Whoodle or Poodle she’s the same bitch to me.

The sad story of the adopted poodle who wasn’t.

Bubs aka Bubbles is adopted. We’ve never told her but she is. When she was a pup, less than 2 years-old, I would lay awake at night dreading the day I’d have her to tell her that we picked her out at the shelter; that we had never met her parents; and that although we could see and had been told she was a poodle, we could not document any of that. She would have to take it on faith.  

When she played at the dog park with the other dogs, she never demonstrated any self-effacement, but I knew inside, not knowing … made her sad. If we had bought her directly from the breeder things would have been different, but we loved her as much as if she were given directly to us.    

It wasn’t the shelter for abused women dogs; it was a shelter for the unwanted, homeless and abandoned. The family who bought her from the breeder was childless, and then the wife who was 43 years old became pregnant. At least they didn’t blame Bubs for the pregnancy. They worried about a dog with the child, and gave up the pup. Life is full of choices, that’s why it’s spelled L – IF  - E.

The whole story started when I promised Pam if she got an A in math, her hardest subject, that she could have a dog. She’d have to walk and take care of it. I thought she’d learn responsibility. Similar to thinking that chess would teach her to be logical. Not every idea I have works out perfectly. This one, well …

Pam received an A plus in geometry, - there’s a reason she was accepted to Harvard undergrad and Yale Law school; it’s called brains.

We drove the station wagon to the shelter. Pam loved Bubbles on first sight. I have to admit that Bubbles’ dark siren eyes sang to my soul. She was a seductress of a major magnitude. The tilted head with the soft stare could melt Simon Legree’s heart, not that I put myself in his class, but during those days, working the hours that I did, well … after 40 hours awake: emergency surgery sandwiched between working two sets of 5 hours in the office, (25 to 30 patients, not all pleasant, but all needing help) being a pleasant Ole Mad Mutt all the time was difficult.

Sorry, I got sidetracked back to Bubs riding home.     

So wee-wee pad and cage in the back of the station wagon and Bubs already showing her lack of demeanor, barking and spinning in excitement, we drove home.

In the car, she would bark first at me, and then in her excitement she’d yell at the dog. Yes, I am talking about Pam who made Bubs look calm. Who says teenagers always have to play it cool? It gave me a giggle that I had to hide, so as not to incur the wrath of my daughter. At one point, between Pam’s barks and Bubs’ answers, it seemed they were singing a chorus together, in harmony.     

The dog fed off Pam and by the time we got home, they were fully bonded.

The ex’s first words were, “Did you have to pick a dirty dog. You and Pam wash her clean before she steps in my house.”

So Pam and I took Bubs out on the patio, by the pool and hosed her down and washed her up. Most dogs would probably be upset or mad at the treatment, but she was a trooper. She bit the water from the hose and rocked up and down like a carrousel horse. (She does that move even today when she is really excited.)

She barked, but not at us. She encouraged her pampering, nuzzling Pam’s hand as she soaped the dog up. Her head-thrown-back barks seemed like the whinnies from a sire about to be bred to his favorite mare.  

When we were finished, she looked no whiter. She was an off-white standard poodle. That’s what we thought. We already loved our mutant. She looked champagne colored or slightly tan. The curls were poodle although the length of the fur seemed a bit long. Maybe the curls were just a little straighter than I expected, but the length may have made them hang out.

We accepted Bubs for who she was. A mutant poodle even though the shelter had provided us with papers from the owner stating she was a pure bred. If we ever wanted to breed her to an AKC registered poodle, the off spring would be AKC registered purebred poodle. At least that is what the paper documented.

8 months after Bubbles arrived, Pam and my ex left for New York and my ex’s boyfriend in Westchester. My ex was only too happy to leave Bubs with her two daily walks with associated poop patrol, and grooming, and need for attention.

“We each get a child. You and my daughter certainly don’t think I would be yoked to that tan fuzz ball. Bubbles is your child, as Pammie is mine. We split the children down the middle. Pammie can beg all she wants, you have Bubbles.”     

Bubbles became Bubs because no man wants to be walking his large off white poodle and calling, “Here Bubbles” while standing outside of a tavern at the Jersey shore. The reaction could keep Mike Tyson in shape and training. 

The dog liked her nickname and so did I. About two years after we brought her home, I received a note from the shelter.

Ophelia Shakespeare Desdemona iii, the dog you adopted two years ago, has a problem. Please contact us.

Yes, Bubs real name as provided by her breeder was actually, Ophelia Shakespeare Desdemona iii. No wonder she liked Bubs better.

A letter of this tone, received by a physician, creates the type of fear that makes you check your healthcare coverage. Bubs was unemployed and therefore had none. She couldn’t apply for Blue Bone and Blue Muzzle, and she was ineligible for Medicaid, unless she could prove she was a Chihuahua from Mexico with a green card or work visa. People have told me that some individuals on Medicaid have neither of those documents. Can you believe that? 

Even now, our President O’Bummer ignores her demographics for healthcare coverage. Get out the dog vote next election.

I visited the shelter and they gave me a letter, which had been initially sent to the family that bought Bubs from the breeder. It stated that she was not a purebred Poodle. Although her mother had been a poodle, she, the mother, had escaped for a fling with the Wheaton Terrier sire on the next farm.

Had they been planning this assignation, or was it totally happenstance? We will never know, but Bubs was one of the products of the love connection. She was one of the original Whoodles. The cross breeding of a Poodle with a Wheaton Terrier.

