"Replace sharks with paper companies, and that is all you need to know about business."
The Office 5.12 - "Prince Family Paper"
I always love it/am extremely frightened when Michael and Dwight team up to do something, because their internal heroic narratives about their own daily lives feed off of each other so powerfully. They see this mission as a fantasy story where Prince Family Paper will, of course, have a beautiful fairy princess daughter for Michael to seduce. Most of what is ridiculous and funny in this episode comes from the way that fantasy grinds up against the other narrative Michael has constructed for himself about the paper business; there's an early hint of the way this is going to go when Dwight sneers that Michael would just fall in love with the beautiful daughter; he would and they both know it. And then they agree on the WORST SIGNAL EVER and psych themselves up with the shark theme from Jaws. Oh boys.
(As a side note, I find it hilarious and intriguing that Dwight and Michael seem to have a long-running argument about IHOP and Denny's, and that Dwight has some kind of ideological objection to IHOP.)
Because Prince Family Paper is exactly the kind of friendly, professional, family-oriented operation that Michael values; it is the office of his dreams, down to the cute child who is ready to drink up all of the wisdom he's ready to impart, even if that wisdom is horribly wrong. Michael talks a good game, but he doesn't really want to be the shark; he wouldn't have gone through with it if Dwight hadn't made him; the fact that he gets credit for being so cut-throat makes it all the more crushing.
I don't really have much to say about the Hillary Swank sub-plot, but it was exactly the kind of raging debate over a trivial subject I've seen happen in my own office, and I thought the detailed arguments were delightful and revealing. I'm also glad to see that the epiphany Stanley had about his health at the beginning of the season is an ongoing thing, that it's something he's serious about trying to change, even if it is disorienting to see him stuff down his pessimism by deciding Hillary Swank is hot.
The Office 5.13 - "Stress Relief"
I thought this was a really, really odd episode to air after the Superbowl, because despite the wacky fire drill hijinks and Dwight's gruesome dismemberment of the CPR dummy (he didn't know how expensive those things are?!?), it was actually pretty dark and wrenching.
The initial chaos of the fire drill was pretty funny--Kevin looting the vending machine, Angela hefting her secret cat out of the filing cabinet and throwing it into the ceiling after Oscar, Jim and Andy trying to break down the door with the copy machine, and all of them genuinely trapped in the smoking office because Dwight's lesson-teaching fire drill is both incredibly stupid and incredibly well-thought-out. But then Stanley collapsed, and the Stanley rage montage was a reminder that Stanley often comes across as the most sane person in the office because he's so unwilling to participate in Michael's insanity, and here he is, too old to find another job, too poor to retire, his health resting in Michael's hands, realizing he's going to die.
And as is so often the case on this show, Michael's solution is worse than the problem: he expects the roast to be full of affectionate joshing, a way of letting off steam. He's never been able to read the gravity of a situation, or the level of frustration in that place; they unload on him instead, and his face gets grimmer and grimmer as he listens until he can't even keep up the pretense of good humor. Stanley's heart attack broke something; it introduced real-life consequences. They all walk to the edge of the abyss--the fact that they really don't like each other very much, the fact that Michael really is unbearable. And in the end, Michael makes a terrible, insulting joke about each of them, and follows up with warm remarks, and they all step back from the edge with the balance restored. It's easier than facing that reality.
The scenes with David Wallace fit nicely into that theme, since David Wallace iacts like he's running a real company, and Dwight's behavior was incredibly problematic. Michael wanted to paper that all over as a misunderstanding too, but it doesn't really work that way. I love him for actually taking that responsibility, and for knowing that taking the position of safety officer away from Dwight was, indeed, the worst punishment possible. It's a sharp contrast to Dwight, who is technically correct that he was not responsible for Stanley's lifetime of bad eating and exercise habits, but who refuses to take any responsibility for the fire drill that caused the heart attack.
And in the background, Pam and Jim deal with Pam's parents' separation, and what that might mean about their own relationship's longevity, and how they deal with her family as a unit. As with the other big events of this episode, the resolution was bittersweet and partial, and not at all tidy.
The Office 5.14 - "Lecture Circuit Part 1"
It was an easy joke, but Jim's description of the phone guy coming in, showing Michael the PA function, and then just leaving made me laugh and laugh. It was like he was describing a terrible atrocity; in a way, he was.
