Saw this at Andrew Sullivan’s joint yesterday… a video called “My Dogs greeting me after returning from 14 months in Iraq.”
It’s beautiful:
Number two?
I’ve been reading THE NIGHT GARDENER, by George Pelecanos, effectively popping my Pelecanos cherry. It’s early still — I’m in chapter six — but he absolutely lives up to his billing.
The story was humming along quite nicely and then I read the following:
The business was owned by East African immigrants and located on a soon-to-be-reconstructed stretch of Florida Avenue, east of 7th, in LeDroit Park. An Ethiopian flag was painted on the sign out front, and Haile Sleassie’s framed image hung beside the wall of liquor behind the stick. The bar, called Hannibal’s by the locals because that was the night tender’s name, catered to Jamaicans, mostly, which appealed to Brock. His mother, who worked as a maid in a hotel up by the District line, had been born and raised in Kingston. Brock called himself Jamaican but had never set foot on the island. He was as American as folding money and war.
Reading this graf you’d swear it’s just a little backgrounder — and in so many ways it is.
But check out how economical it is. Just 112 words and you can see the inside of this place like you were standing in it and having a looksee for yourself. You know the kind of place it is and who goes there.
It’s the bar in your neighborhood.
You might not be a regular, but you know the names of the people who are. You know whether the place smells like years of cigar smoke and stale beer. There’s that table in the back corner, the one you hope is open when you walk in the door.
One hundred and twelve words.
But it was the last nine…
He was as American as folding money and war.
Fucking. Blew. Me. Away.
More than the description of that bar in LeDroit Park — which is the same as the one around the corner from you — you know instantly what this sentence means. There’s something so raw — truth laid so bare — about that description.
If there’s such thing as the perfect sentence, that’s it.
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, George Pelecanos
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{ 3 comments }
awesome video could not stop my eyes from tearing
That’s awesome! I have 2 golden retrievers and would love that welcome!
This is such a wonderful video. I firmly believe that family is the most important aspect of life. It would be hard for anyone to argue that pets (dogs mostly in my opinion) are the most giving creatures on earth. They are loyal and give genuine unconditional love to their owners if they are taken care of.
It is tough to see my dogs go into a sort of depression when we leave for work each morning (we watch them on the web cam), only to wait eagerly to hear us arrive in the afternoon. I can only imagine the welcome we would get after being gone for 14 months!
Again, great video!!
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