Conventional wisdom says that you can’t teach an old dog a new trick, but the lady in condo #1210 in my building is trying to do exactly that.

She’s trying to teach her dog Jack to live a little longer.

Jack is a gregarious, six-year-old Golden Retriever with a rich, lustrous red coat that puts most my ex-girlfriends’ hair to shame. Jack is lean and lanky, so when he runs he strongly resembles a horse, a similarity which of course quickly dissolves once he starts sniffing peoples’ butts in the building’s elevator.

Jack, like most Golden Retrievers, possesses a friendly, eager-to-please demeanor. If he were a guy, he’s be the loyal, wide-eyed friend up for anything who shows up to a party with a 12-pack of beer because it’s the nice thing to do.  

Of course then he would drink too much, rip off everything but his underwear, throw up on the girl he’s hitting on and pee in the fish tank but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Two months ago, I struck up a conversation with Jack’s owner “Ann.” The quotation marks are necessary because, well, I don’t know her name. Like most people in my building, I know all the dogs’ names but just a few of the humans’. She is “Jack’s owner,” I am “Simba and Clementine’s owner” and so on. This can seem unsettling but when I consider that I could be “The Guy Who Never Dusts His Apartment” or “The Guy Who Routinely Comes Home with a Fifth of Vodka,” I elect not to protest.

Ann said she had just found out Jack had cancer, unfortunately a common disease in the breed.

“I’m so sorry. What kind?” I asked, as if that would help frame any of my responses. I just wanted to be inquisitory and polite.

“Mastocytoma. He has a mast cell tumor of the paw. Twenty-five percent of all dogs with skin tumors have this,” she responded.

With that, Jack ran by us, in full pursuit of a squirrel, and then a bird, and then a tennis ball. If he had cancer, I didn’t know it. He was in superb spirits all things considered. Hell, if I get a hangnail I curl up in bed, cry, eat Ben and Jerry’s Cake Batter and listen to Air Supply.

“What can you do?” I asked.

“Radiation. Prednisone. Prayer.” She said, as she smiled, perhaps to make the conversation less uncomfortable.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thank you,” she responded, as she flung a tennis ball off into the grass, which sent Jack bounding after it like it was the last biscuit on earth. He caught up to it, pawed it to a stop and chewed on for several seconds, before dropping it out of his mouth and panting with a tongue slightly smaller than a pancake at I-Hop.

Weeks later, I saw Jack and Ann again in the same grassy play space behind our condo. I looked down and saw Jack smiling despite a hairless, raw paw with a bright pink hue – the consequence of the radiation. It looked bad.

Knowing what I intended to ask, she offered, “He’s had three treatments. It’s helping a little but he can’t walk after each one. He’s fine today but the last treatment was a week ago. I talked to Tom (her husband) and we are not going to take him again. We just can’t … We can’t take him …We can’t do that … ” as her voice trailed off.

 “What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Love him,” she said.

It was a beautiful response, and one that has not escaped me since. When I head out on a run, I often see her strolling with him amongst the grass, or on the trail that snakes past our building. Ann is pretty beyond her 45+ years and her large sunhat and graceful walk lend her a sophistication you can’t pick out of a store window. When it is windy, her dresses ripple in the breeze like when you shake a bed sheet, and this adds to her eloquence. She belongs on a book jacket.

Of course, Jack is anything but, and it is precisely this juxtaposition of energies and imagery that give me pause. Sometimes I will slow up, just enough to watch them play, just enough to watch her love him. But I do so with caution, not wanting Ann (or Jack) to notice I am being deliberate. I don’t want to ruin it.

I think about stopping to say, “Jack is a beautiful dog and he loves you,” but she knows this.

I think about stopping to say, “Ann is the best owner you could ever want,” but he knows this.

Her walks with Jack are longer these days. Either that or the walks are in greater frequency. I think I know what this means, but I don’t ask. All updates from now on must come from her – whenever she feels like sharing.

I see them walking side by side.  I can tell Jack is begging for the tennis ball. I can tell Ann is begging for more time. Time to rub his ears. Time to wake up in bed alongside him. Time to watch him nap.

Time to teach him one last trick.

Every evening, sometime between 7 and 11 p.m. I leave my condo in Austin, two leashes in hand, and embark on a one-mile journey that says everything about who I am as a person, and following this, how far I have come.

