Life Harvester #13: Becoming A Dog Person, Neon S/T LP, The Sopranos, Pedro Dior 2020 Trend Forecast
Life Harvester is written by Colin Hagendorf and edited by Rebecca Giordano. This is the email version of a print publication available for free throughout the United States and for low-cost individual subscription. Life Harvester subscriptions are free to prisoners. If you know an incarcerated person who would like to receive a newsletter every month, get in touch with me directly and I’ll take care of it.
NEW YEAR WHO DIS
Gut yontif! I spent New Year’s Eve 2020 so grateful that I quit drinking because I think I would’ve been swilling Electric Melon Mad Dog 20/20 on account of the resonance. My body is just too old for fortified wine. My resolutions are to drive the speed limit, be kinder to myself, and go back to kickboxing so I can fight the Barstool Sports guy for charity. Daydreaming about beating up an odious famous person is an ignoble reason to train in a combat sport. But, on the other hand, how bad do you wanna see that smug asshole get absolutely washed by a trans woman? In 2020, I’d also like to bring back ASK A SHMUCK, my sporadic advice section. So, please send your questions about ethical dilemmas, interpersonal dynamics, urban etiquette, anything at all, to colin.hagendorf@gmail.com with the subject line ASK A SHMUCK.
BECOMING A DOG PERSON
My family never had a dog when I was kid. We did, however, have a cat named Dumpling. My Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Barry showed up one evening before our weekly Jewish Sunday Dinner at Szechuan Empire with a kitten that they had almost hit with their car. My sister and I were overjoyed and spent the meal discussing what we should name her. I was a little bootlicker as a child and suggested we call her Dumpling during the appetizer course, knowing it would be a surefire hit with the adults. My sister, a true agent of chaos, suggested we call her Spare Rib—clearly the better name, but Dumpling won out. It’s one of my greatest shames to this day.
About a decade later I moved in with my first serious girlfriend and we adopted two cats together, Sal and Growler, the big boy and the runt of a litter that was born on her mom’s next-door neighbor’s porch. Both cats ostensibly belonged to both of us, but Sal was my cat and Growler was hers. Towards the end of our relationship, as a prelude to breaking up entirely, she moved out and I stayed in our apartment. I cried melodramatically. “I WON’T SEPARATE THE CATS.” And so I kept them both. I think this was a childish ruse to get her to stay? I was very drunk all the time back then and had zero emotional management skills, so who knows. That was in like 2005 or something. Growler still lives with me in Pittsburgh, where likes to spend most of her time screaming at the top of her lungs for no reason. She weighs 6 lbs, is 17-years-old, has 8 teeth, and a perpetual kitten face. Tres cute. Sal (18 lbs, 28 teeth) is looking down on us all from the Rainbow Bridge. He was a perfect meatball and I’ll love him forever. His favorite activities were stealing my garlic bread, laying under the bathtub in summer and under the radiator in winter, and being a chubby little angel.
Accepting that sweeping binary categorizations (cats vs. dogs; Stones vs. Beatles; toilet paper roll in vs. out) are fundamentally inadequate for human taxonomy but also that there is a factually correct preference in each instance (dogs; Stones; out), I can say that I spent my 20s under the impression that I was a cat person, the aesthetically and intellectually inferior choice.
It’s not that I’d never liked a dog before. I had a few pals. Jojo, my friend Benny’s enormous pitbull who lumbered around North Brooklyn at a snail’s pace, and was super chill and slobbery. Skiba, a little short-legged pit mix who used to sit in the basket of Amina’s tallbike. Harley, Kat and Milo’s little terrier mutt who was so skittish around strangers that when she finally got used to me I felt like I’d won an award. But these relationships were all superficial. They had none of the depth of my interactions with cats. I thought I understood cats, and furthermore, I thought cats were better—lower maintenance, more sophisticated. I thought that cats had a graceful comportment about them that I wished to attain myself, eternally playing it cool. And frankly, I thought dogs were wet and gross. I found their eager earnestness embarrassing.