They are magnificent dogs and Bubs is a typical product. She is off white in color with long curled fur and a mix in stature between the two breeds. She is usually docile like a poodle, but when whipped up, like a meringue, she behaves with the energy of a terrier. 

I wasn’t planning on breeding Bubs so the revelation was moot. However, like a good golf swing, the story would not be complete without the follow through. In the second paragraph of the letter, the breeder asked to have the names of all off spring and their owners so that the AKC could correct the breeding lines and keep the poodle breed pure.

They would perform this task for me, if I paid them $400. If I wished to perform this communications process myself, they would forward the papers for $400. If I wished to continue breeding in the future, I would need the full sire line papers and that would cost me $400. If I did not contact them, they would forward the problem to the AKC, and make sure that any off spring of Ophelia Shakespeare Desdemona iii, would be ineligible in either classification, Poodle or Whoodle.

My natural inclination was to send them a letter to stuff their whole kit and caboodle with a noodle up one of their poodles. Tink prevailed on me to ignore the letter, since we have the best dog, and they have the problem of fraud.

Seemed like a good plan, but now I worry about how I am going to tell Bubs. We know who her sire and dam were, but they weren’t of the same breed. She's a mixed breed. How will this affect her self-esteem? She usually trots proudly on the sand or boardwalk. I don’t want her to lose her swagger.      

The reason why this comes up urgently today is that the breeder, through the shelter, has located me. They sent me a bill for the paper work they have enclosed. $400. So I guess, Tink’s plan failed.

When I called the shelter, they said the breeder asked for my name. The reason they gave was a hereditary hip problem that the dog might have and needed evaluation. The shelter only wanted the dog to be taken care of well.  

I may only be a human orthopedic surgeon, but I know that a dog, who is 13 years old in dog years, and therefore, approximately 91 years in human counting, would probably have demonstrated a congenital hip defect by now. She has been on glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate since she was 5. The dog still chases squirrels, and Mrs. Leary’s cat, not to mention, the creature in the bramble, who at times gets Bubs a little whipped up.

So I am not too worried about her congenital hip problem.

I am worried about others getting sucked in by this plan to make a breeder’s deception or fraud profitable for them. I think the AKC needs to be informed of this problem. I just didn’t know how to go about it.

Over dinner last week Pam listened as Tink laughed about Bubs needing a total hip and Ole Doc Snickers – aka the Mad Mutt - putting one in her hip.

Pam offered her services because she loved her dog. On her office stationary she wrote the breeder a letter. Essentially in legalese, it states you broke it, you fix it at your expense, or we will seek reimbursement for lost income from failure to have breeding stock as advertised.

She mentioned 8 breeding seasons that would have been useable if the dog were truly a Poodle. At an average of 4 pups per litter and $1500 per dog, she estimated the damages as $48,000.

Of course, if we had actually bred the dog there would have been costs to us, but the other side of the equation was that most litters are larger than 4 pups.

Lawyers, can’t live with them and can’t live without them.

We haven’t received a letter back from the breeders as yet, but I do have the post card from the return-receipt-requested certified-letter sent by Pam.

Isn’t life fun? Just when you thought the sea was calm, some one of exceptionally low intelligence runs your bow in a speedboat. Trim the mainsail and give full chase, overheating your cannon’s muzzle from the cannonade.

Sink the Bastards and make them scuba diving fodder.    

As to Bubs, she handled all this well. I haven’t noticed her off her feed, and she still protects the house at night running from window to window barking at the damn keening from that bramble.

Sorry, I promised that we would disclose the creature of the wild rose bramble this week, but I have to defer that to the future because of this shocking news.

I am the Mad Mutt, proud owner of a Whoodle, who can’t even whistle Yankee Doodle. Goodnight Jimmy Cagney, and all ships at sea.   

Sunday at the wedding. Hey it’s me Tink. Awesome!

Caveat: some names have been changed to protect the guilty, such as Nozzle and Sprae, but they are close enough to get the picture.

Hey! Typing here is just awesome. I’m totally into it, you know.

This is Rosemary or as most of you know me, Tink. I managed to get to the keyboard while Doc and Lew P are having a Murphy’s at Bar A. They want to watch the Jets versus the Saints with loud company. Probably so when they use totally nasty language they will blend in.

Drew Breese is a cute and good, and the Jets are in trouble, but that’s not my problem until a Mad Mutt comes home to commiserate. Maybe that would not be so bad, as long as he comes home alone. We don’t need Lew P documenting.    

Personally I’d rather watch Mark Sanchez’s little tush waddle to the line at home in Mutt’s flannel lumber jack shirt and sweat pants. But what I’m looking for in a football game on television is different than what the guys watch.

Hey, Mark warm them hands before you put them down there. No wonder they’re jumping before the snap. Go Jets.       

What I did to get the computer for myself, was program a little crash into the fifth boot up after Wednesday. That happened Saturday night while Mutt tried to access WebMD.

The boys, who have no idea how to fix the computer, left that in my hands. Simple emergency boot, and a correction to directory and the hard drive, and the Tinkinator is at the wheel, so come along for the totally awesome ride.

I have a story about last Sunday. I knew I was in for a long day because our friends Kim and Ralph Nozzle had invited us their son’s wedding. We had been to their house for Thanksgiving once, and they always invite their childhood friends, the Phatfanny family, Dim-ass, Pill & their son 20 Watts. 

The Phatfannys are not easy people to get along with, and I always check to make sure Mutt isn’t packing the Colt when the Nozzles invite us over. I’m not sure if that’s because he’ll use it. Or, I might be tempted. I’m peaceful, but the Phatfannys are … annoying. That is the PC answer.