“I’ve come to see my dogs as a reflection of my willingness to try to improve, as well as an unsparing measure of my frequent failure to do so. Orson is a different dog than the frantic, matted and terrified creature that arrived in a crate at Newark Airport several years ago. He is calmer, more responsive, more loving – the result, I’m convinced, of my struggle to learn and grow and to be more patient, less angry.

For better or for worse, I see Orson’s progress – and that of my other two dogs – as a mirror of my own humanity, a benchmark of my progress. Or lack thereof. … Can working with a dog really make you a good human? Probably not. Can it make you a better one? Yes.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        – Jon Katz

This one-mile journey is a trek on the shores of Town Lake with my two dogs, Clementine and Simba. For them, it is a walk. Actually, I take that back. For Simba, it is a very slow plodding interspersed with sniffing, stick chewing and pleas from me that range from “Simba, come ON,” to “Simba, let’s GO.” Simba is slower than a stuffed animal but sweeter than honey.

For Clementine, it is a dead sprint. She rushes ahead, her curious soul exploding, like a 14-year-old with TNT and a flamethrower, wanting to vacuum every last stem of grass. She bobs and weaves out of thickets and brush, disappearing for an uncomfortable amount of time, miraculously reappearing just seconds after I have started to grow anxious and begun swallowing hard with regret of ever letting her off the leash.

They are me.

I possess a duality that confuses people. I am Clementine and Simba, physically and emotionally. I can run ahead or lag behind. Physically, I am capable of running 26.2 miles, as well as sitting in the same spot for three days and developing bed sores watching “Cake Boss” reruns. Emotionally, I sometimes demand to be the center of attention, and other times prefer if you notice the blender in the kitchen after noticing me.

I’ve often wondered what, my father, who I write about at length, and who I have described as an “old school worker bee” would say about all this. He has built houses, garages and children, not because that was ever his job. It just came naturally. Naturally, he would want to comment on the wiring in my head.

Me: “Well, what do you think pops?”

Dad: (taking off his glasses) “Well, this is different.”

Me: “Different.”

Dad: “Yeah, different.”

Me:  “Different bad?”

Dad: “No, just different. Just not the way I would have done it.”

 Me: “Right, but that’s no surprise. You used to wake up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to kill animals. I wake up at 10 a.m. to save them.”

 Dad: “I know what you’re getting at, but I also played football and as memory recalls, I coached you in high school. Weren’t you the captain of the football team?”

Me: “Yeah. But I’m not sure I understand your point.”

Dad: “My point is that you take after me and you don’t, and that is a complexity that I have grown to understand and appreciate. I am simple man Keith. You know that.”

Me: “Simple sounds like an understatement.”

Dad: “To you it is. To me it’s a compliment.”

Me: “And you think I’m complex?”

Dad: “Well, yes, we all know that. But it defines you, and that’s what important.”

Me: “I’m not so sure I understand.”

Dad: “Keith, as a father, you’re looking for a son to be like you, but that could mean anything.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Dad: “I mean, as a dad, you want your son to take after you, but then looking back at your own life, sometimes you wonder if that’s possible. I mean, my mom died when I was young. I grew up quicker than you. I could install plumbing at 18.”

Me: “I was going to ask you if you could help with a leak in my condo.”

Dad: “My point is that I am what I am. You call me a worker bee. That’s what I was, and what I will always be. I’ll be taking a circular saw to my casket the day before I die.”

Me: “Does it bother you that I don’t make sense to you?”

Dad: “You make sense Keith. Just because you are a vegetarian and would rather handle a petition than a nail doesn’t mean you don’t make sense. You are strong willed and believe. You believe. I love you for that. You are more creative. I am more resourceful. But come 10 p.m. we both go to bed wanting something out of life, and we both go to bed having tried to pursue it, and as a father, that’s what you want.”

I just signed up for the Austin Marathon. Assuming I cross the finish line (crawling counts), Austin will be marathon #9 and the seventh state in my quest to run a marathon in all 50. I object to having to run one in Delaware since it is the size of the electronics department at Target, but well, at the very least, I can pick up a Blu-Ray while I’m in town for the race.

I wrote about why I run, but really, that is a more general explanation for why I gravitate towards the activity itself. Watching my dad as a child knock out the miles certainly convinced me to run, and it certainly convinced me I had to run a marathon before I died, but still, all this talk begs another question:

Why do I continue to run marathons?