For those who don’t know about me and Becca’s storybook uhaul romance, here’s the clif notes: we met like a decade ago, hung out for six straight hours and at one point I made her laugh and thought, “I want to make her laugh forever,” and then I got freaked out and went home because I had started dating someone that week and just thinking that felt inappropriate. Sometimes I feel wistful that we didn’t start dating then. Other times I feel grateful that it didn’t happen until I was sober. It is what it is. In late May of 2015 she came to New York for work and we went on a date that lasted two weeks. Three months later I packed my cats and all my stuff into my mom’s old Volvo station wagon and drove it to Texas. The drive took almost exactly 30 hours, which is also how long it takes to make a chocolate babka, my favorite food, a fact we know because while I was driving Becca made me one. Truly we have a love for the ages.
The cats and I moved in with Becca and her dog, Gus, with whom she also truly has a love for the ages. Gus is a very special dog. 70 lbs, 4-inch legs, built like a claw foot tub—a big boy with an even bigger personality, he was found wandering a Robert Mondavi vineyard and Becca adopted him from a high kill shelter in Lodi, California. Gus was unlike any dog I’d ever met before, (or have met yet). He seemed completely uninterest in whether or not his actions pleased me, his affections seemed to come and go at a whim, and he could be willful and seemingly emotionally manipulative. He could also be sweet and caring, and since the moment he eventually grew to trust me, his loyalty has been unflinching. Plus, he’s super cute and really soft.
A week or two after I got to Austin, Becca was heading home from work when she got a text from her friend Will. There was a dog on his porch—very cute, well behaved, clearly in heat. He couldn’t bring her inside because his dog is mean and what should he do? Becca obviously offered to take her in for a few days, and it wasn’t until she was driving home, crisis averted, that she recalled that her new girlfriend had just moved across the country with two cats. She called me immediately, explained the situation, apologized. “Look, I just need you to promise me one thing…” I began. She interjected, “I know, I promise I’ll take care of her! I’ll be responsible for everything! I won’t do this again without asking first.” “That’s not what I’m worried about,” I told her, “I need you to promise that you’ll make sure we give her away. Once she’s been in our house a few days I’m gonna wanna keep her.” Becca agreed.
And my prophecy came true. I wanted to keep that dog, who I think I might have called Tuli, but who ultimately was named Rubia—Rubi for short—because she’s a blonde. And Becca held up her side of the bargain, ultimately adopting Rubi out to our friends Uchenna and Eto. In the meantime, Rubi’s presence in our home, and my time spent with Gus at the dog park, hastened my transition from dog-ambivalent to dog-positive, a fact that was pointed out to me on my first trip back to New York. I was walking one evening with my friend Aaron, and stopped to say “hey, big head” in a Nicki Minaj voice to a particularly handsome pitbull we crossed paths with. Aaron stopped dead and looked concerned, “what happened to you in Texas?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you even notice a dog and in the 20 minutes we’ve been walking you’ve stopped to pet 6!” I shared this 4-year-old anecdote with our mutual friend Cindy last month and she laughed, “I know! He called me right afterwards and said ‘Cindy I don’t know what happened to Colin in Texas, but they’re like you now!’”
And that’s sort of where I stayed for the past few years. Dog-positive. Dogphilic. I liked dogs. I started to know some stuff about them, to have preferences about breeds and personality types, but that was the end of it. Then, in October, Uchenna and Eto called us. Their second child was due early in the New Year, and as tough as it was to think about giving up Rubi, the idea of walking an infant, a toddler, and an energetic pit mix through Flatbush every day was daunting. Would we be interested in taking Rubi back? The conversation between Becca and I that ensued resulted not just in our agreeing to rehome Rubi, but also our deciding to freeze my sperm before I started hormones, just in case. Dogs are powerful.