Phuck-phaces? I didn’t say that. You read it wrong. It’s not a typo.   

No matter the occasion, the Nozzles put us at the same table as the Phatfannys who are gratuitously insulting perpetually. Maybe we are the only ones who haven’t complained about them yet, so we are sacrificed.

Before we left the house, Mutt was put off. The Sunday Star Ledger missed a delivery. He initially accused me of not paying the bill, but it’s on the credit card and automatic so … sometimes, when he’s worked up he has a hair trigger temper, and between the Star Ledger and the Phatfannys, well you get the picture. Like the time he walked into the woods alone with the FBI agent following him, totally irrational, that’s what is loveable about the Spring Lake Heights Crusader, delusional passion. Back to the story.        

We called the customer service people and as usual they were pleasant. They offered a replacement copy. The delivery would come between 10 AM and approximately never. Since this has happened about once every three months, we know never is a more likely time than 10 AM.

That was the case Sunday, but they delivered a Sunday paper, Monday with the Monday paper. I guess the delivery guy held it hostage. The ransom for the Sunday Ledger, 125 cents, and the way the paper is shrinking not worth it.     

The really interesting part is that the same guy delivers the New York Times as the Star Ledger. Invariably, we get one and not the other, but it is never both that are MIA. The talent involved in not delivering half a standing order is mindboggling. No comics to read this weekend, boo. Doc was not happy.      

We had to start dressing around 3:30 because of the drive to Roxbury where the wedding would be held.

Of course, the Ledger was nowhere to be seen before we left. Mutt went into Sunday sports section withdrawal, and that is an awesome spectacle of puffing, followed by the holding of the breath, leading into punching walls or doors, and the finale, throwing himself on the bed naked after the shower, kicking his feet and making everything jiggle from head to toes.

I’d call it childish, but I don’t want to insult children everywhere. They are not that immature.     

Having Doc naked on the bed is not a problem for me, I’ve always enjoyed making the four-poster squeak, but because of the time element, there was not any time to take real advantage of the situation, or him.

Foreplay? No time for two-play. Even mind play was out, a flash fantasy maybe, but like a haiku fantasy, at the most contained in twenty words.    

Mutt was in a snit about wearing a monkey suits and a cummberous-bund, but he looks so handsome and adorable in that black and white attire that it is worth putting up with the grousing. Since he dropped 25 pounds, we’ve shortened the cummerbund four inches. Sometimes women give him the eye, a new experience for both of us.  

I need only shoot him pixie love dust with a glance, add a compliment. Bingo, the snit resolves, with a “Do I really look like Sean Connery in Dr. No?”

Men can be so foolish.     

They held the wedding in Roxbury New Jersey, which is more than an hour’s drive from the Jersey shore when there is no traffic. This was Sunday night, like a total disaster, and to make matters worse, a tractor-trailer decided to imitate a half-opened jack-knife lying on its side.

Frozen Perdue roasters scattered over the Turnpike looking like a mass exodus from a Portuguese Churrascaria prior to roasting. The clean up would have been faster, if each passing car was allowed to take a roaster home. For sitting 2 hours, stopped dead, on the pike, that’s the least they could do.

Mutt tried to make a u-turn but a state trooper wouldn’t let him pull-it off. That’s the best I can do for a poultry joke, excuse me, a paltry joke.     

We would not have taken a chicken, because they were not formally dressed. I could have used one as a bustle maybe. You know that thing ladies wore in the 1880’s to give them a bubble butt. The more things change the more they stay the same. Yo Yo, booty call in the Victorian hood, you all. Just giving the antiques their props. 

By the time we arrived at the wedding, the post ceremony reception had started. Mutt looked at the bright side saying, “At least our car was at the front of the valet section, because they filled from back to front. Easy exit. Less time with the Phatfannys.” Then he announced, “Phatfanny red alert.” He imitated a siren, as he left the Honda, and put on his tux jacket.  

He wanted to leave. He is so totally blatant, the tact of a four year-old. Wait Jay would know not to say that, so there goes that theory.

When we sat at the table, with Pill Phatfanny next to me, I understood the emotion. Instead of hello, she said, “That old Honda have trouble making it all the way here from the shore? Our Benz has a GPS that’s works in real time. You understand real time as in computer speak? Thought not.”

This from a lady whose main accomplishment in life is avoiding a homosexual scandal in her boys scout troop by only letting the Moms be the troop leaders. She brought new meaning to the phrase, “Dem Mothers.”      

Mutt, to his credit, smiled and replied, “Actually the Honda tried to chicken out on the Turnpike, because it perdued its nerve. Perdue as in French. You speak the language of the sophisticate, right?”

She looked to her husband Dim-ass and said, “I don’t get it.”

To which Mutt replied, “That’s obvious. When you look like the Crypt Keeper post-exsanguination, you’ll probably never get it. Unless there is a vacant trash bag available, and simultaneously, someone is truly desperate.”

I kicked him. He stopped and the Phatfannys turned to the couple on the other side of them and asked. “So, your daughter married a girl? Is that legal? How’s that working out? Our first grandchild is due in two months.”   

The couple didn’t respond, and left the table to dance on the far side of the floor.

Mutt asked, “And who’s the father of your grandchild. Did they round up suspects yet?”

But they didn’t hear him. And I had to kick him under the table again.

“It was worth the pain.” He replied.  

We left to introduce ourselves to the parents of the bride and groom, who were sitting nearby. Kim Nozzle brought us over to Patrick and Beverly Sprae. 

