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.1

“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:

  1. You’ll rec­og­nize the aria by its qua­si-risqué Eng­lish lyrics
  2. You’ll rec­og­nize it by the fun­ny TV lyrics, or
  3. 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.2

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 lev­el3 (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.