After all the outpouring of support and qualified grief engendered by my last post, it is my happy duty to report that Riley has returned from the hospital, alive no less. (He seemed stuffed last week, but I don’t think I would have brought him back that way. Too Ringo Starr.)

The cause of his ailments is still under investigation. Seems West Highland Terriers are subject to liver disease, including one that involves an accumulation of copper. Really. But after ten days (and much more than ten dollars) and a non-stop IV drip, he is back among the living. Tail a-waggin’ even.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” one of the concerned vets said, and though she didn’t use the word miracle, I think the secret ingredient may have been the golden light I was trying to project onto him. I’m working on a book with a “clairvoyant counselor” who teaches people how to, among other things, project golden healing light. I’m not sure I was doing it right when I held him last week — I couldn’t actually visualize it — but I don’t think I hurt.

Then again it might have just been the promise of chicken if he got better.

My wife and I just went to visit our dog Riley at the vet hospital and the news was rather bleak. It was when the doctor used the word “kidney failure” that we both kind of lost it. I only know that term from conversations I’ve had with medical people about humans, and the outcome has never been good.

Riley’s not that old — eleven in March, which for a Westie is still middle-aged. And he had been fine… mostly. Until he wasn’t. And there is no indication that what ails him is about anything we did or he did — the hand of fate, I suppose. Terriers are prone to liver problems it seems. “You don’t ask why when a person gets cancer,” said the vet.

Some of us don’t. And we do, we don’t really expect an answer. People who don’t have pets don’t really get it. As Riley has gone through his travails over the last week, a number of people have said to me, “That must be costing you a fortune.” I guess if you use money as a yardstick for everything, yeah. But my dog has been a companion and a family member for eleven years now. And a better companion and family member than some who have gone before.

Last night the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain” came up on my shuffle, and I was overcome. I don’t have a lot of Dead in my iTunes — I grew up California, and saw them a few times about the time that song was recorded, in the early seventies. I had friends who were Dead Heads (though they didn’t call them that yet) but I was sort of agnostic. I knew there was something different about that song, though; even at age 16 it seemed to be about something — unlike, say, “China Cat Sunflower” which made a lot more sense when you were high. Turns out Phil Lesh’s father was dying of cancer, and Robert Hunter wrote him those words to sing. “What do you want me to do/To do for you to see you through?”

Those without animal companions (and now I understand that phrase that I used to make fun of) will complain: But it’s your dog, not your dad! Your dog never took you to a ballgame and had a long conversation with you about life. Actually, neither did my dad. But my dog showed me the meaning of love, that the giving is the getting, in a way few people ever have and he encompasses what little I know about the subject, from his dry black nose to the tip of his tail.

“Such a long long time to be gone/And a short time to be there.”

When my Paris friend Randall wrote to say he would not be coming to visit us after all due to the plume of soot from the Iceland volcano, he added, “Can hardly believe all this is the doing of some stupid with a flare gun.” What follows are the memos relating to the film Flaregun we’ve concocted. Yes, it’s in development.

To: RK
From: SE
Re: Flaregun!

Great meeting about Flaregun project yesterday! So excited to see this finally underway. It’s come a long way since that first meeting with Sony, when we still thought of this as Revolutionary War story, though I still think we should copyright the title Messin’ with the Hessians.

To review, Flick Armstrong is a bipolar crosswalk attendant who works nights as a special op for the CIA or Delta Force. We’ll work that out later. I see Shia in this  one, or that guy from Glee. Character name and background negotiable though the eye-patch is a must! (Note to self: eye-patch should be over same eye, from one scene to the next. Start interviewing continuity girls, stat!) His second cousin, Desdemona or Trixie, who’s really his ex-girlfriend in a former life, in a circus acrobat with a degree in string theory. (Note to self: find out what is, what kind of string used.) Agreed, Scarlett would be perfect for this, especially if she’ll wear a wet suit. Let’s get some egghead scientist in to talk about if flaregun could really set off nuclear catastrophe, and if so how it could be put back in the bottle in under two hours. If not we can work around. Still love the final lines:

Her: I told you that you should keep that thing in your pants.
Flick: Wait ‘til you see the fire next time.

