Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: have existential doubts about Hell, but truly, I now hope
Speaker 1: there is one, and I hope if there isn't one,
Speaker 1: I hope they make one just for Trump. He did
Speaker 1: it Saturday in Wisconsin, and then, just in case you
Speaker 1: missed it, he did it again yesterday in Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: guess what, America's news media missed it. When America's news
Speaker 1: media has never been more urgently needed, it's failing, collapsing, cowardly,
Speaker 1: protecting only its own money owners and most reporters alike,
Speaker 1: America's news media in its death rattle before Trump extinguishes it,
Speaker 1: or with its own near complete lack of courage, it
Speaker 1: extinguishes itself. Trump did it again yesterday in Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: the goddamn news media missed it. Joe Biden became.
Speaker 2: Mentally impaired, said, but lion Kamala Harris, Honestly, I believe
Speaker 2: she was born that way. There's something wrong with Kamala,
Speaker 2: and I just don't know what it is, but there
Speaker 2: is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.
Speaker 1: This psychopath, this criminally insane narcissist, this damaged, malignant, disease, dysfunctional, hallucinatory, drooling, demented,
Speaker 1: reptile brained, and ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, this stupid
Speaker 1: slime ball attacked the mental capacities of the President and
Speaker 1: Vice president of the United States. And how was that
Speaker 1: covered by our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying news media Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump sharpened his criticism on border security in a
Speaker 1: swing state visit, playing up a political vulnerability for Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris CNN. Trump criticizes Harris's mental capacity while bashing her
Speaker 1: border policies. Former President Trump criticized Kamala Harris's mental capacity
Speaker 1: while slamming her immigration policies Saturday, a notable escalation of
Speaker 1: his insults towards the vice president. CNN didn't even mention
Speaker 1: the disabled quote until the fourth paragraph. The usually reliable
Speaker 1: guardian Trump leans into anti immigrant rants and Harris barbes
Speaker 1: at Wisconsin rally. Trump spoke Saturday in the battleground state
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin, escalating his anti immigrant rhetoric and taking his
Speaker 1: personal insults against Kamala Harris up a rolling stone. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump railed on migrants, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris in
Speaker 1: an unhinged speech in Wisconsin on Saturday. This is from Reuters.
Speaker 1: Trump escalates harsh rhetoric against immigrants Harris Huffington Post. Trump
Speaker 1: lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link
Speaker 1: Harris to illegal immigration. The Hill and The New York
Speaker 1: Times meanwhile, slip further below the top of the quick said,
Speaker 1: we're not criticizing Trump. Others are criticizing Trump. The Hill
Speaker 1: gop urges Trump to tweak message with women. The New
Speaker 1: York Times Trump rebuked over demeaning insults of Harris. Wait,
Speaker 1: it's still getting worse. Politico. Trump says Harris would turn
Speaker 1: every town into a Third World hellhole, responding to Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris's hardening border what and almost worst of all, The
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, published one hundred and eighty miles away
Speaker 1: from where Trump first said this in Prairie to Sheen, Wisconsin. Ironically,
Speaker 1: with all the Republican abuse of them lately, Prairie to
Speaker 1: Sheine translates as dog meadow. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a local story. To them, listen to what's important.
Speaker 1: In the headline, Trump delivers a dark speech on immigration
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin's prairie to sine, Oh boy, that's almost worst
Speaker 1: of all, because worst of all, worst of all because
Speaker 1: of the context of something else it has just done
Speaker 1: that is equally intolerable. Well, CBS News. Trump levels more
Speaker 1: personal attacks on Harris in Wisconsin rally. Former President Trump
Speaker 1: meandered Saturday through a list of grievances against Vice President
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and other issues during an event intended to
Speaker 1: link his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings. He said
Speaker 1: she was mentally disabled and Biden mentally impaired. These are
Speaker 1: not personal attacks. This is not some attempt to link
Speaker 1: his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings. I cannot say
Speaker 1: this more clearly to the political journalists of this nation.
Speaker 1: The English language is full of words. Words that actually
Speaker 1: describe what Jade Evans once aptly called Trump as the
Speaker 1: peddler of quote cultural heroine. Words that measure his deceit,
Speaker 1: words that quantify his inhumanity, words that will not get
Speaker 1: you fired, and words that will not get your cowering
Speaker 1: bosses sued. Learn these words. Use these words, because if
Speaker 1: you don't, you will die with me. In the Trump camps.
Speaker 1: All of the bleak histories of the dictators of this
Speaker 1: world include this one same chapter. If you cannot summon
Speaker 1: courage on behalf of your nation, If you cannot summon
Speaker 1: courage on behalf of your profession, summon courage on behalf
Speaker 1: of saving your own ass. But of course American journalism
Speaker 1: is going exactly the opposite root, and right now it
Speaker 1: is being led there to hell, coincidentally by CBS News
Speaker 1: David Bowter of the Associated Press, who I have known
Speaker 1: for more than twenty years, and who is the classic
Speaker 1: old school boring wire reporter, who was evidently alone among
Speaker 1: those covering the preparations for tomorrow's vice presidential debate, the
Speaker 1: only one who actually asked, CBS, so you're gonna fact
Speaker 1: check any of this stuff? The headline on David Botter's
Speaker 1: ap story, CBS News says it will be up to
Speaker 1: Vance and Walls to fact check each other in deep debate,
Speaker 1: then quoting some anonymous coward spokesperson, the moderators will facilitate
Speaker 1: those opportunities during rebuttal time. The network said its own
Speaker 1: misinformation unit, CBS News confirmed will provide real time fact
Speaker 1: checking during the debate on its live blog and on
Speaker 1: social media. Oh A live blog that'll keep them from lying.
Speaker 1: That's not just a figle. It's a fig leaf that
Speaker 1: doesn't fig When did CBS decide that its job here
Speaker 1: at a debate was to provide the microphones? The debate
Speaker 1: tomorrow night will be co moderated by Margaret Brennan from
Speaker 1: Face the Nation and Nora O'Donnell, who was soon to
Speaker 1: leave as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. I
Speaker 1: worked with them both at NBC. I didn't know Margaret
Speaker 1: enough to address her here, but I have known Nora
Speaker 1: since we hired her away from Roll Call to be
Speaker 1: a Washington correspondent for first MSNBC and then NBC News
Speaker 1: in early nineteen ninety eight, and quite naturally, as the
Speaker 1: new reporter in the DC bureau, they stuck her on
Speaker 1: the least important newscast with the highest number of opportunities
Speaker 1: for reps, my newscast. Nora has been a professional friend
Speaker 1: of mine for a quarter of a century. The day
Speaker 1: I returned to MSNBC in two thousand and three, she
Speaker 1: phoned me from Washington. I was just sitting my box
Speaker 1: down on my desk. She was bubbling with a list
Speaker 1: of ideas for my new show countdown for most of them,
Speaker 1: you must do a nightly fact check segment on Bill O'Reilly.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what is happening with Nora leaving
Speaker 1: as the anchor of the newscast that Douglas Edwards and
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather made into a legitimate journalistic institution.
Speaker 1: I don't think they are firing her, per se. I
Speaker 1: think they are firing the job regardless. Nora has had
Speaker 1: an extraordinary career and has made an extraordinary amount of
Speaker 1: money and is still a talented and responsible journalist. And
Speaker 1: she is a kid. She is just fifty years of age.