Yes, I want to run one in each state, but that is lipstick. Let me explain.

If I can do it, great, it’s an accomplishment that adds to me and helps make me shine in the eyes of those who love me. Like lipstick. It will make me pretty, especially in memory.

“You know, your great grandfather ran a race in every state.”

“Even in Delaware?”

“Even in Delaware.”

But that doesn’t fuel me. And it won’t matter until the last state is crossed off.

What matters is why I wake up at 6 a.m. for three months in a row to take on a part-time job (training) for a race that will see me bargain with God, temporarily destroy my body, possibly make me vomit, definitely make me cry, and leave me with nothing more than a shitty t-shirt I can’t wear in public, a banana and a bagel, and the sensation that my body is on fire four to five days after the race.

Did I mention I have to pay for all this? $110 for Austin. That’s pricey for a bagel. I might as well pay a hooker to spoon me while I’m at it.

Why do I do it?

Because it makes me uncomfortable.

Comfortable scares the absolute shit out of me. I think that’s a term that should be reserved for recliners. I also think white picket fences are scarier than clowns, especially that one on the tricycle in “Saw,” and “how it’s usually done” is quite possibly the most frightening four words you can string together.

I don’t want to be comfortable. It’s why I have lived in six cities and four different states, why I took a job that I was probably 75% qualified to do, and why I run marathons.

When I line up to run a marathon in that 50th state, I will still think to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this.” At mile 10, I will convince myself I can. At mile 20, I will convince myself I can’t. Then I will spend the next 6.2 miles wondering how it’s possible to feel more alive than ever before despite the fact that I feel like I am dying.

The point is that not knowing keeps me wide-eyed in life, and really, not knowing is the definition of being uncomfortable. Not knowing keeps me aware; keeps me searching; keeps me wondering.

It keeps me running long distances in shorts that are too bright and too small to wear anytime or anywhere else in life.

I was playing Hangman with my future six-year-old niece this weekend at a Mexican restaurant as we were waiting for food, and wasn’t just loosing badly; I was getting my ass kicked.

Ten minutes in, I had guessed eight letters, only one of which had made the cut – the letter ‘a.’  I sat there munching on chips and salsa, stupefied.

_ a _

I guessed another three letters to no avail before spitting out the letter ‘y’ in disgust, almost as a protest guess. The six-year old scrawled the letter to the right of the ‘a’ and I stared at the complex verbal arithmetic she had created:

_ a y

“Can I get more salsa?” I asked the waitress, who scurried by. I was stalling. “Maybe some guacamole too? Can you make it by hand? Oh, and I’ll take a triple scoop hot fudge sundae and an old fashioned.”

Thirty seconds passed. I blinked. Pressure was building.

“M-A-Y. It’s MAY!” I barked.

“You won!” the six-year-old shrieked. “You won!”

I looked down at the mess of letters I had incorrectly guessed that she had scribbled next to the hangman. There were 10-12 or so by my estimation, but the large font she used to write them down made it look like I had worked my way through the English and Arabic languages and was now onto Mandarin.

I had very clearly done everything but win. I had guessed so many letters wrongly that the niece may well have layered the hangman in J Crew’s winter line before he suffered his fate. Moreover, the presence of a tiara suggested she was being forced to accessorize to keep the hangman alive. We were one more missed letter away from a pair of UGZ.

My hangman was beyond hung. He suffered a very violent death. Each letter more horrific than the next. Vowels, Consonants. It didn’t matter. They came at him with a flurry and overwhelmed him. Bright red salsa stained the placemat on which his motionless body lay.

But she didn’t see the mess of letters. Well, she did, but they had no bearing on her thought process. I had messed up, but I kept at it, and eventually I succeeded, and to her that was winning.

Yeah, yeah, it’s childhood innocence, I know. But still, I smiled a smile as wide at the salsa bar, joyful that for five, maybe 10 seconds, I was reminded that it is not all about wins, or black, or losses, or white.

We live in the gray for a long time growing up – even throughout our teens. Imaginary friends dance. We use colors that aren’t supposed to go together. We take chances. Bigger ones than we take NOW.

Exhibit A: The note I passed to a girl I liked in sixth grade. That sounds trivial until I count on my fingers the number of years it’s been since I hit on a girl and I run out of hands.

