Best Half - Words In A Row

My Dad’s Hands

A.K.A. the true story of how the guitarist for Dr. Pep and the Toe Biz Maulers plays his guitar with two bags of walnuts.

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.)

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.

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,¹ 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.

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 finger², 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

Call me Pope Ernie. Or His Holiness Ernest the Oneth, if you’re a Shiite Catholic.

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.

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 Blue³ 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.⁴

“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 player⁵ I’ve ever seen, and he’s a heck of a nice guy.

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:

Zaphod Beeblebrox was a character in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the film version of which had just been released, and
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.⁶

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.⁷

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.

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;⁸ 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

Ten years since she left us: Here’s to one of the greatest dogs of all time.

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.⁹

“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.”

To Gilligan or Not to Gilligan

You know what’s wrong with kids these days? I’ll TELL ya what’s wrong with kids these days!

You know what’s wrong with kids these days? I’ll tell ya what’s wrong with kids these days!

When I was a kid, everyone I knew was familiar with the aria “Votre toast je peux vous le rendre” from the opera Carmen, aka “The Toreador Song” (skip ahead to 1:12):

No, we weren’t opera buffs. Bear with me a sec.

Carmen is an unusual opera, given that its libretto was originally in French.

Here are the original lyrics in French:

Toréador, en garde! Toréador!
Et songe bien, oui,
songe en combattant
Qu’en oenoir te regarde,
Et que l’amour t’attend,
Toreador, l’amour, l’amour t’attend!

And here’s a rough English translation:

Toreador, on guard!
Toreador! Toreador!
And contemplate well!
Yes! Contemplate as you fight!
That a dark eye is watching you,
And that love is waiting for you,
Toreador! Love, love is waiting for you!

My friends and I didn’t have the first clue about Carmen, much less opera in general. We just knew a fragment of the aria with (at the time) mildly risqué alternative lyrics; a few years later we knew the aria with some other amusing lyrics we saw on TV.

You are now about to date yourself with one of three reactions:

You’ll recognize the aria by its quasi-risqué English lyrics
You’ll recognize it by the funny TV lyrics, or
You don’t recognize it at all, in which case I would tell you to get off my lawn, but you already got bored and are watching pimple-popping videos or something instead.

Here are the mildly risqué lyrics:

Toreador!
Don’t spit upon the floor!
Use the cuspidor!
That’s what it’s for!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP15WKZSOO8

That’s not very naughty, you’re thinking. But this was a long time ago, when anything with even the most oblique reference to anything scatological or burps or farts or spitting or whatever was hysterically funny because they’d get you in trouble.¹⁰

Now, here is the TV version I mentioned: It occurred in an episode of Gilligan’s Island titled “The Producer.” In “The Producer,” a film producer crash-lands on the island, so the castaways create a musical version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

As one does.

So they cobble together a mashup of various operatic fragments with (sort of) the plot of Hamlet. In this case they mashed up Lord Polonius’ speech to Laertes (and here are the funny TV lyrics I mentioned earlier):

Neither a borrower nor a lender be
Do not forget! Stay out of debt!
Think twice, and take this good advice from me:
Guard that old solvency!
There’s just one other thing you ought to do:
To thine own self be true!

(Skip ahead to 3:30 in the video):

Shockingly, Gilligan’s Island didn’t rack up lots of awards. But “The Producer” snagged a spot on TV Guide’s list of the top 100 TV episodes of all time.

“The Producer” reminds me of some of the best material from Warner Brothers’ cartoons or Sesame Street: They can produce high-quality, hilarious entertainment that both children and adults love. Not because it appeals to a lowest common denominator with fart or poop jokes (don’t get me wrong—well-executed fart or poop jokes can be a pleasure sublime).

No, it’s because they can appeal to children at their level and adults at their level¹¹ (I could get into a similar comparison of The Rabbit of Seville, or “What’s Opera, Doc?” (same here), for instance, both of which should have won Nobel Peace prizes).

Like every generation ever, today’s kids think they invented everything cool—sex, f’instance. Or more specifically in this case: Memes.

A meme is a little snippet of a cultural fad or joke all the cool kids know. But kids these days didn’t invent memes. They just dumbed them down.

Memes these days are some idiot on Dr. Phil saying “Cash me ousside; how bow dah?” Or a gamer screaming “Leeroy Jenkins!” as he gets all his teammates killed. Or dabbing, or Nyan Cat, or Grumpy Cat, or Ceiling Cat Is Watching You Masturbate, or Philosoraptor or Tide Pod Challenge or a zillion other things.

Many of these are rib-cracking funny, but they don’t go anywhere. They’re a mile wide and an inch deep. Flashes in the pan.

If you visit Know Your Meme and search for popular memes, you’ll find references to a funny line in a show or amusing accident or bizarre news story that caught the public’s attention: DAMN, Daniel!; Oh, wait: You’re serious? Let me laugh even harder!; Ermagerd! Gersberms!—stuff like that.

And since the Internet has given most people the attention span of a hummingbird on crack, I guess that’s nothing to sneeze at.

But again: They don’t go anywhere. With memes, the name of the game isn’t to suss out where they came from and who started it and where they got the idea from and other interesting trivia. With current memes, the goal is to acquire photographic memory of the words or photos accompanying the meme so you can toss them out there online so everyone will chuckle at how smart you are.