Speaker 1: I cannot remember the last time she asked for or
Speaker 1: needed my advice, but I'm going to offer it to
Speaker 1: her here. Nora, what you need to do tomorrow night
Speaker 1: is to utterly ignore your idiot bosses at CBS News
Speaker 1: fact Check, j Vance and Tim Walls, especially Vance, because
Speaker 1: Vance is presenting himself as a congenital liar. He's compulsive
Speaker 1: about it. He is on par with Trumper, may be worse.
Speaker 1: And Nora, you have a choice right now. You can
Speaker 1: go out as Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, where you
Speaker 1: can go out as David Muir and Lindsay Davis. The
Speaker 1: careers of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will doubtless continue
Speaker 1: even after they ignored the rules of journalism and instead
Speaker 1: did with their idiot bosses at CNN told them to
Speaker 1: do in the first presidential debate, and they let Trump
Speaker 1: lie and lie and lie without even a correction, let
Speaker 1: alone a confrontation. But does anybody take Jake Tapper seriously
Speaker 1: anymore after that? If any television figures are going to
Speaker 1: be remembered from this season of debates, if any are
Speaker 1: going to be rewarded for this season of debates, it
Speaker 1: will be Muhr and Davis. One of Trump's favorite floys
Speaker 1: is to lie about raiding's collapses from journalists and reporters
Speaker 1: and newspapers and networks that have thwarted him. But CNN's ratings,
Speaker 1: already declining, are now vanishing. ABC's unchanged David Mewer's newscast
Speaker 1: is in first place, was in first place. It has
Speaker 1: twenty percent more viewers than Lesser Holtz, it has sixty
Speaker 1: six percent more than CBS's And it was CBS News
Speaker 1: and its ex president neiar Ash Kalmani who hired a scumbag.
Speaker 1: A Trumpist called Mick mulvaney in twenty twenty two to
Speaker 1: be a contributor because Calmani said this in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two with witnesses in the room with him. Quote, to
Speaker 1: make sure that we are getting access to both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle, which is a priority because we know
Speaker 1: the Republicans are going to take over most likely in
Speaker 1: the midterms. A lot of the people that we're bringing
Speaker 1: in are helping us in terms of access to that
Speaker 1: side of the equation. In other words, access journalism is
Speaker 1: the worst thing you can have in this world. We're
Speaker 1: doing this to promote our own access journalism. Nora, the
Speaker 1: last impression you're going to leave as the anchor of
Speaker 1: the CBS Evening News. And by the way, I would
Speaker 1: have sought off an arm to be the anchor of
Speaker 1: the CBS Evening News. The last impression is to follow
Speaker 1: the path of the Niraj Kalmanni's of this world, or
Speaker 1: is it to follow the path of Walter Cronkite and
Speaker 1: Ed Murrow. America has a lot of holes in it.
Speaker 1: Failing to reward journalism and bravery and ethics is not
Speaker 1: one of them, not yet anyway, look at the reputations
Speaker 1: and look at the ratings. Nourra fact check them anyway,
Speaker 1: even if they fire you during the commercial break. What
Speaker 1: is the point of being in news one of the
Speaker 1: worst professions ever invented? What is the point of being
Speaker 1: in news? What is the point of being on television
Speaker 1: one of the other worst professions ever invented? What is
Speaker 1: the point if you can't tell the truth, if you
Speaker 1: can't serve your country in this smallest but most important
Speaker 1: of ways. And that's thirty for today, our new theme
Speaker 1: in full for the election stretch, as promised Brian Ray
Speaker 1: and John Philip Scheneiler geniuses, back to the Nightmare. I
Speaker 1: should add that in addition to on Saturday making a
Speaker 1: hilarian kind of cadence. In the middle of his speech,
Speaker 1: Trump yesterday in Erie, Pennsylvania said in the US, the
Speaker 1: police aren't allowed to do their job. And to stop crime,
Speaker 1: he said, you need quote one really violent day, one
Speaker 1: rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word would
Speaker 1: get out and it would end immediately. Translation, he wants
Speaker 1: the cops to kill everybody for an hour. He wants
Speaker 1: literally that movie the Purge. This will be reported with
Speaker 1: headlines like Trump suggests increased staffing for a local police
Speaker 1: There is a punchline to Trump and the other issue
Speaker 1: here the slandering of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. It
Speaker 1: comes from the DNC member David Atkins, and I quote him.
Speaker 1: Trump must be deeply embarrassed that he got eviscerated in
Speaker 1: a debate with a mentally disabled person. He got beat
Speaker 1: so bad he doesn't dare do a second one. He
Speaker 1: should probably just drop out now. Quote. I should also
Speaker 1: mention here, in the light of my excoriation of the media,
Speaker 1: that Axios, which I regularly assault here but always with cause,
Speaker 1: got it right yesterday. Its first twelve paragraphs were, while
Speaker 1: tonally neutral and the need to make everything about the
Speaker 1: horse race was uns shakable, it was absolutely and devastatingly
Speaker 1: quietly accurate. Quoting Axios. Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty,
Speaker 1: and nonsensical when he needed to be swaying national security
Speaker 1: moms and other undecideds thirty eight days out from election day. Yes,
Speaker 1: at least do that New York Times. Other people are
Speaker 1: mad at him. We're not now briefly about the polls
Speaker 1: and the New York Times. When Larry Sabato, who is
Speaker 1: an intelligent man, but pretty much a mainstream political guy
Speaker 1: who I think I first interviewed in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: When Larry Sabato is noting that something is broken in
Speaker 1: the New York Times poll, guess what something is broken
Speaker 1: inside the New York Times poll. The Times wrote that
Speaker 1: Trump is quote surging in the Swing States turned out
Speaker 1: to be a one point gain for Trump, not a
Speaker 1: one point marginal gain. He just went up a point.
Speaker 1: An analytics fella named Jonathan Chavez writes Harris went from
Speaker 1: plus twenty nine among eighteen to twenty nine year old
Speaker 1: voters in Wisconsin in the New York Times August poll
Speaker 1: to minus eighteen today, cross tab truthering. Wonderful phrase, sir,
Speaker 1: cross tab truthering is dangerous, But a forty seven point
Speaker 1: swing in a demographic group really should force you to
Speaker 1: ask some serious questions about methodology, coverage, biases, waiting decisions, etc.
Speaker 1: She was twenty nine points ahead in voters between the
Speaker 1: ages of eighteen to twenty nine in Wisconsin in August.
Speaker 1: She's now minus eighteen according to The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Sabato added to this observation quote instead of mindlessly repeating
Speaker 1: New York Times Siena polls, because well, it's the New
Speaker 1: York Times. News organizations should be asking hard questions about them.
Speaker 1: These poles are given far more weight than they deserve. Again,
Speaker 1: exactly correct. I watch a lot of BBC news. It's
Speaker 1: not that good. It's better than all of the American
Speaker 1: news put together. However, they still have these extraordinary blind spots.
Speaker 1: They and other international news organizations not based inside this
Speaker 1: country not only faithfully report the New York Times polls,
Speaker 1: but they do not report any other polls of the
Speaker 1: American presidential race. Moreover, the BBC treats these polls from
Speaker 1: the Times as if they are not polls, but instead
Speaker 1: some sort of preliminary votes, like there were some kind
Speaker 1: of primaries. It's startling, it's naive beyond words. So the
Speaker 1: BBC viewers will never know about the simultaneous swing state
Speaker 1: polls from Bloomberg in which Harris is tied in Georgia,
Speaker 1: up by two in North Carolina, up by three in Arizona, Michigan,
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, up by five in Pennsylvania, up by seven
Speaker 1: in Nevada, to say nothing of the forty seven point
Speaker 1: demo swing in voters under thirty in Wisconsin you screwed
Speaker 1: up your poll. New York Times critics safe Time screwed
Speaker 1: up poll, and the BBC viewers will never know about
Speaker 1: the Rasmussen polling scandal. We all know everybody but some
Speaker 1: of the voters that Rasmussen is crap. Then a group
Speaker 1: called American muckrakers got emails last week from Rasmussen to
Speaker 1: Trump campaign runners Dance Gavino and Susie Wiles and an
Speaker 1: outlet called the Heartland Institute asking them to pay for
Speaker 1: poles on a specific topic and promising results They'll all like.
