I like to practice for a home invasion on my toy monkey. I pretend the monkey is breaking into the house and I tear him to shreads. Criminals beware.I will kill to protect my mommy. 

This town is full of people who are so crazy, they could hurt themselves. The other night, we were driving home and a girl with long blond hair jumped out of a car and ran in front of our car. She was running really fast, almost as fast as I can run. It was freezing outside and she was almost naked and didn't have any shoes on. Her feet were all bloody. Unlike dogs, who have feet that work, people have wimpy feet that get cut up easily. Plus they like to wear stupid looking shoes so that other people will ask them where they bought their shoes.

Mom and Dad pulled up along side of her and Mom rolled down her window.

Mom: "Are you ok?"

Crazy girl: "No. God says you can't chrysanthemum and birdy runs too."

Mom: "Where do you live?"

Crazy girl: "Cardamon."

Mom: "Where are you going?"

Crazy girl: "They stole my car and my shoes. But God doesn't want more flowers. Berrooupbadipdoop blah."

Then the girl ran down the street to Mulholland so Mom and Dad followed her in our car. She kept running out into the middle of the road and cars were swerving around her. A few cars stopped and guys who were driving tried to get her to come into their cars. Dad was yelling.

Dad: "Don't get into that car! Jesus! Some creep is going to take this girl."

Mom:"Goddamn it! I'm never going out without a phone again!"

Dad: "Why don't you drive home, drop off the dogs, get the phone and I'll stay here with her and try to keep her from getting run over?"

Mom: "No! She's obviously having a psychotic breakdown and what if the police come and she says you tried to kidnap her? What if she pushes you into the road and a drunk in a Ferrari comes by and clips you? I hate this!"

Dad: "We can't just leave her here!"

So Dad got out of the car and Mom got in the driver's seat and yelled all the way home. When we got in, she called 911 but there was an automated message saying that they were too busy to take her call. Then she left us and went to find Dad on the road. I was worried because Mom was hysterical, the cops weren't answering and she wouldn't let me go with her.

Finn and I waited by the door and listened as hard as we could to what was going on out there in the dark. Helicopters were hovering over our yard and shining their huge lights all over the road and I could hear lots of yelling. Stupid Kitty just sat on the kitchen counter eating her wet food like nothing was going on. She's so disconnected. The only way to get her to react would be to have a hawk fly right into her face and grab her by the head.

Finally, what felt like hundreds of hours later, Mom and Dad came home.

Mom: "An HOUR response time! A fucking HOUR for the cops to come! I thought that crazy woman was going to get you killed or lie to the police and say you kidnapped her! We're not safe up here."

Dad: "Let's sell the house--put it on the market. I can't live like this, with alarms and locked doors. I knew this would happen when I got married."

Mom: "You getting married to me has zero to do with the crimes up here. The home invasions up here are not my fault."

Dad hates it when Mom talks about safety and he refuses to get an alarm system. Mom says it's because he's too cheap. Dad's not cheap. He just doesn't like to waste money that we might need for food one day. Besides, we don't need an alarm because I'm an alarm. I would never let anyone into this house that wasn't invited. If anybody tried to get in here, I'd rip them open, just like I practice on my squeaky monkey. I pretend the stuffed monkey has broken in and I rip all the stuffing out of his body.

Exotic hairless guests

A hairless Chinese guy has moved into the neighborhood and I don’t like it. Finn is very interested in him and she makes all kinds of flirty cooing sounds when he’s around. Mom invited the Chinese hairless guy and his mom to lunch and as soon as he walked in, he lifted his leg and peed on the living room floor. I don’t think he’s any kind of serious threat to me and I’m way more buffed than him. Plus, he’s got really creepy skin that gets pimples and sunburn, just like people. But Finn thinks he looks like a Rock Star so I might have to kick his ass.

The Chinese Crested guy and his mom both talk a lot but neither one of them makes much sense. His mom tried to convince my mom that dead people can be reached through a channeler but my mom thinks that channelers are a bunch of quacks.

Guest: “Don’t you dream about people who have died?”

Mom: “All the time!”

Guest: “Well that’s how the dead come to you! They come to you in your dreams!”

Mom: “Really? I thought that dreams were just random neurological synapses that play bits of memories in shuffle mode—sort of like an Ipod with personal data you’ve downloaded over a lifetime. No dead person has ever tried to reach me. They’re… dead. Even most live people I know don’t try to reach me.”

Then Mom’s friend made her Chinese dog play dead. The Chinese hairless dog got on his back and put his legs up in the air but his head wouldn’t completely touch the floor. So his mom held a piece of rigatoni up in the air and started barking out the order to play dead.

Guest: “Dead dog, dead dog. Come on, dead dog! Dead dog!”

I thought it was pretty weird that this woman was forcing her dog pretend he was dead, just so he could get a piece of rigatoni. Finley didn’t like it at all. She thinks it’s degrading when people force dogs to “play dead.” I think the Chinese guy lost a little of his Rock Star appeal when he groveled for a noodle in front of Finn.