I always love it when Jim and Dwight have to team up, because they're secretly more than a little alike, so it was delightful to see them united around hating being the party planning committee and thinking it's stupid. And being incredibly bad at it. Dwight can't even blow up balloons; Jim can't even shake down his office-mates for a couple of dollars. And of all the people to forget a birthday for, Kelly has to be the worst; nobody else would really care.
I also really love it when Pam and Michael are on the same side; they have a touchingly supportive relationship at times, and I think Pam often brings out the best in Michael. They could commiserate over past workplace romances gone wrong; Michael gets to see what closure looks like; Pam gets to try to help him get his own.
Hopefully that's something Andy will get in the end as well; there was a sad desperation to his awful, ham-fisted courting, a thread of dark honesty to his description of himself being in an ultimate smackdown with loneliness, despair, and depression. It's also nice to see that trying to take it easier doesn't mean Stanley has lost his edge.
The Office 5.15 - "Lecture Circuit Part 2"
Although the previouslies were an interesting novelty, I thought this was an unusually weak episode. The writers usually manage to make Angela's relationships with her cats both unbelievably dysfunctional and touchingly human, and above all else deeply weird. Here, though, it felt like they were reaching for stereotypes: the $7,000 purebred, the nannycam, the (ew!) grooming. Also, her behavior with Andy was appalling enough; I didn't like finding out that she sold his engagement ring on eBay in such a straightforward, unrepentant way.
Also, the scenes of Pam keeping up Michael's awful schtick after he was so crushed over finding out about Holly's new boyfriend that he ended up CRAWLING OUT OF THE ROOM BACKWARDS came the closest this show has ever come to hitting my embarrassment squick so hard I couldn't watch. I could see her trying to save face for him, but I couldn't understand why she'd do it by imitating him. Normally I love Pam's strange protectiveness of Michael, but that felt off; I liked it much better when she shielded him from the contents of Holly's letter later on, when she couldn't resist reading it herself but she kept him from reading it too. Their dynamic works best when she keeps him from being his own worst enemy, not when she exhibits the same terrible instincts.
One thing I really loved, though, was that Dwight and Jim's attempt to make Kelly's birthday celebration special was both sincere and lame, and that it worked because they gave her something she wanted, and made her feel special, and that was really all it took. That was the whole point.
* * * * *
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: Pamuk uses the murder of men who are working on a secret illustrated manuscript to explore the themes and controversies of Islamic art in the Ottoman empire: the permissibility of true representation; the scorn for Western techniques, and the cultural/imperial baggage of cultural exchange between Constantinople and the West; the use of violence to enforce theological viewpoints. He switches between a number of different narrators while telling the story, dropping clues about the identity of the murderer. That in and of itself was interesting, but I found Pamuk's narrative stylized and repetitive to a degree that made it something of an effort to read, and wondered if he wasn't mimicking literary forms--especially when describing the relationship between Black and Shekure--that corresponded to the subject matter of the illustrations he described, such as traditional romance stories. It's not an issue I've had with any of Pamuk's other books.
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra: A sprawling story of life and crime in Mumbai, which alternates between two narrators: Ganesh Gaitonde, a self-made gangster king, and Sartoj Singh, a lonely and unusually principled policeman. The scope of the novel is vast; it touches on corruption, urbanization, the intersection of Bollywood and the underworld, and modern reverberations from the partition with Pakistan. I found myself much more involved with the sections of the novel that were narrated by Sartoj; he's a more sympathetic character, a recognizably noir detective figure trying to eke out some justice in a rotten system, negotiating his own moral lines carefully. But I think it would have been impossible to understand Sartoj's story without understanding how Gaitonde rose to power: what motivated him beyond money, his own attachment to his city and country and his understanding of the role he played. And threading through it all is the story of Sartoj's aunt, who was separated from her family during partition and ended up on the other side of the national and religious divides--of the ways she was the same person, and the ways she became someone completely different because of that history. That sense of history, of every action shaped by past events, obligations and grudges and division, is what ties all of the disparate parts of Sacred Games together into something that feels like a whole story told in parts, rather than a collection of vignettes. It's long, but I really enjoyed it, and recommend it.
