I look at it this way: You can track pop culture through slavish devotion to, and reading of, NN.C.

Or you can wait for the Washington Post to catch up.

Your call.

Sweet criminey, but the work just keeps on comin’. Not that this makes me a bad blogger — for you, I always have time — but it does make me a dull boy. Yesterday I finally looked up from my glowing screen, observed a beautiful day in progress outdoors, and made a run for the pool. I sat under an umbrella and read analog media while Kate swam.

A woman nearby was there with three young children. The whole family seemed a little overrevved; after a minor incident between the two little boys, the older boy had a toddler-style meltdown. (And he wasn’t a toddler.) He was actually jumping up and down in front of his mother, demanding justice for his little brother, which I suspect involved beheading or caning. She finally ended the tirade with a backhanded slap to the midsection and a few harsh words in a foreign tongue. The boy shrieked, “I’M NEVER COMING TO THE POOL AGAIN!” and went off to sulk.

After a bit, a man arrived, not dressed for the pool (black socks with Top-Siders — OMG!). He seemed thrilled to see the children, and the children were thrilled to see him. The mother sat as if turned to stone. I went back to my reading, and when I looked up again, he was gone, and mother was screaming at someone on her cell phone. I mean: Screaming. In another language, which I couldn’t identify, but it had many harsh fricatives. This went on at length; people were edging away from her. Finally she slammed the phone shut, sat up and wept for a while behind her sunglasses. In the midst of this, her youngest, a girl of about one, began to wail. She ignored the screaming baby for what seemed like hours. It was a grim, grim scene.

What are you supposed to do at times like these? I mean, if I had three kids under five and a presumably estranged husband, not to mention about 60 pounds of weight to lose, I’d feel like screaming and weeping myself. But to go over and offer her support would be an open acknowledgment that all this stuff is going on in public, which would be embarrassing, and…and…

I went back to my book. Her burden seemed too enormous, not only for her, but for me, too.

And now I have approximately…checking…2,500 words of copy to send singing out of the house by day’s end. Time to cry havoc and let slip.

Man, you gotta love the British press. If I lived in London, I’d spend all day reading the papers. How can you not love a paper that gives the world a headline like this:

Friend of presidents, defrauder of millions: Texas elite bids farewell to ‘Kenny boy’

The story’s not bad, either. It contains a detail I hadn’t yet heard: Even on his last night alive, Lay was reportedly heckled by diners at an Italian restaurant in Colorado, prompting him to finish his chicken parmesan and leave hurriedly with his wife, Linda.

Each man’s death diminishes me, blah blah blah. But still, that’s kinda funny. A guy with a bad ticker probably shouldn’t be eating chicken parmesan.

“Heckled.” I wonder what form that took. This was Aspen or its environs, after all, and presumably Kenny Boy and Linda weren’t eating at the Olive Garden, but among others of their class, at some place where they know how to pronounce “trattoria.” How do folks like that heckle? A hip check as they pass the table returning from the restroom? A thrown breadstick? A loud request of the waiter? (“Can we have a new table? There seems to be a BAD SMELL in this corner of the room.”) Or outright, classic-definition-of-the-word heckling, as in “Hey, Kenny, I lost my ass on your stock, you jerk.” Somehow I doubt any of the comments had anything to do with the workers deprived of their pensions and savings. Rich people may be people, too, but the keenest pain is always reserved for themselves. They’re like everyone else in that way, too.

A tiny bit o’ bloggage: Two guys walk into a bar in Irkutsk, a much better headline than what’s on this very entertaining essay about the jokes of Communism.

All I’ve done this week is work. So I have to go do some more. Maybe I’ll surface later today, but in the meantime, rattle Kenny Boy’s dead thievin’ bones in the comments!

Some years ago, Alan and I attended the Halloween parade in Defiance, Ohio. Those who attend such events know that a big portion consists of fire trucks, police cars and other public-safety conveyances, lights and sirens a-goin’, for the delight of children lining the route.

This particular year, one police agency showed off its latest toy — a handsome mobile command center, an enormous vehicle, a police station on wheels, presumably for use in the sorts of disasters that strike a place like Defiance. (Crickets.) OK, tornadoes. And floods. What if the police station was flooded? They would need that mobile command center.

