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Open Letter to A Puppy: Three’s Company


My frenzy,,

You may have noticed a fourth slow-feed dog bowl at the supper table lately. And no, we aren’t getting a third pup — yet (though the notion draws ever nearer).

You’ve got a roommate for the next few weeks. Mochi’s mom landed an acting gig for a few weeks, so we’re pup sitting this month. Which brings the poundage in the household to at least 180, dwarfing my own. 

And you wanna know something? I love it. I guess there’s no need to pretend I’m NOT that dog guy.

I’ve come to calling you the triplets: three shades of lab/pit  brown that will play triangular tug-of-war with the same rope, share wet food and sleep on the same single pad that nursed my back last year.

You all hop in the creamsicle hatchback, wrestling over squeak balls and whimpering to greet any passing canine. I should be so warm-hearted. 

More miraculously, even your pettiness charms.

What can be more beautiful than a jealous dog? One that bodies into you so closely it could be a vital organ? After dinner and some backyard fetching, I’ll drop to the cot and try to distribute two arms to three bodies evenly, though I know it’s never enough. 

When I return from another room, you cluster at the door like I FINALLY showed up for a staff meeting I’d called hours earlier.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, you should know: This is a lot more doable than I thought. Sixty pounds may be too much for this patch dirt. But 20? Ten? A man gets to thinking.

Until then, I’d ask you to make some home space for the rest of March. But when it comes to your hearts, I guess it’s never cramped. 

The Prodigal Jon


What the hell took so long?

After nine years, three presidents and no hit television show, Jon Stewart returned to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. And it’s glorious. 

Sure, Stewart took a pummeling for “bothsidesism” on his official return last week, and I’ll admit: Watching Stewart skewer Biden for his senior moments was almost too painful to watch (especially given Trump’s own run of them lately). Critics even suggested that he take another nine years off. 

They are, to the last, blithering slackwits. Perhaps they forget what it’s like to watch someone read from a teleprompter. They stutter, misread, misspeak, and otherwise clod over prepped lines. Don’t believe it? Watch any Oscar show. 

But Stewart does not read like a normal human. He seems so aware of his words that he doesn’t read them: he tells them, as if recalling a vivid story.

Watch him skewer newswhore Tucker Carlson for his interview with Vladimir Putin. Stewart blasts him not only for softball questions, but for Tuck’s larger slobbering over lifestyles in Russia, where average family incomes routinely run $200 a week. The cherry on top was Stewart’s trademark “Moment of Zen,” a Russian outlet’s subsequent interview of Putin, who called Tuck a feeble mouse. 

At least one of them was accurate.

And unlike, say, Trevor Noah, The Daily Show replacement, Stewart knows American politics inside and out, sometimes better than stumping politicians. No one interviews on-camera as seamless as he.

Stewart ended his sophomore return show with a simple, devastating rebuke of Carlson and his conservative douchebag fans: a picture of Alexei Navalny, the Putin critic killed in Siberia. That, Stewart said, was the true motive behind Tucker’s constipated visage and mission: To put a shiny happy face on tyranny. 

Welcome home, Jon. Make yourself comfortable. 

The Tranquil Nook

In shade’s cool embrace,

Whispers of solace abide,

Sun’s fervor subdued.

Beneath leafy boughs,

Nature’s canopy shelters,

A haven of peace.

Shadows dance and play,

Soft refuge from blazing sun,

Cool respite awaits.

In shade’s gentle cloak,

A sanctuary is found,

Nature’s tranquil nook.