Speaker 1: Even if Rasmussen polls were legitimate, just the collusion between
Speaker 1: the pollster and the supposedly nonprofit Heartland Institute confirms political activity,
Speaker 1: for which that institute should lose its tax exempt status.
Speaker 1: That's what Rasmussen is. And what on earth is the
Speaker 1: value of crap polls with fake results? What is the
Speaker 1: value of a Rasmussen p What is the value of
Speaker 1: an Atlas poll? Atlas polls that yesterday showed Trump winning
Speaker 1: everywhere butt Nevada. What is the value of a poll
Speaker 1: that might as well show Trump getting five hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty seven electoral College votes and Harris just won from
Speaker 1: the Nebraska. Second, I hope you're sitting down. The answer
Speaker 1: is the value is because when the time comes for
Speaker 1: Trump to announce that he actually has won the election
Speaker 1: and that all the official results are lies, and that
Speaker 1: his mobs should now rise up and take over the
Speaker 1: state houses in Georgia and Arizona and Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And when he tells them to go and kill all
Speaker 1: the reporters, including the ones who did in fact check him,
Speaker 1: and when he insists they have to use any means
Speaker 1: necessary to stop President elect Kamala Harris from being sworn in.
Speaker 1: When he does these things, when not if the piece
Speaker 1: of paper he will be waving above his head during
Speaker 1: his hit Larry and Rant will be the Rasmussen and
Speaker 1: Atlas polls that prove he was ahead in all of
Speaker 1: those states and thus the election was stolen. Oh and
Speaker 1: at this rate, also on that piece of paper will
Speaker 1: be the New York Times polls. Also of interest here, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's a full episode on a Monday. You know why
Speaker 1: that is because it's Stevie Day. This is the anniversary
Speaker 1: exactly September thirtieth, the anniversary of the day I was
Speaker 1: adopted by a dog for the first time, and now finally,
Speaker 1: to my great relief, also for the first time, I
Speaker 1: can tell this story in full, with no pseudonyms or
Speaker 1: masked identities or details left out, because, as I think
Speaker 1: you may have heard somewhere, Stevie's mom is a Liby
Speaker 1: Newsy and this story of her and pictures is entirely wholesome,
Speaker 1: although there are also developments in the non wholesome story
Speaker 1: that I don't think anybody with me would have noticed,
Speaker 1: and I think they may explain everything, and they center
Speaker 1: around one phrase in one article, and that one phrase
Speaker 1: is quote medical leave. I'll explain that's next. This discountdown,
Speaker 1: George Crowing, pleasure to have you here. Thank you. This
Speaker 1: is the best news show ever. I toilet to one
Speaker 1: of your producers, and I want you to know that
Speaker 1: I've seen them all and it's just for especially the
Speaker 1: first thirty five minutes. Thank you. It's just just unparalleled.
Speaker 1: I got bad news between you and I. We got
Speaker 1: six minutes to completely strew that in the draft.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: That's good. O scripts to the news in a moment.
Speaker 1: And then this is Steve. The anniversary of the day
Speaker 1: I became a real person in love with dogs, and
Speaker 1: I can finally tell you the story without hiding the
Speaker 1: identity of the girlfriend who made it all possible. And
Speaker 1: her name was olbya Newsy and so I will tell
Speaker 1: you the entire story next. Maybe you've heard of her. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I could probably launch a second podcast just about the
Speaker 1: women I used to live with, or date or both.
Speaker 1: And if I can admit that, you could admit you
Speaker 1: might listen. Well, maybe I'll do that. Probably not ten
Speaker 1: percent of the time I feel like doing that, especially
Speaker 1: after this ten days that has just passed as one
Speaker 1: of them became headline news. I saw a story about
Speaker 1: Olivia on the internet in German, and for some reason,
Speaker 1: the story sounds way worse in German. But the other
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the time I swerve back and forth
Speaker 1: between two. In one I feel sadness and regret and
Speaker 1: even responsibility and failure that I could not do more
Speaker 1: for her when we were together, along with real fear
Speaker 1: that what is now mostly a story of people behaving
Speaker 1: amorlly and stupidly and childishly could turn into something worse,
Speaker 1: and forgive the dramatic language here, but something tragic. The
Speaker 1: remaining forty five percent of the time, I just feel
Speaker 1: like neo dodging bullets in the matrix. Pew pew, pew
Speaker 1: didn't get me this time. Regardless, there is a commitment
Speaker 1: here to promulgating political news, especially if it's stuff people
Speaker 1: haven't noticed. And so postscripts to the news Dateline New York.
Speaker 1: Of all the coverage of the newsy Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: Junior saga, there are four important points that I think
Speaker 1: are missing. The New York Post reports one of the
Speaker 1: two of them in this equation. Maybe both were impressed
Speaker 1: with his quote stamina during Facebook sex. Excuse me, but
Speaker 1: stamina during Facebook sex is just being skilled jerk off,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Am I missing something else here? I mean,
Speaker 1: we are honoring this now. Is there a Louis C.
Speaker 1: K Award for this or something? Man? The Kennedy family
Speaker 1: has to be proud of this guy. John F. Kennedy said,
Speaker 1: ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country. Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: Senior said, some men see things as they are and
Speaker 1: ask why. I dream things that never were and ask
Speaker 1: why not? Robert F. Kennedy Junior said, what wait, I'll
Speaker 1: move the camera. How's this for a profile? Encourage stamina
Speaker 1: while playing with you yourself. No, Bob, you didn't waste your life.
Speaker 1: More seriously, one forecast, I know Olivia, she taped this,
Speaker 1: that's next you wait, and then two developments that kind
Speaker 1: of went by in the blur of the stupidity of
Speaker 1: the thing. Even Lachlan Cartwright, who wrote the piece for
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, seems to have missed the meaning of what
Speaker 1: he wrote here. He did a timeline of what befell
Speaker 1: my ex when all this was revealed to her employers
Speaker 1: at New York Magazine, quoting it on Thursday, The magazine's
Speaker 1: response shifted several times. One response would have seen her
Speaker 1: request medical leave, and there would have been no statement
Speaker 1: or disclosures medical leave. I've seen almost nobody note this
Speaker 1: seemingly random detail, and Cartwright never even circled back to
Speaker 1: it a medical leave for Olivia Newsy. Some comments I
Speaker 1: have seen have begun with the assumption that her employers
Speaker 1: were making up an excuse to cover up the scandal.
Speaker 1: Medical leave, Yeah, that's the ticket. I can understand this thinking.
Speaker 1: When the Brian Williams exaggeration scandal broke, I contacted my
Speaker 1: friends in the hierarchy of NBC news, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: there is one surefire way you can save this and
Speaker 1: him and yourselves. Get him drunk, fill up his office
Speaker 1: with empty bottles of booze, bring in photographers from the tabloids,
Speaker 1: and then send them to rehab. When he comes back,
Speaker 1: they'll give him an e fing parade. Because you're not
Speaker 1: really lying. He clearly needs rehab, just not the traditional
Speaker 1: kind of rehab, because there clearly is something wrong with him.
