Nemesis

This happened right after Thanksgiving. My dog Booker is your typical lab. He is intelligent, friendly, happy, and can sleep for hours at my feet until he is jolted into animation by the almost silent sound of a leash being taken down from the shelf by the door. When this happens, it is a struggle to get the leash attached to his collar because he will turn in quick circles, like an otter with a bum leg, until you can catch him and put the leash’s latch onto the collar’s hook. We have a friend, Phillip, who comes to walk him during the week, and when he shows up Booker jumps about six feet in front of the door to get a view of the approaching walker. It is mayhem for a couple of minutes as Phillip bustles Booker out the door, and about an hour later they return with Booker panting hard and plopping his often wet body down on the oriental rug.

Booker has learned tricks—he has really applied himself; he’s worked hard. He has learned to catch a Frisbee at fifty yards on the fly. He gets the paper for us in the morning. Recently I’ve taught him to shake, but it’s more like a gimmee five because he slaps at my hand instead of placing it firmly in my grasp; and often he embellishes this trick by jumping on me and forcing me to admit that brushing a dogs teeth is not an act of over-pampering. He looks at me sometimes with his intelligent eyes and I know he wants to tell me something, something about what happened at the dog park or how many trees he marked that day, so I’ll rub his ears and toss him a piece of pizza crust (he’s good at catching those too) and he’ll eventually lie down at my feet, content, after completing his con.

I spent Thanksgiving day with my family, and ate more than I think I’ve possibly ever eaten in my entire life. It’s hard to admit this gastronomical discrepancy, but for some reason the idea of rewarding myself for hard work that I’d been doing meant piling two helpings of purposely rich and fattening food onto the biggest plate I could find and not giving myself time to even taste it as I scarfed the entire mass down my gullet. After the cramps subsided a bit (they came on about the time I had my first slice of pumpkin cheesecake, although that didn’t stop me from having another) my brother-in-law invited me for a run. I declined, but asked him how far he was going. “Three miles,” he said and then took off. He was back in less than thirty minutes.

All of this has a point. The solitary orgy I partook in on Thanksgiving gave way to a pendulum of guilt and forced me to evaluate my health. Eating conspicuously while my father was at the other end of the table suffering from what was later diagnosed as congestive heart failure was a bit thoughtless, although I don’t believe anyone took offence—probably no one noticed. The pendulum, however, had swung, and the next week saw me rising at six-thirty to run, what I figured was, three miles. It took me far more than thirty minutes though. But in my defense, I had Booker with me. He tends to slow me down.

So on day two of this extended period of health consciousness (it lasted all of two days), I was running in the oldest part of town known as Old Salem with Booker along. Booker is usually pretty good on a run, although he does much better on a walk, as do I. We sync pretty well unless there is something he just has to sniff or a familiar tree that is in need of re-freshening. If I am not diligent and attentive my arm can get yanked pretty hard, and soon I am forced to realize that yelling at your dog in public is an extremely socially unacceptable act. Weather is a factor as well. We can’t run in the summer because Booker’s black coat acts like solar panels and he gets extremely overheated. The best time for running with Booker is when the weather resembles his natural environment—think Nova Scotia in early March.

On this day the weather conditions were a little warm, and Booker was falling behind, which meant that I had to run with my left arm a bit behind me. It was looking like a good enough reason to stop running and start walking, but I hadn’t reached that point yet. We were running down Main Street which is literally the original main street of town that extends all the way into the modern downtown area. This segment is lined with restored or reconstructed 18th century buildings and is paved with embedded cobblestones. The sidewalks are paved with uneven bricks, and running here is a careful endeavor. If the streets are relatively empty, it is better to run on the street than the sidewalk because there is less of a chance of breaking a femur. We were on a downhill stretch, and I was catching my breath as we had just finished an uphill grade that I probable could have walked faster than I ran it. Maybe the endorphins had me in a daze, but my mind seemed to have been blank at that moment.

Suddenly there was a great deal of barking and Booker shot from his lethargic pace right behind me to my right side and forward, at a position of two o’clock. I was jerked out of my lull by the sight of a small rat-like blur headed straight in our direction. I vaguely caught the image of a man shouting “No” or “stop” or something, but nothing registered right away. Then I realized what was happening, it was Toby, the Jack Russell, and he was charging for Booker’s neck.

