Comic Gold Blog

I’ll tell you now, you may read some rougher language than usual in this A Dog’s Lunch.
The clever and insightful writer of these columns has been a bit jaundiced of late. You see,
I’ve been battling a virus for over a week now and I’m pissed. In fact, I’m getting pissed off
all over again right now just writing this.

I’m not talking about just a nuisance like AIDS or some upper respiratory thing; it’s much more
serious than that. We’re talking about a computer virus. And no, it’s not the Anna Kournikova
virus; even I’m not that stupid. The year old Love Letter virus infected my computer. I’m so
unhip, even my computer virus is a year behind.

The virus infected my Windows 95, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and ate up all the
pictures I had saved over the last three years. I know what you’re thinking, “Dave lost all his
porn.” That’s true, but I also lost all of my pictures of Israel. My computer used to be pretty much
just pictures of naked women and The Land Of Milk And Honey. If I could have gotten Alyssa
Milano to pose naked on the Golan Heights, I could have saved a lot of memory.

This insidious bug comes to you as though it’s an email from a friend. Open it and you’re dead. In
my case, I haven’t talked to the “friend” who sent me the email in awhile, so I was being nice by
opening the joke he had attached to the email. Just a note to my family, friends, and fans: don’t
send me any jokes. I don’t care how cute you think the little wordplay is. By this point in the
history of the Internet, haven’t we all grown up enough not to be amused by the different uses
and derivatives of the word shit.

I’ve spent a week and a half staying up late buying virus cures, unloading and loading software,
backing up documents and wondering why my computer still doesn’t work right. Of course, once
you buy the super-duper anti-virus software, then you have to spend another hundred bucks on
the pay-for-help line to figure out how to use it. G-d forbid that the company who sold you the
computer in the first place actually attempts to help you. Tuxedo rental places are the only
businesses that can consistently screw up the order and stay in business. That’s a fact of life but
you have to use them. Computer companies, though, are the only ones that take your money,
drop you into a free fall, and then have the nerve to charge you for the help you need on the
machine they sold you!

I’m not a violent man, but I’ve also been staying up late thinking up elaborate tortures for the
little, 15-year old, non-pussy-getting loser who wrote the Love Letter virus in the first place.
Nobody enjoys his teenage years. I know that. I hated high school and waited all year to get back
to summer camp, but I never acted out in such a mean spirited way. Sure, I had a couple of good
years on the J.V. baseball team, but somehow I still found myself withdrawing a good part of the
time. You know you have no career in professional sports when, even on your J.V. team, you’re
the utility player. 

I don’t know why I expect more from 15-year olds. Last week, in the midst of my anti-computer
fury, I passed a Burger King billboard that said, “our burgers are made for a king, not a clown!”
Ooh. Now even our Fortune 500 companies are acting like teenagers. When the McDonald’s
clown sees that billboard, he’s going to kick the Burger King’s ass in front of his girlfriend.
I read that the Love Letter virus was written by some kid in the Philippines. One of the World
Trade Center bombers was picked up in the Philippines. I suggest we use the same task force to
clamp down on this ne’er do-well and his pimply-faced gang of co-conspirators. Either that, or, I
love irony, does anybody know how to get in touch with the Uni-bomber?

Some men; you can read their lives by the scars on their knuckles. Gabriel Cooper’s hands were
like a language and they told his story. All the fights were right there. You just needed to be able
to read it. The zipper across the 1st and 2nd knuckles on his right hand finally read the end.
It’s hard to be a boxer when you keep driving the bones of your hand through the skin that’s
supposed to mark the boundary between fist and glove. Twice that had happened. A compound
fracture is not the type of injury around which myths are made. It is more the type of injury
around which retirements are made.
Gabriel didn’t really love the ferocity or even the competition of the sport. What he most loved
though was the routine. Routine was bliss. One, two, three to the heavy bag. One, two, three. Jab,
jab, right hand. Jab, jab, right hand as he circled the bag first clockwise. Like the rocking of a
bassinet or counting highway mile markers. It was a comfort. One, two, three. One, two, three.
Any combination was peace. It didn’t need to be one, two, three. In bed at night, back to the
mattress, unseen opponent in the air; it was jab, jab, right, duck, uppercut. Five beats. Over and
over again until he fell asleep and then all the next day for real in the gym. It was his life’s
rhythm and his life’s salvation. When you know what life is supposed to be, a planned,
syncopated rhythm, again and again, then you can relax and live the rhythm. The repetition
defined his life and became his life. Living that rhythm was life.
He was a pretty promising boxer at one point. The guys in the gym said they’d never seen a guy
so focused during training. Gabe, do 500 sit-ups. Work the speed bag-so fast and so crisp that it
looked like he was juggling on meth. Now the heavy bag. What are we doing today? What’s the
rhythm, what’s the plan?
No one saw it as abnormal. Gabe was just dedicated. Obedient. They didn’t realize that the
constant work, the sequential pattern he was sewing was the only thing that kept him sane. It was
okay to let your mind race as long as it raced in sequence. But, what did you do when you had to
float. Do you turn left or right? There was no pattern. If you needed to turn right, you turned
right. Not Gabe. He needed to know that he was supposed to turn right, or left, everyday at that
time at that place. It was the routine.
The pounding of the fists wasn’t designed to ebb his anger. It ebbed his anxiousness and his fear
of a life without the salve of routine. And life without routine was unthinkable. Even to someone
who tried not to think.
That routine paid off in the ring. As long as he didn’t have to improvise, he was fine. Get into it.
Jab, jab, right. Jab, jab, right. G-d it was so pure.
But his hands just wouldn’t hold up. He finished four of his first seventeen fights, mostly wins,
with a break or a bulge somewhere on his hands. He did everything to toughen his hands. Iced
them. Held them in an oven. Soaked them in brine. Any of the old remedies. The one thing he
needed to count on to keep things in control; he couldn’t control. Some guys could hit like a mule
and never have to worry. Half the time, they had to cut Gabe’s gloves off of him the pain and
swelling were so bad. His hands were shot and it was all coming apart. Why did his hands
always let him down?
When he finally had to quit boxing he was lost. He had a couple of bucks in the bank and a
couple of tortuous ruminations in his head. He quickly lost all focus. He wandered. He stayed in
his apartment. Comfortable nowhere and content no place. No one in the gym saw him for over a
year. Good. They wouldn’t have recognized him. He was filthy and purposeless and miserable
and so very unhappy.
The nights were always the worst? One long night in a chain of long nights, he lay tense with his
head on his stiff pillow and it started. He viciously started throwing fists into the air. Somehow it
started. Jab, jab, right, duck, uppercut. It was back. Like taking a long, slow, wonderful deep
breath.
If he wasn’t in the boxing for the violence or the victories, why couldn’t he train? Why couldn’t
he go back to the gym? That was someplace to start. Maybe it wouldn’t be much for someone
else, but for Gabriel life began with the routine. It was just hard to remember the routine without
the routine. In a lucid moment, he realized he could build on this. It was the first clear thought
he’d had in so long.
Jab, jab, right, duck, uppercut. Jab, jab, right, duck, uppercut. It turned out to be not so bad a
night.