Dad plays dead a lot in the Jacuzzi. He puts his head in and stays there floating, not moving for a long time, which worries me. All I can see is his back and the top of his head. Now that I think about it, the skin of the top of dad's head is all freckled. It looks like the hairless Chinese guy's skin. Mom always laughs when Dad plays dead but I don’t think it’s funny. If Dad died, I’d want to die with him. I'll tell you what. I wouldn't mind seeing that Chinese guy floating in the pool.




I don't know what Finn sees in this guy. Look at his skin. He looks like a cross between Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol. He needs moisterizer and his peepee looks like an eraser head.

Jack Brussel Sprouts

Mom's moping around because she's "first choice" for a movie role. We met the director of LA Confidential last week and he really liked Mom but no call has come in yet. She was supposed to play Robert Duvall's girlfriend in a movie but Mom knows that "first choice" in Hollywood isn't worth one dried up Purina pellet.

I don't want her going to Vegas and being away from the pack for months anyway. I'm glad she's going to stay here and cook.

I think Dad carries some kind of very delicate balls in his pants. I saw a huge Labrador walking past our car in the parking lot at Whole Foods on Fairfax and I jumped over to the window on the driver's side to yell at him. I stepped on one of Dad's balls by accident and he screamed almost as loud as when he dropped his new Mac on the marble floor in France. I don't have those kinds of hurting balls. I've got all sorts of other balls though. Balls you can slam against walls without anyone screaming like that.

Mom made a big dinner last night. She was all dressed up in high pointy shoes and every burner on the stove was red hot. All the pots were steaming with delicious people food. Dad was walking around in circles, moving the dust around the living room floor with the dust mop but Mom wanted him to do other stuff.

Mom: "Why are you doing that when I've already done it? There are a thousand things to do before people come. That needs to be washed, all that needs to be diced, that needs to be cleared up and that needs to be dried so I can have room to do this.

Dad: "I guess every single thing I do is wrong."

Mom: "No, I just need help."

Dad: "I do a lot."

Mom: "Yeah, I know. You pay all the bills."

They always have stupid fights when they're nervous about not being ready for their food parties. This time, there was no time to fight because their guests started arriving.

It was better than most nights because this time, the Hollywood types that came liked me and Finn. One guy actually lay down on the floor to make out with Finley. She slipped him the tongue. There was a woman here who played with Zelda most of the night. I know she likes animals because she made a cartoon movie about sharks that showed sharks can be nice. Most movies about sharks show them eating people but this one showed a vegetarian shark fighting with his Dad about eating fish. I saw her movie on the plane coming back from Nice. It wasn't bad. Thin story but the idea was good.

There were empty wine bottles all over the place and they were drunk. I was trying to sleep, waiting to go to bed but they were all exchanging stories about losing control of bodily functions. I thought it would never end. It was horrifying.

Mom: "I can't believe how he walks around farting! If he makes any kind of effort, he farts. He can't even control his own ass!

Dad: "The other day, she's in the jacuzzi. I look at this beautiful naked woman in there. A vision. And then the giant gas bubbles. She's a very gassy lady. Phrffffft, phvvrrrrrrroooooot!"

Mom: (screaming) "Ach! Stop it! STOP it! You're disgusting!"

Dad: "Yeah, she's in there floating on the surface bubbling like a power boat."

Mom:" Stop!"

Dad: "YOU started it!"

Then the guests all started with their stories.

Guest #1: "My mother can't stop farting. She's deaf, so she doesn't hear it."

Guest #2 : "My grandfather was so full of gas, he was still farting an hour after he died!"

I couldn't stand it. It went on forever. It was disgusting. Why can't these people leave before Minky time (10 PM)?

When they finally left and we got into bed, I positioned myself like I usually do, on top of the comforter, in the trench between them, head facing down, ass up by their faces. For making me stay up so late, I blasted them with some hot air of my own.

Dad calls me Saddam Hussein when I do that, because he says I gas my own people. Then he fans it over to Mom's side of the bed.

Dad: (fanning with both hands) "There."

Mom: "Arch! Why are you doing that?"

Dad: "So you can enjoy the delicious Jack Brussel Sprouts. There."

Dad likes my Jack Brussel Sprouts; I can tell because he always smiles when I send one his way.





Mom and Finn steaming together. You never know what those bubbles are in there.

JAR Heads

A couple of times a year, Dad gets invited to dinner by his agent and Dad gets to choose the restaurant. This time, Dad wanted to go to Bastide, his favorite restaurant in LA, but his agent said it was too pricey. Actually, Bastide is just a really pretentious Hollywood trough where dinner is served in a hundred, teeny courses and for what a dinner costs, you could pull a hundred dogs off of death row.

Mom: “The chef is an artist. He makes poetry with food. Fabulous, artful, creative, extraordinary food. That chef is genius.”

Dad: “Can you believe my agent wants to go to JAR because Bastide is too expensive, after all the money I give them?”

I’ve been to every restaurant in LA and J.A.R. (Just Another Restaurant) is just another industry trough, only this one pretends to be casual and is owned by a famous TV hack.

