” He sneezes into his hands, looks at his hands, then screams and leaps through a win­dow.
      117. Nick (pick­ing up a bot­tle from the table): “Mind if I have a swig of this?”
        Choco­late Mousse: “Go right ahead!”
        Nick (takes a swig, then chokes and spits it out): “What the hell is this stuff?”
        Choco­late Mousse: “Gaso­line!” (He laughs and drinks from the bot­tle).
      118. As Hillary and Nigel put their clothes back on in the fall­out shel­ter, Nigel describes how he was picked up by a freight ship and the sailors sex­u­al­ly abused him.
        Hillary: “It must have been awful!” (she embraces Nigel).
        Nigel smirks at the cam­era.
      119. Latrine, wound­ed, stag­gers in: “We nev­er had a chance—it was a slaugh­ter!” (the run­ning gag here is that Latrine keeps stag­ger­ing in wound­ed, and some­one yells, “Latrine!”)
        Déjà Vu: “We must put a stop to these after­noon foot­ball games!”
      120. They scat­ter as the Ger­man army attacks the farm­house. Three men are play­ing foos­ball; one stops to update the score before they scat­ter.
      121. The men run to the right, then to the left, then stop to tap dance.
      122. Du Quois backs up against a wall next to a win­dow; Déjà Vu backs up against the win­dow until Du Quois grabs him and pulls him away.
      123. Nigel looks out a six-paned win­dow, then breaks the sin­gle unbro­ken pane before shoot­ing.
      124. Déjà Vu bends his pistol’s bar­rel try­ing to break a win­dow­pane.
      125. Choco­late Mousse shoots a can­non while hold­ing it under one arm.
      126. Albert Pota­to is too short to see out the win­dow, so he jumps up repeat­ed­ly to shoot.
      127. Déjà Vu takes a sledge­ham­mer to the win­dow; the ham­mer breaks into pieces.
      128. Nick and a Ger­man sol­dier play Tic-Tac-Toe by shoot­ing X’s and O’s in win­dow panes.
      129. A grenade lands in the mid­dle of the floor; as Du Quois jumps on it, explo­sions throw four oth­er men out win­dows and into the ceil­ing.[7]
      130. Ger­man sol­diers crash through the door and start fight­ing the Resis­tance hand-to-hand. We cut to Choco­late Mousse shoot­ing errat­i­cal­ly at them with a machine gun, then cut back to the Resis­tance stand­ing next to a pile of dead Ger­man sol­diers.
        Du Quois: “Nice shoot­ing!”
      131. When the Resis­tance meets in Der Piz­za Haus, Déjà Vu and Du Quois hang their guns on a coat stand.
      132. Choco­late Mousse is hold­ing his Tom­my Gun at the table.
      133. Der Piz­za Haus has a Hitler clock.
      134. Du Quois: “Well, Mon­sieur Rivers. It seems that you have become, how do you say, indis­pens­able?”
        Nick: “Indis­pens­able.”
        Du Quois: “That’s what I thought.”
      135. Peo­ple in the back­ground pick up slices from a piz­za, stretch­ing cheese all over the room with­out break­ing free of the piz­za.
      136. Latrine (as usu­al, stag­ger­ing in and wound­ed) slams Streck’s dead car­ri­er pigeon down on the table: “A trai­tor in our midst!”
        Déjà Vu (look­ing at the pigeon): “Well done, Latrine! I see you have dealt with him appro­pri­ate­ly!”
        Du Quois (open­ing the bird’s tiny brief­case): “Not the bird, you fool; this is a car­ri­er pigeon on its way to Ger­man head­quar­ters!”
      137. Nick (when two teenagers ask him if he’s Nick Rivers): “You must have me con­fused with some­one else. I’m Mel Torme.”
        Du Quois: “That was close!”
      138. Nigel: “How do we know he’s not Mel Torme?”
      139. Nick spins on a throw rug until it drills a hole in the floor, then re-enters by the front door.
      140. Déjà Vu knocks a milk­shake off the table and into Du Quois’ lap.
      141. Nick runs up a wall and does a back­flip.
      142. As Nick sings “Straight­en it out!” the bar­tender takes off his toupee, spins it, and puts it back on.
      143. Two guys stand­ing on a table are spin­ning their girl­friends around like they’re dead cats.
      144. Albert Pota­to (whose head’s down at the lev­el of the table): “This is not Mel Torme.”
      145. As the Resis­tance jumps out of the plane there’s a U‑Haul sign paint­ed on the side.
      146. Déjà Vu’s hold­ing a Duty Free bag as he jumps.
      147. Hillary (as Nick drifts by her on his para­chute): “Oh Nick!”
        Nick (rais­ing back up): “Yes?”
      148. Hillary (still para­chut­ing) turns away from Nick; Nick (also still para­chut­ing) approach­es her from behind and touch­es her shoul­der.
      149. As Nick and Hillary (both still para­chut­ing) embrace and kiss, a blaz­ing roman­tic fire­place appears behind them on its own para­chute.
      150. As the Resis­tance scouts the prison, a crick­et gets loud­er and loud­er until Choco­late Mousse smash­es it with a giant mal­let.
      151. As Nigel looks at the prison with binoc­u­lars, a herd of cows step over the edge of the lens­es and appear to be walk­ing inside the binoc­u­lars.
      152. As Nigel draws the plan with a stick in the dirt, minia­ture trees, cows, sol­diers, a fence, the prison, and a mod­el train appear.
      153. Nigel insists upon wear­ing the back half of the cow cos­tume; Du Quois says, “Fine; be an ass­hole!”
      154. The cow cos­tume is a real cow, wear­ing boots, with spots paint­ed on it.
      155. Du Quois moos from inside the cos­tume with a French accent: “Mieu!”
      156. A sol­dier whips the cow and Nigel yells, “Ouch!”
      157. Nigel groans with plea­sure as a calf suck­les the cow cos­tume’s udders.
      158. Leaves rus­tle and crunch as Nick, Choco­late Mouse, and Déjà Vu walk through the woods; Nick shush­es Choco­late Mousse and Déjà Vu and they’re all abrupt­ly silent.
      159. When Déjà Vu checks the time, his watch is as big as a pie plate.
      160. The cow puts on a stetho­scope to pick the lock on the gen­er­a­tor shed.
      161. The cow takes a drag on a cig­a­rette.
      162. The switch to cut the pow­er for the elec­tric fence is labeled Das Fen­cen Switchen.
      163. As Nick crawls under the fence he sees a sol­dier stand­ing in the way, but it’s just a pair of emp­ty boots.
      164. Choco­late Mousse throws a grap­pling hook straight up; when it starts to fall, Choco­late Mousse, Nick, and Déjà Vu scat­ter, scream­ing.
      165. When Choco­late Mousse throws the grap­pling hook again, it snags Déjà Vu’s shirt and flings him up the side of the prison.
      166. As Déjà Vu clings to the edge of the wall, Nick and Choco­late Mousse climb up and over and Déjà Vu, step­ping on his head and hands.
      167. Choco­late Mousse punch­es a sol­dier, who goes over the wall and shat­ters like pot­tery when he hits the ground.
      168. A guard on the wall walks by, clue­less, as Déjà Vu and anoth­er guard fight nois­i­ly in the court­yard below.
      169. Déjà Vu and the guard con­tin­ue fight­ing; Choco­late Mousse tag-teams Déjà Vu and steps into a wrestling ring made with barbed wire.
      170. Choco­late Mousse takes the guard out with WWE moves, yelling, “Vive le France!”
      171. As Déjà Vu and Choco­late Mousse, dis­guised as guards, goos­es­tep down the hall, their boots fly off.
      172. A bull notices Nigel and Du Quois walk­ing by in the cow cos­tume and pur­sues them while we hear the theme from Jaws.
      173. The bull mounts the cow cos­tume and Nigel screams.
      174. Nick (open­ing the cell door): “Dr. Flam­mond! Come on; we’re tak­ing you out of here.”
        Dr. Flam­mond (pil­ing dirt on the floor with a spoon): “How iron­ic; anoth­er day and I would have com­plet­ed my tun­nel.”
        Nick (look­ing under the bed and see­ing the New Jer­sey tun­nel): “Nice work!”
      175. Hillary takes a hand­ker­chief from Nigel’s coat and sneezes out a pigeon; five more pigeons come out of the coat.
      176. Nigel’s stiff bow­legged walk after being mount­ed by the bull.
      177. When Nigel picks up a rifle lean­ing against a tree, the tree falls over.
      178. Nigel: “I was exposed to the works great thinkers: Karl Marx, L. Ron Hub­bard, Fred­die Lak­er.”
      179. Gen. Streck’s giant phone.
      180. A guard waves mil­i­tary vehi­cles along as they race by; when the cam­era pulls back it’s just a few vehi­cles dri­ving in a cir­cle.
      181. Choco­late Mousse: “Where’s the truck?”
        Nick: “Where’s Hillary?”
        Déjà Vu: “I’m hun­gry!”
      182. Du Quois: “Nigel made me go back to the meter shed; ordered me to set off the alarm.”
        Déjà Vu: “And what does he want us to do now?”
        Du Quois: “Noth­ing, you numb­skull; Nigel’s a trai­tor!”
      183. As Ger­man sol­diers approach in a truck, Choco­late Mousse holds out his hand and some­one off­screen hands him a machine gun like giv­ing a sur­geon a scalpel.
      184. The truck skids out of con­trol as the dri­ver slams on the brakes. As it comes to a stop, a Ford Pin­to sud­den­ly appears in front of it. The truck­’s bumper bare­ly touch­es the Pin­to’s bumper and the Pin­to explodes.[8]
      185. Du Quois yells, “Latrine!” as Latrine yet again) stag­gers into the scene, wound­ed, and col­laps­es on Du Quois, lean­ing against a log. Then Du Quois pops back up from behnd the log.
      186. Du Quois: “Nick, whether you make it back or not, that plane must take off with Flam­mond at 1800 hours.”
        Déjà Vu: “That’s why we rec­om­mend you be there at least 45 min­utes before depar­ture, espe­cial­ly at this time of year.”
      187. Déjà Vu kiss­es Nick on both cheeks as they depart, leav­ing large lip­stick prints on Nick’s cheeks.
      188. Déjà Vu (as he and Du Quois, Dr. Flam­mond, and Choco­late Mousse leave in the still-burn­ing truck, the truck that just explod­ed the Pin­to): “You’ve got to hand it to the Ger­mans: They make great cars!”
      189. Nick jumps a motor­cy­cle over a barbed-wire fence, a nod to Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.
      190. Nick winks at the cam­era, then accel­er­ates as the motor­cy­cle emits the Roadrunner’s “Meep meep!”
      191. Nick jumps the cycle over six bus­es.
      192. Nick stands on the motor­cy­cle like it’s a horse as he jumps on the truck con­tain­ing Nigel and Hillary.
      193. As Nick and Nigel bat­tle over Nigel’s pis­tol and the steer­ing wheel, we also see their hands fight­ing for con­trol of the truck’s stereo.