Alan is all for public safety, but only recently we had been discussing the news that the city swimming pools might have to close for lack of funding. “But the taxpayers can afford that?” he fumed.

Of course, the taxpayers probably can’t afford that, but Uncle Sam can, and I’d wager my next meager paycheck that at least some of the bill was picked up by a federal agency entrusted with keeping Defiance safe from al-Qaeda attack. Every smart police chief and sheriff knows there’s money galore for such things, if you know where to look.

(That Klan rally in Fort Wayne I alluded to a few days ago? When the Klan spoke outside the county courthouse, the perimeter was protected by a line of sheriff’s deputies, each one holding a brand-spanking-new plexiglas riot shield. Riots are a rare event in Allen County. I began to suspect having a couple dozen tooth-challenged Klansmen hold a rally was the best thing that ever happened to the sheriff’s equipment budget.)

Anyway. I think I’m right:

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.�? But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place�? sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent�? are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

Oh, it gets better. Ready?

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

Indiana, “the most target-rich place in the nation” for terrorist attacks. They should put that on the license plates.

Even the locals are baffled: One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name. “I am out in the middle of nowhere,�? said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.�?

Amusingly enough, Lehman’s congressman is hard at work building a national reputation for opposition to wasteful government spending. Of course, just being on the list doesn’t mean Lehman qualifies for his own half-price mobile command center or anything like that. The database is “just one of many sources consulted in deciding antiterrorism grants,” the story says. It’s meant to be ” inventory or catalog of national assets,” nothing more.

Makes you wonder, however, how and why an Amish popcorn factory is considered a national asset in the first place. I mean, everybody likes popcorn. Still. It’s not like it’s Orville Redenbacher.

Here’s the whole report, if you’re in a pdf-downloadin’ state of mind.

Picked up a Free Press yesterday, which is, I remind you, the winner of Detroit’s newspaper war. Within a decade, they’ll stand astraddle the pile of bloody corpses alone and bellow their terrible thanks to the heavens. (And won’t that be something to see, eh?) The paper seemed thin, and was. Ah, but it was a Tuesday, and my last dim memory of the business side is that Monday and Tuesday are not wide spots in the revenue stream.

Good thing. I started paying attention to the ads. In the A section — varicose vein treatment, the Michigan lottery, air duct cleaning and, oddly, two for different piano stores. (Is June when you buy a piano? I had no idea.) In Metro — more air ducts, cell phones, some odds and ends, the obits. Business? Cars and computers. Sports? Cell phones, a get-rich-quick seminar. Features actually had the most individual ads, mainly for more varicose vein surgery, dentures, calls for volunteers for medical research, something called “virtual colonoscopy.”

Ah, here’s a quarter-page ad for an all-natural colon-cleansing product. A woman is leaping into a man’s arms; both are open-mouthed with delight, and who wouldn’t be, given this headline: “No more constipation, hemorrhoids, or gas!”

Are any themes emerging? Yes. You have varicose veins and dentures and a colonoscopy in your future. You’re in the market for a nice upright piano, now that you have time on your hands to finally learn to play. Hello, grandpa.

Editorial images are shaped in conference rooms, but advertisers know. The little display ads in the classifieds are as clear an indication of a publication’s id as you’ll find. I once wrote a column about this, after noticing that in conservative political rags, you’ll find enticements to build your word power and learn how to stop moving your lips when you read. In liberal ones, many 1-by-2s offering to introduce you to girls who share your beliefs and values. If you want a flattering look in the demographic mirror, try Wired or Vanity Fair. (Although I often wonder, whenever I see ads for Gucci, all of which seem to feature models with limbs that stretch the length of a furlong, and all of whom seem really, really angry. People only smile in the ads for cosmetic dentistry, and even then, in the bigger national books, it’s a knowing, ironic smile. The models — they’ve seen too much to ever beam happily again.)

Ooooh-kay, then. Stop me before I buy a cell phone with Bluetooth ever again. Did you know you can upload MP3s from your laptop and make them ringtones? Why didn’t anyone tell me this? Is it safe to say I’ll be the only person in Metro Detroit — perhaps anywhere — using “Itchycoo Park” as a ringtone? That’s for all callers except those from my home number, which got “Pennies From Heaven,” mainly because it has a nice meandering tinkly piano intro, which is all you’ll hear, anyway. Billie Holiday’s version, if you’re taking notes.

