Hanging Out in the BDWZ

The Great PD and The Stupendous Brooklyn Belly paused as they got to the Jet Blue loading gate in Burbank and waved as Plotnik took their picture. Then Plot and Ducknik walked to their gate to await their Southwest flight back to the Bay Area.



It was all good, these three days at the old homestead. Mummy P. was so happy to see PD and Belly that she forgot about her aches and pains and jumped on in to the circus atmosphere, especially yesterday when Belly’s friend Hana and her parents came over to Mummy P.’s, as well as The Great NickNik and JadeNik, with their new little baby Adelaide, and PD’s old friend Eric, who also happens to be Isabella’s favorite person in the world.




The usual – Mummy P. fretted in advance that there was too much food (but every morsel disappeared), and the volume levels, with two almost-three year olds tearing through each room at high speed, and playing the piano with all twenty fingers at once, were a bit disconcerting for her, but she is nothing if not game. She enjoyed having lots of people fawning over her, while devouring her brisket sandwiches, and Plot felt very proud to have his mom laughing and joking with all the kids, just like in the old days.



Later in the afternoon, after taking a nice rest in the sunshine, when all the others had gone home and the house had been tidied up, and the salad servers had finally been found (Belly had been using them to “make eggs” under her bed), Plot, Duck, PD and Belly drove down Mulholland Drive to Runyan Canyon for a walk to the overlook.



Since Plot had been to Runyan last, it has become Stiletto City’s BDWZ –Buff Dog Walk Zone. The scene is open to actors and supporting actors and stunt men and animal trainers, with shirts removed or open to the waist, and a minimum of five out of the possible six-pack abs, as long as each man is walking a strange-breed dog.

Women are part of it too – but they don’t seem to be exposing anything, except the occasional medically enhanced cleavage. Their doggies are also froo and froo.

Mischief loved Runyan Canyon, but now would probably be carded at the door and turned away at the invisible velvet rope. And anyway, the poor pup would no longer be able to walk down and back up like he used to love to do.



If you’re a poodle, there are three of you who look exactly the same. If you’re a mastiff your owner is a Jayne-Mansfield look-alike with pink pedal pushers. If you’re simply a German shepherd or a lab, you’ve been trained to jump up on the overlook bench and bark three times on command.



Maybe you’re a horse trainer with a prancing palomino – then, you’re down at the overlook with a camera crew, photographing a beautiful woman with her beautiful husband and beautiful children, riding on the horse or standing barefoot on its back.



The sun goes down and no one really notices – it doesn’t get any darker for awhile and everyone is busy watching the horses or the dogs or the cleavages or the open shirts.

Or maybe you’re interlopers – like Brooklyn Belly and her grandPapa, whose Manny Ramirez t-shirt has no buttons to be opened so his impressive chest may only be imagined by those curious enough to wonder.



And maybe, as the sun drops below the mountains out towards the Pacific Ocean, you are a Moroccan crescent moon appearing between the palm trees.



Everything is reality-enhanced in Stiletto City, but not those trees and not that moon.