I don’t really know the dog’s real name, although I’ve heard it shouted by his owner a few times. Usually, at that time, nomenclature is the last thing I am concerned with as my primary objective is keeping the eight pound devil-spawn from ripping out my dog’s esophagus. It’s sort of like Gremlins meets Benji. I feel Toby is an apt name for the dog though; nothing against the name Toby, in fact it sounds just innocuous enough so the ferocity of the actual beast is put in relief against the cuteness of the name. The real name of the beast should be Himmler, or Beelzebub, or Bubo, or Virus.

We’ve had confrontations before. On a stretch through the Moravian cemetery, known as God’s Acre, an anything but God-like creature came darting out of the cross-paths and bit Booker on the butt. In this instance the owner also ineffectually protested to his dog, who definitely controls the relationship. After wrenching Booker away from the Hitler of dogs, I breathlessly made some remark about the dog having a Napoleon complex and we went on our way. But we would encounter the Jack Russell in the future. Thankfully, at these times, he would be on a leash, which is how he should have stayed. But for some reason, at times, his owner gives him free reign of Old Salem knowing that this little dog is capable of dismembering a bull, like those piranhas you read about who reduce a horse to a mere skeleton in a matter of minutes.

Here is my theory as to why the Jack Russell hates Booker so much. I’m sure dog experts will disagree, and I don’t profess to being knowledgeable about the animal kingdom, but I believe that dogs instinctively do as they were bred to do for hundreds of years. Toby, being a Terrier, was bred to bring larger animals, such as boar, down so the hunter could get a good shot or whatever (I know even less about hunting). When Toby sees Booker he doesn’t see what I see, a friendly harmless pooch with bad breath and a fondness for cheese, he sees a snorting, rooting, wild pig. The confusion is understandable, living in Old Salem; Toby has probably never seen a pig. But Booker is about the right size and color of the Belgian Wild Boar or something, so Toby goes for it; it is his big chance to show what he’s born to do; to exude his purpose. Either that or he’s protecting his master, I haven’t quite decided.

Either way, on this day he was bearing down on me and Booker with astonishing speed. It would be interesting to do a size/speed ratio on this dog. At this level I’m amazed that he didn’t break the sound barrier.

When he reached the point where he was about two feet away Toby slowed up so he could ready himself for a strategic lunge. As I said earlier, Booker had shot forward to greet the attack. I had stopped running and was desperately trying to pull Booker behind me to get between the two pissed off dogs. The owner, some twenty yards away, seemed to be still in the same spot, yelling absently, and taking his time in gaining control over his dog. By pulling Booker back, I inadvertently exposed his backside to yet another butt-bite. Before I could stomp loudly in front of Toby to get him to back off, the Terrier had given Booker a good chomp on the rump. My reaction to this was to let Booker defend himself and let the leash out. Maybe a good bite from a set of jaws with much more poundage per square inch would settle the matter for Toby.

This was a bad idea. Toby was so fast, and by this time Booker and I were so entangled in the leash, that by having Booker go forward, I again exposed him to Toby. This time Toby went for Booker’s neck. He bit down and held on. This was a tragic looking spectacle, and I took the opportunity to swing the entire mass of lab, terrier and leash around and give Toby a hard and well placed punt. It made a little hollow sound; like poonk. He let go.

For the first time I witnessed Toby without resolve and in retreat. He ran backwards a little, still barking, but with less ferocity, and scooted off to our left and out of sight. His owner was somewhere near, but I didn’t even bother to try and look at him. I wouldn’t have made a half-hearted witticism about Napoleon this time. I quickly untangled myself and Booker and kept on jogging, trying to put distance between Toby and Booker. Booker kept his stride, and a few hundred yards down the street I stopped and checked him out. He seemed fine. No problem.

We haven’t encountered Toby since. I have a feeling that his owner took little heed of the fact that his blood-thirsty beast wanted to murder an innocent Frisbee catcher. There are some folks who are oblivious of the effect that their sphere has on others. Toby is probably still calling the shots around that house, and it won’t do me any good to stay pissed about it. One thing I won’t do is report the dog—have the dog suffer for the shortcomings of his owner. But if the dog comes our way again, I believe that I will be justified in scoring the winning field goal for Booker State.

