Maurice Clart-Biggons’ Cat and my bramble bush roses.

Finally found out why Maurice Clart-Biggons’ cat is always getting caught in the rose bramble that separates his house from mine. There is an entrance to a creature’s den in the middle of the bush. The hole isn’t very big, and it’s covered partially by the rocks in the bramble, but the interest that feline has is insatiable. Like a city yuppie that plays camp-out in an RV with a king bed, and its own electric supply so he won’t have to give up his Wii, his Bose, his laptop, or miss an episode of Law and Order, the cat thinks it’s a jungle predator.

Early last evening, I once again played the knight rescuing that dumb mammal. It rewards me every time by trying to scratch me with its clawless paws. The black and gray gib, who lacks those nutty necessities that all males need to procreate, must also lack the brains to realize a four-inch thick body can’t squeeze through a two-inch wide hole, framed by thirty-year-old branches. The boughs are stronger than the gelded kitty, and hold him like a boa constrictor. They don’t squeeze him firm enough to stop that damned keening that announces his recidivistic idiocy, and capture.

Is there a mute switch on animals? That would solve all my problems, unless Tink discovered him trapped. She’d always command me to rescue his furry ass.

I am certainly not a cat person. Cats are as egocentric as my ex-wife, but twice as smart. My lawyer, our daughter Pam, has advised to guesstimate my ex’s intelligence that high, so as not to create a libelous situation. Therefore, I have used a gross over estimation. I reference as proof of her lack of intelligence: she married me.

Please take note that when I say cats as a plural it is distinguished from the Katz family who live in Lakewood. They are lovely. We’ve been to their house for Pesach once. Chicken soup with Matzo balls you could die for.

Anyone who has not been through a divorce, as an active participant, can’t know the emotions involved. So if I sound a little harsh, and come on strong, well, just get over yourself.

People, who have never lived in a glass house, probably don’t completely understand the use of curtains. For all you writers out there, show don’t tell takes on a new meaning when you live in a glass house or dance in a grass skirt, especially when like the Mad Mutt, you are twenty pounds overweight.

I am using the same restraint that I did with Shark-face Nienstine. Like my Colt at that time, I’m loaded. No haven’t touched the Murphy’s yet today. I’m loaded with emotions, but I’m not confined in my locked desk drawer. No, no, no; I’m out there.

At least I didn’t need the Colt to get my ex to sign the divorce papers. Using it was probably the only way to stop her from signing. I don’t think the toner from the Xerox was dry, before she gave it an autograph.

But I digress.

Yes, the divorce was not friendly, that conclusion is obvious. For over ten years Pam’s mother held an illegally gained restraining order against me, so that, I had no contact with her, Pam or Jayson, my grandchild.

Hell, I didn’t even know Jayson existed until the Fatal Blow, Lew P’s novel about my life. Some day I should thank my bearded colleague for re-uniting us. Maybe I could give him another story or two to write, and then we’d call it even. Especially, if his royalties beat his advance, and he shared.

Lew P keeps mumbling something about firing me, because I’m an iconoclastic curmudgeon who won’t cooperate. A freestanding character as the protagonist? Humbug. God I hate when writers talk writerese and stop communicating like humans. They become aliens from the planet Random House or something.

Tink and I have made up for lost time with Jayson and Pam, now that things are straightened out. During our most recent lap in the karmic soup that stews everyone until they are done, my daughter feels significant enmity towards her mother for depriving her, vindictively, of a father from age 16 to 26. My ex lied about my character, although no one would deny that I am one, only my most gross enemy would say I have none.

Getting back to that keening kitty that got stuck in my bramble – repeating that phrase reminds me of the song we sing to Jayson to get him laughing “the little ole lady who swallowed a fly” – Tink holds Bubs in the house, because the dog hates the cat more than I hate the ex-Mrs., Lorraine.

While Bubs is under house arrest, but barking and scratching the wood floors to get free. I crawl on all fours head first into the bramble to the hissing cat that raises her back hairs as if I were my dog. Maybe I carry Bubs’ scent, or maybe she’s just a misanthrope like the rest of her breed.

