What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Things I've Learned

by Merrill Markoe

  They are all part of a universe of theoretically prestigious references that seem to exist only within the boundaries of home shopping channels. This also includes “Capodimonte figurines” and “Kanchanaburi sapphires.” (“Have you bought Kanchanaburi sapphires with us before?” asks Charlene. “Oh yes,” says a caller. “I’ve got so many rings I don’t know where to put them.”)

  And then there are the celebrity product lines. A few years ago the big name was Farrah Fawcett, who was hawking her “exclusive line of jewelry” based on “replicas of pieces she wore in movies” and “reproductions of jewelry given to her by Ryan O’Neal.” I thought that was the most touching idea I’d ever heard of—turning the personal tokens of love you received from your boyfriend into a line of inexpensive jewelry for the mass market—but that was before I saw Joan Rivers on QVC just the other night selling her “pearl clasp expandable bracelet.” “Fabulous! Fabulous! So elegant! So chic!” she said, explaining that it was a duplicate of a piece given to her by her late husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who we all know took his own life. Talk about a sentimental gesture! Talk about a fool for love! Joan was also offering “the Joan Rivers pavé crystal earrings —a gift from Robert Goulet.” I guess the smart person should sign a contract with her before attending any holiday function where presents are exchanged.

  I realize that millions of happy, satisfied viewers do not seem to be as repelled by this stuff as I am. Repelled, nothing. The fanatical love they feel is palpable. “You know, Cathy, I heard you three years ago when you talked to a lady from Oakland during the big fire,” I heard a QVC caller say, “and she said she had to get off. She was being evacuated.” “Yes, I remember,” said the host, Cathy. “You made the San Francisco Chronicle,” the caller went on. “Her house burned down.” “I know,” said Cathy. “Some of our fabulous viewers sent me the article. She wrote us a follow-up letter and said she couldn’t believe she was shopping at a time like that. She said she really is a rational woman and is getting her life back together.” Then she went on to sell the caller a simulated emerald “with a touch of hugs and kisses on the side. The perfect ring.”

  It’s pretty apparent that, with or without my approval, home shopping is on the rise. It does combine two national obsessions—the love of spending and the love of television.

  But as for me, the only thing I personally stand to gain from its presence is that now there is programming I find so thoroughly irritating I may finally have found a motive for becoming a sports fan.

  Things to Do While Waiting for the World to End

  Many people believe the end of the world is coming very soon. But whether or not you socialize with seemingly normal people who forward you Nostradamus quotes on e-mail, as I do, there is really no downside to putting your life in order. As with Christmas, you don’t want to leave it all to the last minute. But where to start? Here are my suggestions.

  Revise Your Life Goals

  Understand That Some Things Will Always Be Unknowable.

  You will not have the answers in this lifetime to such questions as “Why was Adam Sandler such a huge success?” Or “Why did everybody love Raymond?” Or “What exactly was the big deal with Ryan Seacrest, anyway?”

  Accept That You Will Not Accomplish

  All the Goals You Set for Yourself.

  For example, it is probably too late now to become “a Beltway insider” or even find out what one is. Ditto for those big household projects you’ve been putting off. The end of the world is not a good time to begin refinishing your floors.

  Focus on the Achievable.

  Stop lying to yourself. Don’t say you’re going to read War and Peace or that book by Stephen Hawking when you know damn well that even when facing the end of the world, all you are really going to do is fall asleep reading and rereading page one.

  Put together a realistic reading list. You can tackle a few long literary masterpieces or a stunning quantity of short popular paperbacks. Bear in mind that if the world starts up again, it will sound more impressive when you say you used the End Times to read hundreds of books. Considering the stress everyone attending the end of the world will be under, no one is going to ask you to list the books by their titles. That’s why it’s a good idea to stock up on as many tawdry crime novels, celebrity tell-alls, and assorted volumes of semiliterate smut as you can get your hands on.

  Diet

  Stop Trying to Lose Weight.

  Go ahead and get really fat. Now. The worst thing that can happen is you will die of a heart attack or a stroke, and relatively speaking, that’s really not the end of the world. No use pondering whether chromium picolinate really does speed up the metabolism. You probably won’t even have an appetite after the anthrax hits. Stock up on plenty of cocktail peanuts and margarita mix—we are never going to get a definitive answer as to whether alcohol is good or bad for us, so you might as well drink to excess.

  The same logic, of course, could be used as a reason to start a heroin habit. But only if you can buy such an enormous quantity from a non-Taliban source that you are sure you will not run out. The end of the world will be traumatic enough without having to simultaneously search for a rehab center.

  Wardrobe

  After the end of the world, fashion will be at a standstill. So there is no time like the present to begin cultivating the look you would like to have for the Apocalypse. Think practical: Platform shoes, transparent fabrics, or anything by Prada are not good Armageddon choices. Instead, plan on a colorful layered look that will not only boost your spirits but also hold up under a variety of wacky weather conditions.