Of Garage Roofs and Witches

Exams are over!

Memory is strange. I’m trying to remember details from a fifth grade play and already I’m not sure if it was in the fifth grade or sixth. So I have to rationalize a little. We moved to England halfway through the sixth grade so there is less of a chance that I would have taken part in a school play that year, but it’s not impossible. So I am about 89% sure that the play was during my fifth year of elementary school. All I can really say for sure is that there was a lot of nine-square being played that year.

Two-square, four-square, and nine-square were the predominant activities for us outside of the classroom, during recess, where tricks of the real world were learned. Two-square is basically a game where opponents stand in drawn out squares and bounce one of those blood-red elementary school issue bouncy balls in a diminished, net-free game, similar to tennis. Four-square upped the ante by pitting four opponents against each other. The objective was to become king by working your way around the square to become the server. Once you gained this position, you could increase your clout around school by holding the position for a long period of time. To stay king until recess was over was pretty damn good.

The hit sensation of that year though was nine-square. This took the concept further by placing nine opponents on a grid of nine squares and let them have at it. To make king in this game was a joyful event, and, if it happened to me, it took all of the experience that I had learned in eleven years to hold on to the position for a couple of rounds. The guy in the square next to the king square was the one you had to look out for, he was gunning for you. As king, you would send your serve down to the peons at the beginning of the grid and hope that they would battle it out, and screw it up, so you would not have to defend your position. But if the ball came back your way, you may find yourself in a battle to see how softly you could place the ball over the line to force an out. Soft volleys and slams were usually the most effective weapons.

Nine-square was so popular that the two-square and four-square areas often sat empty, while the entire fourth, fifth and sixth grades participated in nine-square. There was always a line—a waiting list—with shouting and breaking in line, and scuffles and admonishments from the principle and taunts; and then you would step up and see how far you got. It was better than kickball, basketball (we were still too short), and dodge ball—where a game could end quickly with some kid’s glasses being knocked off by an early-growth-spurt victim wielding an under-inflated bouncy ball.

After recess the class would return with color in their cheeks and try to settle down. Mistakes and victories would be carried back into the classroom and reported, or distorted, depending on who was doing the talking. The teasing was carried on until our teacher, Mr. Richardt, a funny, hippyish young man who had a beer can pyramid in his living room and whom we all admired, came in and quieted things down. Then it was back to math, or religion, or social studies; and nine square was forgotten, unless you had made king that day, and then, periodically, you could privately bask in that pride.

It was sometime during the nine-square craze of ’78 that the idea of putting on a play was introduced to the class. I believe it was Mrs. Burroughs, the social studies teacher, who put the plan on the table. Most of the class seemed semi-interested, but a couple of the students really took to the idea and began asking questions and trying to develop ideas for topics and so forth. I believe I must have been interested because that night I remember mentioning it at dinner and my family helped me brainstorm topics. If it was up to me, we would do a WWII era action piece culminating with me heroically jumping off a structure as high as our garage roof. I had just learned to do this. I twisted my ankle on the first attempt, but the roof just sat there, taunting me, so when I got better, I mastered the drop and roll technique I had seen in the movies and, to my amazement, it worked. I made this the climax of every WWII scenario I invented from then on. Every game included a need to jump off the garage roof.

The topic I can remember choosing was the crusades. My father had a large book about the subject which contained alluring paintings of knights on the cover and dense, minute, unreadable text inside. The fact that I understood nothing about the crusades did not dissuade me from the topic. It had knights, and swords, and amour; the plot really wasn’t all that important. We could make it up as we went along, like the WWII games.

When the subject of the play came up in class, I was ready to make my case for the crusades, but before I could even formulate my first point, Mary Ann Lofton was already introducing her topic, complete with a script, casting, and possibly even social relevance. This was typical of Mary Ann, she was always prepared. I don’t believe she ever saw a B on an assignment in her life, much less a D given for a homework assignment hastily completed in a Datsun (that’s a car, young uns) pulling out of a gravel driveway. She had her hand up constantly, and led the class by default, but still, I could never picture her jumping off a garage roof.