A little while later the music stopped, and the bride and groom made their entrance. The couple in a gesture to modernity decided to hyphenate their names. They were introduced as Dr. and Mrs. Sprae-Nozzle.

It could have been Nozzle-Sprae.  

He is a GU doctor. Maybe the married name is advertising.

“Have it adjusted by Dr. Sprae-Nozzle, and shoot only blanks without hazzle.”      

The Phatfannys had a field day with the name but not within the hearing of their host and hostess. Dim-ass made several significantly off-color jokes involving the bride handling the new name, and what gauge nozzle, all of which combined a lack of class, taste, and sensitivity. He is the master at that.

After five tries without a single laugh from his audience, the Crypt Keeper pulled him to the dance floor.  

On his return, he mentioned that the newlyweds were still looking for a house and would be living with her parents in Nutley for about 6 months. He railed about living with your relatives and not being a couple on your own.

“Where’s the maturity? How is that earning your way in life?”  

He bragged how his son, 20 Watts – yes he’s not bright, less so than Dim-ass – lived on his own in New York with his fiancé. They have a luxury cooperative apartment on the West Side in the 80’s. It’s rent controlled and in the family since the pilgrims touched Plymouth Rock. 

They boasted how their son is in an allied field to the bridegroom, and can afford his rich digs.

However, if memory serves the Tinkinator right, his son inherited his apartment from a dead uncle who had no children and made his money manipulating stocks in the 70’s. He left that money to Pill and Dim-ass, but he left the apartment with a trust fund to pay rent to 20 Watts.

Dim-ass is less forth coming with his son’s occupation. They talk about how he got into Cornell, but elected not to matriculate. Instead, he followed the pipeline into other career opportunities.

I am not sure how being a plumber is an allied field to being a GU physician. Both are honest lines of work, but apparently, plumber does not meet the threshold for Dim-ass or Pill to mention, at least not specifically.

Honesty has never been allowed to get in the way of the Phatfanny stories. They boasted that 20 Watts’ fiancé is studying animals and is interested in becoming a veterinarian.

I’m interested in flying without a plane, but I am incapable of that feat at this time. She’d have a better chance of becoming a vegetarian. But the vegetables might out smart her.    

During the salad portion of the meal, he asked Doc if his life story had been published yet. Doc replied it’s being proofed and needed some editing before it was published. Lew P will start pitching it in November. 

Pill volunteered, “I thought as much, because I haven’t seen it mentioned on the New York Times best-seller list.” When she crinkles her nose, her skin looks like used tissue paper, and her sneer is straight from Cruella De Vil. “Not even in the paperback section.”

She didn’t ask for an ARC copy. I don’t think she can read anything other than tea leafs and graphic novels anyway. (That’s graphic not gothic. In gothics the plot would be to hard for her to follow.)  

Dim-ass bragged about being written about as an artist – he makes fancy sausage and other stuffed meats – and that led to his editors demanding that he write articles about the experience.

“I’m published in several magazines. Right now, as of this very moment, multiple editors are sending me subjects to free lance via e-mail.”

“What do you write about?” Mutt asked between bites of salad.  

“My area of expertise. The modern use of principles from the industrial revolution in making salami and bologna.”

Doc muttered, “I knew he was a bologna expert.”

His e-mail address must be fifty_percent-bugsnrats_Sin_Lewis@asshole.ditz 

I grabbed Doc to dance, which is a major victory, because in that monkey suit he feels like a gigolo. He thinks that dancing draws attention to that sleazy image. He won’t tango and the only Paris he knows is followed by the name of a former hotel chain, but he had been filled to the hilt on Phatfanny stories.   

To me he is Fred Upstairs, and we won’t talk about who he is down stairs. I remain a lady.

When we got back to the table, the main course had been served. Dim-ass announced over his Roast Beef, “I haven’t got me a good piece of meat in ages.” Then he looked at Pill. She blushed. I guess embarrassing anyone works for him.

Pill then launched into a story about Pam. Several years ago 20 Watts saw her at a shore bar and thought she was trolling – the episode includes his failed attempt to pick her up. Apparently, Pam was dressed fashionably for the bar scene. 

This story, which has been retold every time we meet is not only growing old, but isn’t even original – the lesser light told it first, and poorly. The story should have died a natural death, but like a zombie is perpetuated at the most opportune time to embarrass my Doc.    

I had had enough. So had several people at the table. “Every time I hear that story I wonder, what was a happily engaged man like 20 Watts doing in a pick up bar at the shore, while his fiancé worked the weekend as an assistant pet groomer at Dog R Us. He travels from New York for what, variety? By the way, how do they tell her apart from the dog she’s grooming.” 

Mutt spit up his white wine when I said that, and then said, “A toast to the meek inheriting the earth, while the boastful and bragging live with what little they have and boast of it. May we always know the difference between true friends and the entitled without a real time GPS – Good People Scanner.”  

Everyone at the table raised a glass, although the Phatfannys were slow to do so.

Our host and hostess still don’t get it. The Phatfannys are unhappy people who must tear others down to make themselves appear large.

Their pear-shaped bodies, a species’ trait, should allow for an enlarged brainpan within their fat fannies for the functioning section of their brain. That area appears spacious, vacuous, and cavernous.

They must be like the first IBM computers that took up a room and functioned no better than a handheld phone does today. The Phatfannys are the human equivalent of Univac I, and in today’s world, they are competing with smaller, smarter, and faster versions. Their statements come from the pure bitterness of being obsolete, and non-competitive.    

