Teeth always ready. Direwolf.

Just a narrative now. Think he was there when I died on South Street. Showed him the blue picture from the previous post. He started and got off the couch.

Something happened on South Street. Or will. Lots of people know it. A deerhound confirms it. He was the King’s Guard.

Why he’s ten times stronger, smarter, and more focused than any deerhound you’ve ever seen. We have the same nightmares.

Starting to understand why he’s over protective…

As a doornail. Don’t think he’s at peace.

But I’m not. You’ll probably be stuck with my confessions longer than his.

P.S. Nastiest thing you ever said to me, George: the old stuff was no longer interesting. In the old days it was sting like a hornet… Now it’s lay them out on the floor however. I had a rapier. Now I’m the MMA of writing. Which do you prefer?

It’s all good.

He wants that big leg over mine. I want it there too. We’ll talk about destroying the house and the status quo ante later. (No we won’t.) Think about what it’s like to have a conscious, flawed being in thrall to you. They know some of your commands. They disobey constantly. You threaten them with all kinds of doom. But dammit, there’s some love in there, and golden calfs etc notwithstanding, you know when all is said and done you’re the one they love.

Which is why absolution is not abstract but easy.

I have no empathy. On the other hand, I’m not a Scot. (But I do wear a genie bra, as you will see.)

Some of you suffered through The Killing. A Scandinavian thing. Now we get the derivatives. For once, the Americans and the Brits get to go head to head in approximately the same season. Aiming at the target of being, uh, Scandinavian. It’s going to take ten or twenty episodes to unmask the murderer. Sheesh.

The Bridge is upsetting. An autistic American detective and a corrupt Mexican detective get drawn deeper and deeper into a thoroughly sordid mess. Cool. How Swedish.

Broadchurch is upsetting. A devastated detective inspector gets drawn into a grisly murder he got exiled from Scotland Yard into the rural wilderness to avoid. Cool. How Norwegian.

It’s all going to take hours and hours (and hours) to work out. How Danish. Hopefully avec cheese.

Nothing is ever going to be resolved. How Finnish. Let’s tango instead. Oh. Sorry. That’s what these shows are really about, isn’t it? Tango…

Actually, we were just fooling. Life means absolutely nothing. How Icelandic. The pinnacle editors of the Providence Journal are aspiring to. We can only hope they will someday make it, along with all the rest of the Harold Parmington Foundation…

[Many views of life. There’s the enormous plurality of Scandinavians and also a few others, including the few who aren’t just pretending they believe in Christianity. I’m told there are at least two or three people in New England who aren’t Irish or Italian and yet believe in the Nicene Creed. But it’s the Nordic view we need to be, well, progressive. Something about self hatred. Like this and this. Just trying to be clear.]

Each has its selling points. The Bridge makes blonde autism sexy. Broadchurch makes angry Scottish fatalism sexy. Who am I voting for?

Me, I’m betting on the autistic star of The Bridge. She’s not as heartless, unfeeling, and automatic as she looks. The burned out Scot in Broadchurch is worse.

Well, not really. She’s just more amusing. Same scene, more or less, in both shows. Partner does autistic girl a solid and she ignores it. “You’re welcome,” he says. She responds, “I didn’t say thanks.” Almost the same scene with the resentful second in command in Broadchurch. She gets her DCI coffee and then later in the day fish’n’chips, and he disdains both. The second in command says, basically, hey, you’re a prick because you never thanked me for anything, like, say, coffee and fish’n’chips, and he tells her it’s a murder investigation and get back to work. Who’s more charming? (Answer: Annika Bengtzon, subtitles notwithstanding — or bedamned. I mean, look at her…)

Of course, what am I voting on? The autistic detective in The Bridge is probably more deep down human than the DCI in Broadchurch. On the other hand, a Scottish lowlife with a troubling past and a case of general misanthropy is probably more likely to solve his murder in less than two seasons.

The ticket window is open. Place your bets…

Not Izzie, I admit.

An incredibly moving book about what it’s like to be all alone with a vision and a fear you can never realize it. If you don’t read the others, read this one. The final scene in the jungle when you’re tracking the jaguar and realize it’s been tracking you instead is the perfect intro for the next, and lesser if more important, two.

He drags his prey into the tree all alone.

No. He’s not a nice guy. Why I can relate. He’s the lawyer Rush Limbaugh refers to as “The Great One.” He is. Maybe the only one who can specify the depth of the constitutional crisis we’re facing with a president who should be impeached on a couple of dozen counts. Number One on Amazon by the way.

No. Not even a conservative.

Libertarian. And a scrupulous journalist. Which makes him a lonely hunter indeed.

Trust you to find these books at Amazon on your own. Jaguars never hold you by the hand. They just get into your head and never leave.

Well, you know, ask Rabinowitz about it.

Intrigue in Dayton

A slow-building tour de force of a movie. Minimalist dialogue. A gathering sense of menace and betrayal. It seems slow for a long time until you realize you are being played. Everything is far deeper and more desperate than you thought. Then all hell breaks loose after a fine homage to The Crow, and there’s a screaming attack that’s one of the most terrifying acts of vengeance you have ever seen.

