Dogged Blog

You're not going to blog about this, are you?

In the last week, two different people asked me fearfully if a conversation we were having was going to end up on my blog. One was a virtual stranger and the other a close friend.

I've read about this phenomenon before, mostly trepidation among the children of mommy bloggers. But it's not unique to them. In fact, my vet mentioned to me once that she hoped when people read some of my negative comments about something a veterinarian said or did that people didn't always assume it was her. I just never extrapolated it out to, you know... the entire world.

I don't share personal information about other people on my blog -- names, addresses, what kind of pajamas they wear. Well, sometimes names, if the person is well-known to my readers, like my friend/editor/Pet Connection colleague Gina Spadafori. But yeah, my blogging, here and everywhere else, is full of snippets of conversations, ideas sparked by someone else's experience, and other examples of me turning life into blog fodder.

In some ways, that's my highest compliment: you made me think. You crawled into my brain. You inspired me.

Some of you don't see it that way, especially if you think there's the tiniest chance that you'll be identifiable in what I write, either because I named you or, more usually, because I gave just enough information that mutual friends can figure it out.

It's not that I don't have a life, that I don't experience it independent of its blog-worthiness. It's more about how I see the world, and always have. I remember walking home from school or sitting bored in classes or at church, telling myself stories in my head. Sometimes it was a simple running narrative of what was happening at the moment, and at other times it a form of commentary. Yes, I editorialized at a very young age. 

People who don't do this might think it distances you from life, but I don't find that to be true. It makes me pay sharper attention, notice more details, and at the same time lets me perceive things more organically, more as a whole moment, place, or incident.

In fact, I've long thought this way of perceiving the world is exactly what made me a writer.

Which isn't to say I don't care how those of you feel who don't like seeing yourselves turn up in my blog posts, columns, or articles. Of course I care. Why else would I be blogging about it now?

Blogging the Xena convention

I'm blogging the Xena convention over at AfterEllen.com... come on by!

What do Xena: Warrior Princess, Marion Nestle, my dog Kyrie, and Scott Walker have in common?

I like Facebook, I really do. I have to work on a lot of different things all day long, and I like to take a few seconds to share a link or joke with a friend (actual or social network versions alike) about something when I task-shift. It's fun, and it seems to re-set my brain.

I also hate Facebook, for all the usual reasons people hate things like that and that I won't rehash, but specifically because I sometimes shoot off a one-liner there, or share a link, that might normally have turned into a post here.

And yes, I'm aware I haven't been blogging here as much as I should. There are only so many things I want to blog about that someone somewhere isn't willing to pay me to blog about for them instead, and the stuff that remains I keep wasting on Facebook.

Here's one that's going elsewhere: This afternoon, Xena: Warrior Princess blogging commences on the blog at AfterEllen.com, as the 14th Annual Xena Convention gets under way. I have interviews with Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor to share, plus KT Jorgensen's live reportage and photojournalism from the con floor -- and backstage! -- as well. (Note to KT: See how I spelled your last name right this time? You'd think after knowing someone for like a decade and a half, a girl could manage that.)

Also this weekend, my impressions of my second viewing of "Scott Walker:30 Century Man" go up at ClubKingsnake.com.

And Kyrie's staph infection just flared up again, for the first time in months. I think I caught it before it got out of hand, and I'll be blogging about some of what I've learned about managing a dog who is carrying resistant staph over at PetConnection.

As for the rest, well... maybe you should friend me on Facebook, where you'll learn that I'm about to walk out the door to have breakfast at the Cafe Flore with one of my heroes, Dr. Marion Nestle!

Dr. Marion Nestle and Dr. Mal Nesheim on " Pet Food Politics " and " What Pets Eat "

Some of my personal heroes are joining us at PetHobbyist.com's 11th Annual Chat Month this year, and leading the pack is our opening night guest, Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and a visiting professor in the College of Agriculture's nutritional sciences division at Cornell University, as well as author of "Pet Food Politics" and the forthcoming "What Pets Eat."



She'll be joined by her "What Pets Eat" co-author, retired animal nutritionist, professor of nutritional sciences and provost emeritus at Cornell University Dr. Mal Nesheim.



Their chat is scheduled for Sunday, February 1, at 10 PM Eastern, in the Auditorium chat room on PetHobbyist.com.