While I lift its body – gelded the pronoun his seems inappropriate. Wouldn’t use it for a capon either – up and out of the vee that has snared it, the stupid feline pummels my hands with her clawless paws. It’s like being hit with tiny pillows or getting a shiatsu massage with padded thumbs.

I’d laugh but my bouncing belly would be pierced by the rose thorns and deflate like a red balloon. The scratches from the thorns would make the cat think he had been successful warding off my attack, boosting its gelding ego. I won’t give that feline the satisfaction, same as I wouldn’t give my wife the shore house.

I’ll rescue that animal because that’s what I do best, but I would not sacrifice myself like it’s a human. I do that enough in the stories Lew P writes about me.

Damn authors always thinking they can control their characters, when it’s the characters that are required for the success of their writing. I mean, who do you think develops the plot. We live it. I know, he may have a theme, but who does all that dirty work, me. They should show us some respect and treat us as equals.

I guess Lew P does, because we are sharing this blog.

Getting back to that hole in the middle of my bramble. It looks like a snake hole. I thought from a far it could be a small mammals, like a shrew or a field mouse, but I think now it’s a snake hole.

My landscape person, Lance, they are no longer called gardeners, or the lawn guys, but a landscape person, collects snakes for his snake farm. He milks the venomous ones, and sells the collected milkings to companies that make anti-venom. He has five or six snake skins crazy glued to the dash of his car. He had to use crazy glue because the whole idea is crazy, and really spooky. Sort of like, some anonymous cowboy’s boots shed their skin on his dash. He is waiting for enough skins to cover the whole of the inside of the car. Scary huh?

The skins go along with his straw cowboy hat, and the toothpick in the corner of his mouth. When he speaks the picture fades, because there is no drawl, just pure Jersey Lawn-boy.

He says he bought his personal car with the earnings from the farm. Can’t be that much, because he owns a 1968 Ford Mustang. He calls it a classic. I call it rusted junk. It has potential to greatness, as we all do, but when it’s colors are red lace, and brown trim, and the brown trim refers to the shade around the lace holes, then the car is no longer a classic, but a doily junkyard reject.

He drove me to the Shop-rite in Wall once, and at any speed over twenty miles per hour, it sounded like a chorus of whistlers. “Strangers in the Night,” but it was daylight and no vocal, just the whistling part.

Maybe Frankie’s spirit is in the car, like that terrible NBC sit-com from 1966 with Gerry Van Dyke, the tag-along brother of Dick, My Mother the Car. Frankie was a Jersey boy, so who knows.

Anyway, tomorrow is Monday, and Lance mows the lawn for the last time this fall, at least till he comes back to bag the leaves, so I’ll have him climb in the bramble and see what he thinks.

I had a hard enough time dealing with that snake Shark-face in the Fatal Blow, and since my stroke, Fish, my internist says “take it easy, but take it.” LOL. No he just says, “take it easy,” so I do.

Till I sneak up on you next time, because I know a classy person like yourself wouldn’t be caught hanging around with an ole Mad Mutt like me, I say Shalom.

The always incredulous, but today, the not so Mad Mutt.

I’ve bumped Mutt away from the keyboard.

Hello, this is Lew P and it was difficult but I got Mutt to go downstairs and get a Dagwood Sandwich and a Murphy’s for himself.

Tink and Pam took Jayson to the movies, one of those inane animation things. So the computer is mine for at least the time it takes for the Mad Mutt to gobble a 4-inch high deli sandwich. The BWC agent is out of the house.

I went with my wife to the Mystery Writers of America New York Chapter meeting last night at the National Arts Club. The guest speaker was Laura Lipmann who has written multiple New York Times best sellers starting in 1997. She has a resume that includes being a Journalist in Baltimore (home of Poe, and the late John Hughes both of whom aren’t under the bell curve), and therefore had experience with Druid Hill and the police so she’s been tainted as far as normalcy is concerned. I was very interested in hearing her speak because she writes from the dark side, and I have those tendencies myself.

She was very interesting, but more of that later.