        Dri­ver picks the music; shot­gun shuts their cake­hole!
      194. Nick and Nigel fall off the truck, land­ing in a riv­er. They punch each oth­er, then Nigel hits Nick with a barstool. Nick lands on a table and kicks Nigel as we see they’re in a West­ern-style saloon at the bot­tom of the riv­er.
      195. Nigel crash­es into the bar and grabs a pis­tol; the bar­tender hits him with a bot­tle as he shoots at Nick (remem­ber this is all under­wa­ter!), who leaps out of the way as a chan­de­lier crash­es to the riv­er bed.
      196. A group of cow­boys play­ing pok­er duck under the table; one of them leaves his hat still float­ing where his head was a moment before.
      197. Nick does a Muhammed Ali-style rope-a-dope, punch­es Nigel, then grabs Nigel’s nip­ples and throws him through the saloon’s win­dow, all as the Bonan­za theme plays.

        Pur­ple nur­ple!
      198. A girl lying on the bar gur­gles “Good-bye” as Nick dusts off his hat and leaves through the (under­wa­ter!) saloon’s swing­ing doors (how do you dust off a hat when you and the hat are both under­wa­ter?).
      199. Hillary zooms down the road on Nick’s motor­cy­cle, her hair fly­ing out behind her. When she stops to look around for Nick, her hair is still point­ing behind her.
      200. When Nick walks out of the riv­er his hair and clothes are dry.
      201. When Hillary sees Nick, her breasts glow like E.T.s mag­ic fin­ger; they even has the same sound effect.
      202. As the Resis­tance waits to board their plane, Déjà Vu and Choco­late Mousse use the RAF sym­bol on the side of the plane to play darts.
      203. As Hillary jumps off the motor­cy­cle to embrace her father, she push­es Nick and the motor­cy­cle over with a loud crash.
      204. Hillary: “For as long as a sin­gle man is forced to cow­er under the iron fist of oppres­sion, as long as a child cries out in the night, or an actor can be elect­ed pres­i­dent,[9] we must con­tin­ue the strug­gle.”
      205. Déjà Vu: “Go with Nick. Don’t wor­ry about us. We will hear his music on the Voice of Amer­i­ca. We will hear it in the hearts of the peo­ple and in ele­va­tors every­where.”
      206. Hillary: “Things change. Peo­ple change; hair styles change. Inter­est rates fluc­tu­ate.”
      207. As Nick and Hillary kiss, their tongues grope around in each other’s cheeks.
      208. As Hillary hugs every­one and says good­bye, she hugs Scare­crow from The Wiz­ard of Oz.
      209. Jokes in the cred­its:
        • Focus Puller
        • Clap­per Loader
        • Focus Loader
        • Clap­per Puller
        • Puller Clap­per
        • Clap­per Clap­per
        • Flip­per Flap­per
        • Hab­er­dash­er
        • Hey Did­dle Did­dle: The Cat and the Fid­dle
        • Foreez: A Jol­ly Good Fel­low
        • This Space For Rent

Footnotes:

[1] Bernstein’s par­ents were Jew­ish and fled Rus­sia before he was born, so the chances that Bern­stein would per­form in East Ger­many, to put it mild­ly, are exceed­ing­ly slim.

[2] The Ger­man for the terms doesn’t seem to match the Eng­lish trans­la­tions; I sus­pect the Ger­man in the entire film is full of jokes but I don’t speak Ger­man. If you do, let me know what it says!

[3] Latin trans­la­tions:

  • “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spir­it.”
  • “All Gaul is divid­ed into three parts” (the first sen­tence of Julius Caesar’s book “Cae­sar’s Com­men­taries: On The Gal­lic War and On The Civ­il War”).
  • “Body of the crime” (a legal term refer­ring to con­crete evi­dence of a crime, such as a dead body).
  • “Some­thing for some­thing” (col­lo­qui­al­ly “I’ll do you a favor if you do me a favor in return”).
  • “I came, I saw, I con­quered.” Also from Cae­sar, which makes me won­der why they didn’t include “Et tu, Brute?”
  • “No con­test” (mean­ing a defen­dant waives the right to a tri­al with­out plead­ing inno­cent or guilty).
  • “You have the body” (mean­ing an arrest­ed per­son must be brought to a judge as soon as pos­si­ble either to be released or for­mal­ly charged to remain locked up).
  • I have no idea who or what “Rick Dureus” refers to.
  • “By the very fact” (mean­ing some­thing is the inevitable result of some­thing pre­vi­ous).
  • “For the sake of form” (some­thing done as a for­mal­i­ty).
  • “With equal step” (mean­ing “equal foot­ing” in finan­cial terms).
  • “Here, this, this” (the third and fourth con­ju­ga­tion of verbs in Latin).
  • “Of this one, of that one” (more Latin con­ju­ga­tions).
  • “Out of many, one” (refer­ring to the US when it’s print­ed on mon­ey);
  • Pig Latin: “You’re going to get fried in the chair.”
  • “Time flies.”
  • “Buy­er beware.”
  • “Sex, inter­rupt­ed.”
  • Mitzi Gaynor. Duh.
  • “To nau­sea,” aka “I’m SICK of this!”