Speaker 1: I don't think the reference to the medical leave idea
Speaker 1: was as random as it seems. I have some more personal,
Speaker 1: firsthand information on this, which I will keep to myself because,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, for reasons that may become apparent
Speaker 1: to you shortly, I think Olivia a kind of rehab too,
Speaker 1: and off stage, I don't know why I'm bothering, but
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to assist that if I can in
Speaker 1: some way, and my own reasons for doing so were
Speaker 1: amplified because, believe it or not, I knew something had
Speaker 1: gone horribly wrong with her two weeks and two days ago,
Speaker 1: nearly a week before the story broke. I didn't know what,
Speaker 1: and I certainly could never ever have guessed that Kennedy
Speaker 1: was involved, but her ex fiance edits the Politico Playbook newsletter,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he doesn't like me anymore than I
Speaker 1: don't like him. But every Saturday he posts half a
Speaker 1: dozen long reads that he recommends to his recipients, and
Speaker 1: usually I just skim past them. But the first one,
Speaker 1: two saturdays ago that I would have been the fourteenth jumped
Speaker 1: off the screen of my phone at me. Ryan Liza
Speaker 1: had linked to an article in Noema magazine. Noema, the
Speaker 1: award winning magazine exploring the transformations sweeping our world. Year old.
Speaker 1: He had linked to this article in Nuema called living
Speaker 1: in a Lucid Dream. Claire L. Evans writes of her
Speaker 1: own experience in this The subheadline was recent research on
Speaker 1: lucid dreams suggests that consciousness exists along the spectrum between
Speaker 1: sleep and waking, between hallucination and revelation, between dream worlds
Speaker 1: and reality. Oh worse yet. The story was published July
Speaker 1: twenty first, Newsy's now ex fiance posted at September fourteenth.
Speaker 1: I could easily be wrong, but the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought when I saw this was he found that article
Speaker 1: because he google searched sleep walking or lucid dreaming or
Speaker 1: fugue state, and when I saw this, I shuddered. Five
Speaker 1: days later, new Zy Kennedy scandal. Suddenly he's an ex fiance.
Speaker 1: The rest you know, followed a week after that by
Speaker 1: this passing reference to medical leave. Anyway, I think the
Speaker 1: link and the medical leave idea are bookends to the
Speaker 1: first part of a very sad story, which brings me
Speaker 1: to a happy story about this woman, to the story
Speaker 1: of Stevie. Even the FaceTime references made me more sad
Speaker 1: than disgusted or bemused. Olivia and I used to FaceTime,
Speaker 1: especially when traveling on a story. She was a diligent
Speaker 1: and sincere communicator. To her credit, she usually asked all
Speaker 1: the right girlfriend ye questions, and to her even greater credit,
Speaker 1: she'd then say, okay, enough of this. Put Stevie on.
Speaker 1: Stevie was our dog, our beloved dog, our beloved first dog,
Speaker 1: who we got twelve years ago today, who sits near
Speaker 1: by me as I tell you this story, with the
Speaker 1: masking efforts and pseudonyms removed from this story for the
Speaker 1: first time, which is why when I was asked if
Speaker 1: I really had dated and lived with her, I said
Speaker 1: I had, and it was surprisingly wholesome because it was. Because,
Speaker 1: as you will hear, still, after all this crap, the
Speaker 1: thing that the name Olivia Newzy inspires in me is gratitude,
Speaker 1: because Olivia is Stevie's mom. Today, I have three dogs.
Speaker 1: Two months ago it was four. Then my older rescue, MiNet,
Speaker 1: the guy who came to me in a dementia like trance,
Speaker 1: and within months, with good food and getting his teeth pulled,
Speaker 1: he was leaping over the white stripes in the crosswalk
Speaker 1: like an Olympian, just for the hell of it, forty
Speaker 1: or fifty times per walk. Minee got to his seventeenth
Speaker 1: birthday on a Monday. He took a walk on a Thursday,
Speaker 1: he stopped eating on a Friday, and he gently and
Speaker 1: peacefully died in my arms on Sunday, as if he
Speaker 1: were saying, I made it. I'm going home now. Thanks.
Speaker 1: But Ted, my first rescue, is still going strong at
Speaker 1: six and a half. Ted is a handsome devil in
Speaker 1: the beneficiary of heart surgery when he was about eight
Speaker 1: months old. He is my son as certainly as if
Speaker 1: he had just two legs and was in kindergarten. He
Speaker 1: flirts with girls in the park, human girls. He plays ball.
Speaker 1: He sees a soccer ball, he wants to play with
Speaker 1: soccer balls twice his size. Ted also owns the world.
Speaker 1: Just ask him. Rose is ten now, a beautiful, austere,
Speaker 1: classic girl, a little tough to know. If she could speak,
Speaker 1: she would be the one in your family who addresses
Speaker 1: you as father, as in, oh father, you're being so sentimental.
Speaker 1: And then there is Stevie, twelve years old and tougher
Speaker 1: than all of you put together. Has been through cancer
Speaker 1: and surgery and immune disease and immobility. She couldn't walk
Speaker 1: three bad knees once a week. We now walk over
Speaker 1: to rehab, never afraid of a human being and benefiting
Speaker 1: of a high pain threshold, so nothing bothered her. We
Speaker 1: go to rehab. She goes on an underwater treadmill. Then
Speaker 1: they blow dry her hair and give her a massage.
Speaker 1: It's a spa. She always thought it was a spa.
Speaker 1: Stevie beautiful, sometimes belligerent, always for twelve years, indispensable, and
Speaker 1: as late as three pm Eastern time on September thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, not one word of what I have told
Speaker 1: you would have made any sense whatsoever to me. I
Speaker 1: had never had a dog allergies mine and my mother's
Speaker 1: and travel and work. And then Olivia Newsy looked at
Speaker 1: me and said, I need a puppy fix. Her family
Speaker 1: dog was dying. She didn't say it, her folks wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it. The dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Casey,
Speaker 1: did her best to be the only truthful one in
Speaker 1: the bunch. She was moving purposely and unsteadily with every step,
Speaker 1: and looking out at her world with a seeming mixture
Speaker 1: of acceptance and sadness and regret that the one time
Speaker 1: she really needed these bipeds to speak for her on
Speaker 1: her behalf, they just couldn't or wouldn't do it. I
Speaker 1: just need, Olivia told me, for dogs, not to mean sadness,
Speaker 1: just for a couple of minutes, just for a while.
Speaker 1: Can we go to that pet shop on Les? I
Speaker 1: mumbled that well, we could go, of course, but that
Speaker 1: I had resisted the dog entreaties of the eleven girlfriends
Speaker 1: before her, and I would successfully resist hers as well.
Speaker 1: I had always loved dogs, but I was allergic, and
Speaker 1: more importantly, my doctors had all said that hypoallergenic dogs
Speaker 1: were a crap shoot. And Olivia said, I do not
Speaker 1: want a dog. I am not trying to convince you
Speaker 1: to get me a dog or us a dog. I
Speaker 1: just want to hold a puppy for a little while
Speaker 1: and have you there with me. She paused, as she
Speaker 1: always did when she felt both hopeless and angry at
Speaker 1: being at the mercy of feelings, and she lapsed into
Speaker 1: her version of the shrug emoji. As sappy as all
Speaker 1: this sounds, and it did sound sappy, Olivia was not sentimental.
