Sprinkles is a 12 week old pup that was abandoned outside a jail in Puerto Rico when she was just a few weeks old. 

The amazing people at Safe and Sound Satos rescued her, cleaned her up, and flew her to NYC while awaiting adoption. But they didn’t have anywhere for her to stay while she waited. 

I’m a life-long dog lover. And the feeling is mutual. Dogs know I love them, and they love me back. The first time I meet a new dog, he or she usually just rolls over and lets me rub their belly. They know I am a friend of the canine. 

I’ve been wanting to get a dog of my own for forever. But my lifestyle is the complete opposite of one that works for having a dog. I work all the time. I’m out most nights. I travel unpredictably. I live in a small apartment on the 17th floor of a glass tower building, surrounded by concrete sidewalks.

But I’ve wanted to have a dog for so long that when some friends at work told me about Sprinkles, I looked at my schedule and saw that I’d be in town for 10 whole days in a row, a rare break in my travel schedule. I agreed to take her in until she finds a home. 

I imagined that I’d need to change my lifestyle a bit to add her to the mix.

That was a bit of an understatement. 

Sprinkles has been here 48 hours.

I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I no longer shower. I only leave the house to walk Sprinkles. I may have to quit my job soon. I just don’t see any way to be a full time caregiver to Sprinkles and also work.

It used to be, the first thing I did when I woke up was to read my email in bed, look at my schedule, prepare myself for the day.

Now, when I wake up, I put on pants and shoes like the house is on fire and try to put Sprinkles harness on before she pees on the carpet. I’m batting .500 so far. 

My building has a small courtyard. It’s actually terrible. It’s just some bricks and dirt patches. The only thing it’s good for is to let a dog relieve themselves. So on the first day, I took Sprinkles to the courtyard. She peed. I got yelled at by the building manager, saying that no dogs are allowed in the courtyard. What kind of a building allows dogs but doesn’t let them pee in the only outdoor space? 

Sprinkles  #1 skill is looking cute. She does this tremendously well. All-star level. People on the street stop me ALL the time to ask about her. “What kind of a dog is she?” Nobody knows. Then they ask the obvious follow up: “What’s her name?” When I say “Sprinkles” they look at her cute face for a second and laugh… then they look up at me, and get really weirded out. By the time I start explaining the whole rescue thing, they’ve already got me pegged as a pedo. 

(I could change her name, but that doesn’t feel fair to her forever owner, who should get that privilege. That said, she has no idea what her name is so I’m probably overthinking that.)

 

To be honest, her #1 skill is also her only skill. 

I can’t walk her. She stops ever 30 seconds. 

I take her for long walks anyway, because they say that I should tire her out. I’m tired, she’s fine. At the end of the walk, we come back upstairs in time for her to pee on the carpet. 

I Google a lot of puppy articles. Facebook is now serving me exclusively dog ads. People say that when you first get a puppy, you shouldn’t leave her right away, because she needs to feel safe. But they also say you need to leave her so she doesn’t develop separation anxiety. (I’ve found that if you google enough, you can find contradictory advice on pretty much every topic.)

So I stayed with her a lot for the first 48 hours, but this morning I set up a dog playpen with a gate for her to stay in if and when I’m ever able to leave. I tried it out for 10 minutes this morning. To say that she was unhappy would be like saying that I’m unhappy with the Red Sox start to the season. She cried and cried. I stood outside the door watching on video and listening through the door. The first test did not go well. 

On the plus side, I might not have to worry about living on the 17th floor anymore, because my building is likely to evict me. 

Sprinkles is a puppy, so of course her hobbies are playing and sleeping. She can be a little bite-y, as google says all puppies are. Sometimes I try to rationalize with her. “Sprinkles- that shit might fly on the mean streets of Puerto Rico, but you have to get it together up here.” She doesn’t seem to get it. 

I know it’s a cliche, but Sprinkles loves to pee. (Maybe THAT’S where the name comes from?) 

When we can’t make it outside, which is most of the time because she pees every hour so we’d basically have to live outside, I try to get her to pee on the pee pads. I even bought one of the ones that looks like grass. 

