Mumford & Sons & the Family Dog

Value is a very subjective term when applied to goods and services. Who knows what an article for sale is truly worth? For instance, I have no idea why a banana costs much less than a Mumford and Sons CD; surely a banana is more useful and even more entertaining? A banana can be eaten in a suggestive manner and afterwards its skin can be cast upon the sidewalk to provide hours of pratfall fun. A Mumford and Sons CD, however, can only be played: much to the annoyance, I might add, of anyone in earshot. There is always the drink coaster option, I suppose, but then what would you do with all those old Gypsy Kings CDs already protecting your furniture from unsightly stains? 
Whatever, my point is that you can buy roughly fifty really useful bananas for the price of a single, not very good Mumford and Sons CD. 
Of course, it is a truism that something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Personally, I would gladly pay five dollars for a banana if I wasn't aware that grocers sell them for twenty-five cents each. Perhaps I might even fight a gorilla for one. Would a teenage girl do battle with a gorilla for a Mumford and Sons CD? I think not. But then it's unlikely any self-respecting gorilla would want the wretched CD in the first place (despite the fact that only a filthy, flea-bitten ape could truly relate to the lyrical content in any meaningful way). But I digress.
Perhaps the most bewildering set of valuations occurs in the pet dog market, where the answer to "how much is that doggy in the window?" ranges from many thousands of dollars to free-to-a-good-home. Free can get you a cute little terrier capable of learning enough tricks to be called a canine Houdini; many thousands of dollars, on the other hand, might burden you with a cretinous Labrador Retriever unable to retrieve its snout from its own anus; and vice versa, obviously. So caveat-emptor when considering a canem, as Cicero might advise.
Lola was a rescue puppy; meaning she was free to adopt provided we paid the rescue part, an operation described to us as a sort of Black Hawk Down and Lassie Come Home mash up. Apparently it's expensive and dangerous to transport a cuddly bundle of joy across state lines. But Lola has been worth every penny, even if you add in the total cost of all the shoes, cushions and rugs that she's ripped to shreds and destroyed. Worth more even, I have to say, than an entire boat load of bananas. After all, you can't put a price on a face like this.

Growl: You're on Candid Camera

There is a famous New Yorker cartoon and resulting meme: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Which is true, I suppose, unless you happen to be a dog who unwittingly triggered the webcam on her master's laptop while trampling across the keypad in search of crumbs. Then the mask of anonymity falls and everybody in the pet training chat room can immediately spot the canine interloper. Not that our pets would log on to such a site in the first place, of course. A dog on the Internet would surely be surfing food porn and cat videos if presented with the opportunity. I can't imagine they'd have any interest in the sort of overbearing, tyrannical nonsense that dog whisperers promulgate.

Personally, I think dogs should be encouraged to engage with the Internet, as both consumers and producers. After all, as this very web page proves, random digital images of dogs are much more interesting than anything egotistical humans can add to the Internet. Who wouldn't rather look at pictures of dogs being goofy than scroll through people's idiot blog ideas, dreary news aggregators, boring Facebook updates and Twitter's ungrammatical diarrhea. I would infinitely prefer to study Instagram self portraits of bulldogs in baskets than read the Huffington Post, for example.
So thank God for online dogs, whether they be self-publicizing poodles or schnauzers cloaked in secrecy. Frankly, I believe it's about time we changed that cartoon meme to "On the Internet, everyone hopes you're a dog."

Ho Hum

Most people hum tunes when performing everyday chores. It's a way of filling our heads to avoid thinking about the tedious tasks we're doing; elevator muzak for brains stuck at the mezzanine level for the immediate future. There's a dull droning hum for folding sheets and a slow waltz version for pairing socks. Most popular of all is the funeral march hum for waiting for the next available operator. Imagine a lobotomized Maria from The Sound of Music slobbering all over her favorite things instead of singing; or just listen to yourself surfing the web and reading this nonsense.
I'm pretty sure dogs hum when going about their daily dog business, also, even if their humming, like a high frequency dog whistle, is inaudible to human ears. Lola certainly has that faraway, making-mental-music look in her eyes when squatting at the kerb. Although I'll wager it's not the same bored noise I make while waiting with my pooper-scooper for her to finish. She always seems so pleased with herself afterwards that she must be humming a much more uptempo tune than mine. Sometimes I think I can even see her little back feet tapping away to the apparently irresistible rhythm. In fact, I strongly suspect Lola's humming is actually a jazzy improvisation based on an old, familiar canine standard: Poopin' at the Savoy, perhaps? I've even designed a Blue Note style album cover for her hum.

It seems rather paradoxical to regard a dog as a hepcat, but I can easily see Lola sniffing her way around Birdland, scrounging for scraps of Cajun shrimp dropped on the floor by clumsy bongo players. Physically,  she was definitely born with a Bebop look from central casting. It's almost as if those lopsided ears of hers were especially designed for sporting a beatnik beret. Furthermore, the fur sprouting around her face forms a natural "goatee" effect, even if she is a girl. The alternative, I suppose, is that she might be humming reggae. But she had absolutely no interest in those Jamaican jerk chicken flavored treats we bought from the pet store.