Speaker 1: We used to look at each other in stark shock
Speaker 1: that she, the prematurely cynical girl and me, the everlastingly
Speaker 1: cynical old guy, had proved the maxim about the cynics
Speaker 1: just being the disappointed romantics of this world. And then
Speaker 1: we'd giggle, and then I'd insult her or she'd insult me,
Speaker 1: and the next thing he knew, we were insulting some politician.
Speaker 1: This was different. Casey was dying and Olivia didn't know
Speaker 1: how to deal with it. But to her credit, she
Speaker 1: recognized she needed some self care, and she needed my
Speaker 1: support as she got that self care. So we left
Speaker 1: for the pet shop in mid afternoon, and I told
Speaker 1: her my true fear was that my native but dormant
Speaker 1: shared affinity with dogs would all of a moment spring
Speaker 1: fully grown from my soul, and I would blurt, I'll
Speaker 1: take all of them. I mean, even then, what kind
Speaker 1: of life could I offer a dog? I was on television.
Speaker 1: Thus I was always in a television student, thus never
Speaker 1: home for play or walks, or just the prevention of
Speaker 1: canine loneliness. Olivia lived with me nearly all the time,
Speaker 1: but was out of town half the time too on stories.
Speaker 1: I was clueless as to every aspect of the dog thing.
Speaker 1: I had littered the continent with dead house plants. I
Speaker 1: no longer thought myself ever capable of pulling my own
Speaker 1: ego out of my backside sufficiently to take care of fish.
Speaker 1: I had literally not had a pet of any kind
Speaker 1: since nineteen sixty seven. I had come to terms with
Speaker 1: living in a wistful, hazy world in which I might
Speaker 1: inadvertently have a dog pal for a few minutes, but
Speaker 1: almost never indoors, and never without the pang of knowing
Speaker 1: that the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye.
Speaker 1: And I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious, big, furry,
Speaker 1: friendly dogs. There was an incident on a plane when
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was a dog on board, in fact,
Speaker 1: sitting right behind me, and we almost landed the plane
Speaker 1: on an emergency basis because I'd stopped breathing. I was allergic.
Speaker 1: I might be allergic even to the ones that were
Speaker 1: built as non allergic. I could be in the same
Speaker 1: room with a dog for an hour, often longer, without incident,
Speaker 1: but to hold or touch them within half an hour
Speaker 1: I would start to feel my throat swelling and closing.
Speaker 1: And if I disobeyed this immutable cannon, the buried tears
Speaker 1: of permanent exclusion from dog world might be replaced by
Speaker 1: the far worse ones of separation and loss. Coming back
Speaker 1: to the present day, literally it's two weekends ago. I
Speaker 1: had to send back a rescue dog because I was
Speaker 1: allergic to her. We didn't know she was a mix,
Speaker 1: and I was allergic to whatever the mix was. She
Speaker 1: was here two hours. She's fine, The rescue is fine,
Speaker 1: she will be fine. I'm helping with her recovery. I
Speaker 1: am still processing my guilt if that had happened to
Speaker 1: me at any point in the past, especially in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: to reject, worse, to betray the love of a dog,
Speaker 1: to send it back, what happened then anyway, I went
Speaker 1: with her, and as Olivia and I approached the shop,
Speaker 1: there was, as there almost always is, a small crowd
Speaker 1: kind of undulating around it. The narrow sidewalks of Lexington
Speaker 1: Avenue make these human clots easier to form, even late
Speaker 1: on the first Sunday of autumn. There is also an
Speaker 1: obstacle course there of grates and cellar doors and bikes
Speaker 1: chained to poles, and parking meters and canopies for diners
Speaker 1: and restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that aren't
Speaker 1: quite seedy but also are not your first choice. The
Speaker 1: uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
Speaker 1: ma of the fifty ninth Street Bridge lend the place
Speaker 1: a congested feel even when it's otherwise quiet. We are
Speaker 1: also three blocks up from the trying just a little
Speaker 1: too hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks
Speaker 1: double park three hundred and sixty five days a year
Speaker 1: there and then totally out of place, amid the prosaic
Speaker 1: trappings of a big city at its most men there
Speaker 1: they are bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other
Speaker 1: tiny heads and tails and paws doing a seeming pantomime
Speaker 1: of dismemberment. Their yips and the crunch of the shredded
Speaker 1: cavorting paper are just audible through the glass and over
Speaker 1: the din of the street. They create an oasis of cute.
Speaker 1: And just in case you can't tell what they are,
Speaker 1: there was this big Neon sign above their street front
Speaker 1: window that read puppies. Don't make me go in, I pleaded.
Speaker 1: She reassured me. We'd go in. She'd hold the dog.
Speaker 1: All I'd had to do was take a picture a minute. Tops.
Speaker 1: You don't understand, I reached for her hand. What I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say is I've always wanted a dog. I
Speaker 1: could never have one. Just as the door to the
Speaker 1: shop opened, she grabbed my arm. Olivia pulled forcefully, swore
Speaker 1: at me and muttered, you'll survive. Man up. Don't make
Speaker 1: eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.
Speaker 1: Don't make eye contact. My inner dialogue as we moved
Speaker 1: towards puppies and passed puppies, and the appearance of a
Speaker 1: small staircase to a training loft confirmed we were now
Speaker 1: going under puppies and in the deepest recesses of the shop.
Speaker 1: There was a wall of puppies to our right, three
Speaker 1: cages high, six across, all a yellowish beige behind a
Speaker 1: reddish brown for Micah countertop, and then a structural beam,
Speaker 1: and then three cages high and two cages across, and
Speaker 1: then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
Speaker 1: the countertop, and then in front of me the Hollywood
Speaker 1: squares of puppies, three high, three across, nine puppies, all
Speaker 1: of them staring at me and screaming at me and
Speaker 1: making eye contact. A salesman introduced himself as Jeffrey. Jeffrey
Speaker 1: asked Olivia if there was any dog she wanted him
Speaker 1: to bring to her. Let me see them all tease,
Speaker 1: she said the girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly,
Speaker 1: this was my cue to get my phone out and
Speaker 1: prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the dog, whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from
Speaker 1: the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
Speaker 1: the pet shop besides me, who was not making any
Speaker 1: damn noise at all. Every other dog was perfecting its
Speaker 1: adolescent bark. The cats were making a bewildering variety of noises,
Speaker 1: And was that actually a Norwegian blue parrot squawk? I
Speaker 1: just heard remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue. Isn't it beautiful plumage?
Speaker 1: But this Maltese said nothing. She looked like her torso
Speaker 1: would easily fit in one of my hands. And if
Speaker 1: she was three pounds, a quarter of that was hair
Speaker 1: and half of that was curled. And presumably somebody had
Speaker 1: to come by every day to turn what sat atop
Speaker 1: her head into a mohawk up top and a mullet
Speaker 1: in the back. She was in a cage with another dog,
Speaker 1: her brother. Her cage mate brother seemed a little bigger,
Speaker 1: but his eyes were clearly smaller than hers. Their color
Speaker 1: was immediately visible, even if you still had forlorn hopes
Speaker 1: of avoiding eye contact. His eyes shone, her eyes were illuminated.
Speaker 1: He tried to get past her into the sailsman's arms.