As usual there was a cocktail party prior to the dinner and speaker. They had an exhibition of Pastels from the National Pastel Society, and they were incredible. Some looked like photographs rather than drawings. I wish I could write with the same level of talent. Practice, practice, practice – the rule of three’s.

I corralled a Brooklyn Ale and did the cheese and crackers thing. A lady who had recently published came up to me and introduced herself. I like friendly people, and I am very naïve.

I tried to talk craft because I am still learning. She volunteered her resume, and five reviews of her first novel, including a mild panning review from Publisher’s Weekly.

I asked her about her next project and she told me that her agent has nixed her Muslim in New York murder mystery. I wonder why? She’s determined to write it anyway.

Then she saw someone else who needed to know how she was doing, and she dumped me quickly. Her afterburners singed my eyebrows. I didn’t know a heavyset woman in her seventies could move that fast. But I’ve watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and seen a turbo-charged irate hippo run off, oh boy, flashbacks to my youth.

My wingman Arthur was there with me. He is going to run a satellite meeting of the MWA at Tumulty’s in October. If you live in central Jersey and want to hear Peggy Ehrhart and Mary Jane Clark speak, this is the place. The date is Oct 21. The cost will be posted, but my guess is $35 for a cocktail, dinner buffet and the entertainment. Tumulty’s is three blocks from the New Brunswick train station.

Peggy who is a board member of MWA was talking with Arthur and I horned in. She is a lovely lady who has a PhD in English. Why would she lowbrow-it to mystery writing? Oh yes, she also formed a blues band while a professor in college. She is the type of person who lives outside of categories. I like those type of people. I wish I were one of those.

If you want to know more about Peggy and her writing including her short stories http://peggyehrhart.com is the place to go.

During the time I listened to Peggy, another lady presented. She and I had spoken at the Cocktail Party for the Edgars, Delia Foley. She is writing a mystery, but is a neophyte as am I.

Her sister-in-law has just published her first suspense novel, In Their Blood. October 1^st, 2009 she will be launching the book at a party at Partners & Crime a bookstore at 44 Greenwich Avenue NYC. Champagne and hors D’oeuvres at 7 PM. (phone number 212-243-0440)

Partners & Crime’s web site: http://www.crimepays.com/.

I love hearing first time authors made it. It gives us undiscovered people hope, but I am very jealous of Sharon Potts, Delia’s sister-in-law, because she has a quote from Michael Connelly. He is one of my hero writers. I hope if you read the Fatal Blow that you can tell.

I also met a lady named Gail Stockton, who like myself has written a manuscript, but unlike me, she has an agent actively trying to sell it. I found a blog on which she writes, and read some of her work. http://www.womenofmystery.net/search/label/*Gail. I hope she succeeds, as her writing style is very accessible and fun to read. She puts her heart into it, and that is really important.

My Information Science professor, Dr. Ross Todd, will be so proud of me finding Gail’s site all on my own.

Manning the door at the dinner was Marco Conelli, who writes YA mysteries, with a sleuth who is a chess master and a genius, sort of a young Sherlock Holmes. Marco is a really nice person, soft-spoken and when I learned of his occupation I was surprised.

We spoke a little. He ate alone –because he manned the admissions desk through the meal – and I asked if his characters are loners too. He said ironically Matthew Livingston his detective is.

Write what you know, the Mad Mutt is a converted loner, because of Tink and Pam. Maybe Matthew will find someone who sees that it is worth it to get by the emotional barrier and meet the real guy behind it. It doesn’t have to take a Pixie to do it.

Marco’s books are Matthew Livingston and the Prison of Souls and Matthew Livingston and the Millionaire Murder. If you want to learn more about Marco who is a NYPD detective here is an interesting web site http://www.jacketflap.com/profile.asp?member=TeenSleuth.

Finally we come to Laura Lipmann who trisected the root cause – the motive – of murder mysteries to Money, Shame/Secrecy, and Obsession i.e. serial psychotic killers.

She then eliminated shame and secrecy as being valid motives of murder in today’s anything goes Internet world. She believes no one has shame or secrets that are worth killing to hide anymore. People’s lives are just out there and known.