Canine Coat Check

It is an evil day in any respectable man's life when, without ironic intent, he begins to regard those cotton underpants from Target as his "special pair," but such is the inelegant fate of many formerly fashion conscious men in these mean, recessionary economic times.
Dogs, on the other hand, despite the 'Best In Show' pretensions of pedigree breeders and groomers, are generally an egalitarian and unfussy species who don't suffer from similar existential wardrobe crises. Dogs will wear any brand of winter apparel without a second thought, provided it fits reasonably well, even those hideous skull-encrusted Ed Hardy designs if the dog is especially cold and desperate. Interestingly, such animalistic demonstrations of sartorial indifference are not shared by cats, our other domestic companions, and notoriously the most preening and self-conscious of pets. This is why parades of haute couture are staged on catwalks rather than dogwalks; why we use the term glamorpuss instead of glamorpup.

In the picture above, Lola is modeling an ugly polyester wrap thing with velcro fastenings previously worn by our last dog, now deceased. If I was forced to wear the human equivalent of that coat I would refuse to leave the house; but Lola doesn't give a damn. She could not care less what Godforsaken secondhand rags are draped around her bony shoulders. Despite her floppy ear and unkempt fur Lola still manages to exude an element of effortless elegance that is the equal of any pouting starlet or strutting supermodel. She is canine coolness personified. If only her Target boxer-shorted owner could be so naturally stylish when we're voguing at the dog park.

Dog Road Movie

Detour, L'Avventura, North By Northwest, the list of great road movies is neither especially long nor particularly winding. Most film buffs, I suspect, would limit the list of great road movies to the three I mentioned, since all the others are so tiresomely predictable that most viewers end up wishing that the characters had never left home in the first place.
Of these worthless cinematic bores, with the possible exception of anything starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Lola In Low Gear (directed Baldwin, 2011) is probably the most boring of all.
Below are stills, courtesy of Cahiers du Cinema, from an exceptionally dull scene in which an excited Lola thinks she's reversing out of the driveway, en route for a fund day at the dog park. Unfortunately, much to Lola's disappointment, her feet are too short to reach the pedals; consequently she and car remain stationary and, staring mournfully out of the window, Lola realizes she won't make it to her destination.

It's no 101 Dalmatians fun for the whole family, obviously, but then it's no depressingly sentimental Old Yeller, either. Personally, I like to think of the film as a cross between Alain Resnais' yawningly enigmatic L'Année dernière à Marienbad and that mythical snore-fest Lassie Does Absolutely Nothing At All.
For those interested, if God forbid anyone is, here is the Lola In Low Gear trailer, featuring all the best bits of the film like all movie trailers always do.

Christmas Classics

Despite the suitability of a lowly cattle shed as a sort of makeshift kennel, dogs really have no place in any conventional Christmas nativity scene. Barking at the three wise men and chewing the ends of the shepherd's crooks, then sticking their snouts in the myrrh when Joseph isn't looking and being sick under the Christ child's manger. That's just the way dogs are: more 'Howling at the Moon' and less 'Silent Night Holy Night,' that's for sure.
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, on the other hand, provides the perfect canine setting. It's easy to imagine some Scroogey poodle appearing in this timeless Christmas classic, being forewarned by the restless spirit of Jacob Marley's gloomy basset hound of the depressing doghouse in store if it isn't obedient to its owner's wishes. "This is the choke chain I forged in life. Look how enormously long it is. Some of those links are for peeing on the carpet when I was a puppy, others are for all the library books I've torn to shreds, but most of them are for stubbornly refusing to come when I was called. Change your bad dog ways, you dumb mutt, before it is too late."
Here is a photo of Lola as Eberschnauzer Scrooge, being visited by the Ghost of Rawhide Past.

Oddly, I don't recall any dogs wandering around the Cratchit household, but that's probably because Dickens didn't think those scenes through enough when he was writing his novella. Surely the schmaltzy Victorian heart-rending quotient could be increased tenfold if a mangy cur curled up in the corner with Tiny Tim. I think Lola with her one floppy ear and perennial bad hair days would also be excellent in this role.

The Canine Couch Potato

The canine couch potato, despite its lack of chips and dip and Mountain Dew, is a particularly lethargic type of vegetative entity. It is the type of dog that any self-respecting quick, brown fox has always dreamed of jumping over. Only a single, quivering, antennae-like ear gives any indication that life exists within the furry frame sprawled on the cushions.
The canine couch potato is not vexed by questions of space and time; there are no bone burying deadlines to meet; that artisanal cheese crumb under the dining room table will still be there tomorrow; those sounds and smells from outside must growl at their own provocations this afternoon.

I've tried preaching to Lola with Biblical proverbs: "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." But, like the prodigal pooch in the kennel of its breeder, she merely responds with a drooping eyelid and a short wrinkling of an apathetic snout.
Perhaps this particular canine couch potato believes she has entered a state of suspended animation; that she will wake at some future date when dogs have mastered the art of opening the fridge and making a chicken sandwich for themselves. She is mistaken, obviously, but you can't convince a canine couch potato that the truth is actually very different.
The irony here, of course, is that the canine couch potato should not be on the couch in the first place, but such flagrantly flouted rules of law are topics for another post.