So around Thanksgiving when we were back in New York seeing my family, we picked Rubi up and it was like a switch flipped inside me. I’ll never be more than a step-mom to Gus, a role I certainly relish, but which I’ve since learned has a limited emotional capacity. Rubi is me and Becca’s dog, which means she’s more my dog than any dog ever. And what a dog she is. Rubi is sweet, affectionate, and driven by an earnest desire to please. She’s intuitive, and actively seeks to comfort when she can tell someone is sad or in pain.
Our second day having her a friend fainted in the living room and after pacing nervously while Becca and I made sure or friend regained consciousness, Rubi was immediately attentive, laying her head on our friend’s lap during her recuperation. The pride I felt! A few weeks after we got Rubi it became clear that she was experiencing some new emotions in her new home that resulted in behavioral problems when she picked a fight at the dog park with another dog she perceived to be getting too close to Gus. The agony! The sadness! The fear!
This depth of feeling is different than anything I’ve felt for a cat before. Which doesn’t change anything I feel about Growler. She and I have spent the past 17 years together. She’s seen me through so much. Looking at her purring on my desk as I type this, my heart swells. But loving a dog is different.
NEON – S/T
Totally unhinged hardcore from fucked up freaks. Marissa Magic is a Twin Taz on the guitar—both a cartoonish whirlwind of frenzied energy and a fleeting anarchist occurrence that eludes formal structures of control. Drummer Chelsey Del Castillo and bassist Rosie Cochinx are quicksand underneath. And singer Grace Ambrose is a woman on the brink, with a deranged vocal delivery careening between spoken rants, Three Stooges sound effects, esophageal chanting, and the rough bark of a fenced dog.
This record, which clocks in at just under 16 minutes, contains more information, both sonic and intellectual, than I’m accustomed to absorbing in a quarter hour. From the galloping drums and cacophonous guitar work on opening track “Spit,” to the ascending bassline and controlled feedback of closer “NEON,” the antagonistic dissonance, perfect as it is, that stood out on my initial listen, masks a depth that warrants further engagement. “Gucci 68,” a standout track, wonders what it means for Gucci’s pre-Fall 2018 collection to, in Gucci’s own words, “capture the spirit of the student awakening in Paris May 1968.” The prognosis is negative. Hearing Ambrose’s incrementally more unhinged delivery on “Wanda,” it’s impossible not to think of Sam McPheeters incredible vocal performance on Wrangler Brutes’ Zulu LP.
This is self-proclaimed “ugly girl music,” a bold assertion coming on the heels of Hot Girl Summer, but a necessary counterbalance to the relentless, superficial positivity that even the most savvy attempts at women’s empowerment become in the capitalist hellscape. Having listened to this LP at least a dozen times now, I’m still unsure if I’m being called to account or I’m in on the joke, but that’s the appeal of provocation.
Listen/purchase digitally from bandcamp, buy the record, released by Square One Again, from Sorry State.
FINALLY WATCHING THE SOPRANOS
Can you believe I hadn’t seen it before? Partially it was because my parents didn’t have HBO, and partially it was because when the Sopranos initially aired I fancied myself quite the Adbuster and was above such trifles as a mere television show, occupying my time with more cerebral activities like smoking a dusted blunt in the backyard at ABC No Rio, drinking 40s in the Columbus School playground, or stealing cigarettes from the Stop & Shop.
But 2019 was the 20th anniversary of the show, and with a bunch of friends rewatching and a ton of people talking about it, Becca and I decided it was time for me to take the plunge on my 36th birthday. When Becca suggested we start the series, I was already wearing a velour track suit. It’s like the decision was made for me.
Since we were watching it together, instead of the typically unrelenting way I engage with anything I like (do it unceasingly until it’s all gone or I’m physically incapable), I had to participate in enforced savoring. And I gotta say, there’s something to savoring stuff. The absolutely ecstatic agony of not watching another episode when you can is almost like having an overwhelming crush in the ways that it marries discomfort and sheer joy.