She was raised a Baptist and if you have read any of her novels, she demonstrates this point well.

I applaud her from the shadows of the dark, as the author of three murders, two cardiac arrests and a stroke in my first novel. But the motive for two of the three in my novel is to prevent discovery of the killer in the first murder. Secrecy is a valid motive if you are protecting capital knowledge. The murders are like potato chips, after the first they just keep going down.

She states that while obsession is a valid motive for murder, she would categorize these serial killer books as thrillers rather than murder mysteries. I agree, because a thriller isn’t about who is doing the crime, but whether or not the protagonist can stop them.

This leaves money as the only motive for murder mysteries in the twenty-first century. Being from the school that says, money makes the world go round, but personally adding, whether we like it or not, I have to agree that money is a driving force in most murder mysteries.

The key point of the speech for me, however, related to hooking the reader early and continuously. Allowing your evil, dislikeable, naughty, whatever character to draw the reader’s attention, and never let it waver after that point.

I went home and for the thirtieth time re-wrote my first two pages. I want to thank Laura because I went back to a former beginning but blended in my newer writing. The preachy beginning to my novel is gone, and the in medias res beginning works.

I’ll open a bottle of the wine you were talking about Laura, if you’ll only send me the name. I was too busy writing down the gems to worry about what to drink.

Wait. Mutt just gave me a Murphy’s. I am honored and will get busy with that. Whoa, that frosty mug is cold. I’m pouring it right now. The bubbles come up funny in the Murphy’s. It’s really cool.

Thanks Mad ole boy. Finally someone can tell me I have a good-looking head, even if it is only on my beer. L’Chaim.

Yeah Mutt, you can have the keyboard back now. Pushy- pushy.

Lew P

Two Shore Holidays Pass – Sept.7th

Two shore holidays passed within the last eight days, and all the full time residence of the Jersey shore (The Mainlanders for we live on the continent, not the islands next to it) celebrated in their way, barbeques, and pool parties, avoiding the beach for the last time this summer. It begins our new year whether we are Jewish, Catholic, Hindi or Atheist.

These special dates have meaning and religious significance that is unmeasured else where in New Jersey or maybe even the United States.

On Sunday August 31^st I cracked open two Murphy’s Stouts for me, and a California Chardonnay for Tink. She let me grill a Porterhouse to celebrate Return to Uni Day. The date when most of the college students, who have been partying every night – weekdays and weekends – at the shore, return to some institute of higher drinking, excuse me, I mean thinking. The loss of the walking polluted is to be celebrated with solemn silence, so we know they have really left.

As Pam was already with her Mom in New York, I never saw the other side of Return to Uni Day. The one where families suffer the anxiety of separation, if I had, I would have worried more about when they gather at the on campus fraternities, playing shot games and birthday drinking. I’ll rant about that another day.

Walking the boards at night will no longer involve the loud thump of the bass to signal the tribal message that temporary mating selections can be found here. Like we used to hear at the baseball games, “Get ya beeer heere.” The drums say to guys, “She’s in here, as near as a leer. So if you’re not queer, get in here.”

Since I’m not a girl, I can’t say what the bass means to them, but Tink doesn’t like the loud noise. At least that’s what she tells me. She is vocal about past experiences in the butcher shops at the shore, standing around as if she were Prime USDA choice and being ogled by guys with just enough brains to figure out the tab and a tip, with a pocket calculator. She became a professional wing girl. At least that’s what she tells me.

Shore bars filled to overflowing with girls wearing tank tops and minis. Hanging from their pierced umbilicus is scrollwork that could adorn the front door of the British Parliament. They have filigree on the crest of their buttocks that look like the logo for a Harley Davidson. The posture and demeanor says they’ll offer a test drive. The tank tops allow you to view the artwork coming and going.

The pitch and height of their shoes could give nosebleeds to a Sherpa guide. Like that 50’s song “Yak-kitty-Yak, thongs T-ed up their back.” This can’t be just the generation gap, it must be something more cosmic that rankles my sense of oy vey, or is it my feng shui? Remember when it was considered evil to give someone a wedgie? Now it’s girlish fashion.

