Songs I Love in 88 Words or Less: "Apple Scruffs"

"Apple Scruffs," George Harrison

I definitely hail from the same lineage as the Apple Scruffs, the quirky group of fans who'd wait all night in the winter for a glimpse of the Beatles. Even when invited in, most times they preferred to hang outside, on the edges like shy cats in half-shadows. Not to be confused with the fans who stole Paul's pants, or groupies like Penny Lane, these muses were looking at the same thing that Mona Lisa was, if you can imagine Leonardo a Liverpudlian.



In looking for a video to share I found this demo version that gave me chills. And George sneezes like a happy dog at one point.



P.S. As a kid I also sat in mud puddles (scruff factor 23) and, a few years later, waited every Saturday for my Afghan hound friend from down the street to visit. His name? Apple, of course.

I Wanna Be Your Dog

When people talk about their spirit animals, I actually feel like rolling my eyes sometimes. Yes, me, the person who believes if I think hard enough I can forcefully will a hot-pink streak to start permanently growing from my head because well, it seems like I should have been born with one in the first place. What gets me is when people are so….limited about it.  The typical options for spirit animals are comparatively glamourous fauna like bears and wolves and snakes and dolphins and crows when, hey, what about identifying with a maggot, or one of those dung-eating birds?

OK, I'm digressing. What I really am meaning to write about--I'm pretty sure I was a scrappy dog (no, not Scrappy-Doo, he's a cartoon, silly!--and as such will live forever) in a past incarnation. It really hit me earlier this winter, when I'd see the neighborhood dogs in the snow and feel all familiar and nostalgic. I love the ones who just sort of dig a little hole, like a sunken livingroom, and hunker down and hang out until snow covers their eyelashes. And the back-scratching spine-wigglers who roll around on the ground, paws in the air and smiling, in the new-fallen snow. Just thinking about it makes me feel all funny in the tailbone area…OMG, it can't be just me! Does anyone else know what I mean?!

One Saturday morning in January, I was running along the East River as snow was falling, and I kept looking at the ground, that packed, perfect, glistening whiteness, and thinking about those dogs… I felt all twitchy like I had to stop and…do something. You know what's coming, right?

There weren't a lot of people out, but I still made sure no one could see when I laid down in the snow and yes, rolled on my back like a happy dog. I was sort of embarrassed, so I didn't stay down there too long, which sort of pisses me off in retrospect. If you're going to do something like that in the first place, better make it worth it, ya know? Anyway, the 20 or so seconds were still pretty satisfying, so I got up and continued on my way. If there'd been someone else with me, I guarantee you it wouldn't seem so weird--you know how that is? But, hell, when your inner canine calls…you heed that call. And then get some Scooby snacks.

Re: this next one--I gotta say, ain't nothing like the real thing, but if the Stooges wanna be your Neapolitan mastiff, these guys maybe just wanna be your beagle. Which is totally cool, too.





Belated Christmas wishes. And 'cause Snoopy's a lover, not a fighter:





P.S. The truck-drivin' dog in this old photo is none other than Boogie, whose friend and co-conspirator Bobby Faust passed away earlier this year. I bet they're rolling along, eating Moon Pies and howling at the moon together on the other side.

Wait, Loss

    

I'm still thinking about Manuela, the pet red-footed tortoise who was found after 30 years. Seems her family was cleaning out their upstairs storage room this past January and took a bag of trash to the curb when a neighbor noticed Manuela, crawling around in an old box with a turntable to keep her company.

Never mind that all the online articles that reported this story referred to the reptile as both "he" and "she," or that this weird family had piled stuff in bags in 1982 and never touched them again, until now--what really matters is…what was Manuela thinking all that time? They surmised she survived on termites, but… did time go slow and floaty all lava lamplike? Or am I just thinking that because turtles seem to move and think in a way that one chelonian minute = one human hour? And OMG, not that she could exactly operate the turntable, but what 1 side of 1 album could YOU listen to for 30 years? (I love you, George, but what if you got stuck with, say, side 5 or 6 of "All Things Must Pass"? You'd have to listen to a crazy party over and over where you love all the guests but ultimately had to be there… But all you are is here…and "here" is in a box for 30 years…)