[4] How much is a truck­load of dead rats in a tam­pon fac­to­ry worth, any­way?

[5]  Who is, of course, black.

[6] Déjà Vu is played by Jim Carter, who also plays Car­son on Down­ton Abby.

[7] I’ve seen this movie at least 30 times and I still don’t get this.

[8] When Top Secret! was released, Ford was recall­ing Pin­tos because some of them explod­ed after rear-end col­li­sions.

[9] When Top Secret! was released, Ronald Rea­gan (a for­mer movie star) was Pres­i­dent.

My Dad’s Hands

Posted on by beaker

I just bought a used gui­tar, so I wan­na talk about hands.

I’ve always had big hands and even big­ger feet. Today I look like an aver­age-sized guy with big hands and feet, but when I was a kid? Oh boy.

From left to right: First Sis­ter, Thing 1, Thing 2, and holy crap I look creepy!

I have a pic­ture of my sis­ters and me tak­en when I was 4 years old. I didn’t look like a kid with big hands and feet; I looked like a kid wear­ing kayaks on his feet and wear­ing a pair of those giant foam hands they use to play Slap­jack on The Tonight Show With Jim­my Fal­lon.

The used gui­tar I just bought is a Gib­son Les Paul. I’ve always want­ed one, but they’re hel­la expen­sive. Best Half spot­ted a guy on Craigslist sell­ing a Les Paul, though—he was sell­ing a lot of equip­ment, includ­ing the Les Paul, for which he want­ed only $350.

A Les Paul these days can run $2,500 or more, espe­cial­ly if you get chrome PAF Hum­buck­er cov­ers, moth­er-of-pearl fin­ger­board inlays, the sun­burst fin­ish and some of the oth­er good­ies on the one I just bought.

I drove down to Cordes Junc­tion to take a look at the gui­tar. The sell­er was a groovy old­er guy who looked like a cross between Gan­dalf and Jer­ry Gar­cia: gray and white shoul­der-length hair, ZZ-Top beard, tie-dyed T‑shirt, the works. We could have been long-lost twins.

The Les Paul was in beau­ti­ful shape; almost mint con­di­tion. Gan­dar­cia said he had a bad shoul­der and the Les Paul was just too heavy, and he had arthri­tis so he couldn’t play as much as he used to any­way.

He didn’t care about get­ting his mon­ey back as much as he cared about find­ing a good home for the gui­tar. I liked him and I liked the Les Paul, so I bought it.

(He also had a 100-watt Mar­shall amp he want­ed to place in a good home, but I like being mar­ried so I regret­ful­ly declined.)

Click to embiggenate!

Back in 1982, when I was 20, I saved up and bought a Gib­son Invad­er, which was a bud­get Les Paul: It didn’t have the sculpt­ed maple top, the moth­er-of-pearl fin­ger­board inlays, and oth­er pricey options.

But it was still a damn fine gui­tar, and since it was less expen­sive it was like hav­ing a project car: I didn’t mind hot-rod­ding it up. I replaced the bridge pick­up with a Sey­mour Dun­can mod­el I found at a pawn shop; drilled a hole between the knobs and added a phase switch­er; yanked out the stock pots and installed but­ter-smooth CDS (or was it Alpha-Con­trol? Don’t remem­ber) pots with hand­made caps so crys­talline they could make a brave man weep, lock­ing strap buttons—Eddie Van Halen may have coined the term Franken­Strat, but I think I could legit­i­mate­ly claim the name Mutant Invad­er.

My friend Rob, who has a habit of nam­ing things I own, named the gui­tar Sledge. And I played Sledge, to use a tired old cliché, until my fin­gers bled.

Not long after I adopt­ed Sledge, I moved in with my friend George. George is an amaz­ing drum­mer, and our liv­ing room was jammed with both our stere­os, my gui­tar and amp and oth­er accou­trements, and George’s drum kit, which looked like the moth­er ship from Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, except it was big­ger and more expen­sive.

Ama­teurs.

And we had a lot of friends who would come hang out: the afore­men­tioned Rob, Tori, Dave, Daniel—who gave me an Elec­tro-Har­monix Gold­en Throat talk box: DAMN Daniel!—Kim, John, and I’m sure there were oth­ers.

And they were all excel­lent musi­cians, and we would jam, which means they would jam, because I was still learn­ing to play, so I stum­bled around in the back­ground on gui­tar, sound­ing like Lin­da McCart­ney sort of play­ing key­boards and kind of singing along with Paul, who was too kind to tell her the sound guy had her micro­phone turned off.

Harsh truth: I loved play­ing gui­tar, but I was caught in that frus­trat­ing trap of hav­ing juu­u­ust enough tal­ent to under­stand what real­ly good gui­tarists were doing, but know­ing I’d nev­er ever be that good.

That was okay. I didn’t need to make a liv­ing play­ing gui­tar, and I was lucky enough to spend time with some real­ly good musi­cians and enjoy both­er­ing the neigh­bors with them.

Like most gui­tar guys, I accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of gear: stomp box­es (although like most gui­tar guys, I had a half-dozen or so favorite stomp box­es, but unlike most gui­tar guys, thanks to my size-13 feet, they had to be spread out in a 10-foot long line of cables so I could stomp on just one of them at a time), a real live Fend­er tube amp that tried very sin­cere­ly to kill me, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry, and a pink pais­ley Tele­cast­er that yes, looked just like the one Prince played, although I hadn’t heard of him yet.

I mutat­ed the Tele­cast­er even more; pri­mar­i­ly with EMG active pick­ups that were encased in black ceram­ic blocks and looked unbear­ably cool, plus oth­er stuff I won’t bore you with, before I final­ly admit­ted I just didn’t like the Tele­cast­er.

Oh, it looked cool and it sound­ed good when I played it, but it sound­ed GREAT when any of my real musi­cian friends played it. Also, Rob nev­er named it any­thing, even though it looked like it was paint­ed with Pep­to Bis­mol. What was he sup­posed to name it—Dr. Pep and the Toe Biz Maulers? I’m sor­ry, but—wait; that’s actu­al­ly an awe­some name for a band, much less a gui­tar. But I think he knew it wasn’t going to work out for us and he didn’t want to make the breakup any more painful.

It was the neck. A lot of Fend­er gui­tars have one-piece rock maple necks, and the Tele­cast­er was one of them. But it was too skin­ny, and with my freaky huge hands I felt like I was play­ing a pen­cil.

Sev­er­al years lat­er, I’d met and mar­ried Best Half, who was an excel­lent singer, and we’d joined a church and hooked up with the praise and wor­ship team—who, despite the abun­dance of real musi­cians, did­n’t have a gui­tarist. Which meant there was no rea­son I could­n’t be the best gui­tarist the church had ever had, which, come to think of it, isn’t the best compliment—but hey, free gui­tarist creds, right?

