July 16, 2006
Slept in, took the dogs on a bike ride too late. Oppressive heat by seven. Peaches panting and heaving, although not as bad as last night when she gorged on a big, fat frog that jumped out of our pool (where do they come from and how do they grow so big, so fast?). I looked up from my art desk at about nine and here comes Peaches stumbling forward, blind and wheezing, her snout covered in frog blood.

"You little frog killing Bitch!" I said trying to comfort her. I drug her out by the collar to the pool area and fired up the hose and jammed the spray nozzel right up her mouth and pulled the trigger. Of course she liked this about as much as I like the Yoga down dog, but it was for her own good. Needed to get the frog toxins out of her system. I assumed the deal about frogs releasing a deadly toxin when they are attacked and eaten was just a wive's tale, but evidently there is some truth to it. In true dog fashion, fifteen minutes later Peaches is running around looking for another frog to eat.

I hate it when my dogs act just like me.

Yesterday afternoon, Kathy and I went into Cavelview 5 and saw two movies: Strangers With Candy, starring Amy Sadaris, and A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. Both movies were just okay, about a seven. I especially wanted to see Scanner because it's allegedly this new state-of-the-art animation technology wedded to rotoscoping (which is not new: Disney used it for parts of Lady and the Tramp in the 1940s and it has always been known as animation for cheaters, tantamount to pulling out tracing paper in artclass and saying, "I'm going to draw something original"). Actually, the renderings were for the most part quite inspiring and good, except for the last scene, the money shot, the matt painting that sums up the whole movie. It looks like some gradeschool project with crappy animation (it doesn't look like Reeves, he isn't walking in a corn field, he's floating along like some bad puppet in a bad puppet play, and the mountains and perspective are absolutely juvenile and awful. And it's the last scene! How Richard Linklater, the director and visionary, allowed this or even paid for it is mind boggling to me, unless of course, he drew it, or someone related to him drew it, which is often the case. Embarrassing!

Today I embark on a top secret mission. I am travelling to Sky Harbor to pick up a certain writer in about an hour and we are going to a top secret location to work on a top secret project. I will plant clues right here as we go, but frankly, anyone who has read this blog for more than a week, will easily recognize the writer, where we are going, what we are working on and the likely outcome of the effort. Ha.

"The art of finding out a secret is easy: everyone carrying the secret has one person they can trust."
—Old Vaquero Saying