All choked up on Flight 2211

The day after the American Pit Bull Foundation Summer Concert. Flying home from Charlotte, North Carolina.

On the flight, I read, in its entirety, Ken Foster’s memoir The Dogs Who Found Me.

This is not a book for a grown man to read in public. Unless such a grown man doesn’t mind being seen with tears in his eyes.

Ken was one of the APBF Concert’s celebrity guests. I found him gracious and forthcoming, I had to dive right into his book before I returned home to the distracting vicissitudes of life.

It’s a big deal for me to be fraternizing in the greenroom with a published working author. (A lot of folks don’t know that I went to college to become a writer… a real writer. But once I started writing songs, I my challenged attention span led me to 4-minute pieces containing a mere 3 verses, chorus, and a bridge. I remain envious of anybody who does the sublime work of authoring an entire book.)

Ken answered my “professional curiosity” questions. Then he accepted in trade 2 Shipe CD’s for his book (The Song Clearance of course, which has “Pit Bull Blues” on it, and Yellow House.)

I tend to be an awkward fan, and I find it hard to ask for autographs and photos, etc. I recounted an embarrassing story about meeting Al Franken, to whom I once gave a Shipe CD and then thanked him “for accepting my CD as a gift.”

So Ken signed his book: “Thank you for letting me give you this book.”

I spent most of the flight sheepishly alternating between laughter and crying. I finished the book, recovered somewhat with a few deep breaths, and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me. I told her that I had just performed at a benefit for pit bulls.

She replied, “I have Pit Bulls. Two rescues. One of them has three legs.”

The combination of fatigue and delight must be getting to me. I started laughing, and my eyeballs abruptly starting squeezing out all of their liquid contents.

Pit Bull Rescue Woman

I said I’d do it, and I did it….finally. My cohort John Grimshaw and I made a video/slideshow out of “Pit Bull Rescue Woman” (Thanks to a multitude of contributors in the world of Pit Bull Rescue, the list of whom you’ll see on the YouTube posting.)

Although the song waxes tongue-in-cheek, I hope the message of gratitude and reverence rings out loud and clear.

I’ve got a confession, though: The seed of this idea does not belong to me. It belongs to Mr. Grimshaw.

Back in April, I had just returned from an event in Phoenix, a benefit for May Day Pit Bull Rescue. I had had such a rewarding experience, and I was so impressed with the woman who ran the operation, that I couldn’t stop bragging about how smart, organized, and authoritative she was. And somewhere in the conversation, the subject came up that she also very attractive… uh…. as a woman…

“Oh,” said John G. “Is she single?”

“Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” said John G. “Maybe next time I could go with you. And you could introduce me to her.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“What do mean?” he replied.

“Well” said I, with unusual thoughtfulness in my reply. “She’s a pitbull rescue woman.”

“What do you mean?” asked John G.

“A pitbull rescue woman,” I replied, “ain’t for the faint of heart.”

“Is that right?” said my friend John Grimshaw.

Moments later, I found myself sitting on the couch in the next room, a little dazed, and wondering why I had said what I just said, as if I really knew what this pitbull woman was like. And suddenly, I heard, faintly from the other room, my friend John Grimshaw strumming lightly on his guitar, and singing: “Pit Bull Rescue Woman, she ain’t for the faint of heart………”

And this reminded me: One of the great secrets to being a successful songwriter is knowing when a good song is staring you in the face. “Pit Bull rescue woman; she ain’t for the faint heart.”

I confess, I’m a little embarrassed, as a songwriter, that I missed the obvious song-hook moment.” But that’s what’s collaboration is all about.

Read more »

Pit Bull News: Rescue Women/Android Petition

Pit Bull Advocacy on my mind this week:

My friend (and former drummer) Dyson has posted a Petition requesting Android to block a Dogfighting App. Click Here.

For the record, I am not an advocate of censorship. However, I am all for pressuring companies to voluntarily make the right moral decisions in the free marketplace.

Also for the record, I am not entirely certain that video games directly cause bad behavior amongst the kids who play them. (As a musician who lived through the anti-heavy-metal crusades of Tipper Gore, I understand the argument “this is only role-playing fantasy.”) However, everyone has their particular outrages, and this is mine. I work with Pit Bull Rescue around the country, and I am aware of the absolute, abject, insane cruelty inflicted upon these canine creatures. If you learn what I’ve learned, you’ll sign this Petition.

Now for something more fun: I’ve got a project going called “Pit Bull Rescue Woman.” And I am need of photos of women who work in Pit Bull Rescue. If you are a foster, a volunteer, an adopter, or the director herself, please send me photos of you and your dogs. But I don’t just want women kissing and hugging cute dogs. I want the full complexity and humanity of women who do this work. From determination & toughness, to compassion & gentleness. From hard-nosed gritty to sweet & soft, to sexy. (But please, this is NOT a request for women to send me sexy photos.) Candid shots are best, especially of woman building kennels, treating sick dogs, training dogs, etc. Better yet, pictures of women with very, very bad-shaped dogs, to reveal just what sort of suffering y’all attend to.

See my contact page for where to send jpegs. Thanks, and bless you.