And Best Half enjoyed singing—at which she was was excellent—and I enjoyed bang­ing around, most­ly on Sledge, and some­times the pais­ley Tele­cast­er, the one Rob nev­er both­ered to name.

Our pastor’s son was 12 at the time. He’d saved up lawn-mow­ing mon­ey and bought a beat-up, life­less acoustic gui­tar. He was sav­ing up to buy an elec­tric gui­tar, and then he planned to save up even more and buy an ampli­fi­er.

So I gave him the Tele­cast­er and said he could just wor­ry about sav­ing up for a new amp. I didn’t see any point in try­ing to recoup the mon­ey I’d spent fix­ing it up when I could give it a good home with some­one who need­ed it and was already a far bet­ter gui­tarist than me.

And 30 years lat­er, I found a beau­ti­ful Les Paul that need­ed a good home. Kar­ma, baby.

Not acid-washed jeans. I wore bell-bot­tom jeans because my feet are so big, but no one sold acid-washed bell-bot­toms, so Rob and I would put our jeans in the sink, splash bleach on them, then throw them in the wash­er. Rob called ’em “Cloud Pants.”

I have exact­ly one pho­to of myself from the years I spent liv­ing with George and the musi­cians’ com­mune we oper­at­ed: I think I was 22, and I’m play­ing Sledge. I was about as tall as I am now, but pipeclean­er skin­ny, and my hands are still ridicu­lous­ly big, if not as X‑Man mutant big as they were when I was a kid.

When 1995 rolled around, I’d been mar­ried for a while and No. 1 Son was on the way, so I did what any red-blood­ed Amer­i­can man would do: I quit my job, sold our house and moved us all to Ore­gon so I could go to col­lege.

And while we were pack­ing up to move, I made two bad deci­sions that still haunt me: I looked at the big pile of gui­tars and amps and stomp box­es and oth­er gear I’d accu­mu­lat­ed, and I decid­ed it took up way too much room.

So I loaded up the car with all my gear, except for a grungy old JDS acoustic I want­ed to keep because I liked drag­ging it to con­certs to see if I could get sig­na­tures on it, so Randy Stone­hill, Phil Keag­gy, Ter­ry Tal­bot and Bar­ry McGuire had all signed it.

The oth­er bad deci­sion was that I had an antique bar­ber chair I’d bought from an activ­i­ty ther­a­pist at the men­tal hos­pi­tal where I worked,2 and decid­ed it was just too big and heavy to move all the way to Ore­gon.

Some­times you see memes ask­ing what you would say to your­self when you were a teenag­er; I would tell myself not to get rid of my gui­tar stuff and not to give away the bar­ber chair. But I prob­a­bly wouldn’t lis­ten. I’m stu­pid that way.

(Speak­ing of the musi­cians who’ve signed my grungy old JDS, I also have a Vil­lage Inn kids’ col­or­ing book/placemat that No. 1 Son and Bar­ry McGuire col­ored togeth­er when No. 1 Son was 3, but that’s yet anoth­er sto­ry).

So I drove to a music store in Tope­ka, the name of which I for­get, but it was on 17th Street behind a no-kill cat shel­ter that used to be a Hardee’s, and I trad­ed in all my gear on a real­ly nice 12-string Wash­burn acoustic, which I still have but play only on the rare occa­sion when I want to play Supertramp’s “Give a Lit­tle Bit,” because my stu­pid-big fin­gers on my stu­pid-big hands make the gui­tar sound like a cou­ple of cats run­ning around fight­ing on top of it.

It didn’t take long to regret my deci­sion. Three days lat­er, as we hit Inter­state 70 west on our way to Ore­gon, I exclaimed “Why the HELL did I get rid of 12 years’ worth of stuff I loved? Why didn’t I just get rid of the sofa or the TV or Best Half?”

Best Half, who was in the car with me, expressed her dis­plea­sure at this remark by giv­ing me a pinch that still hurts today.

And so I went to col­lege and met many oth­er musi­cians who were bet­ter than I’ll ever be, includ­ing Andy Gure­vich (the tit­u­lar guru of the Gure­vichi­an cult, which is also anoth­er sto­ry), Matt, John, and some more folks I hope I don’t offend by not remem­ber­ing them.

And I watched them play and I enjoyed it, but I missed being able to stum­ble around use­less­ly behind them.

And I vowed that even though I was a ho-hum gui­tarist, some­day I would buy anoth­er elec­tric gui­tar and amp and oth­er fun gad­gets, just as soon as I could afford to feed my fam­i­ly with some­thing more than Top Ramen.

But that did­n’t hap­pen until I bought the Les Paul, because I was too busy ruin­ing my hands. Which reminds me of my dad’s funer­al, which I’ll get to in a minute.

I had a series of stu­pid­ly dan­ger­ous jobs in my 20s and ear­ly 30s: I worked night shift in a con­ve­nience store, in a state hos­pi­tal with the men­tal­ly ill, and as a res­cue mis­sion chap­lain before col­lege. No, not as dan­ger­ous as being a cop or a fire­fight­er, but then again cops and fire­fight­ers have train­ing and equip­ment and insur­ance and stuff.

Dur­ing and after col­lege I also worked as a con­crete mason and on secu­ri­ty teams in col­lege and in church and else­where.

After that I got a job doing web devel­op­ment, which I loved, but which also helped me build up a love­ly nascent case of carpal tun­nel syn­drome.

But after all the stu­pid dan­ger­ous jobs I’d had, I got bored with hav­ing a safe office job, so I joined a Kem­po karate school to spend more time with my kids, and wound up lik­ing it enough to get my sec­ond-degree black belt and help­ing teach (even though I was about as good at mar­tial arts as I was at gui­tar). Which also did not do my hands any favors.

Com­e­dy is not pret­ty.

I have some real­ly cool scars and sto­ries about griev­ous injuries to my hands and fore­arms: A spec­tac­u­lar (human!) bite scar on the back of my right hand; a scar and nerve dam­age on my right wrist from being hit with a bro­ken bot­tle; a frac­tured ring fin­ger that healed crooked; a nasty burn scar on my thumb from being splashed with sul­fu­ric acid (yet anoth­er sto­ry), sev­er­al bro­ken knuck­les, assort­ed con­nec­tive tis­sue injuries from break­ing bricks at Kem­po demos, and oth­er stuff I for­get.

That was just my right hand. I abused my left hand even worse:

Dur­ing a Kem­po spar­ring match I blocked a punch with my left pinky fin­ger3, which emit­ted a glo­ri­ous­ly hor­ri­ble snap that made every­one in the room wince; I caught my hand between an engine block and a garage floor; I got hit on the back of my fore­arm so hard it spawned a bunch of gan­glion cysts; and I got mauled by dog who took a cou­ple of good chomps out of my fore­arm and hand and left behind a big numb area.

Oh, and I also got diag­nosed with MS, which caus­es some stiff­ness and numb­ness in my left arm and hand, and to top it all off I’ve got a bit of arthri­tis here and there in both hands that I’m sure will be loads more fun in the future.

(A cou­ple months ago I saw an ortho­pe­dist to look at some arthri­tis in my left hand. They sent me an intake pack­et and want­ed exten­sive, detailed info on any injuries I’d had to my hands. So I wrote down all that stuff you just read. The doc­tor came in, skimmed my stuff on the clip­board, and said, “What’s all this? Are you Jack­ie Chan’s body­guard or what?” I told him I’m just clum­sy.)

Just before Dad’s funer­al two years ago, I… what? No, that’s not a non sequitur; I said I was going to talk about my dad’s funer­al right up there, did­n’t I? Pay atten­tion!