And it all takes place in Dayton, Ohio, where it was all filmed and which I recognized within the first five minutes. Go figure.

Showed it to my wife, whom I knew would discount the Dayton connection. She was rapt.

Take a look. I was haunted enough to watch it a second time to show it to my wife. Ask her. I do that very very rarely. It got to me.

At 8:15 precisely.

The war of wits continues. Yesterday, he got through the gate despite the bicycle lock. Impossible for any dog I’ve ever known. He was very pleased with himself.

Here he is, telling my wife that it’s time to go to bed. And, yes, the time was exactly 8:15 pm.

My wife’s fault clearly. I was doing it right, with a sort of standoffish Scottish bonhomie. Then came the broken arm. Suddenly he got the last bite of whatever she was eating, from tuna subs to Tastycake butterscotch krimpets. And she rubbed his tummy. Now he paws at her for tummy rubs. Scots should never get tummy rubs. We’re too prone to irrational fixations. Why do you think we’re so harsh all the time? Because we’re such soft touches.

Now we have a problem. No way to restrain him anywhere. Except at 8:15 pm.

Thank God for that.

A Ferrari that begs to be driven

Here’s the wonderful news:

A rare 1960s Ferrari convertible sold for a record $27.5 million in a weekend car auction.

The 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4*S NART Spyder’s price was the most paid at auction for the Italian carmaker anywhere in the world and the most for any car bought at a U.S. public sale.

A 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4*S NART Spyder. One of only 10 made, was estimated at $14 million to $17 million in a two-day sale held by RM Auctions in Monterey, California, on Aug. 16-17. The car sold for $27.5 million with fees, the most paid at auction for the Italian carmaker anywhere in the world and the most for any car bought at a U.S. public auction.

“The NART Spyder is a very special car,” the U.K.-based dealer John Collins, one of the underbidders at the RM Auctions event, said in a telephone interview. “They’re so rare. They’re among the most beautiful of all Ferraris. Some of the biggest collectors in the world own one, and Steve McQueen tried to buy this one after he crashed his,” said Collins, of the Talacrest dealership.

Wonder why Steve McQueen wanted another one. Actually, I don’t wonder. He wanted to drive it. But you can’t drive a 27 million dollar car. You put it in a vault. It’s like bronzing Sophia Loren rather than bedding her. A total waste.

The story is presented as some kind of triumph. It just isn’t. I’m not normally in the camp of the 99-percenter hysterics, but this is one time when I am.

Such cars should be experienced, not entombed in sterile museum exhibits by the rich acquisitive old men who can afford to buy them and display them like trophy wives they’re impotent to satisfy physically.

This is not a sudden new subject for me. I remember that the fabled Concours d’Elegance, where all the world’s greatest cars are judged and (sometimes) sold, some years back required that the entered cars be driven in a quasi-race to prove that they were still cars. I remember learning two decades ago that an incredibly high percentage of the original 200 427 Cobras were still intact, having found their way into the hands of owners who knew how to drive such recklessly fast and relatively poor handling monsters without wrecking them. (Based on today’s news, no longer true, I’m sure.) And I remember attending a Bugatti — Hispano Suiza meet some quarter century ago in which the Hispanos were worshipped as works of art while the Bugattis were engaged in a flat-out race, dinged and sliding and determined to win. Yes, the Hispanos were some of the loveliest things I’d ever seen. But the Bugattis smelled like hot Castrol R. Which, to this day, is a smell that intoxicates me more than any other, including even you know. It’s that magical.

[Go ahead. Test it for yourself. Buy a can of Castrol R, which is made from castor beans. No petroleum involved. Heat it up on the stove. Drink it in through your olfactory organs. Then tell me you wouldn’t follow that smell to the last open highway, even if the other was beckoning from the bed.]

I’m not resentful of the rich. I’m tired of the idea that mere money is a complete substitute for passion, skill, learning, esthetic appreciation, and the resolve of the committed to be close to, even intimate with, the entities they love.

It’s a disaster. Not a small one. It’s a diminution of humanity. A Ferrari is not Michelangelo’s David or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Those are things you can look at. A Ferrari is something you have to feel, hear, steer, shift, smell, and regard the rest of the world from inside on a desperately winding road. You know, like living life.

Something not meant to be bought or sold like stocks.

But maybe that’s just me.

Yeah. I’m cool.

Only posting this because Saturday will be the debut of the Fox Sports Channel. Don’t actually have a lot of hope for that, but I am well and truly done with ESPN. They hired Keith Olbermann. Who does that? Who is so blind bone stupid that it’s somehow okay to sheer off half your total potential audience at a single stroke? Only the kind of maniac who also can’t figure out that national sports coverage shouldn’t consist of obsessive focus on the Yankees and Red Sox, the New York Jets, and A-Rod. As if we all, every one of us, give a crap about those things.

Tell me I’m bad. I’ll tell you I’m still me.

So he got ahead of himself this morning. He growled and then snapped at me. I did what most men my age would do. I belted him right across the face with all my might. Hell of a punch. Lifted him right off his feet.

My wife agreed that it was the right medicine.

You know? He needed it. He’s been better since. Kind of a thank you daddy moment. Now I await your abuse…

Love me, love me not.