Speaker 1: She simply lifted up her head towards him. It actually
Speaker 1: crossed my mind that she looked like she was about
Speaker 1: to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today? He put
Speaker 1: her gently down in that playpen at the right corner
Speaker 1: of the counter. Olivia asked if she could pick her up,
Speaker 1: and nodded to me to get the camera ready. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey confided, this is the sweetest dog we've had here
Speaker 1: in months. I mean, I say that every day to
Speaker 1: almost everybody about almost every dog, but this time I'm
Speaker 1: actually not lying. Olivia cradled the little Maltese in her arms,
Speaker 1: with the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped
Speaker 1: the camera on the phone. My hand was actually shaking,
Speaker 1: and as I centered up Olivia and the puppy in
Speaker 1: the frame, the Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front
Speaker 1: paws on Olivia's shirt near her neck, and just as
Speaker 1: I snapped the image of the dog, reached up and
Speaker 1: kissed my girlfriend on the lips. To this day, on occasion,
Speaker 1: I am completely incapable of remembering anything that happened in
Speaker 1: my life before that exact moment. Olivia made the appropriate
Speaker 1: sounds of human approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little grooming
Speaker 1: the Maltese breed needed and the great price he could
Speaker 1: give us, And even as my head spun, it seemed
Speaker 1: silly to me that he was calculating the tax on
Speaker 1: something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. Olivia said
Speaker 1: something about how we needed a minute outside to discuss it,
Speaker 1: and handed the puppy back to Jeffrey. The dog looked
Speaker 1: at us sweetly separately in turn, and if she had
Speaker 1: said nice to meet you, I wouldn't have been a
Speaker 1: bit surprised. Then, as the pup went back into the
Speaker 1: cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl
Speaker 1: was reaching her head up towards the spout of the
Speaker 1: cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement she just
Speaker 1: made to bestow the kiss on Olivia, when her brother
Speaker 1: abruptly body slammed her out of the way, and her
Speaker 1: tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage. Then,
Speaker 1: to my shock and confusion, I heard a deep, threatening growl,
Speaker 1: a vengeful, a reverberating throughout the pet shop. My shock
Speaker 1: was because the growl was coming from me. The next
Speaker 1: sounds were from Olivia. My god, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: I didn't know it at the time, but as we
Speaker 1: turned to fight our way back to the street to
Speaker 1: have this conversation that we weren't going to have because
Speaker 1: we were leaving, I evidently half skidded into a display
Speaker 1: full of chew toys and bones. I couldn't see, but
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize my own tears until they hit the
Speaker 1: edges of my lips. Yes, somehow I managed to say
Speaker 1: it again, this time in despair. I always wanted a dog,
Speaker 1: but I could never have one. I'm sorry. Olivia finally
Speaker 1: figured out what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm
Speaker 1: an asshole. Newsy was now helping me to hold myself upright,
Speaker 1: steering me towards the door to the street. I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You
Speaker 1: told me, and I didn't believe you. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. The stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one
Speaker 1: on top of the other, Tiny, the Saint Bernard who
Speaker 1: only wanted to embrace me, and the mcconnons Mutt next door.
Speaker 1: Boots used to sit on my lap, and Tiny didn't
Speaker 1: make me sneezy, only scared me. And the mcconnons had
Speaker 1: three boys and a mother who baked cookies by the
Speaker 1: car load. Lot and Boots never left their side, and
Speaker 1: I was always at their house. And if I was allergic,
Speaker 1: how was it that I never once had a problem
Speaker 1: with Boots? How in the hell did that work? Huh?
Speaker 1: And what about Vladimir, that stray cat that my sister found.
Speaker 1: I used to live in the garage and behave like
Speaker 1: a dog and like to be carried around like a baby.
Speaker 1: How allergic was I? And that beautiful, beautiful little Maltese
Speaker 1: reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And the
Speaker 1: one time I took my dad's movie camera to the
Speaker 1: mcconnon's house, half of the film I made was of Boots.
Speaker 1: And what if I went back and got the allergy
Speaker 1: shots again? It was my mother who said she was
Speaker 1: really allergic, so I must be allergic, And what's the use?
Speaker 1: The little Maltese was perfect, and the next person who
Speaker 1: sees HER's going to snap her up in an instant.
Speaker 1: And I asked them just to let me try a
Speaker 1: little dog who wouldn't shed. And the only thing my
Speaker 1: mother would let me have were lizards. And I could
Speaker 1: take a zertech every day. And I'm so sorry, Tiny
Speaker 1: I didn't realize and I never said goodbye to Boots.
Speaker 1: And the Maltese is gone. She's gone, she's gone. She's
Speaker 1: my dog. I know it. I could feel it. She's
Speaker 1: my dog and she's gone. What happened next Beggar's fiction.
Speaker 1: And if Olivia's later life could beggar fiction, and it
Speaker 1: could involve RFK Junior, why shouldn't this part of her
Speaker 1: life from more than a decade ag go involve Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 1: Rudy Effing Juliani and his part of the story of
Speaker 1: Stevie Day and what happened to Stevie next? This is
Speaker 1: countdown back to the number one story on the countdown
Speaker 1: and the day I fell in love with a dog
Speaker 1: for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Olivia Uzi, and I left her in the pet shop
Speaker 1: and went home. We were walking up Park Avenue me
Speaker 1: mid meltdown, somehow nearing the armory on Park Avenue, one
Speaker 1: block west and four blocks north of that pet shop.
Speaker 1: To her credit, Olivia had kept me from throwing myself
Speaker 1: into traffic or dissolving into a puddle on East sixty
Speaker 1: second Street. The overwhelming sensation was not one of having
Speaker 1: left the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having
Speaker 1: left a part of myself in that shop that was
Speaker 1: my dog. I had never been more certain of anything
Speaker 1: in my life. And what was worse was she was
Speaker 1: obviously going to be taken snapped up by somebody else
Speaker 1: even before I could get back there. Who could resist her?
Speaker 1: I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused
Speaker 1: only when I had no choice but to shut up
Speaker 1: and gasp for breath, and the comments with which Olivia
Speaker 1: tried to soothe me in these interstices were self abnegating
Speaker 1: and solemn. She had talked me off the limb of
Speaker 1: my certainty that the dog had already been sold, and
Speaker 1: was now steering me back towards sanity. I had to,
Speaker 1: she said. Later, you were having a breakdown. She said,
Speaker 1: we should go home, and if I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: seriously about the practicalities of owning a dog, we could
Speaker 1: do that and still get the puppy the next morning,
Speaker 1: even if it meant delaying her scheduled departure next morning
Speaker 1: for DC. Don't worry, I'm sure she's still there. They
Speaker 1: were getting ready to close. Didn't you notice that she'll
Speaker 1: be there in the morning. For the first time, I exhaled,
Speaker 1: and then immediately went right back into a full panic. Wait,
Speaker 1: she's still in there, She's I sniffled anew, and the
Speaker 1: tears resumed. She's in that cage with that brother of
Speaker 1: hers in the basement somewhere. Before Olivia could try to
Speaker 1: answer that, and I swear this is true, Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 1: spilled down the stairs from the Park Avenue armory. A
Speaker 1: cop suddenly appeared from a different nowhere and put out
Speaker 1: an arm and firmly asked us to stop walking, and
Speaker 1: Juliani scuttled rodent like into his waiting car. A wife
Speaker 1: was with him. I did not and do not know
Speaker 1: which number. The driver was already closing the door behind
Speaker 1: them when I shouted at Rudy, how come my dog
Speaker 1: has to spend the night in a cage while that
Speaker 1: asshat is allowed to roam around this city without a
Speaker 1: leash on Later that evening, recalling my remark, Olivia said
Speaker 1: that was the first moment she thought we might just
Speaker 1: get home safe and sound after all, and I would
Speaker 1: not have to be institutionalized. Didn't take more than ten
Speaker 1: minutes to get back to my apartment from there, and
Speaker 1: we walked it in silence. I had long since saturated
Speaker 1: my handkerchief and some tissues Olivia had had in her
Speaker 1: pockets I was breathing deeply and restoratively now, and the
Speaker 1: sniffle frequency was reduced to once or twice per block.
