Talk to Me, You Hairy Beast!

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU ARE A JUDGE WITH THE OLD OPERA HOUSE NEW VOICE PLAY FESTIVAL, PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER!

Okay, now down to work. Why are we fascinated with talking animals? Not the parrots and such, although those are wondrous in a frightening “can it read my mind?” sort of way. No, I’m talking about talking dogs, bears, ants, etc., that populate our cartoons and our literature.

Recently, I had cause to write up a humorous sketch and then a short one-act play. In each case, I found myself relying on the talking animal theme.

The comedy sketch was written as an “audition” for a comedy troupe forming here in Austin. I’d been watching a lot of Judge Judy (way too much Judge Judy) and had been thinking it would be funny if her greatness heard a case involving a man suing a bear who had mauled him.

Well, the concept is funny, maybe. Turns out the sketch wasn’t that funny. I didn’t get the gig with the comedy troupe. Now, in all fairness to that sketch, when I submitted it, I did propose to the guy that we form an all-naked comedy troupe.  So maybe it wasn’t the sketch that was unfunny, but the view of my naked body running around on stage that was funny.  But I digress.

The play.  Last night, I sat down to pen a quick, one-act play. I’d had a dream a few nights earlier about my trying to grab an ant in our living room. In my dream, the ant tried to scurry underneath a baseboard at the bottom of a wall. I managed to grab one of its hairy little legs. (Now I KNOW ant legs aren’t hairy, but the one in my dream WAS hairy. Just like my belly is tight and trim in just about all my dreams.)

My play features a wise ant who offers relationship advice to the protagonist.  As  they say, a writer should write what he knows. So, I wrote a play about a guy whose mental acuity is slowly diminishing as he chases an ant around his home.

Is it funny? I’m not sure. I asked a good friend to review it, and he said, “It started out awful, but it picked up speed. By the end, I liked it. It’s just like all your other plays.”  Did he mean my other plays which start out sucky but get good by the end? Probably so.

My friend didn’t read the Judge Judy bear sketch. My girlfriend did, however.  And she read the ant play.  She seemed to like them both, in the same way she “liked” my god-awful poor man’s potato dinner Saturday night.   God bless my dear Shelley. She’s so protective of the fragile artist within me.

Maybe talking animals are just life imitating art. Among my siblings, two of us have taught our dogs to talk. I taught my dog Buckeye to say, “I love you.” That exercise was probably less of a “teach my dog to talk” effort, and more of a means to  hear those words spoken more often than I was hearing them at the time.

And my sister Peg taught HER dog Buddy to say “Redrum.” She was trying to teach him to say “martini.” I guess Buddy’s more of a brandy dog than a gin and vermouth dog.

All this talking animal stuff will, I swear, someday send me over the precipice that is my barely-hanging-on neurologic stability. Until then, I think I’ll sit down with Buddy and Buckeye over a snifter or three of brandy. We’ll invite the talking ant, and fire up some Dr. Phil on the TIVO. And laugh at his mediocre attempts at fixing couples. Until the bear shows up. Then it’s every verbal mammal for himself.

Tags: bear, dog, Dr. Phil, Judge Judy, talking