Bloggage:

I’m going to be reading this book, if I can stand it. Josh Marshall has a succinct summation of why: I said he was important. You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you? God help us all.

Ashley has another cri de coeur from New Orleans. I hope he never shuts up.

In Detroit, teenage girls from the suburbs hang out in drug houses. Sometimes they die there.

Jon Carroll was a boy in southern California when Disneyland was being built, which gives his take on it a certain authority: When Disneyland opened, the world was so naive that injectable substances suggested nothing more than a penicillin shot. Later on, a new generation of citizens began visiting Disneyland. The Disneyland brass did not like that development — as the brochures displayed at the museum made clear, Disneyland was a park designed by white people for white people, and employees were forbidden to wear beards, mustaches and a long list of other offensive things that might suggest deviation from the norm. Which was ironic, because people soon discovered that getting loaded and going to Disneyland meant a day of big fun. It was an endless playground for people who said “oh wow” a lot. You could, you know, shake hands with Goofy. (“Shaking hands with Goofy” would be a pretty good code phrase for any number of proscribed experiences.)

And now, a glance at the weather map shows giant red blobs headed our way. Best get this uploaded before the power goes out.

The mayor of Fort Wayne is not a career politician, but a career consultant. (Pause to let snickers build.) Yes, and whoever said a consultant is a man who knows 150 ways to make love but can’t find a partner? Got that right. Fort Wayne Observed posts an interview with the mayor, who reveals he’s writing a book. A memoir? No. A crime novel featuring a ruggedly handsome Midwestern mayor who solves mysteries while riding astraddle half the fillies in town and ferreting out corruption in the police union? No. You ready?

“It’s a handbook on how mayors and county executives can use Lean Six Sigma to improve city government.�?

Try to contain your excitement.

I was in town when this guy was elected, and he was all Six Sigma-ing then. I did my research, and honestly, could never understand precisely what Six Sigma was other than some sort of management cult of excellence that boils down to “do the best job you can, and everything will work out.” The more research I do, the more confused I become. Just a random example: The “5 Laws of Lean Six Sigma” starts with zero and ends with four. Huh. It seems to sorta explain this with Law Zero:

Law 0: The Law of the Market – Customer Critical to Quality defines quality and is the highest priority for improvement, followed by ROIC (Return On Invested Capital) and Net Present value. It is called the Zeroth law as it is the base on which others are built.

No, I don’t know how this guy got elected, either, except that the first time out he ran against a scary Republican sheriff who had based his prior career on loudly proclaiming what a mess the city was, in comparison to the Eden of the surrounding county. Astonishingly, this didn’t play well with city residents when he finally rented an apartment within the city limits and declared his candidacy. After that, it was all about the incumbency. People in Fort Wayne like to find a rut and stick with it. A few might even understand Six Sigma.

Bloggage:

I’m declaring today Joke Quote Day. Did someone claim June 15 for funnin’ and not tell me? How else to explain Britney Spears, following her long tradition of imitating celebrities bigger than herself, announcing she’s taking her pregnancy to Namibia? And this can’t be a real, verifiable statement, can it?

“Kevin has always been a fan of African-American culture, I’m sure he’ll feel at home there, rapping with all the natives. Besides, there’s lots of quiet unpaved roads where Sean Preston and I can go driving.”

Or this?

“(Namibia is) on the ocean and there’s lots of sand. So if Sean Preston fell off his swing and landed on his head, there’s less chance he would be hurt and we’d have those snoops from child welfare up our butts all the time.”

And certainly not this?

“I heard that Namibia has laws that let celebrities say whether or not journalists are allowed in the country. That’s so important, even more important than getting the same villa that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had.”

Even the Free Press is in on the fun. A bit local story here is about a 16-year-old from some upstate burg who disappeared a few days ago and turned up…in Amman, Jordan. She headed there to marry a man she met via MySpace. Guy calls himself Abdullah Psycho. She was stopped short of this willful entry into white slavery, and is now described as “in seclusion.” Fortunately for us, though, Abdullah Psycho’s mom speaks English and is giving interviews:

“She was going to sign a marriage contract as soon as she got here,” she told the Associated Press, adding that she told Lester to “bring a pink dress for the engagement party and a white dress for the wedding. She wanted to convert to Islam and wear the head covering and live with us and adopt our culture,” she said.