(This last line will resonate more if he has black sidekick, Don Cheadle or Tracey Morgan, esp if he doesn’t die in last scene.)

I’ve attached the theme song, composed by my five year old, who wants a piece of the gross.

Sammy

PS Sorry again for mistaking your daughter for your wife and your housekeeper for your daughter. I gotta get new glasses!

To: SE
From: RK

Greetings from the Lake Geneva Shoreline! I arrived at the Grand Hotel this morning and — guess what? — my room wasn’t ready! (So 1970s, right?) At least the sauna was working so I could work up a sweat while they were stocking the mini bar and preparing the mobile studio for me.

Anyway, you’re really not going to believe this, but I think I found our Funky Claude! Yes, there I was at a restaurant down by the lake and I see this guy, running in and out. I called him over and — are you ready? — he starts saying something in French! What are the chances of that? In Switzerland! He kept trying to talk to me but I was just crazy at this point, laughing and hugging him really tight like I’m Isaac Mizrahi and he’s Elton John. People at the restaurant were looking at us like they can’t imagine what’s going on (you know how they are in Switzerland, so uptight) so I just said to them (in English), “This man is going to pull children out of the ground, goddammit!” Then “Funky Claude” tells me (in broken English), “Sir, if you are not going to order, I must ask you to leave.” So we may have to find another Funky Claude because the guy says he wants to keep his job in that shithole restaurant — go figure.

Re: “Messin’ with the Hessians”. I still love it (love it!) but I’m not sure it will play in Peoria, if you get my drift. Roger and I kicked around a few ideas during our layover in Pattaya last week and came up with, “No Gravlax for Polacks”, which spells b-o-x-o-f-f-i-c-e  in any language, right? Let’s run it by the Texaco people when I get back to LA in the fall.

Did you hear about the gambling house? They burned it down, the fuckers.

Peace out.
Ritchie

To: RK
From: SE
Re: Flaregun!

I’m thinking with an exclamation point now. Though that makes the kicker hard. Save that for the sequel?

Avril, my new GF, just graduated from one of these girls’ schools I can’t even afford to pronounce, and she says that in Switzerland they speak Italian, German AND French. I’m like, choose a lane! Turns out her name means “April” in English. I just thought her keyboard was broken.

Funny about FC. Try whispering “Who feels like a trip to the Andes?” See if that jogs his memory.

Re the Hessians thing, Russell’s in if we work Thomas Jefferson back up to the front. Harder now with the time travel aspect but I suppose one more won’t hurt! I still like “Pimp My Bill of Rights!” Good in an election year, if we can work that fast.

O, and it turns out a flaregun could set the sky on fire, if the sky was laced with something. Rocket fuel, Vicks vap-o-rub. First thing is we got to make people care. So the polar bear stays in.

Sammy

To: SE
From: RK
Re: FlareGun

As I was saying, I just got off the phone with corporate. I was ready to fight for your exclamation point but then I got to thinking. Would Tom have been as good in Topgun! Would Ernie have been as irrepressible in Mythreesons! So let’s run it back up the flagpole, Jeremiah. I’m thinking intercaps: FlareGun. Simple, powerful, on-message.

Meanwhile, I’ve decided to extend my stay in Europe, kick back, get my hands on some of this volcanic hash they’re all talking about over here. Load up the bong and ride the snake to the lake. Smoke on the water. 30 days in the hole.

Bradley

There were some surprises in this week’s Pulitzer Prize winners: a ProPublica reporter shared an award with the New York Times, and Next to Normal, with its bi-polar protagonist, has to be the best musical about mental illness since Gypsy (narcissistic personality disorder) or The Music Man (mass hysteria).