Just before Dad’s funer­al start­ed, Mom and my sis­ters and my kids and Best Half and I all went up to view him in his cas­ket, and to give him some gifts: I gave him a John­ny Cash CD; The Chow­der gave him a lit­tle apple pie (anoth­er sto­ry), and oth­ers I can’t remem­ber.

The funer­al direc­tor was there, dis­cussing Dad’s appear­ance with Mom, and he looked at Dad’s hands and remarked, “These are the hands of a man who worked hard.”

True. Dad was a glazier for more than 40 years; he also did handy­man work on the side for those 40 years and also rebuilt or remod­eled just about every­thing in our house to boot.

After he retired he did handy­man stuff almost full-time (I remem­ber him jok­ing that retire­ment was bor­ing, what with only 40–50 hours of work a week). He was in demand as the main­te­nance guy for a num­ber of rental hous­es and small apart­ment build­ings.

Today I was look­ing at a pic­ture of Dad tak­en in April, 2002: He’s sit­ting on a hotel room bed next to No. 1 Son, who was 6 years old, and he’s hold­ing The Chow­der, who was 7 months old.

Right to left: No. 1 Son, The Chow­der, a cou­ple bags of wal­nuts, and Dad

The hotel room bed was in Chang­sha, Hunan Province, in Chi­na. And the rea­son we were there was to adopt The Chow­der.

Dad’s hands were small­er than mine (hell, Bigfoot’s hands are small­er than mine). But they were thick and cal­lused and cord­ed with mus­cle and scars, and they looked like two lumpy bags of wal­nuts.

Right now I’m the same age Dad was in that pho­to. And while I’ve nev­er made a liv­ing work­ing with my hands, oth­er than the afore­men­tioned stint as a con­crete mason in col­lege, I like to think I’ve inher­it­ed some of his bet­ter traits:

He had a bea­t­up old poster in the glass shop he worked in; it said “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

He wasn’t preachy or pushy; all he did was set a stan­dard and then demon­strate it.

I deliv­ered the eulo­gy at his funer­al; lat­er some guys he’d worked with, plus his for­mer boss, told me his co-work­ers would gripe at times that Dad was kind of slow and didn’t turn things around as fast as every­one else.

His for­mer boss told me how they answered that gripe: “Yeah; he’s a bit slow­er. But he nev­er, ever has to go back and redo any­thing.”

It’s only been for about the last 10 years of my life that I’ve real­ized just how much that influ­enced me, with­out him lec­tur­ing or preach­ing at me once.

I’ve owned three hous­es; I’ve worked as a writer, a graph­ic design­er, an edi­tor, a web design­er and a web devel­op­er. When I do stuff I try to find a way to do it ele­gant­ly and sim­ply, to avoid quick-and-dirty solu­tions in favor of doing it right the first time.

Draw me. Draw me like one of your French Bull­dogs!

The oth­er day I was sit­ting on the floor in our liv­ing room and tun­ing the Les Paul. Pep­per was lying in front of me with her head on my knee, gaz­ing ador­ing­ly up at me like she was Rose DeWitt and I was Jack Daw­son.

Best Half thought that was cute and took a pic­ture with her phone.

When I saw the pho­to I chuck­led at the way Pep­per was mak­ing eyes at me, but then I noticed that my hands looked like lumpy sacks of wal­nuts, just like my dad’s hands.

Most of the jobs I’ve had in my life don’t cre­ate a tan­gi­ble lega­cy; I can’t point at very many things I’ve made or fixed, or art­work or books I’ve writ­ten or things I’ve built.

But my hands look a lot like my dad’s hands—a coin­ci­dence of genet­ics and life expe­ri­ences for sure, but I can live with hav­ing huge, half-ruined hands if it means I can hon­or my dad’s lega­cy a lit­tle bit.

Oh by the way—my friend Rob named the Les Paul for me: Its name is now More Paul.

Pope Ernie

Posted on by beaker

My friend Rob has a mild­ly unusu­al last name. I’ve wit­nessed him being asked to spell it a few times, and he jokes that it’s spelled just the way it sounds, but with only two W’s.

I’ve nev­er got­ten much humor mileage from my name. Some­times some­one will say “Is that Greg with one or two G’s?” And I’ll joke, “Two G’s: One on each end!”

Now this right here is the dif­fer­ence between a good joke and a meh joke:

“Only two W’s” is pret­ty obvi­ous­ly a wise­crack (unless you’re Welsh or Czech and your name is some­thing like Llan­fair­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoch or Nejne­doob­hospo­dařová­vatel­nější).

On the oth­er hand, if some­one says “Is that Greg with one or two G’s?”, they’re ask­ing you if your name is Greg or Gregg. And “It’s two G’s; one on each end!” isn’t fun­ny; it’s just con­fus­ing.

Pope Gre­go­ry the Some­thingth.

Mom once told me I was named after Pope Gre­go­ry. When you grow up Catholic, being named after a Pope is con­sid­ered quite an hon­or, and I was their only male child. There has, alas, nev­er been a Pope Thing 1, Pope Thing 2 or Pope First Sis­ter, so Pope Gre­go­ry it was.

I looked the dude up once and dis­cov­ered the dude was dudes: There have been 16 Pope Gre­go­rys (or is that Popes Gre­go­ry?). Some of them were were notably good Popes:

Pope Gre­go­ry I (590–604) was a chill dude who earned the nick­name Gre­go­ry the Great; the Gre­go­ri­an Chant was named after him. The Gre­go­ri­an Cal­en­dar was named after Gre­go­ry XIII (1572–1585).

On the oth­er hand, Gre­go­ry IX (1170–1241) revved up the Inqui­si­tion from the equiv­a­lent of a Con­gres­sion­al inquiry to the Inqui­si­tion we all know and love, with the seiz­ing of prop­er­ty and tor­ture and burn­ing at the stake and all that fun stuff.

I once asked Mom and Dad which Pope Gre­go­ry I’m named after. Pope Gre­go­ry XVI died in 1846, so I assumed I wasn’t named after a Pope in recent mem­o­ry. They were a lit­tle sur­prised that there have been 16 Pope(s) Gregory(s). Mom said she wasn’t sure which one, but they knew he was a most excel­lent and boda­cious Pope and she’d look it up and let me know.

That was 48 years ago, so Mom, if you’re read­ing this, I’m still curi­ous.

If my name was Rock­e­feller or Kennedy, I’d expect to be asked if I had Kennedy or Rock­e­feller kin. Being named after a Pope? Ain’t gonna hap­pen. No one’s ever going to ask me if I’m relat­ed to one of the Pope(s) Gregory(s), or tell me I look just like the Pope.

I’ve been mis­tak­en for oth­er peo­ple, though.

Way back in 1986, my friend Stan and I drove up north of Chica­go for a music fes­ti­val, pick­ing up his friend Blue4 in St. Louis on the way. The fes­ti­val was held on a great big piece of rent­ed farm­land, like Wood­stock, except Cor­ner­stone was a Chris­t­ian music fes­ti­val, so we didn’t have folks run­ning around naked or ignor­ing the warn­ings about the brown acid. As far as I know.

I was wan­der­ing around look­ing at the prod­uct tables of albums and T‑shirts and oth­er music fes­ti­val accou­trements, and some­one tapped me on the shoul­der.

I turned to see a pair of excit­ed teen girls. When they saw me their smiles van­ished; one of them said, “Sor­ry!” and they both slunk away.

This hap­pened sev­er­al more times in the next few hours; come din­ner­time, my friend Stan and I were wait­ing in line to get some BBQ ribs before the big main stage con­cert, and some­one tapped on my shoul­der again. I turned to see a young guy hold­ing an album and a Mag­ic Mark­er; his crest instant­ly fell.5

“Sor­ry!” he said as he start­ed to slink away. I said, “Hey, wait a sec. Did you think I was some­one else?”