Her topic was a good one; it was about a true haunting in some puritan town in the 19th century titled the Bell Witch. It was extremely topical because, at that time, the entire country, or at least its younger citizens, was scared shitless by a movie called The Amityville Horror, which is also based on true accounts of a bizarre haunting on Long Island. A dog-eared copy of the paperback based on the movie got passed around and read that year, and when Mary Ann introduced a topic of similar interests, she immediately had the class behind her. My topic, the crusades, never stood a chance.

[Brief note: Because my memory is somewhat shaky at this point about the overall plot of the Bell Witch, I’ve gone online to get a clearer picture. The events took place in Tennessee in 1819, and subsequent years, and involved a ghostly voice who haunted John Bell’s family and others, including future president Andrew Jackson. The story is widely respected as a well documented account of a haunting which was authenticated by many sources. For more, go to:www.bellwitch.org]

After I fell in line with the rest of the class, I found myself cast as Joshua Gardner a suitor of one of the Bell daughters. It was a bit part, but that was okay, because Wendy Debruin, the girl who laughed at my jokes, played the daughter. It would be an easy part, with only a few lines, and some physical comedy, and then I would be free to play nine-square again and not be subjected to too much admonition from the disinterested nine-square all-American types who could have cared less about the play.

Mary Ann was a good director. She started out very patiently, and we worked out our parts and walked through the scenes and generally made progress; and occasionally I would throw in a zinger and Wendy would laugh. It was boring at times though, and often I would sit off-stage and pick at the wood floor or flip through Life Goes to War which I brought to school everyday to display some of the more gruesome photos and paintings. It was a cheap way to get attention, but it worked. My scene was early in the play, but after it was rehearsed I was required to stick around for some reason. I began to get a little resentful. Why did they need me here? I already knew my part. I could vaguely hear the shouts and laughter of the recess session outside. I was missing it.

One day the boys who weren’t involved with the play started talking about a new game. They had taken the game of four-square and added a wall to it. This introduction of a perpendicular element added numerous possibilities. You could bank shots, you could force the ball into the corner and send it in unpredictable directions, the kid with glasses could have them knocked off in new and intriguing ways; it was a revolution in four-square development. And it was catching on fast.

It was just too much for me to resist, I had to play this game. I could hear it being played on the wall outside, behind the stage. When I decided to skip rehearsal and sneak around to the back of the school where the game was evolving, I was welcomed with open arms by my brethren of the bouncy ball. Steve Giljames was in charge here, he was the school athlete, with only one rival, Richard Turner. Richard had a temper, which cost him points at times, but Steve was always cool and was good at every athletic endeavor he tried. Steve seemed to own the position of king in nine-square.

As I learned new rules and techniques of the game, and went a couple of rounds, I got better and the steady progress I made caused me to become hooked very quickly. My gosh, you could zing the ball in strange ways with that corner, and wow did that extra element of banking throw your opponent off, and man did that kid get mad when his glasses flew across the pavement. I wasn’t sure how, but I just might have to forget about the play.

So when suddenly Mary Anne was shouting at me to get in to the auditorium because they were tired of waiting on me—she even used the threat of getting Mrs. Burroughs in on the act—I was lulled out of my dream state and became powerless over the determined daggers being hurled at me from the director’s eleven year old eyes. A shouting match between a couple of the other boys and Mary Ann ensued, and it seemed as if a group of dogs were barking at each other for a moment, but soon I found myself following Mary Ann back into the school, past the chapel and into the auditorium where the rest of the cast was milling around. I could hear the ball bouncing against the wall as soon as I left the parking lot.

So I persevered. On the day of dress rehearsals, Mary Ann had forgiven me, and she welcomed the idea that I suggested about how my character should leave the stage. In the story, Gardner has items hurled at him by the disapproving witch. The plan was to get someone to throw a boot at me from off-stage which would hit me in the head. At this point Gardner has had enough and basically freaks out and runs away, never to come back. I had the idea of having Gardner run all the way through the isles of the auditorium and around the building, screaming all the way. I would circle the building and come back through a door in the back of the building. Mary Ann approved. I only wished there was a garage to jump off of.