To avoid complicated legal issues, I’d like to treat the sending of any photo as permission for it to appear in a YouTube slideshow.

In conclusion, sign this Petition that even Michael Vick agrees with.

On Michael Vick

I recently watched a program on ESPN about Michael Vick and his 49 former fighting pit bulls. Afterwards, my head was swimming with positive emotions. I wanted to blog, but I needed some time to process my thoughts.

Here they are:

The great thing about ESPN’s story was that it focused so little on Michael Vick. They got his basic details out of the way early. (He has been released from actual jail, remaining under house arrest, from where he can wander only to his place of employment and church.) There was no interview of the man himself. This story was really about the dogs, and that was good to get the spotlight off of the criminal, and onto the victims.

Considering the Sports network, you would think that most of viewers would be less interested in 49 dogs than in the guy who is potentially the greatest quarterback in football. But ESPN would not cater. Wonderful.

I would expect that some people, die-hard fans maybe, would have little or no concern for the dogs. “What’s the big deal?” they might ask. “They’re just dogs.”

But I have not heard such words uttered, not since this whole thing came out. In the world of sports, a lot of athletes get a free pass when it comes to bad behavior. Cheating (steroids) is sometimes forgiven, due to the pressure of high-stakes, highly-financed competition. But when it comes to abject cruelty, no one sides with the cruel.

Nevertheless, just in case, in answer to that cold “just dogs” mentality, I paraphrase Albert Schweitzer: Until we are able to extend our capacity for compassion to species outside of our own, we will not have reached our full potential as human beings.

Speaking of compassion and sympathy, most of us have none of it for Mr. Vick. (I don’t either.) But some hard-noses say, “Let him rot in jail. I hope he never plays football again!” And some folks deem his release as too lenient, saying he got off “scot free.”

I can’t say I agree. He didn’t really get off “scot free.” He did serve time, and he still has great obstacles to leading a normal life. But aside from all that, I have a strong belief in transformation and redemption. For me, that’s part of living in a Judeo/Christian culture. I’m not the most biblical guy in the room, but this much I believe: when a criminal transgresses against decency, you punish him to force his redemption, not merely for revenge. And in light of that, one must presume that redemption is the possible–if not probably–end.

Ostensibly, Mr. Vick is paying his proverbial debt to society (a society which includes the animals we love). Is it of any use beating him down for the rest of his life?

However, if he hopes to be welcomed to the community of the respected and well-liked, he’ll have to do something extraordinary to earn it—something that has to do with pit bull rescue, let’s say.

This brings me to another biblical principle: the idea of good coming from evil. What I see in this ESPN special is evidence that a lot of good has come from the busting of Mr. Vick’s ring. There is more Pit Bull awareness now than ever. Until recently, Pit Bull care was an underground phenomenon. Since Michael Vick, I’ve learned of hundreds of Rescue Operations, and people seem to be adopting more pets from shelters these days—even rehab cases.

On a tangent, I find myself indulging in some different kinds of thoughts, vague and disturbing in some ways. As I watched the horrific video clips, I kept asking myself what makes a person want to fight dogs. Why an athlete who seems to have everything going for him, with huge contracts and adoring fans?

I am closer to that answer than I care to be. I’ve been an athlete myself—addicted to competition, thrilled by high-octane activity just this side of violence, and attached to the idea of victory. Add to that my experience in stage performance, and I can say this much: It’s difficult to leave those feelings on the field or on the stage. They become a default disposition, the backdrop of your life.

In the lives of entertainers and pro-athletes, there is a lot of… well, a lot of “stuff.” On the dark side, there might be gravitation towards gambling, partying, etc.—anything to keep the rush going. On the light side, there are spiritual disciplines like devout Christianity or Eastern Meditation. (The former for athletes, the latter for actors and musicians… Generalizing here, but whatever it takes to calm down in between prolonged episodes of operating at the peak of one’s vitality.)

In my day, I had teammates who eventually went on to college and professional sports. Trust me, they are different from the rest of us, admirably so. It’s not just in their physicality. They have a monk-like, soldier-like concentration, and singular attachment to the outcome of competition. Victory is Holy Grail. Defeat is misery. There’s no “let’s-all-just-have-a-good-time-and-play-our-best” attitude. There’s an undercurrent of bloodlust, even for the most sportsmanlike and gentle of them. That’s what we pay to see.

(For my own part, I still recall the day I realized that I wouldn’t excel in sports, in spite of a .400 batting average, speed, and handy fielding ability: I just didn’t have the killer instinct.)

But I digress. This is about the dogs. According to the ESPN story most of the 49 have been successfully rescued. One was put down for health reasons. Another was put down, because it was too traumatized. Others are being rehabilitated and placed in loving homes—with children, no less. Talk about transformation! There are lessons to be learned here, I’m sure. If these animals, forced to fight on behalf of their own survival, can respond to affection… If they can soften, and socialize, against their previous brutal conditioning, perhaps anyone can. Growing beyond ruthless selfishness and knee-jerk defensiveness, perhaps anyone can transform into a decent person.

Perhaps even Michael Vick.