“Yeah,” he said, “you look like Dar­rell Mans­field.”

We got our ribs and found a place to sit and watch the big main con­cert, and lo, Dar­rell Mans­field entered from stage right.

My friend Stan stared at Dar­rell, then at me, then at Dar­rell, like Dar­rell and I were play­ing ten­nis.

Turns out Dar­rell Mansfield’s the best har­mon­i­ca play­er6 I’ve ever seen, and he’s a heck of a nice guy.

Change my mind.

My friend Stan lat­er sent me a pic­ture of Dar­rell and I when Dar­rell was sign­ing auto­graphs, which I prompt­ly lost, so you’ll have to be con­tent with one of Darrell’s album cov­ers and a blur­ry pho­to of me my friend Stan also took dur­ing the fes­ti­val. As you can see, Darrell’s about 10 years old­er than me, but if you squint you can see how I could sort of look sim­i­lar to Dar­rell to some­one who just lost his glass­es and saw my back from 100 feet away at night.

Which no doubt explains why the peo­ple who want­ed Darrell’s auto­graph looked so dis­ap­point­ed when I turned around and they real­ized I was just some mis­cel­la­neous guy with long hair and the appalling bad man­ners not to be any­where near as tal­ent­ed or good-look­ing as Dar­rell Mans­field.

Best Half and I went to the same music fes­ti­val a cou­ple years lat­er, and one night we bumped into Dar­rell tak­ing his tube amp and oth­er stuff over to one of the side stages.

He remem­bered me and made an “evil twin” joke when I intro­duced Best Half, and he invit­ed us in the back door of the cat­tle auc­tion barn where they were play­ing; we got to hang out with the rest of the band and watch the sound­check and enjoy front row cen­ter seats.

Like I said, heck­u­va nice guy. He’s in his 70s now and had to stop per­form­ing a cou­ple years ago due to demen­tia, the same demean­ing, cru­el way my dad was also robbed of his mem­o­ries and cog­ni­tion. But my dad was one of those sweet, gen­tle guys who just got sweet­er as the demen­tia pro­gressed. I bet Darrell’s just the same.

Okay! On that depress­ing note, being mis­tak­en for Dar­rell was my only brush with celebri­ty, so let’s—

Wait; that’s not true. I’d almost for­got­ten this, but The Chow­der just remind­ed me that 15 years ago, she thought I was unbear­ably cool for a cou­ple of days because she thought I was Zaphod Bee­ble­brox.

Zaphod is far more attrac­tive than me, but he’s also a clue­less doof, so I can under­stand the con­fu­sion.

This was for two rea­sons:

  1. Zaphod Bee­ble­brox was a char­ac­ter in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the film ver­sion of which had just been released, and
  2. Zaphod, played by Sam Rock­well, wore a messy blond wig that also resem­bled my hair if glimpsed from a dis­tance dur­ing a bliz­zard through cracked binoc­u­lars.

The Chow­der was only 4 years old, so she still thought I was awe­some (quite right­ly of course, until Fake News dis­avowed her of that belief, for which I will nev­er for­give them).

And now, the moment you haven’t been wait­ing for: It’s way past time for me to explain the title of this post, so let’s talk about My Three Sons.

My Three Sons was a sit­com that aired from 1960 to 1972. The plot was lay­ered and com­plex, so you might want to take some notes:

My Three Sons—bear with me here—was about a guy who had three sons. Got all that?

The youngest of the tit­u­lar sons was named Thomp­son. Ernest Thomp­son. Sus­pi­cious­ly, every­one else’s last name was Dou­glas. Even more sus­pi­cious: Ernie’s broth­ers (Rob­bie and Chip) and their dad (Steven) were all tall, hand­some, tal­ent­ed, and con­fi­dent, and they had studly, cool names while Ernie was a short, clum­sy geek with a clum­sy geek name. It’s almost like Steven Dou­glas wasn’t real­ly Ernie Thompson’s dad at all.

Which of course was the truth: Ernie was adopt­ed. And being around four tall studly guys who were far more hand­some and tal­ent­ed and old­er than Ernie was no doubt an hon­est-to-Tony-Rob­bins con­fi­dence boost.7

And I get that; I real­ly do. I bet every scrawny ado­les­cent geek guy wish­es he had a cool studly name: Steele Hawthorn or Rip­ley Edward Absa­lome (Ripped Abs, for short) or even just Cool Studly McStudly­cool.

I was not an Ernie fan as a kid. I was vague­ly aware of the sit­com and the char­ac­ter (played by Bar­ry Liv­ingston, which was itself a cool­er name than mine).

That all changed when I was 15. I was a 9th-grad­er at Hay­den High School, which was extreme­ly Catholic. Dead seri­ous Catholic. To quote Jim Gaffi­gan, it was a Shi­ite Catholic high school.

And like most geeks in Shi­ite Catholic school, I spent most of my time being stuffed into my lock­er, punc­tu­at­ed with the occa­sion­al wedgie or WTSNA.8

I did enjoy going to Cam­pus Life every week, and I enjoyed going to their week-long camp thingy in the sum­mer out in Quak­er Ridge, Col­orado. Most of the oth­er atten­dees were geeks and nerds too, so it wasn’t so awk­ward social­ly. Kind of like if you were 4’ 11” tall but once a year you got to hang out with like-statured peo­ple in a con­ven­tion titled Nobody Over 4‑Eleven.

Any­way, halfway through my fresh­man year, some­thing very strange hap­pened:

All the girls in Cam­pus Life and at school start­ed call­ing me Ernie. I still have no idea why.

You stay out of this!

One day at school, a girl in class said, “Hey, you look like Ernie!”

I wasn’t used to girls talk­ing to me will­ing­ly, so I kept my reply sim­ple:

“Huh? Like on Sesame Street?”

“No, Ernie!” she said. “Ernie, on My Three Sons! Doesn’t he look like Ernie?” she said, elbow­ing anoth­er girl in class, who agreed with alacrity.

By the end of the day, every girl in school was call­ing me Ernie.

I was befud­dled. Hornswog­gled, even. I wasn’t used to being pop­u­lar, or even noticed. I’d worked hard to learn how to be invis­i­ble at school and I liked it that way.

This was in 1977, so instead of Googling My Three Sons and Ernie and Bar­ry Liv­ingston, I went to the library and pored over archived LIFE, Time and TV Guide mag­a­zines.

Ernie had thick black hair; I had thin blond hair. Ernie had a Fred­dy Mer­cury-style over­bite; I didn’t. Ernie had a strong jaw with a well-kirkled chin;9 I had a shape­less mooshy chin that looked like an uncooked Pills­bury Dough Boy bis­cuit.

Left: Ernie. Right: Not even a lit­tle bit Ernie.

Over here

←

is irrefutable pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence: Pho­tos of me and Bar­ry Liv­ingston at var­i­ous ages.

The “HI ERNIE!” hollers from across the room tapered off, to my relief. But then some­thing even stranger began to hap­pen:

The embar­rass­ing spot­light fad­ed out, replaced with casu­al, but gen­uine kind­ness and affec­tion: So many peo­ple called me Ernie that the teach­ers at Hay­den picked up on it, along with Cam­pus Life staff. I remem­ber hav­ing to ask teach­ers and coach­es to cor­rect report cards or oth­er doc­u­ments refer­ring to me as Ernie.

The sum­mer before my sopho­more year, I went to the Cam­pus Life camp thingy in Col­orado yet again. And on the first day, two or three girls gave me a Cam­pus Life T‑shirt with “ERNIE” ironed on the back.

