Moron Manor

After arguing their way through Provence, Mom and Dad decided to drive the Euro-car deeper into the woods to go and visit an old friend of Dad's, who's a famous TV actor. The TV star and his wife have the most amazing house I ever saw. It's made of gigantic rocks and is perched on the edge of river. There are lots of cozy beds, a giant fireplace and the kitchen is huge.

The TV star and his wife have a very tall sheep herding bitch...she's French. She's hot. They also have a crazy, curly-haired short guy that Finley likes. He just had his balls cut off and they taped up his empty ball sack with silver electrical tape, which kind of made him walk sideways like a crab, but that didn’t stop him from humping Finley like a madman.

It’s supposed to be OK to have affairs in France. So me and Curly are bitch swapping in the Aveyron.

There were lots of Hollywood people staying at the house, and all we did for days was drive around the "Gorges du Tarn" going from one restaurant to another. We ate mountains of food…delicious, one-of-a-kind food. I never saw anything like it at the pound in San Pedro.

After meals, on the way back to the house, Mom and Dad made plenty of stops for us to fertilize vineyards and for them to look at more real estate.

Mom: (yelling) “Stop, look! That house is for sale! There’s a sign. Turn around, I want to see it.”

Dad: “I can’t turn around here. Shit! There’s a guy right on my ass! These French drivers just ride your ass. Then they try to pass you in a curve just when a truck is coming head on. God damn it! Wow! Look at that place…all stone. What a view.”

Dad slowed down and the guy behind us speeded up and passed us, screaming something at us in French about “toureeeeests de merde” and leaving us in the dust.

When the dust cleared, I could see Finn’s eyes pop out of her head, like she had just seen heaven. There it was— at the end of a long private drive of cypress trees, a red stone country house, probably full of mice. The place had hundreds of sheep. It was Finley’s dream-house—a place where she could follow her dream and chase live animals, not lame, Los Angeles squeaky toys.

I love her even though she's having an affair with Curly. I love her so much I wish I had already sold a bunch of my books and I could buy it for her.

Mom: “It’s to die for.”

For Finn, it was a place to kill.

We drove up the long driveway and a toothless farmer came out of the barn with around a dozen herding dogs the size of donkeys. They were surrounding the car and all had green foam oozing out of their mouths. Unlike their owner, they had teeth. And it looked like they wanted to make dogburger out of me.

Mom: (in French, to the toothless farmer) “I saw the sign…can we look around?”

Toothless farmer: “You’d better not get out of the car. My dogs are aggressive. But go ahead, drive around the property.”

Mom immediately rolled up all the windows. Finn and I were yelling at the outside dogs as hard as we could and trying to bite through the glass to look like we could kick their asses even though we knew it would be all over if the car door opened even for a second. We slobbered all over the windows with drool.

Dad: “Look at this place! I like this idea much better than flying back and forth to L.A. and getting our heads cut off by terrorists. We can just drive to our country house, wear turtle necks and drink wine in front of the fire, all cozy. People will visit us. Finn likes it. Let’s sell L.A.”

Mom: (to us) Shut UP! Jesus! Oh my God. This place is so fab. I like it. I wonder how much it is.”

Then the rabid sheep dogs surrounded the car and started ripping off the bumpers with their teeth! It wouldn’t be very long before they had clawed through the doors and murdered us all. I could see them making puncture holes right through the body of the car!

Dad: “Shit! We’ve got to pull outta here now.”

Then Dad sped up the car and tried to drive through them, back out of the drive.

Mom: “Oh my God! Slow down! You’re going to run them over! Don’t kill them! Oh God!”

Dad: “SHUT UP, will you? I know what I’m doing! We’ll never get out of here if I don’t speed up!”

Mom started to cry while we barked our heads off to keep up the pretense that we could put up a good fight. I showed them every single one of my teeth and threw myself at different windows to look like there were two of me.

We drove as fast as we could all the way to Nice. When we finally got home, we got out and looked at the car. It had tooth marks all over it. It had been destroyed. The tiny Euro-car looked like it had just come back from South Beirut.

Dad: “There goes the deductable! You stop and look at a house for ONE minute and it costs 300 Euros! Why can't we just live in the houses we have? ”

The dogs of Aveyron are insane

Morons in Aveyron

Mom and Dad not fighting in Provence. The grapes of passive/agressive wrath.

The Weak in Provence

The weak in Provence

Mom has been begging Dad to rent a car and go to the country.

Mom: “Come ON! I found this fab place in Provence, just outside of Arles, where they’ve converted an old manor house into a hotel. The dogs can go and the restaurant has a couple of Michelin stars. It’s in an old medieval village!”

Dad: “Now what? A vacation from a vacation? So I can feel doubly useless? I haven’t written anything…I haven’t worked out…I haven’t done a thing I wanted to do since I got here.”

Mom: “What did you want to do and who is stopping you? Isn’t it enough to be learning another language, another culture, to ride your bike, to swim in the Med, to just simply enjoy your life? Why can’t you enjoy anything?”

Mom talked about going away until Dad gave up resisting and we went to rent a cheap car. We drove past hundreds of mountains and farms and lots of giant rocks that I couldn’t pee on because we were driving by without stopping. It would have been a better trip if I could have stopped a lot more, like on my walks. You know, just to let the Provence dogs know I was there and to watch out.

We drove into Arles, where they had a giant Roman Coliseum but Mom refused to spend the night there.

Mom: “There is NO WAY I’m staying in this town, as beautiful as it is. They have bull fights here and they’re expecting 50,000 bull fight fans this weekend. Not only do I not want to see a bull fight but I don’t even want to be around jerks who watch that kind of stuff. It’s barbaric.”

So then Dad took pictures of us in front of Van Gogh’s room. Van Gogh was some dude who painted some fat ladies and postal workers around here and got really famous but not before he went nuts and cut off his ear. I've seen that Van Gogh dude's paintings. They just look like he swirled some mustard around with a stick. The only one I ever saw that I liked was one that was painted right here, in a corn field with some black birds taking off. I couldn't even chase the birds. Crappy.

Dad wants to open a buffet style restaurant here called "Arles You Can Eat." He loves those stupid word games.

Dad: “Hey Honey, what if I went to Aix-en-Provence and opened up a breakfast joint? What would I call it?”

Mom: “I don’t give a Crèpe.”

Dad: “No, I’d call it "Eggs on Provence"…hee hee hee! If I had a moving service in this town, you know what I’d call it? "Vincent’s Van Go!" If I had a Steak house in Nice, you know what I’d call it?”

Mom dragged me down the street, past a screaming kid who dropped his ice cream.

Dad: (yelling) “Entrecôte d’Azur!”

When we finally got to the Cabro D’Or, in Les Baux de Provence, we ran around like crazy and met some goats. Finley got to know the goats a little too well. She ate some goat poop. There was an "organic" vegetable garden and just to make sure it was in fact organic, I peed on the basil plants.

Of course, Mom and Dad can’t go anywhere without looking at real estate. Whatever town in we’re in, they stand for hours in the hot sun, drooling over pictures of houses in the real estate office windows. Finny’s feet were burning on the hot cobble stones so Mom and Dad went in to ask about an old farm house for sale.

Finley and I would love the country life. And we could bring Stupid Kitty out from Hollywood. I'm not sure though, because she's got some kind of liquid or gel in her brain that's not allowed on planes anymore. Besides, Mom couldn’t really live too far from fancy shoe shops and Dad can barely change a light bulb. He might hurt himself.