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull: Either this is a young adult novel, or it's astonishingly emotionally immature. Bull spends a great deal of this novel focusing on two things that don't translate well into prose fiction: lavish descriptions of clothes and music. They're a drag on the narrative momentum, and also, at this point, date the novel horribly. The characters are a little too quirky and special, and the phouka's initial charm--his snark, his cynicism--vanishes as he falls in love with Edie. (Of course he falls in love with Edie! She's so talented and special that her eyes are practically violet.) The shame of it is that the writing itself is not bad; the descriptions are sharp and her dialogue snaps. But the whole thing read like a bad adolescent rock 'n' roll fantasy with fairies thrown into the mix. Bleah.
Music for Torching by AM Holmes: A scalpel-sharp dissection of the isolation and discontent of suburban life, by turns darkly funny and heartbreaking. Holmes manages to create characters who do loathesome things and think loathesome thoughts but are still somehow sympathetic in their loss and confusion and inchoate longing for something different. The novel opens with an arson: Paul and Elaine set impulsively set fire to their house and run. But then they stop, half horrified and half fascinated by what they've done, and slowly they get pulled back into the quicksand of their daily lives. By the end, you wish they'd kept running, opened their eyes just a little wider, been less self-involved and more aware of what's around them, because their self-absorption and despair have a terrible cost, and give the reader that helpless sense of watching a trainwreck unfold.
The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch: These were fun adventure stories. Lynch's worldbuilding is terrifically imaginative and detailed, and he avoids (I think deliberately) a couple of common fantasy tropes: heroism as a hereditary trait and the main character as main actor in a great sociopolitical drama. Locke and Jean are thieves, and smalltime players rather than secret princes; they make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes get people killed; they themselves get out at the end, but never entirely unscathed, and never with the reward they were working toward. Lynch has created a world where women hold positions of power in society and this is not considered remarkable, and in the first book, he introduces a couple of interesting female characters--Dona Vorchenza and Dona Sofia--who while minor, are powerful and competent, experts in their field. But the novels are not exactly running over with female characters; Red Seas Under Red Skies introduces a couple of female pirates, but one of them--the love interest for Jean--ends up nobly sacrificing herself. And perhaps because I found the entire pirate plotline structurally problematic, and spent a lot of it scoffing to myself--the novel starts off as a vault heist/casino caper, and then takes an abrust turn into pirate adventures, and the pacing really suffers--it was hard to find much depth in either one of them.
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler: I thought I was in some trouble when one of the blurbs on the cover called this novel "Tarantinoesque," because with the exception of Pulp Fiction, I haven't really gotten into the Tarantino oeuvre. Perhaps it's an accurate description; Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse seems to zigzag between some beautifully detailed and moving descriptions of post-apocalyptic life and loneliness and some kind of slightly weird and adolescent wish fulfillment in which the best hope for the restoration of civilization is a chain of bars with go-go dancers. Parts of that absurd premise are actually pretty well-thought-out: the system of bicycle ride labor, the barter economy, the juxtaposition with the authoritarian Red Stripes; and it's a source of dark humor, of people being absurdly human no matter what, frat boys and middle managers with guns at the end of the world. But it produces some dissonance in the way female characters fit into this story. Mortimer starts looking for his wife--and in fact survived the apocalypse because he was hiding from her attempts to file a divorce--because he has some weird, retrograde ideas about marriage and possession; but he lets them go over the course of the story, and his epiphany about her as her own person is the backbone of his character arc. Sheila has agency and her own agenda. But the overall role of women in the story is terribly circumscribed: they are badass strippers in bikinis, with guns, and that is what they do, or at least aspire to do. I do think it's interesting that Sheila gets rejected when she tries to get a job as a dancer; but it's the only role she can imagine, and with a couple of small exceptions, the only valid role for women in this world. So I found that frustrating, but on balance, I enjoyed the novel overall--Gischler has a nice eye for physical detail and a biting sense of humor, and Mortimer Tate's inability to be as selfish as he needs to is endearing.