I lament that life becomes black and white as we grow older – metaphorically and literally. We merely win or fail. Promoted or demoted. We furiously type away on our black laptops and clamor away on our black, well Blackberrys. Then we go home and try and inspire ourselves by hanging a new piece of art from Z Galleria, because that is what our playground has been reduced to – a bunch of white walls.

We go from coloring on walls to hanging crappy imitation art on them that we overpaid for. We go from dreaming bigger to working harder. We turn our attention from keg to political parties. It’s inevitable. We grow up. We have babies. They color on walls for us.

I find that sad. You may disagree, saying “That’s the way it has to be Keith.” I don’t know that I would disagree with you. But I certainly wouldn’t agree with you. 

So what have I learned by eating a quesadilla alongside a six-year old?

It has encouraged me to think less about the sum, or the result, or the “right” way. It has encouraged me to believe in what we disbelieve in. It has encouraged me to spend more time with people who are creative, or odd, or ever better yet, weird. Abnormal or what is thought of as wrong is so much more interesting than what we all agree on.

Life lies at the edges.

But mostly, it has taught me that if I want my Hangman to wear a Kangol hat before he dies, then fuck it, he gets to wear a Kangol hat.

I remember driving 4 hours from Sioux Falls, SD to Fargo, ND late 2007 to see Bon Iver perform in a tiny, dark bar that was half full. I had decided to go after reading a short write-up that detailed what a grease fire his life had become, and how that led to the creation of the album For Emma, Forever Ago.

A third of the crowd was watching sports on two TVs behind the bar; another third was shooting pool or interacting with friends. So it was me and 30 other people, standing there, taking it all in. I never will forget that performance. It was like catching Pacino doing community theater before he landed roles in Scarface or The Godfather. You knew things would never be the same. They couldn’t be.

A year and a half later, Bon Iver is an indie icon. The band has toured relentlessly and with good reason, decided to make October 11^th’s performance at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee its last. For awhile.

Radio Milwaukee broadcast the performance and is now streaming Bon Iver Live at the Riverside here.

P.S.  For those of you Bon Iver super fans (like me) who think you’ve heard all his songs, you haven’t. He covers The Outfield (I’m serious) during this set.

Months ago, I told you about Fun, or, the new incarnation of The Format.

First, a little background: Fun is fronted by Nate Reuss, former lead singer of the now defunct band The Format. If you lived in Phoenix in the mid 2000’s and were dialed into local music, you had them on repeat and often muttered “These guys are ridiculously amazing. Seriously.” They were the one of the hottest things to come out of AZ, besides, you know, the fucking sun.

Well, the band is knee-deep in its kickoff tour. I caught them in Houston when they opened for Manchester Orchestra (Audrye Sessions was also on the bill).

In between stops, Fun sat down for a studio performance at Paste. “The Gambler” is a pretty ( “I swear when I grow up,  I won’t just buy you a rose / I will buy the flower shop”), haunting (”We moved to Arizona to save our only son”) song that is amongst my list of top singles for 2009.

Note: Click on Menu to navigate songs.

“There are three things we should do every day. #1 is laugh. You should laugh every day. #2 is think. You should spend some time in thought. And #3 is you should have your emotions move you to tears. Think about it. If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day.”

Now, I know that #3 is somewhat of an example of hyperbole, but the sentiment is Swarovski crystal clear:  Do things that matter.

Sometimes we forget that. I do. More often that I would like.  I would like to believe I have a gentle heart, but thinking I have one and showing people I have one is the difference between a tall glass of Blue Moon and a pint of bathwater.

This thought was bouncing around my head like a racquetball when I moved to Austin three weeks ago. I was driving around with an hour to kill before signing papers on my condo and pulled up to a stop sign near an on-ramp for I35. That’s when I saw this homeless guy and his dog. I looked twice not because of his condition, but because he seemed to be right around my age.

And 33 is way too young to throw your hands in the air and become BFF with desperation.

This was my thought process:

“I should help him.”

“I should help him.”

“I wonder if his dog is hungry.”

“ I wonder if he’s hungry.”

“Don’t homeless people make like $12 an hour.”

“I should help him.”

“Fuck, that dog is cute.”

“I wonder if he just borrowed it make his begging more impactful.”