  Sex

  Remember, ladies, it’s finally okay to have sex without thought of commitment since a commitment can’t really be long-term anymore. But choose your indiscriminate liaisons wisely. If there’s not much time left, then it makes sense to only have sex with people who know what they are doing. Focus on commitment-phobic sociopathic types who have been working this angle for years: Musicians are still a good bet, but you may find that congressmen, prisoners out on parole, and show business executives will be even more in demand than usual.

  Priorities

  As we approach the end of the world, it becomes officially okay to abandon certain antiquated behaviors. For instance, forget about:

  rewinding Blockbuster films

  wiping the backs of shelves

  watching MTV video roundups to stay current

  knowing the names of the newest Survivors

  keeping an eye on the gardeners

  maintaining your Christmas card list

  staying up-to-date on insurance payments

  saving those fucking New York Times Book Reviews

  Also: FIRE THE SHRINK. As the end draws near, many kinds of mental illnesses and neuroses will be regarded as sensible behavioral choices. And now is the time to confront your weirdest obsessions. For instance, have you always wondered what it would feel like to pound your fist into the center of a chocolate mousse cake?

  Maybe I’ve said too much.

  Zombie Clerks Are Messing with My Mind

  I am not averse to a certain amount of pointless cheery chit-chat. I talk to friends and animal companions alike about nothing of real importance on a regular basis. I also exchange pleasantries with strangers on checkout lines, and goof around with waiters and waitresses in restaurants whenever the mood strikes me.

  At least, I used to do these things. Until it came to my attention that a new level of increased friendliness I had been noticing on the part of employees of large chain stores was the result of elaborate instructions from management on the art of how to manipulate me. And not just me (although the thought of being singled out by national chains as special has a certain appeal). No, you’re included in this, too.

  There’s something aggressively soulless and robotic going on in the world of commerce and chitchat. Ever since I became aware of it, I feel a little like the central character in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

/>   It all began when I started to notice that the various women running the cash registers at my neighborhood market seemed unusually interested in the contents of my purchase. At first, I thought that perhaps I had stumbled on one of my lesser-known talents. Apparently I was a more-fascinating-than-average shopper. “No one really picks out the half-sour pickle slices and the mock chicken patties made of soy protein like I do,” I said to myself, chuckling, as the checkout women gushed, making comments like “This looks really interesting” or “I bet this is delicious!” “Well, I’m trying it for the first time, but I’ll let you know,” I would reply proudly, still a little puzzled by all the attention but imagining that they might be trying to decide if they had the personal courage to join me in this brave new world of adventurous product tasting that I was pioneering.

  Meanwhile, I was secretly thinking, It’s amazing that after so many years of working at this market, these women are still able to be riveted by what is for sale here since you’d think they must have rung up everything in the store fifty billion times.… Perhaps they are simple people, I finally concluded, which is probably kind of a blessing since it helps them survive the tedium of an otherwise thankless, repetitious job.

  That was before I discussed this very topic with a friend who worked the cash register at a similar kind of market. He told me about the training video his market manager made the employees watch. In it, through a series of unintentionally hilarious scenarios performed by uniquely wooden actors, the store employees were given specific instructions on how to perform the very bits of friendly interest in a customer’s selections that I had been pondering. “Once I made the commitment to force myself to say hello and talk to everyone, I found out that it was fun!!” a reluctant “employee” testified on tape.

  Not long after, I got ahold of a copy of “Communicating Coffee,” the sixty-four-page training manual for employees of a large coffee franchise with a name kind of like “Barstucks.” There it all was again. Page after page of specific instructions on how to make customers think you actually enjoyed seeing them come in the door and talking to them. “Connect with customers within 30 seconds by welcoming them, and establishing a relationship,” it said. “Ask questions about their personal coffee consumption habits. Make recommendations to identify how you can help.”

  Later that same day, I found myself shopping at a big, popular sportswear franchise. But now, when I noticed an unusually high level of interactive chitchat taking place at the cash register, I heard a horror movie sting in my head. Goose bumps crept over me. Here were more people forcing themselves to talk cheerily to me and pretend that they cared about me as a person. When the blond sales-surfer looked up from folding the blouse I was about to buy and said, “It’s a beautiful day out. Do you have some fun plans for the weekend?” I had to fight the urge to turn and run out to the parking lot screaming, “They already got to these people, too! Quick! Everyone! Run for your lives!”

  Because I am the kind of shopper who doesn’t want a salesman hovering around me, asking if I need any help, or a saleswoman volunteering any unsolicited lies about how great I look in the clothes I am trying on, I find this whole fake conversational thing to be a complete nightmare. It scares me to think that possibly everyone I run into on a daily basis in the world of commerce has been programmed like a live human version of an automated message.

  I never thought that anything would make me nostalgic for the days of snotty, ill-tempered, IQ-impaired slacker retail clerks and hostile waitresses, but this big new world of cheery, fake, forced conversation is causing those feelings to surface. It’s all the more frightening to me because over the years, I have come to the conclusion that excessive job cheeriness equals incompetence. Real competence in any job tends to make a person grouchy.

