by Ben Harpe (2015) and Ben Harpe (2019)
I don’t like Billy Joel.
Billy Joel works so hard to make you think he has an edge. He portrays himself as a tough guy (You May Be Right, Only the Good Die Young [a song about coaxing a high schooler into having sex with you which was released the year Joel turned 30]), while in reality he’s 5’5” and only hires musicians who are as short as him or shorter to appear on stage with him. Here’s a guy who’s constructed a successful music career as an act of ego-compensation.
Also, his melodies are catchy. Too catchy. Like TV commercial jingles. Poppy melodies and addictive hooks that burrow into your brain like parasitic worms. When folks who came of age in the late 80’s hit the dementia wards in the 2060’s, the halls will resound with a constant, droning overture of Movin’ Out.
Doubtless one or two of you have your rankles up over this philippic against Billy. Doubtless all of you will have the stentorian bark of “UP! TOWN! GIRL!” echoing in your heads the rest of the day.
I created What Am I Missing? as an opportunity to prod the pop culture trends that have been generally inducted into the pop culture canon, and a forum for dissenters to voice their protestations against them.
Here’s a helpful grid to show you the sweet spot of what I’m talking about:
In the past, I have personally written on the following topics: hockey, Chipotle, The Red Eye, BuzzFeed, Led Zeppelin and, most infamously, dogs.
On this podcast, when I ask “what am I missing?” I genuinely want to know. So one might ask, have any of my second-column essays been won over to the first column?
Yes.
Meet Roya.
In my most divisive essay I wrote:
John Lennon said, "life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans." I say "life is what happens to other people when you're going home to walk your dog."
Roya is my wife’s dog. She is a rat terrier/cattle dog mutt (we think). She’s a rescue, so no one can be sure where she came from or what she is. Having lived with her for two years, I am inclined to believe she is at least part snake and part gargoyle. She has a lot of personality, she is unpredictable and very cute. Not only has she made me love her, she has made me love dogs.
Having come to a new understanding of this, several years after I wrote the essay in question, I will now respond with a point-counterpoint to my own essay. All quotes are from the original essay, performed in Winter 2015.
When I meet a person, I say "Hello" to them, instead of the preferred ramrodding of my snout into their crotch, which is apparently an inoffensive way to greet a dog person.
To wax philosophical for a sec - dogs do break social norms by approaching strangers, charging other animals and, yes, sticking their snouts into the crotches of unwitting bystanders. Even well-trained dogs are still dogs and can occasionally exhibit poor behavior. Roya (a generally ill-behaved dog) jumps, licks, barks, and sniffs on a good day and in my experience most people are charmed by this. And those who aren’t can lighten up. Let our beloved dogs be a friction against their Scrooginess! I realize that I am showing zero empathy to people who hold the exact same opinion I did a few years ago. It’s my right as an apostate.
Roya keeps things surprising - it’s been written that the minor chaos a pet brings to your life enhances your longevity. Or put another way, when your day-in day-out becomes rote, your brain goes, “okay if this is all that’s ever going to happen, might as well atrophy.”
Inevitably, there is some chair or a spot on the couch or just some rank discarded fetid cushion on the ground that the dog drags around and sleeps on, that is so thoroughly filthy no one could ever reclaim it, nor should any human hand ever touch it. Errant, rent-apart plastic toys, stuffed animals and bits of knotted rope are strewn across the floor like you salvaged them from the wreckage of an abandoned orphanage.
Jesus. An abandoned orphanage?
Okay so Roya does have a bit of detritus in our home - but it’s proportional to her size. She’s a 40 pound dog, and has a small bed in the living room, a bone and at any given time 2 or 3 balls which are caught under couches and bookshelves.
These homes also have a sometimes-subtle yet pervasive smell of dank festering wet garbage wafting inescapably. If you're a dog-owner and you don't think your apartment smells like that, I hate to break it to you, but it is only because you are used to the smell.
Okay this is not untrue. She has a weird pillow that she fucks with all day, sometimes she sleeps on it, but when she’s not sleeping on it she’s fucking with it.
This is the key factor that dog dissenters are resistant to, preventing them from becoming dog acolytes like myself: once you love the dog, everything else seems a negligible counterpoint to the value of being with a dog.
Dogs need you and love you and humans need to be needed and loved. You can’t make a person love you but the average dog you meet will.
Perhaps this can sum up my stance on dogs: I'm picturing myself as a dog-owner, on a cold winter night when I'm tired after a long day's toil, comfortably huddled up in my flannel pajamas by a kind fire, winding down and ready to go to sleep when my 200-lb mastiff goes clamoring to the door, frantic to exude half a bag of Alpo, and I have to choose between going out into the cold and dealing with the awful repercussions in the morning. Confronted with this decision, I'm afraid I just don't know which choice I'd make.
Has she pooped in the house? Yes. Has she pooped in our bed? Yes. But has she pooped in our bed, and I wake up having rolled in it? Yes. I still love her.
