He Wasn’t Dogging It, He Was Only on Vacation
I intended to take a few more days off, figuring you people needed the break, but there’s no place like home, which is why I had to get out of there.
You see, the Barkers still live next door, and I was that close to going Ron Artest on the yapping monsters.
Now as you might imagine, we get next-door neighbors moving in and then out all the time. I know how tough it is to live with the wife, so I’m not surprised that others find the challenge to be too much.
When the Barkers moved in with their two scrawny dogs, I greeted them just as you’d expect on Page 2, and Mrs. Barker came over, let me have it and said she was never going to read The Times. Then she put electric collars on her mangy fur balls, which are designed to zap the yappers when they bark.
Well, the mutts apparently are no longer wearing the collars, although come to think of it, I haven’t heard a peep from her husband for some time.
Anyway, the yapping has become relentless, and I’m just standing in my own backyard. At least I know how Kobe Bryant felt while getting booed at the American Music Awards.
It’s not as if I haven’t been booed before. I’ll occasionally speak to a local Optimist Group, which includes Bruin fans, or attend a family gathering back in Chicago. But this is different.
This is two dogs yapping constantly, making it almost impossible to watch Montel, and do you know how aggravating it is to watch a whole show only to miss the final results of the lie-detector test?
Now we have pro athletes telling us this is what it’s like when they play before howling fans, and I should be thankful the yapping dogs don’t swear or say mean things about me. (Believe me, I have my share of yapping dogs who know how to e-mail.)
I’ve seen athletes interviewed this week, and they all seem to be saying the same thing: They blame the fans for cussing and pushing the players to the brink of mayhem. Shocking, I know, that athletes wouldn’t hold themselves or one of their own accountable for assaulting paying customers.
In fact, if you listened to the former players now broadcasters on TNT, Artest was actually protecting his manhood when he was hit with a plastic cup and raced into the stands to beat up the wrong guy.
To protect my manhood, I could’ve decked Mrs. Barker when she came onto my property. I know I’ve thought about taking one of our cute dogs into the neighbor’s yard and letting them devour one of their scrawny mutts, but we have attorneys who live in the neighborhood, and you talk about yappers....
No, I know my place, and it’s back to work making everyone else miserable. Besides, it’s not really the yappers’ fault; that’s their breed, and if they don’t have owners who will control them, that’s just the way it’s going to be.
At least the players catch a break -- they have home games.
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AS FOR the rest of my vacation ...
* Watched “Desperate Housewives,” and decided we’d better not hire a gardener.
* I think it would’ve been funnier had Nicollette Sheridan dropped her towel and we had seen John Madden’s reaction on “Monday Night Football.”
* I agree with everyone else that the pregame skit was terrible. I’d have had Lisa Guerrero making a “Monday Night Football” comeback in place of Sheridan.
* Played golf with Casa Colina’s John Roundtree, millionaire or billionaire Frank O’Brien and golfer Bill Dwyre, and if Roundtree, O’Brien and Dwyre had played better we might have had a chance to win the golf tournament.
* It was nice to see the Los Angeles Angels’ Vladimir Guerrero honored.
* Interviewed Clipper owner Donald Sterling -- his first radio chat in more than 20 years -- and I heard later that he thought he made pretty good cents. I mean, sense.
* Dwyre became a grandfather for the second time. Daughter Amy gave birth to William Dwyre, who is already crying at the prospect of all the tennis tournaments he’s going to have to attend with Grandpa.
* Played golf with Los Alamitos’ Brad McKenzie, and we would’ve beaten Hollywood Park’s Rick Baedeker and TVG’s Bob Baedeker if McKenzie had played better.
* I see the Chargers hired NFL Super Bowl-staging expert Jim Steeg. They’ve tried everything else to win one.
* Dwyre, Class of ’06 at Notre Dame, was a guest on Sunday’s father-daughter show on XTRA Sports, and he said the Irish have no chance of beating USC. (Correction: That’s Class of ’66. Sorry.)
* The wife has gone to a cherry motif in the kitchen, which means the bananas are out. She’s having trouble finding matching dish towels. First time in my life I wished I had made plans to attend a Charger game Sunday.
* When I read about Rudy T. storming off rather than talk to the media, I had no idea the wife would be doing the same thing two days later after I said I’d rather be at a Charger game than spending time with her looking for cherry dish towels.
* The Sunday Times of London reported that “T.J. Simers, a notoriously conservative sports columnist, was so appalled by the [Maria] Sharapova photograph ... “ Notoriously conservative! I know the story in London wasn’t exactly liberal with the facts, never mentioning that Sharapova is 17, and still considered a child here.
* It must have been only a coincidence that I took time off just as the tennis tournament was about to begin.
* Listened to Vic “The Brick” Jacobs one day on the radio, and the yapping dogs aren’t that bad, I guess.
* Played golf with The Times’ Mike James, and we would have beaten jockeys Alex Solis and Corey Nakatani if James had played better.
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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.