I ask you: How is a book about Six Sigma and better government going to sell in a media environment like this?

Finally, not a joke, but recommended: Emily Yoffe’s affectionate tribute to parenthood, in Slate: In our society parents do a wonderful job of portraying the difficulties of having children: the financial burdens, the time drain, the guilt, the exhaustion. But we do a lousy job of getting across something else about parenthood: It’s fun! When you are experiencing parenthood from the inside, there is an overwhelming pleasure in the funny, fascinating things your children do. When my daughter was 2, she put her arms around me as I was kissing her goodnight and said to me, “Mommy, you’re a wonderful husband.” That was better than any of the movies I hadn’t been to since she was born.

Yep. The other day I dropped an aggravated F-bomb — that is, the F was an intensfier for another obscenity — while talking of the day’s events with my husband, unaware Kate was not upstairs, but reading quietly in the next room. “Mo-om,” she said, disapprovingly. And yet still, I’m expecting a good report card. The little buggers are more resilient than we think — more good news!

A Lovely Week in June continues for the forseeable future, but I still have work to do. And the new cell phone arrived yesterday and I realized I have no idea how to use it. So I’m off for a bike ride and a briefing session at the Cingular store before school lets out for summer in…two hours. Best get moving.

I’ve been meaning to post this thing forever; it ran two weeks ago in the NYT’s sports magazine, Play.

It’s a story about a 12-year-old pitcher — “arguably as close to being a professional baseball player as a 12-year-old can be” — on an elite travel team in Florida. The story’s quite long, but equally readable, and is about lots of things — the blurring boundaries between child’s play and adult expectations, the care and feeding of a promising young athlete, etc. To say it pressed every button I had would be an understatement, starting with the opening paragraph:

Jarrod Petree has spent his whole life throwing. The first things he threw, according to his mother, were assorted toys and a fair amount of food from the highchair. Before long, he moved on to throwing balls. Some babies, of course, are throwers. But from the very start, Jarrod had an especially determined arm. At least this is the view taken by his father, Tim, who played Division II baseball at the Florida Institute of Technology in the late 80’s, graduating only a few years before his son was born: the kid basically arrived on earth wanting to throw.

The kid’s parents don’t come across as drooling villains, but it’s hard not to notice the rationalization, the Earl “Training a Tiger” Woods School of Self-Justification, isn’t it? “We had no choice in this! He threw toys and food from his highchair! Clearly he was born to be a pitcher! It’s our job to guide him to his goals!” Uh-huh. I had a baby who vigorously threw food from her highchair, too, and I never mistook the impulse for a burning desire to play major-league baseball, but then, she was a girl and I wasn’t a college baseball player, either. So there you go.

Again, these parents don’t strike me as bad people. It’s my devout wish that they read this story and saw themselves whole for the first time — well-meaning parents who have nevertheless set in motion a program designed to chew up their son and spit him out before he’s old enough to buy a beer:

Because of his arm, and because of his team, Jarrod has a list of things that he won’t do, or can’t do, by decree of his parents, who are usually thinking ahead to the next baseball game. He will not, for example, jump on a trampoline. When his friends from school hold their birthday parties at a rock-climbing facility, Jarrod does not go. He does not play pickup basketball at school, and if it is the week before a tournament, he sits out of gym class. If he goes swimming in the backyard pool, he’s careful not to get sunburned or tired out. He is not allowed to skateboard or ride a scooter.

“He rides his bike,” Lori interjected. “Just not a lot.” Then she sighed, adding, “I know we sound psycho, but we’re not.”

Keeping a 12-year-old off a bicycle? Who would find that psycho, mom?

I know there are children out there who are preternaturally talented in many things — music, art, sports. I’m sure it’s a struggle, as a parent, to find the balance between supportive encouragement and just plain pushiness. As adults, we know what these talents can mean in one person’s life — the riches, both monetary and otherwise, they can bestow. If you could choose a life of wealth, fame and world travel for your child, vs. one of being a crime-lab specialist or phys-ed teacher (Jarrod’s backup career choice), who wouldn’t go with Door No. 1? How do you find the right path there?

