Hey, this is a new thing I am hopefully going to start publishing regularly. It’s hard to write on a schedule. Sometimes I’m like, holy shit, who am I, some Joan Didion-type? I’m incredible, should I pitch this to The Cut? And then I do and never hear back. Most times though, I have small ideas that I think would serve me well were I a stand up comedian. I am not a stand up comedian though, I am but a humble writer.
This is Loose Ends. The hopefully semi-regular column I share on my newsletter with – you guessed it – some loose ends. Think stories that are like kind of okay, maybe even funny, but lacking an overarching theme, or just some that wind up trailing off at the end – a car running out of gas in the middle of crossing a bridge – except it's not a car, it’s words, and they just kind of peter… out… eventually…
Behold: some loose ends.
A dog with a feather
Usually when my family dogs make a trip to the groomer, my mom will send me a picture upon their return. It’s always jarring to see them freshly shorn. A bowtie around Indy’s neck, bows in Scout’s ears, demarcating them as a clean boy and a clean girl.
I love when their hair is longer – Indy’s is all silky and straight. His paws look like the Grinch’s feet. I delight when the hair makes a clean part in two and his paws take on the air of the bovine, which is to say hoof-like. Scout, a curly haired girl, is all puffed out like a teddy bear. She’s fluffy and adorable and sickeningly sweet.
They look good with short hair too. It just takes a second for me to acclimate. They’ve gone from the wild things I’ve watched trying to eat the dead baby bird that fell out of its nest in the backyard tree to a couple of pampered pooches in a matter of hours. Dawgs to dogs, if you will.
Growing up we’ve always had boy dogs. Scout is our first girl. Gendering pets has always felt silly to me. They’re animals and we’re foisting a gender binary onto them. A dog is a dog is a dog. And that’s true. They’re animals – a part of the natural world, evolved to live with humans centuries ago. They exist within our world, not as an extension of it.
That being said…
LIST OF THINGS I'VE SAID TO BOTH MEN AND DOGS:
Sit!
Stop that
Bad boy!
SPEAK
No kisses
Please don’t lick my fingers. I don’t like it
You’ve earned a treat
Wanna go for a walk?
Are you hungry?
Did you just sleep all day?
Did you miss me?
I do love seeing Scout dressed up like a “girl” dog though. So cute and so unbelievably ridiculous.
The dogs usually come back from the groomer with the same accoutrements – usually just bows and bowties. Sometimes however, Scout will get a feather in her hair.
“Scout came home with a feather extension,” my mom giggled to me over the phone.
“STOP. Send a picture.”
“She already tore it out. It was so funny though. It was neon orange.”
“You’re joking.”
In my memory Scout has come home to us with a feather in her hair about four times ever over her five years of life. Her accessories never last long, so I’ve never seen the feather in person.
Until now.
This time the groomer had attached the feather with some hybrid of an extension bead and a zip tie and it’s going nowhere soon. Dog-sitting for my mother while she was in Hawaii with her friends, I got to see the feather everyday. Through bleary eyes in the morning, Scout’s paws on my chest, wet nose brushing my cheek, demanding I take her outside to pee, her neon green feather dangling between my eyes. Feather extension delicately framing her face, as I try and fail to rip a chicken bone she found on the sidewalk out of her mouth. Lazing on the couch, feather flipped up onto the pillow behind her head, looking less like it’s attached to her and more like it’s attached to a chew toy.
There’s something absurd about the gendering and humanizing of pets. They’re animals that we let live with us in our houses, bend over backwards to take care of. Creatures that we cuddle and buy special treats for. Things we accessorize. Rules and aesthetics never seem so arbitrary and foolish as they do when applied to an animal with floppy ears. The absurd is made manifest.
More absurd still to be the white woman in a pair of Hunter rainboots sporting a fuck ass bob, out walking her two small dogs, one with a bright green feather in it’s hair like Ke$ha circa 2011.
All I need next is one of those mug and wine glass sets. The ones you see in Winners in a two-pack – a mug that says “Bean Juice in the Morning” and a wine glass that says “Grape Juice at Night” in loopy calligraphy.
I won’t cut out her feather though, it makes me giggle too hard. It’s so ridiculous and dumb. My dog with a feather in her hair, sniffing trees. My dog with a feather in her hair, sleeping next to me in bed. My dog with a feather in her hair, standing on my chest, wordlessly demanding that we get up and start our day. I hate how much I love it.
Cringed too close to the sun: Artists I will never be seeing live again
Vampire Weekend – the first time I saw them it was a magical experience. Ren will roll her eyes at this. I can hear her already, “It was raining and I was wet.” But it was really only misting and the air was cool, but not cold, and the crowd was great and Ezra said, “Wow, this is a special one!” and it was a special one.
I had attended that show with other friends and was accidentally very drunk on blueberry vodka. Ren was at the concert with Nic and I’d just met them both a matter of weeks earlier at work. We made a point of finding each other in the crowd. Swaying together in the mist and the mud and laughing as I screamed “MONK AND LOU!!!” between songs (one of the labels our clothing store carried). None of us had been huge fans of Father of the Bride but by the end of the show we were perhaps the world’s biggest fans. Every song hit. Every twang of the guitar struck us.