Anyway, it got me thinking about the turtles in the reservoir in Central Park, those red-eared sliders whom people buy as pets and then wind up dumping… They've been there, way down deep, all winter. Maybe they problem-solve and do a group turtle think, planning for the spring to come. Maybe they don't do much, softly jostled to awareness only if something juicy's happening on the roof…Like, did they hear the loafy, oafy echo echo echo of that buffoon who tried to walk across the not-frozen-all-the-way ice in early February? He fell through and a bunch of firemen had to come rescue him, as the rest of us who happened to be in the park that day watched… I wish all of them down there a safe journey back…or maybe it's the other way around--that being above the surface is the dreamier dreamworld.

Then, of course, there is the ain't-got-no-reservations, I'm-100%-happy-to-be Waiting, a la Elmer:

                                                      


Does the 4 seconds he has to wait to have the ball thrown feel like 30 years? And if you felt such gloriously excellent in-the-moment expectation, would you mind waiting that long anyway?

Slow or fast, slow or fast. Oh yeah, oh yeah.



Then there's the waiting you hear wax-and-waning off Bryan Ferry's voice in this next one.. you know, the delicious histrionic kind from which tiny poems slip and drip and gasp…



Random P.S. Those reading who are looking for love, take note--don't discount the power of that song. This sucker lured me into a crappy relationship a long time ago that ended in 11 forgotten boa constrictors and being banned from using the bathroom and having to pee on the beach instead, made even more enjoyable with a UTI. Yup, that powerful. Good luck, and don't leave your snake at home. And for that matter, make sure you know where your turtle is.

Baby's Got Blue Eyes?

A couple days before Christmas, I came across a post in my Facebook newsfeed from a pet ID tag company calling for haikus about dogs. But the haiku couldn’t be about just any old dog, it had to be someone else’s dog. No matter… could you say no to that? About 7 minutes and 17 syllables later, I’d posted my contribution, only to realize I had entered a haiku contest!

The subject of my haiku was Nina, my friend and manager’s dog (that’s her at top). Nina and I had recently met on my Seattle trip, and I’d been thinking about her a lot. She is this unknown-to-me mix of laid-back and driven—a bee-line maker to other dogs if she so desires, but calm and happy to wait in the car for her mom.



Is it an East Coast/West Coast thing? I’m used to NYC dogs, but Pacific Northwestern canines somehow seem so different they may as well be monkeys! True, I only encountered several—1. Nina, with whom I saw my first eagle and walked through a field of tall lion-colored grass, 2. a droolly tail-wagger on the beach, and 3. an exotic-looking mix who turned to look at us as he hot-to-trotted along with a major case of what I call “butt pride.” (Cats can have butt pride, too, btw. Puffer did.)

Anyway, I forgot about the whole haiku thing until last week, when another post from Fetching Tags came across my newsfeed. Hmmm…I wonder who won, I thought…probably some sappy, Hallmark-y sentiment about loyalty and best friends…

Well, guess what? Check it out!

I was so excited that I read my haiku like 20-million times (well, it IS only 14 words)…but very soon doubt began to creep in. Does Nina really have one eye blue and one eye brown?

I emailed 2 of our coworkers, both of whom weren’t sure but didn’t remember Nina having different-colored eyes. So I looked at Sue’s Facebook photo albums and I couldn’t fight the truth. Both of Nina’s eyes are blue, which makes me…

A haiku liar.

I was instantly transported back to 3rd grade at Most Holy Trinity. Our class was having a bake sale, so all us kids brought in whatever our moms had slaved over the day before and sold it during lunchtime to the other grades. Chocolate chip cookies, brownies, sugar cookies with colored sprinkles, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes… everything was probably like 25 cents or something. There were also two cakes to raffle off, one of which everyone was obsessed with. It was pink and perfect, with swirly peaks of pinker frosting and smelling like Lip Smackers. Clearly from a bakery—someone’s mom must have forgotten about the sale and bought it at the last minute. I hadn’t purchased a chance for the raffle, but that cake was doing crazy things to my head.