  Which is not to say that I want to go back to the day of arrogant, muttering zombies. Although, looking back, I see that the irritation they were serving up at least reflected some amount of backbone and connection to reality. It also didn’t require any energetic false-positive behavior in return from me.

  But it’s too late. This trend is creeping subtly through job populations you’d never imagine it would touch, just the way the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers did. “They just brought in a customer-relations specialist at our museum,” my brother, an art curator, told me. “We’re all going to have to attend seminars about how to approach the public.”

  The weirdest thing is that now that I know that this genial talk is mandatory, it makes me, in my role as the customer, want to return every suspiciously friendly conversational foray with a stern glance and a one-word answer. Simply because it’s the only response unmanipulated by customer-relations automatons that is still left open. “Try and chat me up, asshole,” I want to say. “You have to pretend you want to talk to me, but I don’t have to pretend I want to answer.” Maybe spontaneous human interactions in the workplace are going to become relics of a bygone era. But, if I have my way, the days of the really, really irascible, totally unprogrammed customer are only just beginning.

  What I Did on My Summer Vacation

  Perusing the things-to-do section of the newspaper, I was taken by a little drawing of happy cows riding on a roller coaster. “Don’t miss your San Fernando Fair,” it said. “We’re on the Mooove.” If cows could enjoy the damn thing, I reasoned, so could I. And I was on my way until I saw the ad directly below it. FREE SCREEN TEST. ACT IN MOTION PICTURES, TV. BEGINNERS WANTED—WE TRAIN. Why not, for God’s sake? This is L.A.!

  So I find myself walking into a storefront. Just across from a mortuary, on a Hollywood street. Inside, the receptionist, a fiftyish woman with dark, pinned-up hair, motions for me to sit on a couch flanked by two plastic palm trees. The room is heavily decorated with paintings of Elvis and a few eight-by-ten glossies of women in swimwear and high heels shaking hands with men, none of whom I can identify. The receptionist is talking to a big, good-looking guy in his thirties about how she used to dance professionally with Mario Lanza when a young black woman with dreadlocks is ushered out of an inner office and I am instructed to go in.

  Inside, a stocky white-haired man is seated at a desk. “My, what a pretty girl you are,” he says to me. “Do you think you could handle leading parts in pictures?” Immediately I am impressed by his good taste and judgment. “We’re a studio,” he tells me. “We just make one picture after another. We’ve been here since 1938. I’m eighty-one years old. I’ve been directing and producing since I was seventeen. You could do commercials.” Then he tells me, “You’re a young stewardess type. Would you like to earn $1,000 to $1,200 a week?” “Well, okay,” I say, adjusting immediately to my new role as media whore.

  “It’s a government school,” he tells me. “The whole course is six hundred dollars, but the government pays the whole thing. It’s called grants.” “I don’t get it,” I tell him. “Doing a commercial is paid for by a government grant?” I ask about the screen test. “That’s just for beginners,” he says. “Why don’t I have you try out for speaking parts? I can see you’re ready to work. I want you to read this skit with that young man out there.” Then he hands me a three-page scene from something called Saturday’s Children, written for two characters named Bobby and Rims. “What can you tell me about the character I’m playing?” I ask. “Her name is Bobby. She’s a woman,” he says as he shows me into a dilapidated back room full of motel-art-type paintings. The big, good-looking guy is already back there. “You two read this together. Then I’ll be back to take a look at you,” he tells us.

  So we begin to rehearse the scene, which sounds as if it was written in the thirties because of its oddly dated turns of phrase, such as, “Oh, Rims, dear, don’t you get tired of poor me? Ever?” My scene partner, although clearly all-American, reads English as though it is his second language. Even after six rehearsals, our scene still falls short of what you might call entertainment. Suddenly the receptionist bursts in. “It’s eventually all going back to radio,” she
tells us firmly. “It has to. In TV everyone has to be so glamorous, but in radio you can show up with your hair in curlers. Although I wouldn’t advise it because sometimes there is a small audience.”

  Now she hands us another scene to read. It’s called Wilderness Wife. “In the wilderness of northern Ontario stands a little log cabin,” my partner, who is now the narrator, reads in a voice that sounds like he’s coming out of a heavy anesthesia. “And inside, Myra Webster is making some meat pies. Way off in the distance a man plobs his way toward the cabin.”

  “Plows,” the receptionist corrects him. “I made a mistake when I typed this.”

  “When he reaches her side, he drops a bundle of beaver pelts, puts his arm around her and kisses her,” the narrator continues, and begins to move toward me. “You don’t have to touch,” the receptionist interjects. “Real actors can get their point across without ever touching anyone.” Before we can get our point across she suggests that we accompany her backstage. “I’d like to show you a few things,” she says, as I think I hear the theme from The Twilight Zone. “Usually I work for Rockwell on the B-1 bomber,” the big guy enthuses as we return to a stage area that is decorated with a green Naugahyde couch and two little paintings of pixies. “Now I want each of you to get up onstage and say why you want to be an actor,” she says. Lucky for me the big guy gets right up.