It revved up the whole “Hey, there’s Ernie whose name isn’t real­ly Ernie but I don’t remem­ber his real name so HI ERNIE!” thing again. But this time I didn’t mind it so much. Pub­lic schools can be tough envi­ron­ments; Shi­ite Catholic schools can be even worse. Geeks and nerds like me learned to be invis­i­ble at school because being the object of atten­tion usu­al­ly means being bul­lied.

But some­times it doesn’t. Some­times it’s okay to get a fun­ny nick­name or to be teased about one quirk or anoth­er. Not in a mean-spir­it­ed way, but in a wel­come aboard, goof­ball-spir­it­ed way.

I still don’t know which Pope Gre­go­ry I’m named after, and I still have no idea why the girls at school start­ed call­ing me Ernie.

But that’s okay. Just call me Pope Ernie. Or His Holi­ness Ernest the Oneth, if you’re a Shi­ite Catholic. I’ll answer to either of them.

Touched by an Angel

Posted on by beaker

Angel could­n’t do any tricks. Oh, she’d mas­tered the basics: She was house­bro­ken; she’d come when we called her; some­times she would sit if she was being offered a treat. That’s about it.

There was one oth­er thing, though:

Angel could talk.

In 1999, when No. 1 Son was 4, we decid­ed it was time for him to raise his own dog. After inter­view­ing a num­ber of avail­able can­di­dates at the Humane Soci­ety, we round­ed a cor­ner and came face-to-face with an incan­des­cent white mon­ster. “Chew­bac­ca: 1 Year Old,” said the plac­ard on her pen.

Chew­bac­ca most close­ly resem­bled an albi­no Ger­man Shep­herd but was larg­er, weigh­ing in at a good 112 pounds. Our vet thought maybe she was a Shepherd/Russian Wolfhound mix, but we nev­er knew for sure.

She sat on her haunch­es, one ear cocked straight up and the oth­er flopped for­ward endear­ing­ly, and regard­ed us calm­ly, head tilt­ed. No. 1 Son was instant­ly entranced. “Let’s get her!” he said. “Can I pet her?”

“I’m sor­ry,” the vol­un­teer escort­ing us said, “but only adults can go in the cage.”

“Don’t wor­ry,” I told No. 1 Son. “I’ll check her out.”

I entered the cage and squat­ted down in front of Chew­bac­ca. Hold­ing my hand out cau­tious­ly, I start­ed to intro­duce myself with non­sense dog­gy talk: “Well, look at you. You’re a sweet­heart! Who’s a good girl? Are you a good girl?”

Instead, I found myself say­ing, “Hey, Chewie. Think you might want to come hang at my house?”

Chew­bac­ca sniffed my hand, then licked it with the far­away, apprais­ing look of a som­me­li­er.10

“Hmm,” she mused. “Might be doable.” She glanced at Best Half and No. 1 Son. “They part of the deal?”

“Yep.”

She licked my hand again. “You know,” she said, “I’m not usu­al­ly this impul­sive, but you got a deal, Mis­ter.”

In the van on the way home, Chew­bac­ca sat eager­ly next to No. 1 Son, look­ing at the traf­fic stream­ing by.

“What are we going to call you?” I said to Chew­bac­ca. “I don’t think Chew­bac­ca is real­ly your name; do you?”

“You got that right,” she mut­tered.

“Snow­bear!” Best Half sug­gest­ed. “How about Snow­bear?”

“Hey, let’s call her Queen Fros­tine, like in Can­dy­land,” I said.

I glanced back. Chew­bac­ca was whis­per­ing in No. 1 Son’s ear; he frowned and whis­pered back. She shook her head and whis­pered in his ear again; he rubbed his chin, then nod­ded.

“Angel,” No. 1 Son said.

“What?”

“Her name is Angel,” he repeat­ed firm­ly.

I glanced back at Chew­bac­ca — I mean, Angel. She looked smug.

She nev­er admit­ted it to me, but I’m con­vinced Angel want­ed to grow up to be a Bud­weis­er Clydes­dale. Even giv­en her size, her strength was almost unbe­liev­able. You did­n’t take Angel for a walk, she took you for a pull.

No. 1 Son’s favorite game with Angel for sev­er­al years was to pick up a toy, then grab her col­lar. Angel would imme­di­ate­ly spring to her feet and shout, “Pull!” No. 1 Son would throw the toy across the yard and Angel would pur­sue it, hoick­ing No. 1 Son vio­lent­ly off the ground and tow­ing him along effort­less­ly like a ban­ner behind an air­plane.

Angel’s abil­i­ty to talk nev­er seemed unusu­al to us: We thought No. 1 Son was going to raise Angel, but she did­n’t get that memo and decid­ed she would raise him, so I sup­pose it made sense to com­mu­ni­cate on a high­er lev­el. Most peo­ple could­n’t hear her talk, but among Angel’s fam­i­ly and clos­est friends there was nev­er any non­sense dog­gy bab­bling: We com­mu­ni­cat­ed like peers.

Like many kids, No. 1 Son was a lit­tle bit fear­ful of being alone in his room at night. Angel quick­ly assumed own­er­ship of that issue. At bed­time we would often be loung­ing in the liv­ing room while Angel snoozed in the cor­ner.

“Angel!” Best Half or I would say.

Angel would crank open an eye. “Bed­time?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” She would stretch, trot upstairs with No. 1 Son and climb into bed with him, keep­ing watch and return­ing to her liv­ing room nap only when he was asleep.

Occa­sion­al­ly her flop­py ear would flick upright while we watched TV. “No. 1 Son’s awake,” she’d say, trot­ting back upstairs. Twen­ty min­utes lat­er or so she’d be back. “He’s asleep again,” she’d say. “Is Let­ter­man on yet?”

In 2002, Best Half, No. 1 Son and I took a trip to Chi­na, return­ing two weeks lat­er with The Chow­der: Our 7‑month-old adopt­ed daugh­ter.

I went in the house first and asked Angel to go out back for a lit­tle while. “We have a sur­prise for you,” I said.

“Oh, c’mon! You guys were gone for­ev­er! I hard­ly remem­ber what you look like!” she com­plained.

We brought The Chow­der in, ignor­ing the occa­sion­al yell from Angel out back: “Hey! What are you guys doing? Hey! I smell some­thing fun­ny! Hey!”

After every­one was set­tled I let Angel back in. She charged across the kitchen and skid­ded to a halt at the liv­ing room door.

“Okay, I’m sur­prised,” she whis­pered to Best Half out of the cor­ner of her mouth. She sat down and stared at The Chow­der.

The Chow­der, who had nev­er seen a dog before, stared back up at the white, pant­i­ng mon­ster tow­er­ing over her, its gleam­ing teeth fram­ing a pink, lolling tongue and its intense black eyes fixed on her.

After about 10 sec­onds of unbear­able ten­sion, I decid­ed if The Chow­der did­n’t start scream­ing soon, I would.

Then Angel did the most amaz­ing thing I’ve ever seen:

“All right, then,” she said firm­ly, and crouched down, putting her head on the floor. She stretched out and crept slow­ly across the floor toward The Chow­der, stop­ping when her nose was almost touch­ing The Chow­der’s foot.

“Now lis­ten,” Angel said gen­tly, look­ing up at The Chow­der. “I can’t take care of you if you’re afraid of me. That’s no basis for a good rela­tion­ship. So here’s the deal: I’ll lay right here and hold still until you aren’t scared any­more, okay? Go ahead — pull my ears, poke my side, smell me. I’ll nev­er, ever hurt you. I promise.”

The Chow­der ten­ta­tive­ly reached for­ward, grabbed Angel’s flop­py ear and came away with a dou­ble hand­ful of fur. Angel smiled and closed her eyes. “See?” she said. “Noth­ing to be afraid of.”

The Chow­der stared at the fur waft­ing away from her chub­by fin­gers, then squealed with delight and dove face-first into Angel’s ruff.