* * * * *
Three dog-related links:
I always love it/am extremely frightened when Michael and Dwight team up to do something, because their internal heroic narratives about their own daily lives feed off of each other so powerfully. They see this mission as a fantasy story where Prince Family Paper will, of course, have a beautiful fairy princess daughter for Michael to seduce. Most of what is ridiculous and funny in this episode comes from the way that fantasy grinds up against the other narrative Michael has constructed for himself about the paper business; there's an early hint of the way this is going to go when Dwight sneers that Michael would just fall in love with the beautiful daughter; he would and they both know it. And then they agree on the WORST SIGNAL EVER and psych themselves up with the shark theme from Jaws. Oh boys.
(As a side note, I find it hilarious and intriguing that Dwight and Michael seem to have a long-running argument about IHOP and Denny's, and that Dwight has some kind of ideological objection to IHOP.)
Because Prince Family Paper is exactly the kind of friendly, professional, family-oriented operation that Michael values; it is the office of his dreams, down to the cute child who is ready to drink up all of the wisdom he's ready to impart, even if that wisdom is horribly wrong. Michael talks a good game, but he doesn't really want to be the shark; he wouldn't have gone through with it if Dwight hadn't made him; the fact that he gets credit for being so cut-throat makes it all the more crushing.
I don't really have much to say about the Hillary Swank sub-plot, but it was exactly the kind of raging debate over a trivial subject I've seen happen in my own office, and I thought the detailed arguments were delightful and revealing. I'm also glad to see that the epiphany Stanley had about his health at the beginning of the season is an ongoing thing, that it's something he's serious about trying to change, even if it is disorienting to see him stuff down his pessimism by deciding Hillary Swank is hot.
The Office 5.13 - "Stress Relief"
I thought this was a really, really odd episode to air after the Superbowl, because despite the wacky fire drill hijinks and Dwight's gruesome dismemberment of the CPR dummy (he didn't know how expensive those things are?!?), it was actually pretty dark and wrenching.
The initial chaos of the fire drill was pretty funny--Kevin looting the vending machine, Angela hefting her secret cat out of the filing cabinet and throwing it into the ceiling after Oscar, Jim and Andy trying to break down the door with the copy machine, and all of them genuinely trapped in the smoking office because Dwight's lesson-teaching fire drill is both incredibly stupid and incredibly well-thought-out. But then Stanley collapsed, and the Stanley rage montage was a reminder that Stanley often comes across as the most sane person in the office because he's so unwilling to participate in Michael's insanity, and here he is, too old to find another job, too poor to retire, his health resting in Michael's hands, realizing he's going to die.
And as is so often the case on this show, Michael's solution is worse than the problem: he expects the roast to be full of affectionate joshing, a way of letting off steam. He's never been able to read the gravity of a situation, or the level of frustration in that place; they unload on him instead, and his face gets grimmer and grimmer as he listens until he can't even keep up the pretense of good humor. Stanley's heart attack broke something; it introduced real-life consequences. They all walk to the edge of the abyss--the fact that they really don't like each other very much, the fact that Michael really is unbearable. And in the end, Michael makes a terrible, insulting joke about each of them, and follows up with warm remarks, and they all step back from the edge with the balance restored. It's easier than facing that reality.
The scenes with David Wallace fit nicely into that theme, since David Wallace iacts like he's running a real company, and Dwight's behavior was incredibly problematic. Michael wanted to paper that all over as a misunderstanding too, but it doesn't really work that way. I love him for actually taking that responsibility, and for knowing that taking the position of safety officer away from Dwight was, indeed, the worst punishment possible. It's a sharp contrast to Dwight, who is technically correct that he was not responsible for Stanley's lifetime of bad eating and exercise habits, but who refuses to take any responsibility for the fire drill that caused the heart attack.
And in the background, Pam and Jim deal with Pam's parents' separation, and what that might mean about their own relationship's longevity, and how they deal with her family as a unit. As with the other big events of this episode, the resolution was bittersweet and partial, and not at all tidy.
The Office 5.14 - "Lecture Circuit Part 1"
It was an easy joke, but Jim's description of the phone guy coming in, showing Michael the PA function, and then just leaving made me laugh and laugh. It was like he was describing a terrible atrocity; in a way, he was.
