As promised this morning.
Yesterday I was in a jaunty mood and took a zippity-doo-dah walk along (and also in! and perhaps even through!) (it was a banner day, preposition-wise!) Riverside Park and met a couple of really groovy dogs. I will put their photos in the Dogabout gallery tonight, so be sure to check back.
My walk took me down Broadway, where I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a beautiful bulldog. I mooshed his face long enough to appear relatively normal (which is more than I can say for the way I behaved with two dogs I’d met earlier, in the park) and asked his “dad” how old the dog was (one year). The dad then offered the information that the dog was a bulldog, which was like saying of an ice cream cone, “This is an ice cream cone.”
Just as I was about to ask if I could take a photo of this pulchritudinous pup, I found out that his “dad” wasn’t his dad. The man walking the dog was doing so for the dog’s famous real dad. But because I figured that any request for a photo would now be refused, and because I did not want to seem like a celebrity-sniffing lunatic, I left my camera in my pocket. I knew that if I did so much as pull the flap aside and allow the light of day into the pocket, the camera would leap out with its little tophat and cane and do its usual tapdance routine until I had no choice but to let it take a picture.
I still wanted a photo, anyway. So I sort of hung around, about 20 feet from where the man and dog were standing (outside a Starbucks), my hand on the pocketed camera, occasionally looking at my watch so the guy wouldn’t think I was lurking with the intent of trying to snap a secret photo with my hidden camera, but was just waiting around for a tardy friend. He looked over at me several times, but each time I glanced at the glass doors of the office building behind me as if waiting for that tardy friend to exit. I put on my best ‘Jesus Christ, where is she?” face. Oh, dog-guy, I thought, I barely even know you’re there anymore. I don’t have all the time in the world for my fake friend to meet me for an imaginary lunch for which she’s already late, so, really, you can leave for all I care!
Obviously my telepathy worked, and the man and dog walked past me … just as I was on the phone with the DOG, telling him whose dog I’d just met. “They just passed me!” I said. Apparently I didn’t say it as softly as I’d thought, because the man looked at me. And then stopped about ten feet away from me, on my right. On the opposite side of me from where the impatient camera laid in wait.
I ended my call, crossed my arms, gripped the camera in my left pocket with my right hand, and hid it under my elbow. Several times I depressed the “on” button and casually turned toward my subject to quickly snap a photo (and then run off into the crowd!), but every time I did so, the man magically looked over at me. What the hell was he looking at? Didn’t he ever see a girl waiting outside an office building with her arms crossed before? Some people!
Eventually they started walking away, west on 52nd Street. I had to pretend I was still waiting for that friend, though, so I didn’t leave my post for about 15 seconds. And then I walked off in dogged (heehaw!) pursuit of my subject. But by then the man and dog were already too far away, and I didn’t dare run after them, barking. Instead, I just pulled out my camera, depressed the “on” button, zoomed in as far as I could, and took this horrible, fuzzy shot:
So here’s the part where you participate (i.e. comment). I want you to tell me whose dog you think the bulldog is. I will give you four clues:
- The person is an actor.
- The person is a handsome man.
- I’ve met the handsome man actor in person. (“I’ve met him,” I told the dog’s walker, “and I don’t know who’s better-looking … him or the dog!?” Then we LOL’d and the dog rolled his eyes at me and said, “Ha. Ha. Moron.” My camera also pinched the hand that grabbed it in the pocket, and licked the word “Idiot” into my palm, sorta kinda like Helen Keller.)
- The dog’s name is the actor’s last name.
The first person to guess correctly wins a prize!*
* My admiration