Doc’s home from Bar A. He says, “Next time, he will blog on Lance and the creature from the wild rose bramble. The damn Leary cat still lives.”

Apparently it was a long game and they had quite a few Murphy’s. He went straight to the bathroom. It’s been five minutes and I haven’t heard a flush yet.
“Hey big guy don’t fall in.” LOL.   

 I’m not Mad and I am certainly no Mutt. The loo is a British bathroom and so pee belongs there, not on the computer. I am the Tinkinator, and I’ll be back.     

Another Pleasant Starbuck’s Thursday. Wasn’t that a song?

Spent part of Thursday morning at Starbuck’s with Lew P. While he is ok company, he acts like he knows me from the inside out. I met him a short while ago, not more than two years. It’s not like he created me, is it? Some guys, huh?

DOE’s, Doctors of Everything, they know it all, you have to foul them up to keep them on their toes. Slip them a tidbit of information that they don’t know, and make them think. Like Biden’s brain surgery. He had an aneurysm. People forget that fact, and it explains a lot about the Vice-President. He’s brain damaged, for real. 

His neurosurgery must have been computer-guided to be performed in such a confined and miniscule space. Biden’s brainpan, he’s a size three hat. Know what I mean.

Another American medical innovation, the surgeon used an electron microscope for neurosurgery, an advance way beyond stereotactic surgery.  

I guess you can tell Dr. Muttnick plays for the elephants, a Republican. Back when I was in private orthopedic practice I worked for peanuts; that’s why most physicians are Republicans. No that is not an Urban Legend, it’s a fact jack.      

Or maybe you just let the DOE’s know, you know who they really are. With Lew P it is easy. I asked him if he had been published yet. He hadn’t so what kind of writer can he be? He says an unpublished novelist.

Tink requested that I be diplomatic. He’s an unpublished scribbler, linking events without a theme. He is to writing what Jackson Pollack was to art. Hemingway is Rembrandt, and Lew P. is Pollack. He swears it is different in his novels compared to this blog. From my experience as a character in both settings, it is.

In the novels, I know my dramatic purpose, and so does he, but you never see the author getting shot or having a stroke in the novels. I guess, they reserve that fate for after the novel is published, and the author gets his first royalty check.  

Self inflicted wound, or cardiac arrest?      

A few lesser lights at the hospital have been published, although in fairness, it was in second-rate medical journals, like The Journal of Irreproducible Facts. They hadn’t published fiction, at least they won’t admit to publishing fiction, medical or otherwise. They call it research. I call it bull droppings, with a dose of imagination.

A self-style savant, Dr. Mack. U. Seow, has written several books on surgical history and also business acumen, but he is gone now. One of his patients popped a question that punctured his ego and he blew up like a balloon. He was never seen on the Jersey shore again. Rumor has it that he moved to New York City where he can re-inflate (read re-invent) himself.  

I was in Nam. A whole bunch of writers came out of there. I like the hardboiled works of Michael Connelly, and Robert B. Parker. They write about guys, men who have been there, not physicians who forgot how to shoot straight.

Arthur’s taking me to Sea Girt to practice with the Colt, but until then I’m part of the physicians who can’t shoot straight. I did once, but not now, and it’s a shame. There is nothing to compare with the joy of squeezing off four or five rounds into a target. To remain PC we’re talking bull’s eye targets, not animate, although if the creature from the wild rose bramble would show itself ….     

I practiced orthopedics for eighteen years before Lew P even found me. Still, he’s an all right guy, if you go for that kind. Let’s you know whether he likes you or not right out, straightforward.

Still can’t call him a man’s man. Doubt he ever shot a gun, even an air gun. He thinks BB’s are the row after AA. He thinks AA is the row after Z. He’s afraid of a straw and wadded paper spitball, and he doesn’t drink much Murphy’s either. So he doesn’t know his BB from his AA.  

Hemingway would chew him up and make Grappa out of him. Or maybe use that damn shotgun on him. Oops there goes my PC right down the tubes.

His sentences are so long, Papa would probably shoot him just for that. Lew P’s two daughters are prettier than anything Earnest produced, as a first or second-generation sire. Smarter too. So we cut Lew P a minor break.   

Instead of Murphy’s Stout, I think Lew P. is a wine drinker. Is it wino or whiner? Or is he two wines in one? Like that mint advertisement several years ago. Certs, no he is more ticky-tacky than a cert-ive.    

How can wine be a smart drink, it doesn’t have a head. Instead of a head it has a bouquet. No man wants to trade his head for a bouquet, like some debutante.

I know some people who have nothing in their heads. An empty head is better than no head, although, anencephaly, being born without a brain, is immediately fatal, at least in the medical books. Some of the Hollywood celebrities, lately, demonstrated that the textbooks are wrong. The things they do, they couldn’t have functioning brains.

Pour that Murphy’s down the side and it is smarter than most of Hollywood, with a head that stands up for itself. Didn’t Mel Gibson claim that it wasn’t his fault and his head just stood up by itself. He had no control over it on that beach in Costa Rica. It’ll cost him more than a few Rica’s by the time he’s through. Couldn’t happen to a more worthy subject.     

Lew P mentioned that his nephew won an Emmy for being a writer on the Daily Show. But he lives on the East Coast so that makes him bright, and not a celebrity. He can write, so that immediately disqualifies him from living near Los Angeles.

Does smog affect brain function?   

Writers aren’t celebrities, they are … er … writers and no one knows who they are, unless they go to the Manalapan Headquarters of the Monmouth County Library to hear Lew P’s nephew speak on October 3^rd, 2009 at 2 PM.     