The boards at Belmar across Ocean Ave. form a backrest for the drunk, high or romantic ones that actually attempt to talk first. They loll back and slur soft nothings or yell to their partner as if he or she is deaf or not paying attention or is across the Atlantic but requires their urgent communication. The scary part is they are less than a foot apart and they can’t see or hear each other, and one is going to climb in a car and drive them home or to a room.

You try not to listen, but most of the time you can’t help but hear. When you do, you wish you hadn’t. It’s fair, as the punishment fits the crime of eavesdropping. He wants to do what with which??? And you’re willing??? Sometimes even though I’m a doctor, the anatomic possibilities exceed my comprehension.

The ones who aren’t communicating via verbal signs, are using physical signals to get their message across. Lingual tonsil exams. Messages, oh my god, or are they massages. Kneading of secondary sexual organs, chest and buttocks, not to mention the ever popular, but not so subtle, groin rub; they should really get a room.

Someone who was lucky faster than them probably already occupies their room. Gives new meaning to the expression “the early bird catches the worm.” Boyo, that picture sort of skuzzes me out. Who knew Aesop wrote porno? Wouldn’t bet against the early bird catching an STD as well. Think about that Aesop.

Back to another gripe, they live in the rentals that sprawl over the several blocks from Main Street to Ocean Ave. Twelve to twenty people in a house built for a single family – father, mother, two children – if they are lucky a guest room too. Cars parked on the street from here to the Garden State Parkway. They hang in the streets and make car traffic difficult. You play miss-the-moving-drunk every weekend after 7 PM.

Tink gets on my case, because she went to Bar Anticipation <http://bar-a.com/>, and watched the NFL when she was 18 and 19, playing wing girl for her less pretty friends. Guys with nose hair that blended with their mustaches, or chest hair that needed a lawnmower leaned over her and asked, “Babe, you want a drink or something else. I can give you whatever you want.” Ew.

“Hey, Einstein, there are already three mugs of Bud in front of me, and a guy on each side.” She’d never say that because she is a lady. Her response was “Like sure, totally awesome dude.” Then she’d give the Bud to a girlfriend or buddy next to her. The guy got the message. She liked watching the Jets and Ken O’Brien; today she likes watching the Jets and Mark Sanchez. I’m still explaining how four downs works, so I don’t think she’s a rabid fan.

She didn’t have time for boyfriends then. She was going to school and working at the same time. X-ray tech school is difficult, lots of math and science. It needs focus and Tink focuses well. She did the same thing when she worked for me, while going to computer school at DeVry. She writes programs now, and sometimes researches on the invisible web for me, when mysteries require information the average person can’t find.

She believes in the Star Track credo “To go where no one has gone before” in a virtual – hacking – sense.

She is a good resource for a detective.

Good reason to lock her up to a long-term contract with that diamond ring. Saves a lot on salary too. Cynics that we both are.

To answer any questions about Tink’s past, she does have five earrings in her right ear, but no tats and no other piercings. At least that I have found yet, and I think I’ve done a thorough inspection.

One eye is blue-green and the other is green-blue, but she was born that way. It is not contact lenses, a fashion or cultural statement. Although one boy friend was a very bad choice, reference The Fatal Blow, she hasn’t had anyone burn her out of her home lately.

That’s fine since she lives with me, and I have nowhere else to go. I’d have to live with Lew P but he says his wife wouldn’t deal well with another couple living in their house. She can barely live with that couple occupying Lew P’s head.

Tink laughs when I get on my, “that’s not the way things were when I was that age” rant, as we walk the boards on a Saturday night after a meal out, at Brindl http://www.brandlrestaurant.com/ or maybe Vivas http://www.vivaslatincuisine.com/ or Ragin’ Cagin’ http://ragincajunnj.com/ . She reminds me that the hitching posts were meter free back then. And you had to clean up after your vehicle. In my youth every father had and knew how to use a shotgun so his family could eat. They didn’t have food stores only tents and hunting, following the herds of Buffalo – in New Jersey?