The last two years have made us acutely aware that all is not as it should be when it comes to the safety and wholesomeness of our food supply. Dr. Nestle has been one of the leading voices in the movement to reform how we deal with food and nutrition, and one of the first on the human side to see that the implications of the pet food recall extended far beyond "just pets."



Pet Connection recently profiled Dr. Nestle and "Pet Food Politics" in its syndicated weekly newspaper feature, and we have a lengthy interview with her here as well.



Photo of Marion Nestle by Pet Connection Director of Photography Morgan Ong; photo of Mal Nesheim courtesy of Cornell University.

Two ' s company: Slow introductions make for happy cat couples

I don't understand it myself, but this week's Pet Connection newspaper feature says it, so it must be true: Most people who have dogs have only one dog. Cat lovers, on the other hand, tend to have multiple feline family members.

But in a lot of those multi-feline families, relations between cats are a bit strained. And when cats aren’t happy, nobody’s happy. The noise of cats grumbling threats at each other or engaging in frequent rumbles can get on one’s nerves and even mean trips to the veterinarian. And the litter-box problems that can be a part of such turf wars can turn an entire house into a toilet.



Living with more than one cat doesn’t have to be so contentious. The trick to domestic harmony for cohabiting felines is to introduce—or reintroduce—them slowly and carefully.

Gina and Dr. Marty Becker go on to explain just how that's best done, and other tips for getting your cats to live together in harmony if possible, and to benignly co-exist at worst.



Got ferrets? Dr Becker says to be sure to take their lumps and bumps seriously:

Lumps and bumps are common on ferrets as they age, but their presence should never be taken for granted. A ferret with a skin mass of any kind needs to see a veterinarian promptly to have the mass evaluated and possibly removed.



[....]



Because lumps in ferrets are often cancerous, the veterinarian will probably recommend that any mass that looks suspicious be removed while the animal is under anesthesia. The mass will then be sent to a pathologist for further identification to help identify proper follow-up treatment.

Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker Shannon share some good news about a new pain medication for dogs that may last as long as 21 days; the American Veterinary Medical Association has revamped its free Web site’s section on first-aid tips for pet owners; when it comes to cat litter boxes, more is more; and find out what Susan Tripp, MS, and Rolan Tripp  DVM suggest for this dog owner:

I have a 2-year-old Chihuahua. I recently went away for eight months and had him looked after by my parents. My parents are too easy on him, and he seems to like them more.



He doesn’t want me going near him. And when I try to stroke him, he growls and shows his teeth and tries to go for me. At first, when he became angry he would get over it within a few minutes and give me a cuddle as an apology, but not anymore. I try to play with him using his toys, but he goes all stiff. I try to give him his treat to like me again and he’ll take it from me nicely, but then he doesn’t want to know me afterward and starts growling.

All this and more, in our Pet Connection newspaper feature, which you can read right here.



You can also see it exactly the way we send it to our client newspapers here. (PDF)

11th Annual Chat Month on PetHobbyist.com!

Every year, I earn around half my annual paycheck in one month by helping produce Chat Month on PetHobbyist.com (a family of websites that includes kingsnake.com, the Web's oldest and largest reptile community). This massive series of online seminars, discussions, symposiums -- I never know what to call them, really; "chat" just doesn't reflect what they really are -- is the Internet's longest-running such event, at least as relates to animals.



We bring in herpetologists, zookeepers, breeders, rescuers, authors and veterinarians to talk to our users about all the things we're most passionate about, from the ethics of breeding to how to stop puppy mills to how to get your cat to stop scratching the sofa.



It starts Sunday night, February 1, and runs through Saturday, February 28. The complete schedule is here.



You'll see some familiar names on the schedule, including Gina's twice, once with Dr. Marty Becker on how to add a couple of years to your pets' lives (seriously!), and once with her "Birds for Dummies" co-author Dr. Brian Speer, one of the country's most respected board certified avian specialists.



We'll also welcome Rich Avanzino of Maddie's Fund, talking about what each of us can do to get animals out of shelters and into good homes -- it won't cost you a penny, but it won't happen without your help.



There will be lots of other Pet Connection BFFs, including Dr. Marion Nestle (I'll do a separate post about her appearance later) and I although she's not on the schedule yet, rumor has it Dr. Patty Khuly will be joining us, too.



Most of the events have free email reminders you can sign up for, in case you're getting forgetful. ;)



We're actually still adding names to the schedule, so in addition to checking it out here, you can sign up for our Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter feeds and get last minute changes, updates, and additions as we make them.