Speaker 1: My mind, though wasted with dogs, I had known Boots, Tiny,
Speaker 1: Vladimir the cat, who was not a dog but might
Speaker 1: as well have been. Even Olivia's little Casey, dying out
Speaker 1: in her parents' home in Jersey and unaware of the
Speaker 1: seismic events which she had set in motion that day.
Speaker 1: Other dogs, to all the dogs in all of the
Speaker 1: stories of James Thurber that I had read on television
Speaker 1: every night, I had smiled along with his poetic, loving
Speaker 1: descriptions of them, but never confessed that I loved them
Speaker 1: as he must have. There was Samantha, whom my late
Speaker 1: friend Bruce Hagen used to bring everywhere, including our college
Speaker 1: radio station newsroom. Samantha was big enough to have had
Speaker 1: license plates. The first really big dog who didn't frighten me.
Speaker 1: There was my great aunt's Yorki or maybe Morky, whose
Speaker 1: gas was so potent that the Christmas just before I
Speaker 1: turned nine, my great uncle said he was convinced the
Speaker 1: dog had been a German terror weapon at Chateau Terrra,
Speaker 1: and he and I had bonded because I, just before
Speaker 1: I was nine, already knew what Chateau Terry was. There
Speaker 1: was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of my
Speaker 1: sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put on
Speaker 1: the phone with me. In my mind, they all stood
Speaker 1: before me, all lined up, all quiet, all smiling, smugly,
Speaker 1: with the kindest type of I told you so. Look
Speaker 1: on their gorgeous faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes, dogs who had belonged to neighbors or
Speaker 1: co workers past, who are just chance encounters on the
Speaker 1: streets of any of a dozen cities decades earlier. There
Speaker 1: were moments in which a glimpse this scene in my
Speaker 1: head and I saw all the dogs who'd ever lived. No,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Olivia said, I shouldn't have been that selfish,
Speaker 1: But now I was disagreeing with her, and as I
Speaker 1: unlocked our apartment door, I began to tell her of
Speaker 1: the dogs I had just been communing with, and what
Speaker 1: had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable, and perfect, but about
Speaker 1: which I needed as much to tell as I could
Speaker 1: from her in as short a period as possible, And
Speaker 1: she tried, well, you just take the dog wherever you can.
Speaker 1: My parents have been saying this a lot lately. Now
Speaker 1: they regret not doing more things with Casey, not adventures,
Speaker 1: not just to the park or outside. Just take her
Speaker 1: with you, just go out into the yard, or just
Speaker 1: hold her while you watch TV. You just let the
Speaker 1: dog in. We went through topic after topic, cleaning, training,
Speaker 1: poop handling, walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground
Speaker 1: level shelves, discipline, and most importantly, a backup plan in
Speaker 1: case this epiphany was false and I was still allergic,
Speaker 1: or terrified, or incompetent at it, or all three. Olivia
Speaker 1: was again extraordinarily helpful. I don't think it'll take much
Speaker 1: to convince my parents to take her. I mean, after
Speaker 1: Casey recovers, I can take her to DC tomorrow in
Speaker 1: the car. I'll bring her back next weekend. So in
Speaker 1: the interim, you can get the apartment ready, and you
Speaker 1: can get you ready, and you don't have to go
Speaker 1: in at the deep end. You have some time to prepare.
Speaker 1: I interrupted Olivia with a kiss. Let's go get her
Speaker 1: before they close. I don't want to wait. I'm still
Speaker 1: terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly.
Speaker 1: I had a sudden moment of doubt. This isn't just
Speaker 1: me having a breakdown, right, I mean, Olivia, she is extraordinary,
Speaker 1: isn't she? You know dogs? Olivia stopped being and now
Speaker 1: for the first time, looked at me like I had
Speaker 1: just gone crazy, even though I had gone crazy several
Speaker 1: moments before. She said, obviously, that kiss, that kiss that
Speaker 1: the dog gave me, that was a real kiss. The
Speaker 1: Pet's Shop had stayed open, partly because Olivia, again to
Speaker 1: her eternal credit, phoned them as we hit the street
Speaker 1: outside the apartment building, and partly because they said they
Speaker 1: knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see
Speaker 1: it sometimes. Also, you seemed well, kind of emotional. Olivia
Speaker 1: again helpfully mentioned that, in fact, I had had a breakdown.
Speaker 1: They had all the paraphernalia ready for me, little aqua
Speaker 1: colored bed, a series of attached gates that could be
Speaker 1: used as a pen or a barrier, gates which I
Speaker 1: still have. I got them out of the closet a
Speaker 1: week ago. There was a small pink blanket of training
Speaker 1: pads and the plastic holder for the pads. There was
Speaker 1: enough dry food to last a month. There was some
Speaker 1: horrific wet food that looked like a discarded early design
Speaker 1: for liverwurst. There was a few chew toys in a bag,
Speaker 1: a bright pink harness and a leash as light as
Speaker 1: a ribbon, a black carrying bag, and paperwork with the
Speaker 1: puppies family tree, which, to my astonishment, stretched back beyond
Speaker 1: her birth three months earlier, through the six preceding generations,
Speaker 1: all the way back to six entire years earlier. The
Speaker 1: stuff they sold me could have included a moped and
Speaker 1: a stock portfolio to guarantee her college education, and a
Speaker 1: Maltese sized typewriter with a twenty year supply of replacement ribbons,
Speaker 1: and I would have also bought them. A nice lady
Speaker 1: named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog
Speaker 1: owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a
Speaker 1: voucher for a vet and a check list of stuff
Speaker 1: to do. I signed a credit card bill. I think
Speaker 1: I used my own name. I absolved myself of the
Speaker 1: guilt of not getting a sheltered dog because I was
Speaker 1: allergic and kind of had to go to the shop
Speaker 1: and go the root of the bread dog, and vowed
Speaker 1: that I would do something for a shelter dog someday. Plus,
Speaker 1: I was not looking for a dog, I'd actually fallen
Speaker 1: in love it for at sight. And lastly, because no
Speaker 1: matter the obvious and often tragic flaws in that system
Speaker 1: of breeding, there was no argument with the fact that
Speaker 1: those who came from a pet shop had as much
Speaker 1: of a right to a happy life as any other dog.
Speaker 1: At that moment, they produced her from the back room
Speaker 1: behind the block of cages where we had first seen her.
Speaker 1: Curls had been fluffed up and her hair freshly brushed.
Speaker 1: It would be lovely to say that the little Maltese
Speaker 1: made eye contact from across the shop floor, or was
Speaker 1: aware of our presence, or yipped happily seeing me again,
Speaker 1: and it would be completely untrue. The little Maltese calmly
Speaker 1: scanned the room and only occasionally glanced up at the
Speaker 1: manager who carried her, and didn't look at us once
Speaker 1: until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed over to me,
Speaker 1: whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands, stuck
Speaker 1: her front paws up on my chest as she had Olivia's,
Speaker 1: and reached up to give me a kiss on the lips,
Speaker 1: and another, and a third, and my sunglasses conveniently hid
Speaker 1: the tears that welled up again. I managed to ask
Speaker 1: if they all did that, and no, came the answer
Speaker 1: from that original salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly, sweetest puff we've had
Speaker 1: here in months, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
Speaker 1: I marveled at how light she was, and yet how
Speaker 1: articulated and strong her body was. Her eyes were far
Speaker 1: more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy,
Speaker 1: almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown
Speaker 1: irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul who
Speaker 1: was about one two hundred and twelfth my age and
Speaker 1: one eighty seventh my weight, and who had a great
Speaker 1: great great great grandmother born in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: as opposed to my great great great great grandmother, who
Speaker 1: was born in seventeen sixty seven. She was meeting and
Speaker 1: holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was seeing
Speaker 1: in her eyes, whatever the inner being I was actually processing,
Speaker 1: she seemed to be doing her equivalent vetting of me.