The boys at the cock’n’bull session all raised a cup of Latte to his achievement. If we weren’t at Starbucks, Mutt might have order a round of Murphys’ for the boys, but they don’t stock that. It would take up the room in the cooler meant for the hard Blueberry Scones and the crummy coffee crumb-cakes.

More importantly, they would need a liquor license, and we don’t need to make Corzine’s Cronies richer. Tax the poor and the rich and give the money to a son of an #itch. We’re trying to maintain that PG rating.

The only problem the state of New Jersey has is that McSpeedy, Corzine (remember his 90 mph accident on his way to the Imus disaster with the Rutgers women’s basketball team) is being challenged by McGreedy, Christie (he loans money to other politicians, charges interest and doesn’t declare it on taxes, while he was the state attorney general? Esquire my ass.) meaning our next governor will have shifty-beady eyes either way.  

Tink says, “Absolute dworks toast with decaffeinated Lattes. Not awesome, but bore some.” It’s the thought that counts and not the buzz from the drink. Elliot congratulations and keep up the good work.

Tink also thinks Lew P brings some class to the table, but she wears five earrings in the cartilage of her right ear. I love the Pixie, but class is not the forte of my babe or me. Blue collar and blue jeans, and Blue Moon, the song or the beer, that’s what I am talking about.     

The cock ‘n’ bull sessions put things in perspective. Dr. Bowel came by and sat down. Just as Lew P. arrived, Manley Eskwire left. He is a friend of Dr. Bowel and an acquaintance therefore of Lew P. Me, the Mad Mutt, I don’t know him an inch or a mile.

I think he’s a retired poker player who now supports himself by practicing the law. His training was bluffing Dolly Doyle and Crazy Mike, so getting past a judge or a jury is a piece of cake. Maybe he can advise the winner of the Gubernatorial election? They both have a lot of bluffing to do.    

All of us know that life needs a laugh along the way, and Lew P sees life with a crooked sense of vision. Manley calls him the Devil’s Advocate, but coming from a lawyer that’s almost sour grapes, which gets us back to wine.

That bottle of Korbel that went missing New Years, I never completed the story. It was found in Jayson’s room and Pam had a kitten, but not Mrs. Leary’s cat, which was keening outside in the bramble most of January first.

Jayson said he liked the label on the champagne bottle. He said it without hiccupping.

Tink took the bottle away, and Svettie made a dogface that meant she knew how Jay got it. So the mystery is solved, but Pam is missing the happy ever after part.

Jay didn’t visit the bathroom much January 1^st so I think he got an empty bottle. That’s a good thing, because Svettie is wearing thin on Pam who asked to go to Sea Girt with Arthur and I. She wants to borrow the Colt. Svettie could predict the trajectory of the fired bullet as she is a rocket scientist.

Even Tink thought Svettie, her sister, might have overstayed her welcome. Svettie blasted off to Boston and the Aerospace Engineering Lab at MIT the next day. Why does a rocket scientist need a GPS to find Boston from New Jersey? Another question to which I don’t know the answer. 

Back to now. We’re sitting outside of Starbucks on the patio enjoying the late summer heat, 78 degrees, and shooting the cock’n’bull. Not with a gun, with our mouths. You can imagine how much cock’n’bull is chatted when you realize the participants are three old physicians and a poker-playing lawyer.

Sum total four DOE’s without restraints.     

Lew P wanted to talk about his Jets and the victory over New England, but since Dr. Bowel is a Giant fan, and Manley would only be interested in football if he could bet it, the conversation died before Mutt could start a J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets cheer. I guess will have to change the name back to Jets from Jests, since they are doing so well.

Arthur, my FBI friend, continues to talk about the Mets, because his Phillies are doing better than the Philadelphia Beagles.

You think they are the Philadelphia Eagles, no. They are a bunch of dogs. And with Michael Vick as your quarterback he’ll violate parole if he rejoins the team.  

The Tennessee Titans came into the Meadowlands like lions, but left as tamed moutons (French for lambs). I had to fumble around for that bad pun.

All hail King Rex. We’re relyin’ on Ryan. Go JETS, and next week NO Saints.    

Manley was hot that the poker tournament at Atlantic City was on the weekend of the eve of Yom Kippur. He didn’t want to gamble on the holiest day of the year. That led everyone to believe that the really high rollers aren’t Jewish.

Myer Lansky would turn over in his grave.

Oh almost forgot, the on going saga of the creature from Mutt’s wild rose bramble. Sounds like a 1950’s grade B horror movie.

Lance came back and all three traps were empty. There was no bait and no capture. He probed the hole and it doesn’t go in more than 2 feet, so it is probably not a den or lair. He thinks the creature lives in the rocks that he couldn’t move, because they are too deep in the bramble, and too large.

He also thinks that the traps captured field mice or other small mammals, and they were a buffet for the creature from the wild rose bramble.

We await Lance’s next move, but he thinks that Mrs. Leary’s cat is lucky, because what ever the creature from the wild rose bramble is, it is a carnivore.

I guess if I don’t rescue that gib then my problem with the keening at night will solve itself. Most carnivorous snakes and mammals are nocturnal feeders. If the snake is big enough, it can devour the whole kitty. A wild dog would have a field day.

Something won’t allow me to let that castrato suffer more than he has. He lost his testicles, a eunuch experience. To compensate, he has become too big for his britches. It sounds like a non sequitur, but it is an accurate statement. Think about it. 

Using my theory of deflating puffed up DOE’s, I’ll tell him that he’s firing blanks at all his bitches. Then he’ll stop calling attention to himself, like a pimp who has lost all his working girls.      