She claims the whole era had a less boisterous life-style, no television or radio, only books read by the light of candles. That type of talk makes my joints creak. The whippersnapper should respect her elder. She and Pam keep reminding me that I am her elder, much elder, but when we’re alone at home she forgets my age, and so do I. You’re as young as you feel. I’m 37 by that standard.

Speaking about age, I admit that when you’re three years older than your college classmates and been to war and back, studying on the GI plan, that being a frat boy has lost its luster. Something in my stomach churns like the generator in a turbine when confronted by someone pissing away time and opportunity.

Getting fall-down drunk and pissing in the gutter seems less romantic after picking up human body parts in the street outside of an American Bar in Saigon. The aftermath of anti-personnel devices strapped to a busboy that wanted to be a hero for his nation, blowing up his countrymen with us.

The MPI work in Southeast Asia involved protecting our boys and finding out who wished to harm them, but it also involved harvesting the crops of guerilla warfare. Every time some drunken bastard plays dodge the traffic in Belmar, I think of that humid night of broken bodies, bloody gutters and the smell of burnt sulfur, and skin. If I drove a hummer under a wailing siren, the nightmare would be complete.

The second holiday is Labor Day, and it signals the exit of the summer renters, the islanders go home. All the New Yorkers come from islands – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long, even Staten – so they are the islanders.

When the islanders leave, then the beaches are empty and the pace is slower and walking the boards is not an Olympic slalom event. Even the waves and the ocean seem to relax, with fewer rip tides. The people walking the shore say hello to each other, because we know the other can’t be a foreigner.

The line at Hoffman’s < http://www.hoffmansicecream.net/> becomes shorter although with the lowered heat, the urge to break my diet becomes less. Maybe not the urge, but the excuse I can give the BWC agent is weaker. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and it is the best ice cream on the Jersey shore, at least in my opinion.

So Labor Day will pass, and getting a reservation on the weekend for a restaurant of average quality will not be an effort in Mission Impossible.

I will finally be able to take Jayson to Surf Taco and not worry that his activities will aggravate the Dude at the next table who’s trying to talk a teeny-bopper into hero worship with his prowess at hangin’ ten. The closest any Dude from Jersey has come to surfin’ is when they get on the web late at night. And then they aren’t looking for that big wave. Hangin’ ten is a measurement of their delusion.

Jersey isn’t for water surfin’. It’s for sun bathin’ chicks with bikinis eyeing that tattooed buck while he dashes between blankets playing Frisbee kicking sand everywhere. When people complain, he says, “Fugetta-bout-it. Catchin’ mah Fris-bee.” Then he adjusts himself and with a shrug flings the plastic plate back to his friend.

The skateboardin’ Dude with their pants down far enough to see half his boxer’s, making him waddle rather than walk. He slides down the black metal railing of concrete public stairs, landing with a crash at the feet of a gray panther lady whose walker stops his forward roll. Then laughing, he pulls his pants up to half-mast and waddles off, limping with his board under his arm, his right knee bleeding.

I saw some dumb ass trying to wind surf from a boat at Spring Lake Heights this summer. Might as well try that over Secaucus for all the fun it is at the Jersey shore. What’s the view, the Long Branch train line, the 7-11 in Belmar, or maybe the scenic Tire Farms of Farmingdale, like this is the Mexican Riviera?

No this is Jersey “fougettaboutit.” We eat meat and we drink beer, NJPAC my ass. We’re the culture of landfill and toxic dumps, but we’re happy, so leave us alone.

All you cultured islanders go home and let us enjoy the quiet of the ocean as it rolls in with high tide and wipes the beaches clean. Let us sail our boats out of the inlets of the Raritan and the other bays along the coastal water way. We like our fish caught fresh and delivered to our plate hours after it left the sea. We like to go and watch our children play traveling sports like soccer, softball, basketball, baseball and football. We like our pleasure simple, and without fancy polishes that don’t let you see through to what is actually underneath.

We like to be honest. So fougettaboutit, and go home to your islands.