And how does one acquire this encyclopedic knowledge? Simple: By staying online and plugged in 24/7/365.

While No. 1 Son and The Chowder were growing up, Best Half worked Saturdays for a few years; a bit later I worked as a freelance contractor with super-flexible hours.

I had the privilege of spending many priceless hours with my kids at museums, bookstores, the library and so on.

But sometimes when I was busy with contract work, we hung out at home and watched movies. For Christmas one year, First Sister gave me a set of all the Warner Brothers cartoons ever made; I already owned all of Mel Brooks’ movies on DVD as well, along with most Monty Python movies, and the unrivaled kings of spoof movies: Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, producers of Airplane, Airplane II, Top Secret! and the Naked Gun flicks.

Memes are the cultural equivalent of trivia quizzes. These days “spoof” movies are just strings of loosely related trivia facticles, but truly great spoofs are more than trivia quizzes. If you want to produce truly great spoofs like Blazing Saddles or Airplane!, you have to love the genre you’re spoofing, love it enough to turn it inside out in a way true aficionados of Westerns or disaster movies will recognize instantly.

Old-school memes like The Toreador Song are funny and viral, yes, but if you get interested in where they come from, you won’t see info like “This meme started when Bender the robot said ‘Oh, you were serious? Let me laugh even harder’ on Futurama.”

That’s what I think, anyway. YMMV. Get off my lawn.

The Blown Away Guy

Reliving the Great Car Stereo Wars of the ’70s.

So this just happened: I’ve got a bit of a stuffy nose today, which is good, because The S.O. has been suffering with adult croup all week and that means I probably haven’t caught it.

So I said, “Hey; where’s the Mucinex?” Meaning, of course, the brand name of the popular decongestant. Except that’s not what I said—I actually said, “Hey, where’s the Memorex?”

She said, quite reasonably, “What?” I went to the replay, as I so often have to do, to figure out what I really said. “Oh, I meant the Mucinex.”

“It’s under the sink in my bathroom,” she said. “What’s Memorex?”

“Ah!” I said. “You did not have to fight in the Great Car Stereo Wars of the ’70s. There was all sorts of debate about stereo and recording equipment, but it got most vicious when it came to car stereos. Which was a little silly, because every right-thinking person knew the correct answers: The very best car stereo was the underdash Pioneer SuperTuner; the very best speakers were Jensen Triaxials, and the ONLY cassette tapes that should be allowed in anyone’s stereo were Maxell cassette tapes—in short, precisely what I had installed in Charles the Deep Breather.”

That whole “Stairway to Heaven” thing? This is what they meant.

She wisely stopped listening at that point, so I’ll just tell you what I meant:

See, if you were around in the 1970s, it came down to this: If you liked Memorex tapes, you had to get behind their lame commercial with Ella Fitzgerald singing a high note that broke a wine glass, then the recording of Ella Fitzgerald doing the same thing.

“Is it LIVE—or is it MEMOREX?” the commercial smugly asked.

Well, lemme think: I’m in my car listening to music. Is it live? A quick glance at the passenger and back seats confirms: There are no musicians performing here. None of my windows are shattering. Conclusion: It is neither live nor Memorex BECAUSE I’LL SET THIS CAR ON FIRE BEFORE I USE MEMOREX TAPES!

There were other worthless tape brands out there, such as TDK (aka The Dick Knnnnnniggits¹², favored by wimps who listened to smooth jazz) or BASF (aka Barf and Shit Farts,¹³ which your younger siblings used to record, directly from the radio, whatever bubblegum dreck was popular that week, and you made it known across the land that a slow, painful death awaited he who dared even think about using in your car).

On the other hand–Maxell. MAXELL, baby. They got more famouser even than Memorex with a single print ad: It was a fantastic, iconic image; the kind of advertising Apple is always grasping at.

On the left is a hulking, monstrous speaker, the kind Dr. Dre wishes he’d replaced with the Beats Pill. On the right is a deep leather armchair in which a guy wearing a leather aviator’s jacket and scarf is hanging on for dear life. His scarf is snapping and fluttering like he’s a Florida reporter standing outside for no reason during a hurricane. Behind him, on his right, a lamp is about to blow away. On his left is a small side table upon which a martini glass has slid to the edge and is about to tip over; the martini itself and its olive are spraying over the edge of the glass.

The guy in the chair quickly become known as The Blown Away Guy, and the ad OBLITERATED Memorex. It was on billboards for a while during my senior year of high school–just the photo with the word Maxell down in one corner. That’s all they needed. If you were a faithful Maxell user you would just shout “MAXELL!” and high-five your passenger. If not, you would turn your stereo way down in abject horror and misery, wondering if you could ever aspire to redo all your mix tapes and albums on Maxell tapes.

When they finally decided to make it a commercial, they did Apple before Apple was Apple: All you saw was the guy hanging on, teeth and toenails, against the oncoming tsunami of–not Led Zeppelin or KISS or The Who, but Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries.”

It’s been 20 years since even seen a cassette tape, much less listened to one. But having accidentally spoken the Cassette Brand That Must Not Be Named, I still feel the need to apologize to Maxell and anyone old enough to understand what the hell I’m talking about.