Mom: “You mean there’s a restaurant in LA that’s too good for you, after all the money you throw at them? They didn’t get you that job, you got that job and they just sit and collect! You ought to insist on going to Bastide.”

Dad: “I bet Eric Roberts gets to go to Bastide. Who do you have to be to get to go to Bastide around here? I’m going to cancel dinner. He’s ruined it for me. I can’t go to dinner knowing that I’m not good enough to go to Bastide.”

Mom: “No! Don’t cancel dinner; that would make you look like a prima donna. Tell him we’ll go to Soup Plantation if he wants. Let’s just go to JAR and you can tell him at dinner that you are a little shocked that there exists in Los Angeles a restaurant that is too good for you.”

Mom and Dad put us in our airline bags and we drove down Laurel Canyon to JAR. On the way down, we passed under all the red tagged houses that are in danger of slipping off the mountain because of the rain.

When we go out to dinner in LA, because of the stupid hygiene laws, we’re in the bag the whole time and no one knows we’re there, so we see, hear and eat everything. The bags are cozy with cushions and windows so when the food is served, Mom and Dad sneak us delicious, dripping bites of restaurant food.

As soon as we got to the table, Mom and Dad started behaving badly. When Dad’s agent told Dad that he’d like to arrange a sit-down with a lawyer friend of his about future projects, Mom exploded.

Mom: “A lawyer? What a scam! These entertainment lawyers are thieves, ripping you off for 5% of what you make and they do NOTHING! They get paralegals to do all the work and you could pay someone by the hour to look over contracts!

Then Dad started yelling.

Dad: “How many hours does it take to look over a contract? Five hours? Five hundred hours? What do they make an hour? A hundred thousand dollars? That’s bullshit! Why should they make a percentage of what we make? They don’t do anything! What about this? I give you 30% of what you make for me, not what I make! Go out and make me some money and I’ll give you half of it, I don’t care, but don’t just take my money! $150,000 to look at a fucking contract? I’ll look at my own contracts. I know how to read contracts.”

Then Mom asked the agent’s girlfriend, who’s also a writer, if she had a lawyer. She said yes.

Mom: “Fire him!”

Dad: “Yeah! Fire him! He does all the work! (Pointing at his agent) You don’t need anyone else. Get rid of all these bloodsuckers.”

People at the other tables were staring at us now. Finley was snoring but I was listening to the whole thing. I was licking some mashed potato off of Mom’s finger when she started yelling at the waiter.

Mom: “Don’t ever pour a new bottle into a full glass.”

The waiter apologized and he said it was the same bottle.

Mom: “Yes, yes, it’s the same kind of wine, from the same winery, but it’s not the same bottle. Every bottle is different. You never pour two bottles in the same glass. Don’t hate me, but you need to know this. It’s not a refill on a Sprite, you know.”

Dad: “Every bottle is a living thing. Didn’t you see Sideways?”

The yelling got worse when the girlfriend said they were going to buy a dog.

Mom: “BUY a dog? Shame, shame, shame on you for buying when we kill twelve million dogs a year in the shelters. You can adopt one, any kind you like! I’ll take you to the shelter myself and help you find one.”

The agent’s girlfriend: “Oh, I can’t; it’s too sad! I’ll want to take them all home.”

Mom: “What’s sad is that they’re going to die and you could take one. You don’t have to take them all, only one. If you have room in your heart and your home for a dog, then it’s awful if you buy one, knowing what goes on. You just can’t.”

On this issue, I agree with Mom but there must have been a better way to convince her. Mom was acting like a rabid rottweiler.

At the end of the dinner, Mom went to the lady’s room. She strutted across the room and turned a lot of heads in her micro-mini leather skirt. When she came back, she told everybody at the table what had happened when the chef stopped her in front of the bar.

Mom: “He grabbed me by both arms and pulled me toward him! And he said, ‘What did you have? I may of made it.’ I told him, ‘I had a lousy bottle of wine and a dried up piece of fish. Did you make that?’ He let go of me like I was radioactive.”

After dinner, Mom and Dad laughed all the way home. Big, loud, laughing out of the open car windows. I think everyone in Laurel Canyon heard them laughing like a couple of hyenas. Even the coyotes, who make a hell of a noise every night on their killing sprees, must have wondered what kind of monsters were coming up the hill in the middle of the night.

The BTK Killer is a Dog Catcher. Duh... 

So the BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) killer has been caught and guess what? He's a goddamned dog catcher. People are such idiots. If they had arrested him for shooting that dog in a front yard in front of kids, they would have found out then who he was. People who shoot animals are no good and the sooner they realize it, the sooner they'll solve a lot of crimes.



But people are a little slow, you know? The scientific community is just now figuring out that we have personalities. Sometimes I can't believe how dumb people are. The fact that we animals actually have personalities is on the cover of the New York Times today. Normally, when we go out in the morning, I piss on that paper before Mom can pick it up but today, I decided to pee somewhere else.