I drunkenly purchased a long sleeve concert tee and the next day I woke up mildly hungover and entirely unprepared for a tutorial presentation I was set to do. I plucked my concert shirt from my bedroom floor, threw together a halfway okay powerpoint presentation and went and presented it for my tutorial session and the TA I would later go on to date and be ghosted by. 8/10 grade on the presentation. 10/10 show.
For a long time it was one of my top concerts – the best, the most magical. “I think I’ll always go see Vampire Weekend when they come through on tour!” I told everyone who didn’t ask.
Then I followed through on my pledge… I saw Vampire Weekend again this past summer.
Once more none of us had been huge fans of the newest album. But we knew that our tides could be shifted by a great live show. And then we got there.
I’m not sure if it just felt cringe to watch a grown man hop around a stage, the way it is when you remember that the actors you’re watching in a movie are literally playing pretend, but it was cringe watching this grown man hop around on stage. Worse was the crowd. Elder millennials. Carmella was there too – “Kendall, you won’t believe it. There were these millennials in front of us and they lost their minds at Prep School Gangsters. I think it was because they resonated with it.”
Tough.
Hobo Johnson – Okay just in name alone few will be surprised that this was not a great experience. Hobo Johnson is already a divisive artist – his raps are more like spoken word poems; titles of his include Subaru Crosstrek (about buying a car), Peach Scone (about an unrequited love), Sex and the City (about how he’s bad at sex). He’S nOt LiKe OtHeR rApPeRs.
He really isn’t. That’s what I liked about him. That’s why I went to his show.
The thing about Hobo Johnson not being like other rappers and letting his freak flag fly is that his fans aren’t like other fans (derogatory).
They’re… different.
When Nicole and I arrived at The Vogue, the venue was full of freaks. BO permeated the air like chlorine gas – noxious and penetrating. A kaleidoscope of manic panic was swirling about us – fuschia, green, lavender, cobalt blue – hair colours that you think are rare until you see 100 people with canary yellow bangs. There were studded collars. There were fake ears. Every single person in the packed venue wasn’t like other people… they were a bunch of unoriginal weirdos instead.
Waiting in line for the bathroom Nicole turned and whispered in my ear, “It’s like American Horror Story… Freak Show.”
And she was right.
Hobo Johnson was honestly great, but he was forever tarnished in my mind after that. I play one of his songs and all I can think of are his fans. My compatriots. Because it’s true. I was one of them for a night, and I shudder at the thought of going back.
Father John Misty – Love FJM. His voice gives me chills. I love watching his long meandering interviews where he quotes great minds and thinkers with the swagger and attitude of Bob Dylan. I think he’s cool as fuck.
His fans weren’t cool as fuck though. It was one of the weirdest crowds I’ve ever been in. There was an interesting mix of ages in the Orpheum that August night in 2022. Old people, young people, people who were likely 34 but looked 46. And me. And Nic. Rare to be gathered in a room with a less cohesive energy than that. We were oil and water and vinegar and maple syrup. Not mixing but all in the same cup anyway.
A month later Nic saw FJM again and she said it was official. He was ruined. Why? I asked.
“His crowdwork schtick was the exact same. Verbatim. Basically word for word.”
“You’re kidding!?” How could she remember his lines from a month ago when she couldn’t remember what I said to her the night before?
“No, dude. Even his dancing was the same.”
So, at risk of one day feeling the way I do about Hobo Johnson, I’ve made a pact with myself that I can never see Father John again. Or at least until he puts out an album that’s as good as Honeybear.
My therapist told me I’m an empath
The sun had set and the skyline was jewel-like. I stood on my balcony in the cold winter night and watched my breath fog as the lights of the city glimmered and winked in the distance. It was a beautiful night but it was cold.
The alley behind my apartment building is a parking lot for a mental health clinic. By day the parking stalls are full with 9-5’ers putting in time at the office. By night, the parking lot becomes a transient’s paradise. Half walls for sitting, a dumpster to poop behind, a wall with an outlet where you can plug your phone in for a quick charge.
Nestled on the mental health clinic’s stairwell was a man in a sleeping bag. Huddled on a step, trying to keep warm.
Standing on my balcony and watching him I felt my heart break. I’m no better than this man. And here I am, in an apartment literally looking down on him. And you know, I’m so much closer to being him, than I ever would be to becoming a billionaire. So few things have to go wrong for me to be homeless. A few months of bad luck and I could be out there with him.
How could society leave this soul behind? Why do we sweep the streets and pretend these people don’t exist? Why are we always averting our eyes? This is a man with a soul and he’s in a sleeping bag in an alley and it’s so cold out tonight. How can we do –
The white man in the sleeping bag began shouting the N word. I went back inside.
The picture of Scout 💀
Dawgs <3 <3 <3 (I give this three out of three Millennial hearts, deal with it)