Even in dog years, I am immature

My dog, in dog years, is my age now, which probably explains, on sunny days, his lying naked on the lawn.

I understand the impulse.

The dog and I, we do a lot of the same things now. We build our day around meals, we find butterflies more entrancing than television, and by eight o'clock our eyelids get heavier than the plot of a CSI episode.

Our eyesight, and memory, isn't so great. This week I took an old plastic pony my children had outgrown and put it out at the curb. The dog spied it out the front window, mistaking it for a dog brazenly marking his territory.

He growled and growled at the interloper, despite having, just two minutes before, been on the driveway when I carried the pony past him to the curb.

So I flung open the front door and he bolted out at top speed to confront the infidel. He bounced around for about two seconds like a boxer looking for an opening, and then went "Oh. It's plastic. I was just...uh...coming out to sniff the lawn here. Mmm. That's some fragrant grass, just as I suspected. I'll be going back in now."

When he is happiest, he goes in the back yard and rolls around in his own poop.

We differ in this respect.

But we share the same middle-aged expression, that gaze which says yeah, I've seen a few things, sniffed them too, but it takes a lot to impress me these days. A squirrel, for instance. Or a video of a squirrel.

Unlike me, Skipper still runs like the wind. He does not have that internal self-governor which warns "Careful, you'll rip your Achilles, your knees aren't what they used to be, is your heart really up to this?" No. Squirrel? Boom. Gone. See you after I've shown this varmint who's still got the stuff.

After a bath he races around the house like a dog afire, ripping through the rooms as if attempting to escape cleanliness itself. Like me, there is some puppy in him yet.

I make a unique tsk-tsk sound to alert Skipper to the presence of a squirrel. Even in the house, if I make this sound he will tense, look at me as if to ask "Really? Game on?" and then he will bolt out the doggie door.

I really shouldn't play tricks on a dog his age. But at my age, I get my entertainment where I can.

. . .

Skipper, vigilant for the next plastic interloper

Trip to Mars for married couple is proposed

Dennis Tito, the millionaire space tourist, has recently created a foundation which is seeking—I kid you not—a married couple for a 501-day circuit around Mars; a trip even Jackie Gleason would find ambitious.

Due to the cramped, claustrophobic conditions, Tito feels a married couple would handle it better than a pair of strangers. But here is how I think it would go:

Day 1.

Husband: This is amazing. I can see North and South America all at once.

Wife: I never realized just what a fragile jewel the Earth is. I am overcome.


Day 30.

Wife: Do we have any Twix left?

Husband: No.

Wife: You effing* ate the last Twix? There were, like, 20 left yesterday.

Husband: Who's counting?

Wife: Grrrrr.


Day 100.

Husband: Is that Earth? That little dot by the three white dots? I can't tell.

Wife: Who am I, Galileo?

Husband: I forgot my glasses.

Wife: Well, there's a shock.


Day 250.

Husband: Mars is huge. I never knew it was so big. Did you know it was so big?

Wife: You know what's big? My craving for a Twix right now.


Day 300.

Husband: Have you seen my iPad charger? I was on the last level of Pizzas vs. Skeletons.

Wife: You mean the iPad charger sticking out of your shirt pocket?

Husband: You don't have to be snarky.

Wife: The whole universe is out your window and you're playing games?

Husband: You see the Milky Way, you've seen the Milky Way.


Day 350.

Wife: Did you do today's experiment yet? With the salt crystals?

Husband: That was an experiment? I thought it was for the pasta.

Wife: You ate the experiment?

Husband: Did anyone ever tell you you're kind of negative?

Wife: You left me some pasta, though, right?

Husband:

Wife: Perfect.


Day 450.

Husband: Divorce should be a last step, not a first step.

Wife: Dare me to open that hatch. Dare me.


Day 500.

Husband: Ah, Earth. One more day. When we get home, I'm buying you a whole case of Twix.

Wife: Yeah, you are. So...how are we going to spin this?

Husband: It was a spectacular journey, not just of our solar system but of ourselves, yadda-yadda.

Wife: I almost killed you in your sleep.

Husband: I almost let you.

Wife: Look at how blue it all is. What a jewel.

Husband: Priceless.


*In space, no one can hear you curse.

. . .

Wednesday Wa Pic - Insert whip crack sound effect here

 Rollin' rollin' rollin'

California rollin'

Keep that sushi rollin'

Raw fish!

Wednesday Wa Pic - Have your cake and, um, eww

"Plops" cakeballs. That is all the punch line I need, thankyouverymuch.

. . .

Wednesday Wa Pic - Try the Redwood Torte!

 I suspect this sounds more appetizing in Chinese.

Wednesday Wa Pic - iDon'tthinkso

 Somehow I think the prefix "i" as a selling point loses its vigor when applied to shoes.