I’m taking up a collection for replacement of my cashmere coat. Crawling in the brambles to rescue the capon, it is getting dirty too frequently. I have to find a solution, and soon.  

Black Racer Snake - constrictor carnivore.

I am the Mad Mutt, and you are not, so what do you care.

Jayson, Arthur, Lance and Mutt on the dreary dreary horrible day.

 

The image was obtained  at www.alanamous.com/page/2 on sept. 20th 2009.

The sky blanketed us with the dirty fleece of a grubby lamb. Gray shadows wrapped Jersey shore, everywhere. We waited for the wash water from the sky to cleanse us, and make the day better. But God held back the heavenly rinse cycle. We got heavy clouds, but no rain.

The demons of autumn honed the air to an edge the summer can’t possess and the chill invaded our sweaters. Despite our best efforts, autumn toddled nearer like a child learning to walk. Is that why they call it the fall?  

Jay had a half-day at Kindergarten, and Lance dropped by to look into the bramble. We were his audience as he investigated what lived under my wild rose bramble.

He wore a gray-green ski cap over his shaven head. I am not sure why young guys shave their heads but it is the style, and who would argue with Kojak. Can they all be going pre-maturely bald?

He knelt, probing deeper into the brambles, while modeling pants styles for plumbers. Jay giggled seeing Lance’s heinie, covered his mouth with one tiny hand, and pointed vigorously with the other. He followed the etiquette of a Kindergartener.  

During this earth shaking moment, Arthur Frank drove up in, what else, a Crown Vic with government plates. Did President Ford sign an exclusive contract with his namesake to supply government vehicles? I wonder if President O’Bummer rides in a Ford? His car must have a webcam camera, so he won’t lose airtime.

Arthur, military and FBI, commented that I looked like the mangy mutt today. I just haven’t had time to get to Mike the Barber. We call him that to distinguish him from Conan the Barbarian. They are twins separated at birth like Arnold and Danny. Mike did not grow up to be the governor of California or a Terminator. He's registered safe with scissors, so sleeping in the chair isn't a risk. 

My Isro looks more like a Rasta do than a kosher mop. Tink has started calling me Marley. Jay wants to know why she uses a dog’s name for me.

Art yelled to me, “Boyo, going over to Sea Girt to pop off a few rounds. Want to come?”

“Watchin’ Jay, don’t want him around loud noises. The M1911A is broken down for cleaning anyway.”

I did not want Jayson to hear the word gun or Colt, as he had a fascination with them when his mother was an active FBI agent. He learned Colt .45 as the name of my gun when I brought it back home after being shot. For his safety, and he is a curious George if there ever was one, the Colt stays locked in the floor safe of the shore house.

He played cowboys and Indians up to 3 months ago, hiding in closets and ambushing me with a cap pistol. The first time, almost gave me another stroke, but now he plays secret agent. Less loud noises and surprises, so I fully expect to live another year or two, and not face a sudden traumatic medical episode. No pacemaker needed at this time.

 Tink played a DVD of Dr. No for him on a rainy day, and now he wants to go undercover. When we walk Bubs at the shore, he runs on the beach and hunts for conch shells like they did in the movie. At the Jersey shore, he’s more likely to find small shells, old syringes, and used condoms. Just kidding, that was the old Ciba-Geigy days at the shore. The beaches have been especially clean and beautiful this summer. On a scale of 0 to 10, beach cleanliness was a 9.   

My favorite character in Dr. No 

is obvious. But what man who was a teenager during the release of this movie could feel otherwise. To quote Tink, "WOWZER. Ursula Undressed, I mean Andress. 

Because of the James Bond attitude, Pam bought Jayson a video game Golden Eye Rogue Agent. He plays the video game as often as he watches the Telebubbies and Sesame Street. So the less talk about shooting guns the better.

Culture shock meets childhood with a bang. He hasn’t asked for a child-sized tuxedo, and he can’t seem to learn the rules to Baccarat Chemin de fer.  

 He dressed Bubs as a French secret agent. The dog seemed to like the disguise thinking she was human, hidden, and unrecognizable. 

Maybe she likes the human pup enough to put up with all his silliness. She never had a litter, maternal instincts and all that. 

In another salute to 007, Tink claims last New Year’s Eve Jay developed a taste for the bubbly. Her spinster sister, Svetlana Angelucci was visiting at the time, (her first name has been changed to protect the humor). 

.

A bottle of Korbel Brut was missing in action on January 2nd, but I think Svettie requisitioned it for her room after watching the ball drop in Times Square. She needed something inanimate with which to cuddle. She doesn't do well with living, feeling things, like dogs, and cats, and especially humans. I think she might be better with aliens, not the Mexicans who work in the restaurants but the aliens from Neptune ... not Neptune NJ, but Interstellar Neptune, as in Mars, Venus, because she is out of this world and works to put people out of this world. More on that later.

Jay wasn’t hung over the next day, and it was a whole bottle. Once a Marine Military Police Investigator, always solving crimes. Maybe the sisters shared it before I woke up to watch the football games on January 1^st – go Rutgers - who knows, who cares.

Maybe it was Svettie who gave Jay his first taste that night. She’d do it for a laugh, like giving catnip to a cat and watching. 

Wouldn’t put it past her. Pam would kill the interloper if she knew. She has gone with Art and I to Sea Girt and out shot the both of us, and Art is marksman rated with a handgun. My rating is below that, significantly.