I’ve read that I’m supposed to celebrate when she pees on the pad, and give her some treats. I celebrate. I celebrate like she just hit a grand slam in the World Series. Sprinkles is nonplussed.

If she happens to be in the area of a pee pad, she might grant it the gift of her urine. Most of the time, though, wherever she happens to be standing when the mood strikes is preferable. 

The first time I read this story on the inventor of wee wee pads listing their home for $39.9m, it didn’t make sense to me. 

https://ny.curbed.com/2019/4/9/18303492/upper-east-side-manhattan-apartment-for-sale

That’s a lot of money for anyone, but for dog pee pads? The money had to come from somewhere else. 

48 hours into watching Sprinkles, I get it entirely. Further, I’ve invested all of my money in companies that make rags and those small plastic bags that I use to pick up her poop. 

Wish me luck!

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series!

And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I didn’t play shortstop or right field. I didn’t manage. I didn’t help decide who should be on the team. I didn’t even sell beer at Fenway Park to help pay for it all.

I did NOTHING to contribute to this monumental season. But it sure was fun.

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.” That’s a phrase I don’t really believe in or live by. Sounds kind of lame, to be honest.

But in the case of being a baseball fan, the journey is all we really have.

Jerry Seinfeld said it best…what are we really rooting for, anyway? The players want to win, sure. But really, they want to make the most money. The teams are owned by billionaires. When we root for our team, are we just rooting for the clothes?

 

 

Why rush home for work in time for first pitch, on a Tuesday in April against Baltimore? Why turn the radio to WEEI as soon as I get in the car? Why fly to Florida for spring training games, or Boston for the regular season? Why do I care if Chris Sale gets his 12th strikeout in an inconsequential game in June? Why do I agonize over pitching changes, second guess contract renewals, scrutinize the lefty/righty matchups, and study the payroll after every roster move?

These moves don’t really matter, these guys don’t really care about me, and I have no impact on the game.

And yet…just as I’m fully coming to terms with all of that, I’ve never been a bigger baseball fan.

It’s simultaneously relaxing and riveting. There’s nothing better than a warm summer day with baseball on the radio, the perfect backdrop for relaxing by the pool. Fast forward a couple of months, and you’re glued to the screen, studying every sign from the catcher before every pitch.

Some nights you see every pitch, some nights you miss a whole game. But baseball is there for you the next day, either way.

Maybe it’s the storylines. There’s always somebody playing better than they should, or worse. There’s team drama. Somebody’s hurt. Somebody said something stupid.

Maybe it’s the length of the season? February thru October, almost all of the best parts of the year.

Maybe it’s the shared language you have with other fans, the inside jokes, the latest news tweets from a favorite writer.

Maybe it’s just pure fun. Go out to the ballpark on a warm summer night, drink some beers, watch some guys play a great game.

I don’t know.

Sure, winning the World Series was fun. But it was just another game in a long, fun season.

Pitchers & Catchers report in 114 days. I can’t wait.

 

Since the dawn of time, bloggers who don’t post very often have started off their posts with the reasons they have been sidetracked, and sincere promises to “start back up again.” Like dieters who just need that one last day before they get “back on the wagon,” these bloggers lie to themselves and their readers about what they know will happen next: another long lag between posts. So in this grand tradition, I proudly present to you my latest (but not last) excuse: I’ve had the flu.

No, not the flu that you get from drinking too much, or the flu that’s really a cold but you call it a flu so you can get an extra day off of work. I had vacation time scheduled anyway, so I was truly the only victim here.

When you’re stuck in bed for several days, little things start to annoy you. Actually, everything starts to annoy you. But since being stuck in bed in front of a TV is all you have to do, TV is what annoys you most.

I’ve made a list of a few observations from my week with the flu, in no particular order.

1-Could anyone possibly still have an undiscovered case of mesothelioma? Where has this person been for the last decade?

2- The new Starz series Boss is incredibly depressing. Kelsey Grammer is good in it, but wow, it does not make you feel good about life. I don’t recommend you watch it while stuck in bed.

3- Tom Cruise is always a good guy. Even if you think he’s bad, he’s actually good. No, he’s not a double agent. The other guy is. Yes, even if it looks like he’s doing something really bad, he’s still good.