I hope to see some of you there! It's all free, and you don't have to register; just make sure you have Java enabled in your browser. You can check the chat rooms out here in advance if you want to be sure.

That's the LEGENDARY Lou Reed to you...

I don't know exactly what year it was, sometime in the late 70s I guess. I was lying on my back listening to a bootleg recording of a Patti Smith concert with my girlfriend.

Like most bootlegs, the sound quality was horrible. But I worshipped Patti Smith and really, back then, it was enough for me to hear her sing.

She started a song I didn't know, not one of hers. I couldn't understand the spoken intro because it was garbled, and after a few minutes, I sat up. "What... what is this?" I asked my girlfriend.

"White Light, White Heat," she said. "It's a Velvet Underground song."

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

And that's how I discovered Lou Reed.

What got me remembering this is that a friend posted a snippet of Antony singing a Leonard Cohen song to her Facebook page last night. Antony is not well-known by the general public, but musicians know him and his slippery, bewildering, beautiful voice very well.

One of those musicians is Velvet Underground founding member Lou Reed, who invited him to be part of a series of now-legendary performances of Reed's album "Berlin" that were filmed by Julian Schnabel and became a concert movie that debuted last year at SXSW in Austin.

I was at that screening, and just after the lights went down, Lou Reed himself walked down the center aisle and slipped into the seat directly across from mine. It's a testament to the film and the concert that I eventually forgot he was there; it can be very distracting to have one of your idols sitting three seats away from you while you watch him perform a work that itself had affected you powerfully from the very first time you heard it.

"Berlin" has been described as a "rock musical," but that's not how I see it. I'd say it's more of a concept album, although to be honest, it really couldn't matter less. It's a collection of songs about a time, a place, and a small group of people; about destruction and suffering, and little pieces of love that never add up to enough.

Some of its songs, well, I don't know what to call them except for perfect: "Caroline Says," "Sad Song," "Oh, Jim."

And you know, that album sank like a fucking stone when it was released in 1973, and now it's on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest rock albums of all time.

I went to YouTube to find a link to Antony singing in the film of "Berlin" to share with my Facebook friend. And I found one; it's at the end of this post. It's actually from the encore and is an old Velvet Underground song called "Candy Says," not from "Berlin" at all, but it should give you an idea of what Antony's voice is like, and also, what Lou Reed's is like now.

Which isn't good, as several clueless folks pointed out in the comments, as if Lou Reed fans are just stoopid and somehow hadn't noticed and if it were only brought to our attention, we'd stop liking him.

And then I realized why I got so angry last night, in my post ranting about an email I got saying that Scott Walker's music sucks.

Scott Walker isn't like Lou Reed in the sense that he's lost his voice; his voice was always one of the most beautiful in rock, and it's still an incredible instrument, haunting and pure, even if the music he's using it to sing is unsettling. But his music has gone off in a direction most of his fans, including me, find difficult to follow. Or even impossible.

But he's like Lou Reed in that both men have had incredible influences on other musicians, and sparked huge musical transformations that are still going on today, while themselves flying under most people's radar. I think it's fair to say that had Lou Reed never recorded "Walk on the Wild Side," most people reading this would not know his name at all. It's probably apocryphal, but Brian Eno supposedly said that almost no one bought the first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did went out and started a band.

Of course I know Lou Reed can't sing. (Neither, for that matter, can Leonard Cohen.) Of course I think Scott Walker is, at least creatively, batshit insane.  It's just that I don't care, because  those artists are at the roots of pretty much every single bit and shred of music that I've cared about in my entire life.

Lou Reed's "White Light, White Heat" is the song that invented punk. Scott Walker transformed the face of alternative music forever. They can't just be dismissed because they're obscure or the voice is gone. They're legends. It's not about liking them; it's about knowing who they are.

My mini-review of "Lou Reed's 'Berlin'" from last year's SXSW film festival, and notes on an audience Q&A with Reed, are here; my liveblogging of his keynote address is here. The photos on this post were taken by my Club Kingsnake colleague, photographer Clint Gilders, during that address.

And this is Antony, singing "Candy Says" with Lou Reed:

Remembering Colleen: Strange dreams and happy memories

Last night I dreamed I was driving on mountain roads, and stopped at a small gas and grocery store for gas. When I went to pay, the man who ran it tried to attack me. Suddenly my dog Colleen, who died 8 years ago, appeared, and knocked him to the ground. She stood over him, and every time he tried to get up she bared her teeth and growled at him.