The other award no one saw coming went to a dead guy: the Pulitzer Prize Board gave a special citation to Hank Williams, who died in 1953 in the backseat of a car “in a Pure Filling Station on a New Year’s Day/In a car that needed gasoline/He found the only peace of mind he would ever enjoy/In a place he’d never ever seen.”

Those lines are from Steve Yerkey, who wrote one of a handful of great songs about the man who remains country’s greatest songwriter — “a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song,” as Leonard Cohen sang. Why the Pulitzer chose to honor him now is anybody’s guess, though he’s in interesting company: Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane and Bob Dylan are the only musicians who have been similarly honored. (Now that would make an interesting quartet.)

But you don’t hear a lot of Hank these days, not the real thing, anyway. His songs endure (Norah Jones did a sweet cover of “Cold Cold Heart” on her billions-sold debut album) but modern country stations don’t have much use for him, let alone his only talented offspring, Hank Williams III. Maybe the Pulitzer committee was hoping they could make people rediscover his poetry and pure-as-spring-water singing.

Not that Hank would care, but his alter ego, Luke the Drifter might. This was his handle for his good side, the guy who sang morality tales like “Ramblin’ Man” and “Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw” while bad Hank kept on drinkin’ and fightin’ and cheatin’ through life. That Hank would have missed the awards ceremony luncheon, where they never pour any sour mash anyway.

My neighbor Rob Buchanan forwarded the following to me, I guess in attempt to make me barf. It’s from a handout for DKLB BKLN, a new condo highrise in our neighborhood. Honestly, I’d try to parody the prose but I’m just not that good:

He likes waking up with the sun streaming through his window. He turns over–Sunny’s still asleep. God, she’s beautiful. He throws on a t-shirt, sweats, and steps out on DeKalb–he’s at the crossroads of Fort Greene’s multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual, multistatus world and that’s what he thrives on, the life. He does a few stretches, then starts running. Give him something hard to listen to, something fresh. Runs to the park and does some laps. Finishes with a dash up the steps to the monument. Breathes. He loves this view. Loves where he lives.  Brooklyn’s a city in motion, pulsing, alive. He looks out over the park and thinks about what he has to do that day. He’s in control of his time, his space, his environment. And he likes it that way.

Back home, he rouses Sunny and they hit the Greenmarket. They pick up some vegetables and find fresh fish and flowers. They like getting there early when the local chefs are shopping too. There’s the chef from General Greene. Giles nods. The chef smiles back. They know each other. Back home, Sunny heads to the gym for a yoga class. Giles checks emails. He’s been waiting for a sound clip from a DJ in Durban. There’s this new South African group he’s hoping to book. Soweto kids. Cool, it’s there. He listens. Their sound is fresh, alive–they have something to say. He heads to Tillie’s. Coffee, black. A muffin. He talks to Mavis, the Pratt student with purple hair. They dish about the art on the wall. She’s smart, gorgeous, and knows what she’s talking about. Over his coffee, he jots down notes, things he’s gotta do. Book that band for one. Plus, he has something waiting for him at UrbanGlass. A vase he had blown for Sunny’s birthday. He finishes breakfast and heads back up DeKalb.

This threatens to be the first installment of the on-going adventures of Giles “Goat Boy,” Fort Greene arriviste and all-around monied hipster. His girlfriend is beautiful. His iPod is stocked with hard music, perfect for those runs around the park. He is friends with chefs and coffee shop waitresses alike. He listens to kids from Soweto.

But hear his song, and deconstruct for a minute the meaning of the word “multistatus,” one of the multi-adjectives he uses to describe our neighborhood. Does that mean Giles, who just overpaid for a condo on what is actually the Flatbush Avenue Extension (hard to romanticize that name), rubs shoulders with the dealers from the Walt Whitman projects? Would they take his iPhone from if he ran at night? And would he still like it that way?

Discuss among yourselves.