Of course there’s a dark side, alas:

Overuse injuries — particularly in the elbows and shoulders of young pitchers — are indeed becoming epidemic. Orthopedists often blame coaches and parents for failing to monitor how many pitches kids are throwing and for not giving them time to rest their arms. They also view breaking balls — particularly the curveball — as placing undue stress on the soft growth plates in the arm, which do not harden until a child reaches puberty. Glenn Fleisig, the research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., has studied pitching mechanics for more than 10 years. He and his colleagues have come up with two basic recommendations, both of which are widely ignored across travel baseball: young players should take at least four months off per year, and nobody should throw a curveball before he’s old enough to shave.

Dr. Timothy Kremchek, the medical director for the Cincinnati Reds, specializes in an elbow-ligament reconstruction procedure commonly known as Tommy John surgery, named for the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who first underwent it, in 1974. There was a time when the surgery was reserved for aging professional pitchers, says Kremchek, but today, with young players pitching more games over extended seasons, the average age of his patients is quickly lowering. “I’m seeing 15 to 30 kids a year who are younger than 11 years old and in need of surgery,” he says. “It’s unheard of.” He maintains that there is currently a shortage of skilled pitchers in Major League Baseball because too many promising young players have self-destructed “trying to get to the Hall of Fame when they were 10 or 11.”

By the way, Jarrod throws curveballs. Is there parental rationalization at work? Why, of course: Tim insists that Jarrod, who has been honing his curve since he was 10, throws a less taxing form of the pitch in which the curve originates from his wrist and not his elbow.

Ohhhh-kay.

I wish the kid luck. Lots of it. He’s going to need it all.

While we’re on a sports-bloggage theme, I liked this Michael Miner column in the Chicago Reader, about how lame-ass American newspapers cover soccer:

As the World Cup gets under way in Germany, American journalists are talking to their readers as if they were unbaptized children. We have Hundley going on about war-torn Angola “carrying the pride of an entire continent,�? the “joyful samba�? that’s the Brazilian style of play, and even the “sons of immigrants and the sons of suburban soccer moms�? who form the up-and-coming American squad. We have Steven Stark and Harry Stark explaining in the Inquirer that one can see in the Italian team “some of the attributes that gave birth to the Renaissance�? and in the English team “what helped give rise to the industrial revolution and the wasted cities it left behind.�? If soccer’s not the church you worship at, all this is ecstatic gibberish. Or hilarious overwriting.

Note well: Every person I know who follows soccer does so by reading an overseas newspaper or watching satellite television. And the country gets more soccer-fied every year. While American sportswriters yammer about the Renaissance.

So how was your weekend? Mine was lovely. I bought a Swiffer. It was thrilling to use on my new wood floor, and restored my faith in Swifferdom. (To recap: The dusters work beyond your wildest dreams, but the WetJet is a waste of money.) Is there a cleaning product I’m not a sucker for? Yes. The battery-operated toilet brush. Show me a person too squeamish to scrub out a toilet with the old-fashioned long-handled brush and I’ll show you someone who has some Germ Issues. I don’t have germ issues. I expect bacteria to bloom everywhere, and it doesn’t bother me. I make war on gunk, dust and dog hair. If it’s visible, it’s my enemy. I don’t have time to worry about the invisible stuff.

We also saw “Cars.” Loved it. Every year, Pixar shows the rest of the animated moviemaking world how it’s done. Every year, the rest of that world fails to learn the lesson. One of these days, maybe.

And so the week begins. Last one of the school year. Ah, me.

My friend Jeff Borden made me a driving mix tape when I took delivery on my 1986 Honda Civic CRX. That was 20 years ago, and let me tell you, “Shift Slappin’ With the Kokomos” holds up, a funny and imaginative blend of driving music that bears no resemblance to what I’m calling Lame-O List One and Lame-O List Two, from today’s Freep.

I have only this to say: To not include “Freeway of Love”?!?!? IN ARETHA FRANKLIN’S HOMETOWN?!?!?!?!

At some point in the last few days, I spent way too much time trying to write something about National Review’s 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, finally giving up when the only thing I could think to say was, “This is the stupidest thing ever written, and will be so until the writer writes something else.” And even that line I stole from The Poor Man.

