doggie in the window

I was 12 years old when the first evidence appeared. It was a poem. I’d used a thesaurus and remembered being completely bowled over by the term white horses as a synonym for breaking waves. 

The next big piece was dance. Before dance there was gymnastics, but it was the lyrical detail pointed out by my dance teacher of how the lines of the body that convey to viewers something beyond mere movement.

A few years before I had pieced together a short film while still in high school. Shot with an 8mm camera, then edited by splice and tape, it was a tale of self-discovery, of an actual young teen running through a forest into a clearing where was hung a mirror. The character stopped and looked at herself surrounded by tree, meadow and sky. It was a simple revelation. I had her toil up hills, across creeks, through thick woods into an open meadow. 

Two pieces of the project remained to be completed. I would need to choose a path and the next was earning a living wage along my way. Dancing, acting and writing seemed to hold some potential. Distilling and purifying would be necessary. 

Nick Weber had a small three man show and each year cast two sidekicks to travel nationwide with his act. All of this was done in front of audiences. We traveled without lights or sound. All of what we did was by sheer force of voice and what spectacle we could concoct from fabric, glue, paint and our will to prevail against all odds. 

After a year I retreated to work as a bartender, furniture mover then furniture salesman. Saving my money, buying a truck, writing furiously, rehearsing every night after work somewhere between July of 1975 until March of 1977 was born my first show. 

Within the seeds of this first effort emerged the work I would do for all my professional life. Due to the pandemic I shutdown the act in February of 2020 as Covid-19 spread. 

After tens of thousands of performances an entire lifetime of victories and defeats were celebrated and suffered. I had been deeply touched by my time with Nick Weber, Milt Gonsalves and Fred Tollini. All were Jesuits, all with extraordinary educations. 

I learned from each that the path was meant to be challenging, that it would be mostly perspiration leavened by God given inspiration and that if you put your shoulder into the project something worthwhile might emerge. 

In 1980 I set out to hone my act. I picked a spot on Jefferson Street in Fisherman’s Wharf where I would every week work five days or more and put on a sidewalk show that would last somewhere between 12-15 minutes. I would repeat the show 9 or 10 times each day. 

By 1982 after cranking out over 2000 sidewalk shows I had the hard-won experience I needed to take the leap to the next level, to perform a show of 30 to 45 minutes of length. A show that could work as well as my 12-minute set, a show that could hold an audience, engage an audience, perhaps the show could strike some as unique, something hard won, something they would take as being authentic and special.

In the 1980’s street theater was still highly regarded. Our best talents in this form dominated. Michael Davis and A Whitney Brown both took New York by storm, Mike winning a Tony and Brown a seat at the writers table for Saturday Night Live. Harry Anderson worked in San Francisco for a time. Harry, I think may have been street theaters highest paid success story after his long run success in television.

My being a creature of the stage there are a few key skills. One is being able to switch on your likeability from the very first moment to last. Another key ingredient are transitions, jumping from one routine to the next without our audiences noticing. There is the matter of managing applause points, improvising within your set material enough to create the illusion of the material feeling spontaneous, material that you manage to deliver as fresh as the day it was first tried. Then, there is the matter of not being too proud, too self-centered. A good act provides a service and there is plenty of time offstage while alone sitting atop your bunk or bed to take time to appreciate the good work you are trying to improve.

In retrospect after 46 years onstage it is not just the sheer number of shows and routines you have performed; it comes down to what might be the very best. The act that pops up again and again was my work with my two performing dogs, Sunshine performed in the act from 77-89, Lacey joined in 99 and worked with me until 2011. We sang a song written by Bob Merrill and made famous in 1953 by Patti Page— How Much is that Doggie in the Window. 

What made the routine a success was how warmhearted the song came off to our audiences. I liked that the focus was on the dog that the audience could see I had found a way to put across our relationship in the best light. In case you didn’t know I’ll clue you in. The show is over when the dog’s routine is over. In the early days before I’d learned how to maintain pace and focus it wasn’t so certain, but once I had polished up the act there was no second guessing how the show ought to be played. 

The secret to putting across a good show with a dog is learning how to pace your dog as it goes through the routine. The dogs jumped through hoops, did simple mathematics, 1 plus 1, 4 minus 2, 5 times 0, you get the idea, we did the song and for the big kinetic closer they jumped over 7 children. On hot days my dogs were the same as any animal, they were hot, they went slower, they had a hard time. On cool days they might go too fast, be too eager, push the material instead of playing the material to its best.

At the acts peak when I was playing the street festivals maybe 13-14 minutes of my 30 minute act was with the dog. I’d open with fire juggling and other stunts while in transition asking the audience if they were ready to find out what the dog can do, and each time pushing back mocking the audience for their lack of enthusiasm, telling them they weren’t ready.

There are four novels and two screenplays to my credit. I have hundreds of routines I have created, an entire songbook of songs and lyrics I created on my ukulele. Years of hard work in the dance studio, many more years practicing acrobatics. And then there is this looking back now at the whole pile of work and finding from conversations among my peers, that for them by and large it was the work I did with my dogs, and in particular the song we sang.

A handsome charming gentleman arrives in some far off place and touches the community most by a simple song presented as a duet between a dog and his trainer. 

I think I like how unusual my life has turned out to be.