As the years passed, Angel was pro­mot­ed from Chief Exec­u­tive Dog to Chair­dog and final­ly to Dog Emer­i­tus as oth­er cats and dogs came and went. She’d chuck­le tol­er­ant­ly at their exu­ber­ance and arro­gance, but made sure they knew the score, espe­cial­ly when it came to The Chow­der and No. 1 Son.

An avid movie fan, Angel would do her best R. Lee Ermey imi­ta­tion with the new recruits, then tran­si­tion to a father­ly Gre­go­ry Peck (as Atti­cus Finch) as she impart­ed her wis­dom to them. Occa­sion­al­ly they’d get too big for their britch­es and we’d get to see a home re-enact­ment of the Veloci­rap­tors try­ing to take on the T. Rex in Juras­sic Park. “AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!” she’d roar as she hurled her oppo­nents around like rag dolls.

But Angel nev­er appoint­ed a pro­tegé until last year, when Bosco, a minia­ture Black Schnau­zer, joined the fam­i­ly. Bosco massed about 10 pounds to Angel’s 100-ish, but he had the rare com­bi­na­tion of guts, intel­li­gence and will­ing­ness to learn she was look­ing for. She tol­er­at­ed far more guff from Bosco than any­one else, although she so rad­i­cal­ly out­sized Bosco she would often sleep through his most fero­cious attacks, snor­ing away as he chewed her ears and pounced on her.

But most of all she spent every wak­ing moment teach­ing him every­thing she knew: “No, no, no, NO! The food stays here in the bowl! Now look — don’t both­er them when they’re at the table. See, you just sit here in the cor­ner and look hope­ful. Some­one’s at the door — Bosco, that’s your cue! Get over there and bark! Hus­tle!”

Bosco, although he did­n’t share Angel’s gift of speech, was an apt pupil and learned very quick­ly. R. Lee Ermey retired and was replaced by kind­ly old Mas­ter Po, who gen­tly but firm­ly led her young, impetu­ous Grasshop­per down the path of enlight­en­ment.

Sev­er­al weeks ago, we noticed Angel was­n’t eat­ing much and was los­ing weight. She’d always been lean and mus­cu­lar, but we could sud­den­ly see her ribs and hips. Our vet not­ed a fever and pre­scribed antibi­otics and an appetite stim­u­lant. We bought pre­mi­um canned food for her and she start­ed eat­ing again, but after a few more weeks we real­ized she not only was­n’t putting any weight back on, she was still los­ing it. Bosco some­how under­stood the time to attack Angel was past and instead cud­dled her pro­tec­tive­ly every spare moment.

In anoth­er week or so, Angel’s weight had dropped alarm­ing­ly; she looked gaunt and bony, but still as gen­tle and bright-eyed as ever.

“Bosco’s got this,” she’d say apolo­get­i­cal­ly as Bosco would leap over her to bark at the door. “I’m just kind of tired — gimme a minute.”

In her last week with us, Angel began to have dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing. We fed her her pre­mi­um canned food with a fork as she lay on the liv­ing room car­pet, gen­tly thump­ing her tail. “I know I’m break­ing the rules,” she said to me sheep­ish­ly one after­noon. “Sor­ry to be a has­sle.”

“Now don’t you wor­ry about that,” I said. “You’ve got a lit­tle pam­per­ing com­ing.”

“Thanks,” she said, fin­ish­ing the last bite. “I’m not wor­ried.”

“Good,” I said.

“As soon as you have a minute,” she con­tin­ued, “I know you’re going to fix every­thing. No rush — soon as you have a minute.”

I did­n’t reply. She looked at me steadi­ly, con­fi­dent­ly, for a moment before sigh­ing con­tent­ed­ly and tak­ing a nap.

The morn­ing of August 9, Angel could­n’t get up. “I’m sor­ry,” she mum­bled. “I’ll feel bet­ter after a nap. Don’t wor­ry about me.”

She slept in the liv­ing room all day, occa­sion­al­ly wak­ing up to check in with Bosco, who by now had ful­ly assumed the role of Chair­dog pro tem.

Around 9 p.m. she woke up, looked at me and said, “Hey, I don’t want to be a pest, but I’m ready for you to fix every­thing. When­ev­er you have a minute. I just can’t get much done like this, you know?”

Best Half and I sat down with her. “Angel,” I said, “I wish I could make every­thing okay. I real­ly do. But I can’t. I’m sor­ry, hon, but I can’t.”

She looked sur­prised. “Real­ly?”

“Real­ly. I would if I could; you know that.”

Angel looked at Best Half. “Is he mess­ing with me?” Her eyes shin­ing, Best Half gen­tly shook her head.

Angel thought a moment, then sighed and smiled. “Okay. Um, can you do me a favor?” She looked embar­rassed. “I real­ly need to go out­side. I was­n’t going to say any­thing, but….”

“Sweet­heart, don’t be embar­rassed!” Best Half said. We helped Angel to her feet and half-car­ried her to the back door, across the patio and onto the grass, where she did her busi­ness, then col­lapsed.

“Whew!” Angel pant­ed. “Thanks!”

I got a beach tow­el and Best Half and I gen­tly cra­dled Angel in it, lift­ing her so she could pre­tend to walk back inside. I was sur­prised — Angel looked like a bag of bones, but she still weighed a ton.

About 11 p.m., we set­tled back down in the liv­ing room with Angel — Best Half, No. 1 Son, The Chow­der, Bosco and I — cov­ered her with a blan­ket, and told her it was our turn to put her to bed for once. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she said skep­ti­cal­ly. We were sure. She’d earned it.

Angel pant­ed heav­i­ly, clos­ing her eyes but refus­ing to lay her head down. “Wait — I’m not sleepy yet,” she kept say­ing. Occa­sion­al­ly she’d open her eyes and look at one of us in sur­prise. “Oh, you’re still here?” she said.

“You bet. We’re right here with you,” Best Half said. She’d brought blan­kets and a pil­low down and was lying next to Angel, ready to spend the night.

Angel closed her eyes and her head sank slow­ly, then sud­den­ly jerked upright again. “I’m okay!” she protest­ed. “I’m not sleepy yet!”

Some­how we all real­ized simul­ta­ne­ous­ly what she need­ed. And so, for the very first and last time in her life, we engaged in some non­sense dog­gy talk with Angel: We told her she was a good girl. A very, very good girl.

She looked around at us. “Real­ly?” she wheezed.

“Real­ly real­ly,” Best Half said. “You did a good job rais­ing our boy. Did­n’t she?” She looked at No. 1 Son.

“Yes,” he whis­pered. “You did.” He gen­tly stroked her flop­py ear.

The Chow­der looked anx­ious­ly at her broth­er. “Bub­by, we’re gonna see Angel in heav­en, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’ll be wait­ing for us.” Reas­sured, she buried her face in Angel’s ruff for the last time. “G’bye, Angel,” she said.

Angel looked at me.

“Don’t wor­ry,” I said. “It’s okay for you to go.”

She looked at Bosco, who had been lying by her side for hours. Bosco winked.

“Okay,” Angel said. “Okay. I’m just gonna take a lit­tle nap, then.” She final­ly relaxed, lay on her side, and closed her eyes.

Angel stopped breath­ing just after mid­night.

We’d made arrange­ments to take her to the vet for cre­ma­tion, so I decid­ed to wrap her in her favorite blan­ket and put her in the back of our Jeep until morn­ing.

I braced myself and lift­ed the still, silent bun­dle. It was light as a feath­er.

When we came back inside, Bosco was in the kitchen sit­ting on his haunch­es, his head tilt­ed alert­ly at us.

“Okay, guys,” he said. “I got this now.”