The Sopranos is a brilliantly written show that examines a number of ethical and philosophical questions about violence, governance, and morality, via a cast of well thought out characters who by and large have complicated identities and a depth that is often rare in television. It contains a dark humor, a keen eye for visual details, and a fully engrossing emotional landscape. And finally, this show inspired Becca to make multiple baked trays of baked ziti, and for that I’ll forever be grateful. But people smarter and more well trained in television criticism than me have already written just about all there is to write about the series as a whole, so I’m gonna talk about the episode I both liked best and was most disappointed by: Season 2, Episode 7, D-Girl.
There are two major plot points in this episode. One involves Christopher Moltisanti, titular character Tony Soprano’s hot junkie nephew, trying to become a screenwriter. He meets Jon Favreau, and visits him on set of the fictional lesbian spy movie starring Janeane Garofalo and Sandra Bernhard. He has an affair with his lawyer cousin’s fiance who works for Favreau. The other focuses on AJ, Tony’s adolescent son, who becomes an existentialist after Tony’s mom tells him “it’s all a big nothing,” on her deathbed. Tony and his wife Carmela, (played by Edie Falco in my favorite performance of the entire series) learn of their son’s new ethos after he steals Carmela’s car and crashes it but doesn’t care about being punished because “death just shows the absurdity of life.”
Some of the details are phenomenal and right up my alley—Sandra Bernhart and Janine Garofalo as lesbian spies?! A plump teenage boy pronouncing Neitzche “Nitch” in an argument with his dad?! A mobster asserting to his therapist that “the fuckin’ internet” is responsible for his son’s adolescent nihilism?! All with thick Jersey accents?! This is manna to me. But the whole thing is tainted for me by a scene in a pizzeria where Christopher is regaling Jon Favreau with true life tales of a wise guy, and the story he tells in the most vivid detail is about a violent attack on a trans woman that leaves her permanently disfigured. My impulse is to preemptively excuse the writers, but I’m not gonna go do that because it’s not the point, the point is, can’t we have anything nice? Can the only episode of the Sopranos with lesbian characters also AVOID being the only episode with a graphically described attack on a trans woman?
This is likely a symptom of the show’s overall misogyny. They deal with male homosexuality a few seasons later in a way that is nuanced and complicated. Lesbians get one episode and it’s part of a “show within a show” conceit, not even the real characters. What’re you gonna do? I didn’t expect a work of fiction about a group of horrific, violent men to never make me uncomfortable, I just wish this particular discomfort could’ve held off for a different episode!
2020 TREND FORECAST WITH PEDRO DRAKE DIOR
Pedro Drake Dior is 9-years-old and lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his mom, Angi. and his dad, Benny. His interests include playing video games, baseball, snuggling his mom, and sushi. When asked to describe himself in one sentence he said, “I’m cool, funny, and cute.”
IN—Mortal Kombat Motion Picture Soundtrack. “I like the lazer sounds in it.”
OUT—“Baby Shark.” “It’s for babies.”
IN—Chewy Sweet Tart Balls. “They’re chewy, they’re sour, but they’re not tarts. They’re balls.”
OUT—Blueberries. “They’re blue. They taste bad.”
IN—MAD Magazine. “It has Spy vs. Spy. Like, duh.”
OUT—Hippie alternative school. “Literally every day I walked in, there was just a five-year-old kid naked running around and screaming.”
IN—The Goosebumps Series. “I like being freaked out.” [Pedro then threw a Pez dispenser at his dad and said ‘think fast’] “Did that freak ya?”
OUT—Mirrors. “Too freaky.”
IN—UHF. “My favorite songwriter Weird Al Yankovic directed that movie. The funniest part is when a guy cuts off his thumb.”
OUT—American Horror Story. “Cause I’m not allowed to watch it.”
IN—Drinking Water. “I like staying alive.”
OUT—Dying. “It’s the beginning of a new decade.”