Lastly I want to comment on the small brew contest held at Monmouth Race track on Sept 6^th. It follows in the long line of local contest and festivals, the Belmar Seafood festival, the Jazz festival in Long Branch, and all those other festivals that smell of fried grease and stale drafts.

They represent all that is bad about the Jersey shore before Labor Day. 2,000, 3,000, 10,000 people stuffed in a space meant for half that many. Food, beverage, and the music are always generic, like eating the cardboard burgers at McDonalds. When is the last time a culinary contest that mattered was held within fifty miles of the Jersey shore, exclude A.C. and the set of results is void.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s just an excuse to pack in people and sell cheap food before the islanders go home. Food that real New Jersey people won’t touch with a ten-foot kielbasa. Yes, the trouble with New Jersey from Memorial Day to Labor Day is the foreigners and our catering to them, trying to support ourselves through the winter on the profits of the summer, that we garnered from the sophisticated rubes that populate the shore on week long rentals. We need immigration rules like Mexico has and then our shore would be safe.

I have never been to the beer festival, because I don’t think I want to drive out of a parking lot with 5,000 inebriated drivers. It’s bad enough driving against the purple-gray haired ladies in the parking lot at Shop-rite. Driving in New Jersey is a competition as surely as NASCAR is. They drive as if god hadn’t invented lanes or yellow lines or turn signals. Maybe it’s the gray panthers that are defending our shores for us.

And you can take all those micro-brews and throw them in the trash. I’ll pay extra for a cool Murphy’s Stout, and a totally secluded back yard that is quiet, a pool to sit around, and Tink in a bikini, better yet a mono-kini serving the Murphy’s with that impish smile.

Today I sign the Mad, but not insane, Mutt.

Supra-Tachy a Special End to an Evening → the Mad Mutt.

I feel obligated to give you follow up on the end of the evening at Asbury Park, two nights ago. No the title is not a typo, so just be patient. I know I can misspell with the best of them and thank god for spell check, but this time, I’m right and everyone who corrects me is wrong. As my favorite Pixie would say, “Absolutely Totally Awesome for me.”

We, Elsa Neinstine, Tink, Dr. Heart-throb and I finished our cakes and coffee at the Baker Boys <http://www.thebakerboys.us/> without the presence of the interloper, whose name shall be Atlantic City Maestro. It was pleasant, and we decided to walk back on the boardwalk together as our cars were parked in the municipal parking. They had space # 117. No charge after 9 PM, what a bargain.

The boardwalk makes you remember the days when Asbury Park was a resort for New Yorkers and evenings strolling the boards meant families and friends playing at games of skiball, miniature golf and jumping on rides. Tim Mcloone’s Supper Club <http://www.timmcloonessupperclub.com/> was still busy with people spilling out onto the boardwalk, and music playing. It must have a great view of the Ocean. I’m not sure what the difference is between it and Mcloone’s Salt Water Café < http://www.saltwaterbeachcafenj.com/>, but that’s Mcloone’s problem not mine. Maybe one is downstairs and one is upstairs, since they are both listed at 1200 Ocean Ave.

Tink says the buzz is good, but the food is average.

We were still walking on the boards when Dr. Heart-throb’s beeper alarmed. It’s 12:30 AM. 4 hours since we ordered at Baker Boys and 3 ¼ hours since we sent Atlantic City Maestro on his way. Dr. Heart-throb announced he has a patient in the ER at Jersey Shore with a supraventricular tachycardia that won’t break. He is developing Angina, and at risk for a heart attack.

Translation à The patient’s heart is going too fast (140 – 180 beats per minute) because the usual trigger for a beat has been superseded by a faster trigger in the top half of the heart. His heart is out of control, and going to crash, like a virus plagued PC.

Dr. Heart-throb had to go in and start drugs with the possibility of inserting a pacemaker tonight, and other acute treatments before the patient has permanent damage to the muscle wall of the heart. Other than death, that is what makes a heart attack bad for the patient in the long run. It weakens and damages the heart muscle called myocardium.