I admitted defeat, and it sounds as though Charles Pierce was tempted, too: Oh, Lord, sometimes, you make the fish so big and the barrel so small. Thankfully, though, he forged ahead:

The original list notes several “anti-government” songs by British punk bands, without noting that the government to which they were anti- was run by the beloved Maggie Thatcher. The freaking Sex Pistols as an anti-abortion band? The Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East? If anything can bring Joe Strummer back from the dead, this is it.

It goes on, and gets better.

I wonder if Prince Rainer ever regretted marrying a commoner. She sure did give him some common-acting children.

Every few years, America finds and crowns a new King or Queen of Dogs. The ceremony usually comes with a book deal, some slow-news-day think pieces by a few columnists, an interview on NPR, maybe a major magazine article. I don’t know why this is, but I suspect it has something to do with the way dogs have, to a large degree, joined children as the object of adult obsession. The other day someone asked me how often dogs chase me when I’m out cycling. The question was startling, as I realized it had probably been more than 30 years, which was the last time people thought it was OK for dogs to roam around free in neighborhoods.

(When I was in junior high, and my bike was my main mode of transportation, I was chased by a raging ankle-nipper at least twice a week. I became skilled at the angled downward kick that discouraged most of the little buggers. More persistent chasers got a squirt in the face from my water bottle.)

It’s good to have a Ruler of Dogs. We had a lot to learn. Crating, for instance. No one ever crated dogs when I was young, preferring to whack them with rolled-up newspapers when we got home and saw the damage they’d done. If I could have those days back, the first thing I’d do would be: Buy a crate. Dogs got walked less then, and on shorter leashes. The inventor of the reel-type dog leash? Should get a Nobel prize.

I’ve been a camp follower of these folks, along with everyone else. Spriggy came into our lives when The Monks of New Skete were in their ascendancy. I later was entranced by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ “The Hidden Life of Dogs,” although that was a hot love affair that cooled quickly — I came to think of her as a twit. Leaving your dogs free to roam? What kind of nut, etc.

Other contenders for the crown pop up now and again. Jon Katz used to scold the mainstream media for being thoroughly out of it; now he’s pretty much all about the dogs. There’s that Tuesdays With Marley book, which I refuse to buy on general principles; I can smell that disappointment coming a mile away.

The newest King of Dogs is Cesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer. I caught him on the Discovery Channel while channel-surfing one day a few weeks ago, and seemingly within days, he was in my face like, constantly. The New Yorker sent Malcolm Gladwell to analyze his body language. The New York Times ran a cute photo of him on one of his signature dog-whispering techniques — his four-hour daily tramp through the Santa Monica Mountains with the motley crew of canine hard cases he’s overseeing at any given moment.

But like parenting experts, sooner or later they all lose me. The Monks of New Skete advised that all dogs be taught the extended down-stay, and included photos of their pack of German shepherds lying quietly on the perimeter of the dining hall, waiting for dinner to be over. Thomas basically advocated for dogs to take over your house and sleep all over your bed. Millan and I started to fall out when he said dogs should always walk behind their owners, in true “pack leader” fashion. Also, when he said Oprah Winfrey was a perfect example of a pack leader.

All I can say is: These folks have never worked with my dog. The extended down-stay, for my terrier, would require bolting him to the floor. Alan’s allergist banished the dog from the bedroom, let alone the bed. Walk ahead of him at all times? Has Millan ever worked with a Jack Russell? I’d have to have the speed of Carl Lewis. And Oprah? Please.

Here’s what I want to know: What is it with dogs and pooping? The other day I sat down with a calculator and figured I’d observed, and cleaned up after, approximately 9,000 Spriggy poops. That’s a lot. And I’ve observed a few things. I know that if we walk down a street where one homeowner is standing outside, that’s the house he will choose to poop in front of. If a dog is behind a fence barking furiously at us, Spriggy will sometimes engage but nearly as often, studiously ignore him and then poop in that yard, too. I know dogs mark territory with urine, but what about defecation? What’s he trying to tell the guy outside, admiring his landscaping? “I defy you?” Or, “Here’s a memo on the local food supply. Sniff and learn.”

Also, if Cesar took my dog for a walk and expected to stay in front of him, he’d best bring his Nikes.