Let’s talk about the writing process. I’ve now written 11 of these A Dog’s Lunch columns
so certainly I’m qualified to pontificate on the art of writing. I am now a man of letters.

When I speak of the writing process you must realize that I can’t speak for all us. By us, of
course, I’m speaking among others of Tom Clancy, Camille Paglia, Leon Uris, and myself. My
literary cohorts. I used the word myself instead of me or I because it’s much more impactful.
Athletes often do this as in, “we have a great defensive backfield with players such as Gene Jelks
and myself.” Athletes also like to throw in, “things of that nature.” To prepare for games we lift
weights, study film and learn our game plan. You know, “things of that nature.”

First of all I procrastinate. It is now 7:09 p.m. and I’ve been procrastinating for a little more than
four hours now. I’m currently in the transition phase from procrastination to activation. For the
last twenty minutes or so, my fingers have actually been typing. Before that, for half an hour, I
was in the secondary procrastination phase. That grueling stage included looking over some
notes for this column, logging on to the internet to add the link to what will be this column, and
scanning my bookshelf to find names of other writers to mention in this column. You know,
“things of that nature.” As you would expect, the secondary procrastination phase is preceded by
the primary procrastination phase. That began at about 3:00 with a swim at the Y to get the blood
flowing and a trip into Manhattan to check what I knew would be an empty P.O. Box.

Procrastination is not wasting time. I don’t know if you can convince your boss or husband of
this, but I believe it to be true. I have been well aware since last night, and much more so since
this afternoon when the procrastination countdown began, that I would have to sit down and
write tonight. I believe that subconsciously I’ve been whipping my imagination into a froth. Only
now, by removing my finger from the dyke to allow the ideas to flow down my arms, through
my computer keyboard, and onto the Internet am I ready.

The environment is also very important to a writer. I like a very bright room when I work. I don’t
listen to music when I write but I do keep a movie, with the mute on, playing in the background.
I like to keep hard core action movies playing because it gives me something to glance at every
once in awhile but not something that ever requires concentration. Tonight, I’m screening
Scarface here in my study. My whole apartment is just one room, but when I write, I like to refer
to it as, “my study.” Just another part of the tenuous mental camouflage that must be in place
before great art may be created. What’s going on in the background has nothing to do with what I
write.
A few years ago I had an acting coach compliment me on the tenderness of a scene of unrequited
love that I’d written for a screenplay I’m working on. I wrote that lovely scene at Billy’s Topless
in Manhattan. In response to the new anti-nudity law in Manhattan strip joints, and to avoid
having to buy a new sign, Billy’s Topless is now called Billy Stopless. We’re talking about
writing so I have to mention that sublime little bit of syntax. 

Now, as I write this, I’m trying to be aware of many things. I’m looking to be clever and funny
and down to earth. I’m also trying to be a little lighter than I was in my last ADL on Martin
Luther King. Most importantly, I’m trying to make sure that all the paragraphs have at least three
sentences. My friend Mike Murphy went to catholic school and he says this is very important. I may not agree with the Vatican on the beatification of Pope Pius, but on writing style, I think
they may have a good point.

Okay, so now I’ve gotten the background lighting and entertainment in my study just right. I’ve
gotten my blood pumping and my notes organized. I’ve called my mom to alert her that she’ll
have another ADL to proof read tonight. Now, if only I had something to say.