4- Remind me NEVER to watch another movie on the TV Guide Channel. I started watching The Pelican Brief on TV Guide Channel. I wasn’t in any shape to time it, but I would estimate that they were running 30 minutes an hour of commercials. In order to accomplish this, they edited out key scenes in the movie so poorly that sometimes they would rejoin the movie with dialogue in progress. Finally, the audio wasn’t synced with the video. All in all, a quality experience.

5- I spent some quality time watching The Science Channel, until I couldn’t take the “Dragon Naturally Speaking” commercials anymore. Seemingly every commercial break, they would play a 5 MINUTE LONG commercial. The same one every time. If you want to torture yourself, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbffVqWIKqw

6- I know that there have always been a lot of crazy prescription medicines out there for crazy illnesses, but the one that give you longer eyelashes has to be the best one ever. Seriously.

7- Finally, a word about Time Warner Cable. My Tivo isn’t getting certain channels because the tuning adapter provided by TWC isn’t working right. My appointment was for Monday 2-4, a time period when I was at my very worst. But I dragged myself out of bed. I could probably drag this out, but most of you already know the ending: the person that Time Warner Cable sent to replace my tuning adapter failed to bring any tuning adapters with them.

I know this blog has been a bit of a downer, so let me leave you with some practical advice. Get a flu shot.

I always wanted to be a writer.

Communicating with people through the written word is so powerful. In my business, I tend to think that the emotional connection that the audience has with their favorite radio host is among the most powerful bond in media. But a great writer has a similar bond with the audience. The power to make someone laugh, to make them think, to make them understand something, or just to entertain. I’m not the first person to write about writing, but it is something that’s important to me, so I guess that’s what this blog is all about. (In fact, this blog is named after a piece of dialogue that one of my favorite writers often used in his books, “Be Fools Not To.”)

In hanging around radio and TV studios for the past 6 years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many celebrities, and many “celebrities.” In most cases, I’ve turned down those opportunities. However, the list of people that I actually have gone out of my way to meet is an interesting one. I flew across the country on the hopes of meeting Aaron Sorkin. (I did.) I waited in quite a long line to meet Michael Lewis. I interrupted David Baldacci at a cocktail party for the opportunity to tell him what a big fan I am. I never got to meet Robert B. Parker before he died, but I did try on several occasions to get up to Boston for one of his very rare public appearances.

Being a writer seemed like a dream career for me. The romanticism of spending my days at a little coffee shop by the fire, churning out great words. The freedom…no bosses, no Outlook email, just me and a blank Word document.

But I rarely wrote anything. Once in a while I contributed something to our magazine. Very rarely. But most days, I didn’t write anything. I have a very good excuse for not writing: I have a full time job. That job doesn’t allow me to spend my days at coffee shops dreaming of movie scripts or plots for fiction novels, or even blog post ideas.

Someday, I thought. I won’t have hundreds of emails to return or calls to make, and I’ll be able to really focus on writing.

I went out for a drink with my friend John Bobey a few years back, himself a writer with a long resume. John will appreciate it if I say that his advice is often dubious, so listening to John on all things is not necessarily a smart life choice. However, on this occasion, he said something profound.

“Writers Write.”

We were talking about my love for writing, or more accurately my love for talking about writing. John reminded me that the real life of a writer is nowhere near as I imagine it to be. Everyone, even full time writers, have constant pressures and obligations, phone calls, emails, and deadlines. Aaron Sorkin doesn’t sit in a cafe all day drinking lattes and brainstorming movie ideas. And successful writers these days are also marketers, business people, etc. For successful writers, writing is only a small piece of what they do. The difference between “writers” and “wanna-be writers” is simple: writers write.

I have tremendous admiration for those mentioned above, as well as newspaper and magazine writers who push themselves to write every single day.

When I started this blog a few weeks ago, I committed to writing. And so far i’d give myself a D. There’s more than one entry, but there’s less than there should be. But for now I’ll keep at it, find the time where I can to put some thoughts down on “paper” and hope that this writing becomes a habit.

And keep dreaming of the day that will never come, with no phone calls, no emails, and a coffee shop with a fireplace and a comfy couch.