Tink and I agreed to drive Elsa home. Dr. Heart-throb left but not before introducing himself by his full name. Dr. Ertan Hart. Tink gave me a pixified smile, saying wouldn’t you know with her eyes, but you never would. I had to look off into the ocean to avoid laughing in his face and being rude. People who live in the Mad Mutt’s shoes, shouldn’t throw moans, but Tink’s look didn’t help. He really is a nice man, who could be the title of a Johnny Cash song, A Boy named Ertan.

He should have become a Urologist, then his mother might have name him Richard. How confusing is the name, Dr. Dick Hyman OB-GU? Oh but I digress.

I’ve known many doctors with similar messy monikers, which I call truth in labeling. Dr. Mark Colon gastroenterologist. Dr. Lawrence Bone orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Waterhouse nephrologist. Dr Brain, psychiatrist. There are many others, but tonight, and with what had happened earlier, this was the perfect end to the evening. We reserved the right to laugh when Tink and I were home in the shore house. Bubs wouldn’t be embarrassed. But the night wasn’t over.

Elsa told us on the way to her house, she introduces him as her boyfriend, Art, because of his full name. She says his mother was a fan of country western music and they always sing about that stuff, so she branded him.

It wasn’t until I took Jayson to Elsa for his preschool pre-school physical that I learn the completion of the story, which only got better.

The patient with the supraventricular tachycardia was A.C. Maestro. His girlfriend drove him to the hospital. Apparently she lives in Neptune and he was biding his time on the boardwalk while she got off work. When she got home, they got busy.

Extra-marital sex gets the heart going, as per a certain Ertan Hart M.D.

Dr. Hart could not break the rate in the Emergency Room and with all the drugs A. C. Maestro demanded and received in the ER for comfort prior to Dr. Hart’s treatments, he could not legally sign his consent for insertion of a pacemaker. This is a problem I have tackled. {see The Fatal Blow. Lew P. has written about what happened when my patient had this problem.}

So unknown to Maestro, they called his wife who presented at the ER bedside while Maestro and bimmy were lovingly holding hands. Elsa said this was the PG version since Jay was in the room, so who knows what was really being held. His red-haired wife went infrared, and launched the flight of the blonde bimmy. Did NASA deny UFO sitings that night on the Jersey shore?

Red chased Blondie around the ER until Dr. Hart called security and had the mistress removed. She had no legal standing to be there. The wife did.

The chase scene and its tension broke Maestro’s tachy-arrhythmia, and here tacky is being used and spelled appropriately once again, a new world’s record for Mutt. The scene was super-tacky and as Tramp sang in yesteryear, Super Freak-y.

Maestro will get a pacemaker inserted electively, and he actually produced insurance cards when he was told he was clinic ineligible by the social worker.

The hospital and Dr. Hart are now able to go after him for the payment of services recently rendered. If he has to pay out of pocket, it might hurt more than it did in the past, since his net worth looks to be decreasing by at least, fifty percent.

He may have to recuperate in Neptune. Although his wife said, “On Uranus. That’s where I’m throwin’ ya, out on Uranus.” As everyone already knows, if he wears a Johnny coat home his moon will shine all over Neptune.

When Dr. Hart first addressed him in the ER, he spoke about suing me for terroristic threats. Remember I had asked if he was packin’? Of course, I have three witnesses that will say that never happened.

By the time he’ll be discharged his lawyers and accountants will be working full-time auditing assets and hidden reserves, trust funds in Grand Cayman. They will get to play with his wife’s lawyers and the IRS for the near and foreseeable future.

Yes, that was how he qualified for the clinic. Did you know that you can’t claim to be the executor of an off-shore trust fund for your underage dog, Fido? Even if he is dependent on you, he is not your dependent for tax purposes. This includes the situation where he is a full time student in obedience school. You still can’t claim him. You can’t divert your salary. You still owe taxes, even if the money is in the dog’s name, and dogs don’t file tax returns. Are you listening Jerry Koosman?

Of course, the disclaimer for the preceding statement excludes politicians as they can claim any deduction and tax shelter that they want, if they have been in office long enough.

Ain’t life grand.

à Dr. Madison Muttnick