And with that, I put foot to gas pedal and hit the on ramp, certain that he would use whatever money I would have given to him to buy vodka.

Which is precisely what I did an hour after I moved in.

Extreme Athlete Righteously Breaks Both Legs, Neck

“Sunday, he put on his running pants and his cross trainers when he woke up, so I thought he might be going for a quick jog,“ said roommate Carson. “Turned out went next door to buy some weed from our neighbor Mouse.” That night, Watts used the pants to drink 14 beers before blacking out and drunk-dialing his ex.

 ORIGINALY PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 16, 2003 IN VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

I’ve stopped and started this letter to you eight different times. The first time I stopped because I found myself being too forgiving. The second time I stopped I found myself being too unforgiving, and so on. With my last attempt, I had formulated what I thought was a rational, thinking man’s response to all that has transpired, and then my dog Clementine jumped up onto the bed, licked my face, and rested her head on my keyboard.

And well, it’s not difficult to surmise the tone of the letter when she’s the editor.

I have an active imagination, and when I read the court documents detailing how the dogs under your care, if you can call it that, were tortured, I started to paint their reality. The terror they experienced overwhelms me to the point where I have to wipe my eyes, close them, shake my head like an Etch-a-Sketch and erase those thoughts from my mind.

What bothers me the most is that when I talk, my dogs Clementine and Simba search my eyes for answers. Their eyes dart back and forth as they yearn for meaning in what I say, or what I do. It kills me that the dogs you tortured searched your own eyes for the meaning behind your brutality and only found confusion and fright. 

The legal system uses the phrase “paid one’s debt to society” when a person is released from prison, so one could apply this to you. In fact, people have applied this you when arguing that you are free. Free to eat whatever you want. Free to watch whatever you want. Free to play for the Eagles. There is the opinion that you served your sentence and should be able to again chart your own course in life and play football. Legally speaking, this is accurate. You are absolved of judgment by the state and the federal government.

But some crimes are so heinous that judgment doesn’t end with the gavel. There are cases where society in addition to the government demands retribution. Yours is one of those crimes Sure, you may free be free legally, but we will incapacitate you publicly as long as we desire. My freedom allows me to do that, and anyone who tells me otherwise confuses legal sentencing with moral sentencing. The public does the latter. You have served your time with the prison system, but not with me. Not yet.

There is also the opinion that your crimes are so inherently evil that they should prevent you from certain activities, such as playing in the NFL. This argument is not a stretch. We take things away from people all the time, especially if they are felons. Society takes away jobs, the government takes away voting rights, and so on. As a company, the NFL certainly would not be setting precedent by disallowing you to continue employment.

I have two dogs and am tempted to share the sentiment of people who don’t want you to touch a football field, but I hate playing God. My beard’s not nearly long enough to start telling people how they can and cannot best provide for their families. You are a felon, but you are a felon with children. You are a human being, and I don’t feel entirely comfortable setting the limits to what that “being” consists of.

I think there is a middle ground here; some common space between “let him play” and “let him die.” We, as a society, just need to define that common ground. For me, it is this:

You tortured many dogs that lived. They have all been placed in homes now, and while I lament what they have been through, I celebrate what they will go through in homes filled with dog beds and table scraps.

It’s the ones that you tortured that died that give me pause. Those are the ones that make me bite my lip and fall into sadness. These are the ones that truly represent the sadistic nature of your dig fighting ring. I won’t go into greater detail describing that sadism because it’s sunny outside today and I’m in a good mood.

But the ones you killed are also ones that can redeem you, so pay attention. This is where the moral sentencing comes in. This is how you can make me feel better about allowing you to go about your life.

You know how many dogs in which you had a hand in killing. Tell me. Give me a number. Be honest with me.

Now, I want you to go out and save the lives of twice that many dogs. Millions are euthanized each year due to old age, demeanor or injury, or regretfully, lack of space. So, go to the county shelter in Philadelphia and find out what dogs will die that day due to lack of space. Save one of those dog’s lives. Then do it again. And again. And again. Start a website if you need to. Hell, I’ll help. Post the photos of the dogs whose lives you are saving. Tell me the story about a black lab you rescued who is now in a loving home in Philadelphia. Tell me the story about a 12-year-old shepherd mix you rescued because you wanted it to enjoy one more year of ear scratches.

Tell me those stories, and it will redefine your own.