New Years Eve, Tink and I were snuggling on the couch from 11:30 PM to 3:00 AM January 1^st. We didn’t need champagne. The bubbles of champagne disturb my eyebrows. When you pass 55 years old, your eyebrows grow so long they curl like Shirley Temple’s hair and develop nerves that can sense the wind from a tsunami in Japan while standing at the Jersey shore. The bubbles are annoying. Ask Andy Rooney. Mike the Barber charges 2 bucks extra and uses a lawnmower to trim them.

Tink likes them long, claiming it’s fun to brush them against the grain. I put up with that but …  You can see my problem with the eyebrows, not to mention the tongue.

I think Tink is in denial as to why all the Murphy’s Stout was gone 24 hours after her sister’s arrival. The Chardonnay went next, 6 bottles in 3 days. I didn’t up my intake, although her sister gave everyone orders, and therefore I had justification.

She even had Bubs fetching things for her, and we never taught Bubs to fetch. She’s a poodle not a retriever. That’s like asking a Jewish American Princess to do the laundry, by hand, in the river, on a stone.   

Svettie got on Bubs nerves to the point where she brought me the beret and glasses, scratched the floor begging me to put them on her. Stupid poodle, like that would help. 

Svettie threw Lew P off the computer while he and I were going over a scene for the Fatal Blow, so that she could read her e-mails. She had brought her laptop with her and the shore house has wifi. She didn’t want to go up to her dormer bedroom (yeah, I can’t stand sleeping and living on the same floor with her), and get her computer. She tried to figure out how to tell Bubs to pick it up without teeth marks, but the canine was having none of that. So she sent Lew P to Siberia for a half hour, while the pleasant sound of “You’ve got mail” played from the desktop. 

Worse yet, after making large amounts of alcohol disappear, Svetlana can walk a straight line and talk normally, which means she’s had practice, probably on straight Vodka, hence the name.  

The way to tell the booze has affected her is the subtle degree of hostility increase. From yes to yeah what, and from please to the royal command of do it, i.e. “Doc is that you who just came in from raking leaves? Bring my glass of wine here. I’m watching Oprah.”     

We’ll cut her a break since her four-year relationship with a guy who worked for Bear-Stearns went up in smoke. Truly that is what happened. They caught him smoking the weed in the men’s room and he was fired, right before everyone at Bear-Stearns was fired or absorbed. He is unemployed and she refuses to support him with her job as a computer programmer for NASA. 

Yup, a polluted rocket scientist destroying the ozone, and creating ethanol breath.   

Back to our dreary, dreary day, Arthur picked up on not using the word gun or Colt, and walked from the car to the yard to see what made Jay giggle. From the street, he couldn’t see Lance’s heinie buck in and out of the brambles in a very obscene manner. Jay was too young to understand, but I had a chuckle, as he lunged in and out of the bush, grabbing rocks and placing them near his feet.

Repetitively, Lance on his knees, springing forward to straight, reaching his arms over his head into the center of the bramble, and pulling back to a compact size, carrying rocks to pile near his shoes. The upper half of his body disappeared and appeared in a steady rhythm. The gray ski cap on his baldhead only added to the effect of safe bramble probing.

When Arthur made it to the corner of the house he stopped. It took him 20 seconds to understand what he saw. A smile percolated onto his face, as he reached the same suggestive conclusion as I. Old men, and the gutter, constant companions, hey. Those who can’t do, teach. I remember that adage from my residency in orthopedics. For old men, those who can’t do, well they just keep thinking about it, but …      

“That half-exposed heinie belongs to Lance.” I said, “Something, a snake, a field mouse, a shrew lives in the bramble. Mrs. Leary’s cat thinks it’s something good to eat. I am getting tired of that pseudo-lion being ensnared by my roses. Lance is the MPI of animal control. Unlike the official county people, he has no rules, just like us in Nam.”

“What’s he going to do with it when he catches it?” Art asked.

“If it’s a snake he’ll keep in his zoo/farm. If it’s a mammal, I guess it’s food for the farm. I’m finished crawling in that briar. That’s all I know.”

Jayson said, “Granddaddy looks like a baby when he crawls in there, but his heinie is covered.” Then he whispered to Art. “But granddad’s butt is bigger.”

Art mumbled, ”military, they teach you to CYA, all the time, unlike plumbers.”

“Jay, I had more time to develop my ass.”

Jay laughed loudly. “Grand dad said a bad word. I’m telling mommy you said that.”

“That’s ok, just don’t tell Tink.”

Jayson raised a puzzled look and turned to see Lance putting out traps around the entrance to the creature’s den. He baited each of them with different foods.

“That should do her.” Lance said, as he climbed from his knees to his feet. He dusted off his knees, and wiped his hand across his bald pate, pushing back his ski cap, grabbing it and squeezing it like a wet wash cloth. “Now we just wait.”

He walked away from the bramble, but never bothered to tug up his pants. They made his butt look as flat as an ice pond. He never looked back as he climbed into his Mustang.

I stopped Jayson from giggling and told him that wasn’t polite, but I had trouble keeping a straight face.

Art said, “He shouldn’t expose his brains to the sunlight, might dry them out completely.”

I countered, “Guess it’s his lucky day, no direct sun. Want to go inside and heft a Murphy’s or two?”

“Got go to Sea Girt, need the scores to stay employed. See ya soon.”

So Art left and Jay ran back in the house. It was no surprise that Rogue Agent blasted from the television set in the den when I followed him in.

The Mad Mutt and the horrible, dreary, desolate, desultory, but not dampened day.

I am the Mad Mutt, be grateful that you are not.