I called the police, and while we were waiting some other people drove up.



"Can you see that dog?" I asked them.



They looked at me, confused. "The red dog? Errr, yes. Why?"



"Nothing," I said.



After the police came for him, I wrapped my arms around her. I remembered her: the way she butted me with her head when I hugged her. The way she tossed her chin and nose-bumped me instead of the slurpy kisses my deerhounds give. The way her thick red coat felt under my hands, the way she always put her front paws down with exacting precision while her her whole hind end wagged joyfully along with her plumed tail.



Then I woke up.

It's okay to not like Scott Walker, but do you have to be such an idiot about it?

Okay, I recognize that I'm about to be irrational. If that might bother you, feel free to, you know, move along.

There are things in life I do not like, that other people do. Most famously among them: cilantro and Crocs. Many of my friends (hi, Gina!) like these things, like them very  much. I remain friends with them. I don't doubt their sanity nor their powers of reason. I simply accept that it takes all kinds of personal preferences to fuel a competitive global economy.

There are times, in fact, when I glory in the diversity of human experience. I mean, if I had to compete not only with the other people who find my girlfriend hot but every person now living on the planet, that would be very exhausting.

Who we find attractive, the shoes we like, the television shows that grab us, the music we enjoy listening to, all these things are simple personal preferences and matters of some kind of chemistry or magic.

But how we express our likes and dislikes, and the way we talk about those of other people, gets into an entirely different zone. The zone where everyone who knows me is tapping his or her foot and going, for the love of god Christie stop rambling and qualifying and tell us what the fuck has you pissed off before we slap you silly and make you wear Crocs.

So fine. Here it is:

I don't care if you like or don't like Scott Walker. I don't care if you enjoy his music of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, or the new millennium. I don't care if you enjoyed Stephen Kijak's film about him or not.

But if you're going to spew out your opinions on either of those subjects, and dismiss either or both as lame, bad, or disappointing, it would be nice if you had some kind of basis for your opinion, if you could put either thing into context in some way, in other words, if you knew what the fuck you were talking about before you informed all the people on the Interwebz of your views on the subject.

Scott Walker is considered by many of the best known and most respected musicians in the world to be a genius and a major influence on not only their work but the entire field of alternative music. It's fine if you don't like him. I honestly don't care. But when you shrug off who he is and how he fits into the music world as if listening to a few songs by him gives you the ability to put him into any kind of context... oh god, someone make me shut up.  Honestly, I shouldn't write when I'm this pissed off.

As for Stephen's film, if you don't like it, that's also fine. But critique it in a way that respects it, that shows some remote understanding of its structure or themes, the craft that went into it, or the field of musical documentary filmmaking. I have a friend who didn't care for it, and when she published a critique of it in her blog, I didn't come here and rant about it. I read it, I saw where she was coming from, and while I didn't see it the same way, she had a foundation for her criticism and I respected that.

But the little girl who wrote me that she's "disappointed Gale Harold put his name on something so weak.... about a musician no one's ever heard of" needs to get her head out of her ass. A hundred years from now, when we're all dust and every TV show Gale Harold has ever been in is forgotten, people will still be making and listening to music that has its roots in Scott Walker's work. And I'll bet that "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" will outlive "Desperate Fucking Housewives" into eternity, too.

If I had blood pressure medication I'd take it. I don't, so I did this instead. I now return you to your normally calm and rational Dogged blogging.

PSA: AfterElton.com loves you. Really.

I get a lot of email about my blog posts at AfterElton.com, particularly when I blog about Gale Harold as I did last night. The traffic shoots through the roof on those posts, but the comments? Nada.

Most of the private emails I get are from female Queer as Folk fans saying the kinds of things our readers normally post on the blog itself. When I've asked some of them why they don't comment right on my post, some say they feel like they shouldn't participate at AfterElton.com because it's a site for gay men.

Hello, I write there and I am a girl. Lots of women, lesbian, bi, and straight, post at AfterElton. Yes, it's a gay and bisexual men's entertainment media site, and yes, most of the site users are gay men. But I have it on the best authority that everyone is welcome to post there.

So if you have something nice to say, by all means, say it there.

If you want to tell me I suck or share girly supersekrit information, well, best to keep that to yourself. ;)

/PSA