Me: “I brought in those cupcakes and I was in charge of selling all the chances. I deserve a free one.”

Michael Hayes, handing me a piece of paper: “Here, just write your name on it and put it in the box.”

So, I slipped it in the box and well, wouldn’t ya know…

My name was called as the winner of the pink cake.

Michael’s eyes bugged out, and I was just about to ‘fess up when he looked at me and shook his head in a “Don’t say anything!” way. Looking back at it now, I realize he saw my winning the big pink cake as a good and fortuitous thing, not a scam on my part to cheat the class and everyone else who paid for their chances. Well, d’uh. Third-grade boys could care less about a pink cake. And in that moment, I didn’t care that I was a fraud…just give me my dang cake.



I'm going to shame myself in the eyes of New Order purists by saying 1) I like the 12-inch version better than the 7-inch, and 2) for a long time I got the title of this song confused with "Everything's Gone Green," because of all the eye-color references.



P.S. As I recall, the cake was awful. Not only was it sorta dry, but it may as well have been covered in BITTERcream frosting, what with the growing guilt and shame I felt. And I know it’s not the same thing as the haiku, but I also want to say--Nina, I’m sorry I inadvertently misrepresented you, but I do indeed think you are beautiful.

Doughy Lumps, Stomach Pumps, Enemas, Too…

Or, Brian Wilson: Friend of Vegetables (and Goats)

Today’s post was inspired by two things—Mr. Pleasant’s Top 100 7-inch Singles (major Beach Boys representation here!) and the inadvertent inclusion of the Pet Sounds mailing list on a recommended list of Internet resources for animal welfare professionals (don’t ask!). Oh, well, three things—all those long-suffering folks who actually know the next line in the song referenced above…

Here goes...

If life were a big county fair and we were all various kinds of produce, this man, or at least the creative side of his brain, would be one of those beautiful gargantuan mutant tomatoes that wins the blue ribbon, but is just so big and juicy that even the farmer doesn’t know what to do with it. Was it something in the water? Or just a highly developed root system?

Eventually the tomato rolls off the vegetable cart, and it’s not uncommon to find it introducing the onion to the peach, or the beet to the watermelon, just to see what sweetness might result. And did I mention this tomato can sing?

No matter what your favorite veg-e-table, everyone can benefit from a little extra Brian Wilson in his or her life. It just so happens that throughout his career with the Beach Boys, he never forgot to tip his hat to his favorite flora and fauna:

* “Vegetables,” written by BW and Van Dyke Parks and first found commercially on the Beach Boys’ 1967 Smiley Smile LP. This song romp-chomps along, ending with a plea for the pea: “I know that you’ll feel better when you send us in your letter and tell us the name of your favorite vegetable.”

* “H.E.L.P. is on the Way,” from disc 3 of Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys. If you’re a vegetarian/vegan who has never guffawed with delight, you will now. Written as a kind of promo for a health food restaurant, the song features Brian cautioning listeners about the pitfalls of being a meat eater: “Doughy lumps, stomach pumps, enemas, too/That’s what you’ll get when you eat that way!” In a moment of cruciferous triumph, he glows, “Hamburgers and hotdogs, throw ‘em all out!/You’ll feel so good you’ll stand up and shout!”

* On the Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up album is a wacky song written by BW & Jack Reilly called “A Day in the Life of a Tree.” If you listen to it enough, it just might grow on you (haw haw!). It’s about air pollution and is really, really sad: “But now my branches suffer/And my leaves don’t offer/Poetry to men of song/Trees like me weren’t meant to live/if all this world can give is pollution and slow death.

P.S. Don’t wanna end on such sad note, but…let me share my favorite BW-ism. When asked to describe himself by a reporter, Brian said he was…PSYCHEDELICATE.

P.S.S. Crap, I have to make an animal-music connection by the end of this post...Those are Brian's dogs, Banana and Louie, who you hear barking at the end of “Caroline, No" from the Pet Sounds album, and a Sparklett’s water jug you hear at the beginning of the song. If that ever comes up in a trivia contest, you have to split your winnings with me.