Today I was going for a casual hike and saw a man approaching with his little dog, perhaps a Shih Tzu. He had just given the dog a brief pep talk beforehand. I wonder what they talked about. Did he give the dog a synopsis of his favorite movie? Did he ask the dog where they wanted to go for dinner? Did he talk in a human or doggie voice? If a human voice, how does he think the dog will understand him without a high pitched tone with lots of inflection and baby talk? Did the government record their conversation and if so will those government tapes ever be released?
So the man is walking towards me with his Shih Tzu, I'm just going to call it a Shih Tzu for the sake of clarity even though it might not be a Shih Tzu. And I consider myself a friendly person so I wave and say hello with the body language of that kind of person. I'm usually successful in this interaction except this time I forgot that I was hiking in the woods and that when you are hiking sometimes, pretty much all the time, you should pay attention to the ground so you don't hook your foot on a root or stab your big toe on a sharp rock or something like that.
So, I hooked my foot on a root and fell almost on my face but luckily caught myself with my hands in some soft, nutrient-rich dirt so it was really more of an experience of nature than anything else. The guy with the Shih Tzu said in a joking manner, "I didn't see that." And I was like, "Don't tell anyone about that." And once again he was like, "I didn't see that." And I laughed. Actually, I was laughing the whole time after the vicious stumble; I wonder what the Shih Tzu was thinking. Vicious Stumble was the working title of Tenacious D until Jack Black and Kyle Gass realized the name could become a terrible omen, perpetuated on the band by themselves and haunting the duo every time they walk to the stage in front of an arena full of fans or Jimmy Kimmel and fall flat on their face, embarrassing themselves horrifically as one of the funniest late night hosts in history bears witness. Kimmel would without a doubt make a hilarious call back at the end of their set, so gut wrenching in the farce of it all that the audience would react as if dozens of comedy clouds had just collected above the studio and began raining laughs with a chance of meatballs.
Speaking of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs...has there ever been a leg of the industry that has gained as much positive publicity from a film as Italian food did from this movie? I like to imagine Chef Boyardee relaxing in his igloo, walls plastered with ravioli, carpet fuzzy with shreds of garlic bread, reading the New York Sunday Times and seeing on the front page that Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be coming out in theaters next week. He would run excitedly to his corded phone on the wall by the fridge because he's to enveloped in the world of ever evolving worldly cuisine to pay a second of attention or a dime of his hard earned savings to one of those Silicon Valley hippies. Then he would call his best friend, The Situation.
"Hello?" The Situation would answer.
"Hi, Sitch. It's the Chef here. What's good?"
"What up Chef! Oh you know, just doin' what the Situation does; mackin' on some hunnies at the 24 Hour Fitness, sculpting these triceps like Michelangelo carvin' up the next David because you know that's what they call me at the front desk, doing a load of mediums." The Situation would say.
"Doing a load of mediums?" The Chef would ask.
"Yeah, you know GTL, Gym Tan Laundry, you can't have the weights and that beautiful orb in the sky that we know as the sun without throwing a little Tide in there every now and again, you know what I'm saying my man? And I'm not talking about the Tide pod challenge, please don't do that Chef, that stuff is dangerous, my dude, I don't want another one of my friends to succumb to it."
"Wait, how many friends have you had die from the Tide pod challenge?" The Chef would query.
"A lot, like too many to even count. I'm just sayin', be careful out there; the world is ruthless." The Situation would say, full of heart and on the brink of tears but holding them back like only a Guido knows how because the world can't see your weakness, bro! You know the traditional Guido saying that dates back to the early days of Guidos when swaths of tangerine-tinted travelers first stormed the beaches of Seaside Heights, New Jersey coming from Italy by luxury yacht, setting up bright blue folding chairs and instantly forming sand castle building competitions with panels of judges: Don't shed tears over your protein shake p.s. tears are just like little rain drops of protein, you're losing mass, dude, graduation party is at the water tower this weekend and you have to impress Tina with your totally sick bod! Radical? (After years of delving into anthropology, Guidos are said to have been closely related to the Surfer breed.)
"Wow, that's super sad. I was not prepared to be that sad when I picked up the phone to call you. I was going to tell you that there is this new movie coming out called Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and it's going to be like a huge pitfall for my personal business and give my checkbook a real kick in the behind but now frankly I'm just too sad to even talk about it. Stay safe, Sitch." Chef Boyardee said as he hung up the phone and laid down on his garlic bread carpet but not before grabbing a handful and stuffing it in his mouth.
Anyway, that Shih Tzu was probably like, "Dang, I wish he would have stayed down there and I could have ate his face." Think about it...if left to its own devices that adorable dog would probably eat your face because dogs are like people on bath salts and the smaller the dog the more vicious they are. If that Shih Tzu was the size of a Greyhound, they would be the landlord of a moderately-sized apartment complex in the Lower East Side. If that Shih Tzu was the size of a Greyhound, they would have appeared as a guest star on several popular sitcoms in the nineties. If that Shih Tzu was the size of a Greyhound, they would own most of the shares of Greyhound.
