I thought he would live forever but it turns out I am full of shit.

Simba is dying.

Not tomorrow. No. But within the next 12-18 months, he will die. He is 10 and running on a ¼ tank of gas in a ’76 Chevette. At some point, his life will sputter.

Simba and I have never been particularly close. My younger dog Clementine and I were an instant match. Sonny and Cher. Bonnie and Clyde. Like every happy couple on those Match.com commercials, we hit it off on the first walk. As we found out, I’m totally into rawhides. She’s totally into the band Hockey. We hardly leave the apartment.

I didn’t plan it this way. Simba was supposed to be Clementine. He was supposed to be the brazen, animated, shotgun-riding hound whom I would chase in fields of daffodils during our Heartgard commercial shoot, talk about on dates, and  feed Snausages to on road trips to find myself. 

When I picked Simba up from the pound 10 years ago, I had our life planned much like a stage 5 clinger. We would become the first power couple – Kimba. Rumors would swirl. We would be caught out late outside my apartment. Us Weekly would publish photos of me walking him on the beach somewhat out of shape. People would publish a story about how he was spending time with the more patient next door neighbor Doug. But we would endure.

I didn’t like that he peed on the couch, but best friends who got drunk at the time were doing the same, so I let it go.

A year or two went by. I waited for Simba to meet my expectations as a human, and he didn’t. He was somewhat of a plodding puppy, more 10-passenger church van than car, and this lumbering continued into his youth. He didn’t break into sprints to chase tennis balls (not even the really fluorescent ones that gay tennis players should use), would “shake” with as much enthusiasm as a hooker doing an overweight Hardee’s manager, and generally speaking, seemed to care less about me than the DMV did.

He acted aloof. He feigned interest in being petted here and there. He ran, no moseyed, away several times in his first few years, which seems impossible considering his size (65 pounds) and pace (a turtle with a torn meniscus).

I caught myself muttering “I hope he doesn’t come back” the sixth time and didn’t hate myself for saying it. I would find him, ask him what his fucking problem was (I swear that once he muttered “you, dick.”), and take him back to my apartment, where we would continue to get along like two people who have been in a relationship too long and just want to set the other person’s belongings on the curb and hit the road in a convertible with the cute server from Red Lobster.

Our disconnect was exacerbated by the arrival of Clementine.  Simba was just over four years old when I took her in as a six month old puppy. She was a a fifth of vodka – a true party starter.  She constantly did her best. And minute by minute, she left life come ripping right through her. Hey joy was boundless. Her exuberant facial expressions could only be captured in a cartoon dog drawn by someone aftter drinking 12 glasses of box wine.

We hiked mountains. We went swimming. We ate muffins for breakfast on the weekends. When relationships failed, I would slip on my Nikes, grab her leash and run with her galloping alongside me for miles as I sweated  out too many beers from the night before and my own shortcomings.

In contrast, Simba would listen to my problems for an exceptionally short period of time before turning away and licking the area where his balls used to be.

But my relationship with him would change  in 2005 when a German Sheperd got loose during one of our walks and tore a path toward him in a fit of rage.

Synopisis:  When conventional therapies fail to help their autistic son, Rupert and Kristin Isaacson travel with Rowan to Mongolia in the hopes that a combination of traditional shamanic healing and horseback riding will benefit him. Director Michel O. Scott’s documentary juxtaposes scenes of the family at home in Texas with their journey on horseback across the breathtaking Mongolian countryside in search of reindeer herders and a powerful shaman.

My Seven-Word Movie Review: “More powerful than Tyson’s punch in ’85.”

Order The Horse Boy on Netflix

Synopisis:  WASTE LAND follows artist Vik Muniz from his home in Brooklyn to his native Brazil to the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located in Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s objective was to paint the catadores. However, he changes course and collaboraes with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage –  revealing both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.

My Seven-Word Movie Review: ” Beauty’s in the eye of GLAD holders”

Order Waste Land on Netflix

Synopisis:  Josh Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web” through the infamous dot.com boom of the 1990′s, founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network and created his vision of the future, an underground bunker in NYC where 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days over the millennium.

My Seven-Word Movie Review: ” Are cameras a better drug than coke?”

Order We Live in Public on Netflix

Synopisis:  Documentary that chronicles how Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” was plagued by extraordinary script, shooting, budget, and casting problems–nearly destroying the life and career of the celebrated director.

My Seven-Word Movie Review: ” Sheds light on a creative mind’s darkness.”

Order Hearts of Darkness on Netflicks

In one of the most poignant essays on the human psyche in the last 20 years, author and social color man Chuck Klosterman wrote:

You are not like Cal Ripken Jr. You aren’t that dedicated, you aren’t that intense, and you care about your job a whole lot less. Ripken might be your favorite player of the past 25 years, but the two of you have almost nothing in common. In fact, I bet there are many days when you wish you could just take a suitcase of money to Australia, drop out of society, grow out you hair and smoke cannabis all afternoon while having sex with whoever you felt like. In fact, if you had the chance, you’d probably do it tomorrow. But you know what? I bet you also think Ricky Williams is despicable.

I can’t read Bode Miller’s mind, but I bet the interior monologue bouncing around his cerebral cortex sounds something like this: “My job is OK, and I’m good at it. I suppose I could even be better if that was the only thing I cared about, but I’m not sure what the benefit of that would be, beyond appeasing a bunch of people I’ll never actually meet. And if I can get paid this much money for being myself, why would I want to force myself to become somebody else’s caricature? I’m already content with who I am.”

Now, it is possible that such sentiments would make you hate Bode Miller even more.

It’s also possible you hate him because you feel exactly the same way.

This is exactly why you hate Charlie Sheen but would trade places with him in the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket.  You hate him for unfulfilling his talent, but love him for fulfilling his life. Morality aside, he’s having the fucking time of his life. A better time than me. A better time than you.  

You have a mortgage payment. An outstanding credit card bill. A sick child. Car repairs. A coworker who makes you want to quit. 

You hate him because he doesn’t have to deal with this. But you love him because he put himself in a position where he doesn’t have to.

You would run off to an island and roast marshmallows with Ricky Williams and let the tropical rain fall on your tongue alongside Sheen.

But you won’t do this. You won’t because you cannot and would not want to deal with the repercussions. But Sheen does. He puts out a welcome mat and starts a pot of coffee for them, and that bothers you. 

You hate Charlie Sheen because we have to force ourselves to become someone else’s caricature.  We agree with bosses when we don’t want to. We hold our breath with co-workers when we don’t want to. We appease friends, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives.  We constantly accept less than we think we deserve in the name of the greater good.

Charlie Sheen would tell you he is the greater good. Then he would wax poetic and use onomatopoeia effortlessly in a sentence because the son of a bitch is better spoken than you.

We appease people. He appeases himself. That’s sounds disgusting, but really, really fucking amazing. Kind of like McDonald’s.

Which you ate last week.

You gorge one way. He gorges another.  But of course he’s doing coke so he’s not gaining any weight.

We all want freedom. You may choose to become a writer or an artist or a business owner if you ever obtained it, but freedom is freedom, whether you’re doing what your passion calls you to do or a hooker named Luscious from Dallas.

He has freedom. Do you?

Probably not. It’s why we watch CNN, read People and check TMZ.com. We won’t risk leading his life, but we’ll risk staying up late enough to catch up.

So make fun of his exploits. Call him immature. Call him deranged. Or tell your friend Julie that he has lost it.

Or have you lost it?

He’s the one calling all the shots. We have to go to Squeaky Pete’s on Thirsty Thursday to get the same exhiliration.

Which is more depressing? That, or $200 whores?