Wednesday Wa Pic - Jewelry personality test

 O.K., answer quick. When you first saw the gold bear on the left, did you see a cute Teddy bear in a sitting position, or a Teddy bear with a profoundly large set of breasts?

Wednesday Wa Pic - Black gold gets gentrified

 I remember back in the last century when they called it "Texas tea."

Truthfully, not many modern marquees have the room to fit the entire actual title, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and I, for one, am thankful for such a genteel abbreviation.

Wednesday Wa Pic - the language of retail

 Not much, Candle Shop.

Wednesday Wa Pic - Pluck 'em if ya got 'em

Elegance finally has a name.

Park your gravy boat in the new year

You haven't lived until you have watched somebody parallel-park an eight-foot gravy boat.

I, my friends, have lived.

It was New Year's Eve. The gravy boat was a Rose Parade mini-float attached to a larger float, and the whole vehicle together was too large to fit its pre-parade parking space. So the g-boat was detached, and a crew of guys maneuvered it curbside by hand, a skill you will not find in your DMV driver's handbook.

Seriously. A gravy boat.

I witnessed all this as a volunteer for the parade; my duty was to spend the night, all night, with the Stanford float, assuring Stanford's floral security, and then ride a scooter as its escort in the parade New Year's morning.

Huge crowds came out all evening and past midnight to view the lineup. I was amazed that people were still strolling and taking pictures at 3 a.m. I was getting woozy myself after nine hours in the street.

At one point I thought I was hallucinating huge butterflies. When dawn broke, I saw they were just on a float.

(See: butterfly, just below the moon.)

Nothing can prepare you for riding a scooter through the canyon of humanity which forms to watch the Rose Parade, an estimated 700,000 people. Stanford fans roared as our cheerleader-festooned float passed and their band played. I watched one elderly alum stand erect, slowly remove his hat, and hold it theatrically over his heart.

Stanford's mascot is a tree. (Long story.) It is a majestic tree, I admit, and not meant ironically; something you probably cannot say of UC Santa Cruz's Banana Slugs.

But a tree does not automatically inspire your opponent's dread that, say, a sword-wielding gladiator mascot does. Still, I loved the Stanford fan in one grandstand who stood and held up the sign: "Fear the tree."

I also enjoyed the poster somebody held up near the very end of the parade, for the benefit of exhausted marching bands, I would guess, which said, "You're halfway there!"

I despair sometimes for our globe. After the anger-filled political year we just departed, a year of such meaningless gun violence, the Rose Parade felt like being dipped in a vat of hope.

I saw, close up, the smiling faces of people of every color, jammed shoulder to shoulder in rows 10 deep for miles, cheering for the simple beauty of flowers, smiling in unguarded awe at the extraordinary things people can create if they work together. 

A new year, another chance.

Take a deep breath. Now go park your personal gravy boat like only you can.

. . .

More pics below

While a white suit is required dress for the parade, overnight duties involve rocking extra-large coveralls.

People sleep out overnight before the parade, sometimes sitting up.

Little-known fact: if you don't fertilize your roses enough, sometimes they can break out in eggplant.

 These were the folks from the Trader Joe's float, about an hour before the parade. They were really up for it. My camera couldn't resist the stripes.

It was a good time.

Wednesday Wa Pic - vanity plate 'tude

With attitude like this, I am not surprised he went through three of them already.

 

Wednesday Wa Pic - Downsizing R Us

 I found where they print all the pink slips.

Wednesday Wa Pic - Melville ate here. Hardly.

 The best novelists avoid adverbs and so should you.

Wednesday Wa Pic - Hey, who's chicken?

 WYNGZ, as described in Wikipedia:

"Wyngz is a chicken food product that is in the shape of a chicken wing...but is not actually a wing."

Do you suppose the pizza in the box is topped with melted "chyzz?"

Wednesday Wa Pic - When nuts are not enough

 I always want to bust through the door of a place like this, mock frantic, and gasp "Where's the stuff?! I need the stuff!"

Wednesday Wa Pic - z best sandwich in z world

 Meaning early in the morning. You know, before you are even clothed. So that bread is fresh, and you will definitely want to buy a sandwich utilizing it. Good slogan.

Special thanks for this photo to my only authorized guest Wa Picker, my wife.

Wednesday Wa Pic - Question answered

 So that's where the states get it from.

Wednesday Wa PIc - Brushing Beauties

 

Yeah, I remember back in college when a group of us guys would lean our heads together, admiring a passing beauty, and say, "She looks like she could scrape the baked-on cheese off a casserole."

. . .

Wednesday Wa Pic - Whack to the future

Got a rift? Stuck in a decade you didn't intend? Call Galvin. Personally recommended by Doc Brown.

. . .