Speaker 1: I kissed her, and was by now not surprised when
Speaker 1: she kissed me again. The little tongue poked out a
Speaker 1: fraction of an inch, just enough so any one of
Speaker 1: us dumb, unsubtle bipeds could tell she meant it. And
Speaker 1: then she, from her upright pose, settled back into my arms,
Speaker 1: her head in the crook of my right elbow, in
Speaker 1: an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat every
Speaker 1: time I ever picked her up, right through to about
Speaker 1: an hour ago. I guess it was an hour, hour
Speaker 1: and a half, maybe two hours before suddenly it dawned
Speaker 1: on me what her name was. She was Stevie. It
Speaker 1: was the haircut. She had, the haircut of Stevie Nicks. Stevie.
Speaker 1: Olivia did not like it at all, not at first.
Speaker 1: Within a week she was saying, I was wrong again,
Speaker 1: you got that exactly right. She is a effing Stevie,
Speaker 1: all right. Olivia's dog, Casey, who started all this, died
Speaker 1: within the month, and soon Olivia and I were back
Speaker 1: in that same pet shop, Olivia solemnly telling me we
Speaker 1: were going to get her folks a new dog. Make
Speaker 1: the decision for her, thus taking the guilt away from them.
Speaker 1: In point of fact, Olivia could not make up her
Speaker 1: mind which of two dogs to get her folks. That's
Speaker 1: when I was hit by a bolt of inspiration, as
Speaker 1: unexpected as the day Stevie rescued me. I said, wait,
Speaker 1: if we get one dog, that dog will always be
Speaker 1: Casey's replacement. That doesn't sound fun. But if we get
Speaker 1: them both, your folks won't feel guilty at all. I asked, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: you got a price on the two of them. Jeffrey
Speaker 1: looked at me like I was insane. Olivia looked at
Speaker 1: me like I was insane. I said, look, I haven't
Speaker 1: figured this out completely, but this just makes sense. Two
Speaker 1: dogs as a team. Neither of them will be a replacement. Together,
Speaker 1: there'll be successors. Just work with me on this. Olivia
Speaker 1: left the next day for her folks house with Holly
Speaker 1: the albino chihuah and Milo the Maltese. And it was
Speaker 1: genius of her she named the dogs in advance, so
Speaker 1: that when she brought them in to meet her grief
Speaker 1: stricken folks, they weren't just dogs. I'd like you to
Speaker 1: meet Holly and Milo. They were individuals. If you're ever
Speaker 1: in this situation where you want to give somebody a
Speaker 1: dog and you don't know if they want them, or
Speaker 1: you don't know if they're going to take them, name
Speaker 1: the dog in advance. Well, it didn't work. Olivia texted
Speaker 1: me that her mother would not even look at them.
Speaker 1: I don't want Holly and Milo, I want Casey, she said,
Speaker 1: she was seated in a darkened room holding the dead
Speaker 1: dog's picture. I said, all right, give it half an hour.
Speaker 1: Keep the car there. Worst thing happens here, you and
Speaker 1: I we suddenly have three dogs. I like dogs, Stevie
Speaker 1: likes dogs. You like dogs. Our far worse outcomes here.
Speaker 1: Give it half an hour. Twenty minutes later, I get
Speaker 1: another text from Olivia. It's a photo with the caption,
Speaker 1: my god, it worked. The picture is of mister and
Speaker 1: missus Noosey rolling on the floor laughing with Holly and
Speaker 1: Milo twenty minutes. Twenty minutes from suicidal despair to rolling
Speaker 1: on the floor with puppies. The solution to the problems
Speaker 1: of dogs is more dogs. Olivia's parents are long gone.
Speaker 1: I like them both, and they liked me. I'd love
Speaker 1: to know what happened to the dogs. I do know
Speaker 1: Milo was a cousin of Stevie's. More importantly, I do
Speaker 1: know Holly and Milo and Olivia's parents made each other happy,
Speaker 1: and after that, her parents treated me like gold and
Speaker 1: every Christmas we would all gather at their house with
Speaker 1: all the dogs, dogs plural. Olivia and I went and
Speaker 1: got Rose, Stevie's sister. A year later, and after Olviya
Speaker 1: and I broke up, I happened to run into at
Speaker 1: a pet shop. Of course, the woman who leads the
Speaker 1: American Maltese Association rescue group. Of course I did. I
Speaker 1: was walking Stevie and Rose. A year later, Ted, my
Speaker 1: rescue with the bad Heart, arrived and he had surgery
Speaker 1: and he's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with the bad Heart,
Speaker 1: was here for just a couple of months. He had
Speaker 1: a very happy life. He just didn't have a very
Speaker 1: long one. Minee got here just before his fifteenth birthday left,
Speaker 1: as I said, just after his seventeenth. He and Mishu
Speaker 1: are now commemorated with tattoos. They are with me always.
Speaker 1: It's a crowd. Who's that old man with those tiny dogs?
Speaker 1: But then again, I wasted the first fifty three years
Speaker 1: of my goddamned life living without a so I have
Speaker 1: to make up for our lost time as many dogs
Speaker 1: as I can fill into the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Menai's roster spot will be filled again. There
Speaker 1: will be a dog in need soon enough. All the
Speaker 1: stuff you see for me about dogs on Twitter, all
Speaker 1: the dog videos, all the fundraising requests, all of this
Speaker 1: came from one event. As Anatole France wrote, until one
Speaker 1: has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
Speaker 1: Twelve years ago today, when it became official, I was
Speaker 1: born again in dogs and Stevie adopted me. So as
Speaker 1: you shake your head about the headline Olivia Newsy story,
Speaker 1: or laugh or cry or like me all of the above,
Speaker 1: Holy crap, please remember this Olivia Newsy story as well.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Now I can go back and play
Speaker 1: with the dogs. We are now back to five episodes
Speaker 1: a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Once again,
Speaker 1: there is a Monday countdown. You're listening to it now.
Speaker 1: Please send this podcast to somebody who doesn't listen but should.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors, have
Speaker 1: Countdown Arrange produced and performed most of our music. Mister
Speaker 1: Shanelle had liled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, bass and drums. He's the guy who likes
Speaker 1: to update the themes. He's really into it. Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 1: The music was produced by Tko Brothers Our Satirical on fifty.
Speaker 1: Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my late friend George Carlin. Everything
Speaker 1: else was pretty much my fault. I have a signed
Speaker 1: picture from George in which he is holding a dog
Speaker 1: that's countdown for today, five weeks and one day until
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty fourth day since convicted felon drooling. Jay Trump's the
Speaker 1: first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
Speaker 1: United States. Use the election, use the mental health system,
Speaker 1: use presidential immunity if we have to, to keep him
Speaker 1: from doing it again while we still can. And as
Speaker 1: a reminder, he and that idiot JV Vance don't like dogs.
Speaker 1: F them both. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
Speaker 1: as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Alremman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Ulreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.