I always love it when Jim and Dwight have to team up, because they're secretly more than a little alike, so it was delightful to see them united around hating being the party planning committee and thinking it's stupid. And being incredibly bad at it. Dwight can't even blow up balloons; Jim can't even shake down his office-mates for a couple of dollars. And of all the people to forget a birthday for, Kelly has to be the worst; nobody else would really care.
I also really love it when Pam and Michael are on the same side; they have a touchingly supportive relationship at times, and I think Pam often brings out the best in Michael. They could commiserate over past workplace romances gone wrong; Michael gets to see what closure looks like; Pam gets to try to help him get his own.
Hopefully that's something Andy will get in the end as well; there was a sad desperation to his awful, ham-fisted courting, a thread of dark honesty to his description of himself being in an ultimate smackdown with loneliness, despair, and depression. It's also nice to see that trying to take it easier doesn't mean Stanley has lost his edge.
The Office 5.15 - "Lecture Circuit Part 2"
Although the previouslies were an interesting novelty, I thought this was an unusually weak episode. The writers usually manage to make Angela's relationships with her cats both unbelievably dysfunctional and touchingly human, and above all else deeply weird. Here, though, it felt like they were reaching for stereotypes: the $7,000 purebred, the nannycam, the (ew!) grooming. Also, her behavior with Andy was appalling enough; I didn't like finding out that she sold his engagement ring on eBay in such a straightforward, unrepentant way.
Also, the scenes of Pam keeping up Michael's awful schtick after he was so crushed over finding out about Holly's new boyfriend that he ended up CRAWLING OUT OF THE ROOM BACKWARDS came the closest this show has ever come to hitting my embarrassment squick so hard I couldn't watch. I could see her trying to save face for him, but I couldn't understand why she'd do it by imitating him. Normally I love Pam's strange protectiveness of Michael, but that felt off; I liked it much better when she shielded him from the contents of Holly's letter later on, when she couldn't resist reading it herself but she kept him from reading it too. Their dynamic works best when she keeps him from being his own worst enemy, not when she exhibits the same terrible instincts.
One thing I really loved, though, was that Dwight and Jim's attempt to make Kelly's birthday celebration special was both sincere and lame, and that it worked because they gave her something she wanted, and made her feel special, and that was really all it took. That was the whole point.
* * * * *
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: Pamuk uses the murder of men who are working on a secret illustrated manuscript to explore the themes and controversies of Islamic art in the Ottoman empire: the permissibility of true representation; the scorn for Western techniques, and the cultural/imperial baggage of cultural exchange between Constantinople and the West; the use of violence to enforce theological viewpoints. He switches between a number of different narrators while telling the story, dropping clues about the identity of the murderer. That in and of itself was interesting, but I found Pamuk's narrative stylized and repetitive to a degree that made it something of an effort to read, and wondered if he wasn't mimicking literary forms--especially when describing the relationship between Black and Shekure--that corresponded to the subject matter of the illustrations he described, such as traditional romance stories. It's not an issue I've had with any of Pamuk's other books.
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra: A sprawling story of life and crime in Mumbai, which alternates between two narrators: Ganesh Gaitonde, a self-made gangster king, and Sartoj Singh, a lonely and unusually principled policeman. The scope of the novel is vast; it touches on corruption, urbanization, the intersection of Bollywood and the underworld, and modern reverberations from the partition with Pakistan. I found myself much more involved with the sections of the novel that were narrated by Sartoj; he's a more sympathetic character, a recognizably noir detective figure trying to eke out some justice in a rotten system, negotiating his own moral lines carefully. But I think it would have been impossible to understand Sartoj's story without understanding how Gaitonde rose to power: what motivated him beyond money, his own attachment to his city and country and his understanding of the role he played. And threading through it all is the story of Sartoj's aunt, who was separated from her family during partition and ended up on the other side of the national and religious divides--of the ways she was the same person, and the ways she became someone completely different because of that history. That sense of history, of every action shaped by past events, obligations and grudges and division, is what ties all of the disparate parts of Sacred Games together into something that feels like a whole story told in parts, rather than a collection of vignettes. It's long, but I really enjoyed it, and recommend it.