On the day of the play, my sisters made special arrangements to leave class to come and see my debut. I don’t remember being nervous, but I suppose I was. When my scene came around I played it well, but I wasn’t expecting to be considered a comic genius. I played the part a little rednecky I think, and by the time the boot hit me in the head the audience, especially the first grade, was howling. I ran around the building, screaming as planned, and all in all I felt that I was a hit. The rush of public approval had me spinning, I could picture myself with that academy award: “I would like to thank my parents, my sister, Wendy Debruin, and all the little people…”

The favorable reviews followed me home. My sisters passed on the reception of the performance to my parents in which I basked until my father took the wind out of me by calling me a ham. I sulked the rest of the night, a prima donna, misunderstood and underappreciated. Then I realized that the play was over! It was back to Nine-square—and the new game, and jumping off the garage roof!

Massacre on Walton's Mountain

This is a short paper I did for Cult Films. We watched The Waltons religiously in my house as a kid. My dad was born and raised just north of the area where the show takes place, Nelson County Virginia.I got an A on the paper, the professor has a sense of humor.

In the early years of the 1970’s, television and film viewers were being inundated with conflicting imagery that ran a spectrum from simplistic morality to violent depravity. During these years no television show exemplified ideas about morality and family values in the 1970s more than The Waltons. The show, set in depression era rural Virginia, is told through eyes of John Walton, better known as John Boy. The stories are short morality plays about how the togetherness of family is the balm of life and that by giving, one will surely receive. In sharp contrast to The Waltons is the 1974 Tobe Hooper movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If this film is used as an example of the other end of the spectrum from the morality of The Waltons we can get a clear idea of how diverse the depictions of families were in the 1970’s.
Remarkably, there are some similarities between the Waltons and the family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both are victims of hard times, the Waltons are struggling through the depression while the Leatherfaces are victims of the automation of the meatpacking industry. Both live in rural southern areas and make their living from the use of power saws; John Walton owns a backyard lumber mill; Leatherface owns a chainsaw and half a gallon of unleaded. Both families place a high priority on the nightly ritual of gathering around the dinner table and discussing family matters. And both families have a great reverence toward the patriarchal grand paw figure with Grand Paw Walton being given the head of the table and Grand Paw Leatherface being given the honors of bashing in a dinner guest’s skull.
The similarities meet a divergence however when the families play out their motivations. The Walton’s, always using morality as a roadmap, might make every effort to help a wayward stranger, while the Leatherfaces, erring to the side of depravity, might make every effort to eat a wayward stranger. At the Waltons, a visitor might be treated to an extra slice of Grandma’s famous sponge cake, while at the Leatherface’s a visitor might be treated to her boyfriend’s barbequed spleen. The Walton family might spend an evening tramping through the woods in order to chop down the perfect Christmas tree, while the Leatherfaces might tramp through the woods to chop up a wheel chair bound whiney guy.
However dissimilar the two productions are, both The Waltons and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre represent a fantasy image of the American family. While it is hard to imagine the perfection in which the Waltons adhere to their principles, it is equally difficult to imagine the complete depravity of the family depicted in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Considering the middle ground might give us a better idea of what the reality of family life in the 1970s translated to: that families are weird and imperfect. Whatever the case, there is one more similarity between The Waltons and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Whether it be from the saccharine morals careening off of Walton’s Mountain, or the splattering blood and incessant buzzing coming from the Texas wasteland, a viewer may end the viewing of each production feeling more than a little nauseous.

Short Announcement

Okay, so I’m supposed to be writing a ten page paper about the boasting in Beowulf right now entitled “The Broken Boast: Fate and Alienation in the Boasts of Beowulf." My procrastination has taken me so far that I am rationalizing that if I write a blog entry it will warm me up for the paper. My sister seems to write ten entries for every one of mine, and she is a highly paid professional person with what I imagine to be a grueling schedule. How does she find the time?

I’ve decided to procrastinate no longer and start on the paper. I will post this blog, but it will be short—just long enough to say that I’m waiting until after exams to write a long post. I just don’t have one in me until these next two weeks are over. So all of my 1.65 subscribers will have to sit on their hands until then. But after exams—watch out!