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull: Either this is a young adult novel, or it's astonishingly emotionally immature. Bull spends a great deal of this novel focusing on two things that don't translate well into prose fiction: lavish descriptions of clothes and music. They're a drag on the narrative momentum, and also, at this point, date the novel horribly. The characters are a little too quirky and special, and the phouka's initial charm--his snark, his cynicism--vanishes as he falls in love with Edie. (Of course he falls in love with Edie! She's so talented and special that her eyes are practically violet.) The shame of it is that the writing itself is not bad; the descriptions are sharp and her dialogue snaps. But the whole thing read like a bad adolescent rock 'n' roll fantasy with fairies thrown into the mix. Bleah.
Music for Torching by AM Holmes: A scalpel-sharp dissection of the isolation and discontent of suburban life, by turns darkly funny and heartbreaking. Holmes manages to create characters who do loathesome things and think loathesome thoughts but are still somehow sympathetic in their loss and confusion and inchoate longing for something different. The novel opens with an arson: Paul and Elaine set impulsively set fire to their house and run. But then they stop, half horrified and half fascinated by what they've done, and slowly they get pulled back into the quicksand of their daily lives. By the end, you wish they'd kept running, opened their eyes just a little wider, been less self-involved and more aware of what's around them, because their self-absorption and despair have a terrible cost, and give the reader that helpless sense of watching a trainwreck unfold.
The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch: These were fun adventure stories. Lynch's worldbuilding is terrifically imaginative and detailed, and he avoids (I think deliberately) a couple of common fantasy tropes: heroism as a hereditary trait and the main character as main actor in a great sociopolitical drama. Locke and Jean are thieves, and smalltime players rather than secret princes; they make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes get people killed; they themselves get out at the end, but never entirely unscathed, and never with the reward they were working toward. Lynch has created a world where women hold positions of power in society and this is not considered remarkable, and in the first book, he introduces a couple of interesting female characters--Dona Vorchenza and Dona Sofia--who while minor, are powerful and competent, experts in their field. But the novels are not exactly running over with female characters; Red Seas Under Red Skies introduces a couple of female pirates, but one of them--the love interest for Jean--ends up nobly sacrificing herself. And perhaps because I found the entire pirate plotline structurally problematic, and spent a lot of it scoffing to myself--the novel starts off as a vault heist/casino caper, and then takes an abrust turn into pirate adventures, and the pacing really suffers--it was hard to find much depth in either one of them.
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler: I thought I was in some trouble when one of the blurbs on the cover called this novel "Tarantinoesque," because with the exception of Pulp Fiction, I haven't really gotten into the Tarantino oeuvre. Perhaps it's an accurate description; Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse seems to zigzag between some beautifully detailed and moving descriptions of post-apocalyptic life and loneliness and some kind of slightly weird and adolescent wish fulfillment in which the best hope for the restoration of civilization is a chain of bars with go-go dancers. Parts of that absurd premise are actually pretty well-thought-out: the system of bicycle ride labor, the barter economy, the juxtaposition with the authoritarian Red Stripes; and it's a source of dark humor, of people being absurdly human no matter what, frat boys and middle managers with guns at the end of the world. But it produces some dissonance in the way female characters fit into this story. Mortimer starts looking for his wife--and in fact survived the apocalypse because he was hiding from her attempts to file a divorce--because he has some weird, retrograde ideas about marriage and possession; but he lets them go over the course of the story, and his epiphany about her as her own person is the backbone of his character arc. Sheila has agency and her own agenda. But the overall role of women in the story is terribly circumscribed: they are badass strippers in bikinis, with guns, and that is what they do, or at least aspire to do. I do think it's interesting that Sheila gets rejected when she tries to get a job as a dancer; but it's the only role she can imagine, and with a couple of small exceptions, the only valid role for women in this world. So I found that frustrating, but on balance, I enjoyed the novel overall--Gischler has a nice eye for physical detail and a biting sense of humor, and Mortimer Tate's inability to be as selfish as he needs to is endearing.
* * * * *
Three dog-related links:
- Anybody who has spent more than two minutes around dogs can predict where this story about a dog and an entire pork roast is going from the get-go.
- As if there weren't enough reasons to fangirl Peter Dinklage, he has a super-cute puppydog. (One that looks remarkably like the late lamented Floyd--which just goes to show that Peter Dinklage has very good taste in dogs.)
- Excerpts from your pets' diaries.
