Monday, September 23, 2013

Cher is on the Today Show today. She has a new album, her 26th, and I think it said she is going to go on tour again. She arrived at the studio riding behind a uniformed police officer with two others, all riding on motorcycles and with their sirens going. Cher does know how to put on a show. Policemen in uniform are usually unsmiling, but this one was grinning, especially as Cher kissed him on the cheek when she got off the cycle. She is still slim, and was dressed in tight black pants and a spangled top. I remember her fondly from the Sonny and Cher television show. I always thought she was very tall, because she was so much taller than Sonny, but in her biography on Wikipedia it said she is 5'8”. Sonny must have been very short indeed. She sang a new song “It's A Woman's World.” Her voice sounded slightly husky, but was still strong.

I was watching my bedtime tape of television documentaries last night and on it was some extended news footage of the Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel trial. They are the ones who owned the two dogs that killed Dianne Whipple in January of 2001. That breed is called Perro de Presa Canario, originally bred for working cattle on Spain's Canary Islands. Show quality males are 23 to 26 inches at the withers, and weigh from 100 to 140 pounds. They require “early socialization and obedience training,” and still are sometimes aggressive toward other dogs and suspicious of strangers. These particular dogs came from a prison inmate named Paul Schneider who was attempting to start a dog fighting business from behind bars. Knoller and Noel got the dogs “through the relationship” with him, apparently a friendship. Knoller adopted Paul Schneider as her son shortly before the dog attack occurred, so it was more than a client and attorney relationship. Schneider was also a prominent member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. The dogs had already bitten a number of people, and Noel, when told by a professional dog walker to muzzle them, told him to “'shut up' and was called offensive names.”

The jury convicted Knoller of second degree murder and Noel of felony charges of keeping a mischievous dog. It was not clear, according to Wikipedia, whether they had actually trained the dogs to attack, or simply had insufficient control of them. It was stated that the the woman who raised the dogs had kept them on a chain, which tends to make dogs more vicious. Knoller is serving a 15 year sentence, and Noel served a term of 4 years. Both owners were attorneys in California and as a result of the trial were disbarred. It was a deeply sad story –- that an animal had been allowed or even caused to be so vicious and that two lawyers, who are supposed to be respected members of society, were so lacking in common sense and moral fiber as to keep them without proper restraints and training. Their close connection with a prison inmate serving a life sentence is also amazing. What kind of people were they? Some people love their animals over all other things, of course, but I wonder if they were actually planning to fight the dogs at some point. At any rate an apartment house in the city is not the place for such an animal. Maybe they should even be a banned breed, as probably the pit bull should be.

President Obama came out this last August against the banning of specific breeds of dogs, based on studies by the Centers For Disease Control and the Task Force On Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions. According to those studies, there are no “objective” criteria for determining exactly what breed a dog belongs to, as so many dogs are mixed, and both owners and law enforcement don't have a clear cut way of knowing what a given dog is. Also, according to the White House report, those individuals who are intentionally raising vicious dogs will simply move on to another breed that is not yet banned. The ASPCA recommends education of owners and the spaying or neutering, as that reduces a dog's aggressiveness. Nancy Perry, the ASPCA's Senior Vice President For Government Relations praised Obama's stance. So it's apparently next to impossible to tell on the basis of breed alone whether a dog will be dangerous or not. In the book I read about dogs, however, the author said that genetics is a major cause of aggressiveness, and that some breeds of dog should particularly be given lots of warm human socialization early in their life and obedience training. The author also was against methods of dog training that included physical punishment and intimidation, as a timid dog is more likely to deliver a “fear bite.” I have always loved dogs, and have found most of them to be receptive to being touched gently, but some dogs I've met don't respond in a friendly way and I always respect their distance. If I have a dog, which I won't at this time in my life, but if I were to win the lottery and buy a house with a big back yard, I would like a border collie because they are mostly gentle, but will bark and even bite if their owner is threatened, and they have the intelligence to make a better judgment of which people they meet are dangerous to their owner. A prowler skulking around the house would be challenged.

10:25 Finishing my coffee now, and back to reading my mystery novel. Bix Golightly, the underworld operator who is threatening Clete, is described here in a humorous and entertaining way, rather than as a truly dangerous man. His thug underling Waylon Grimes shows a definite lack of respect for him and Golightly doesn't smash him to bits. He then sees Clete come to a bookstore near his house and confronts him. Their conversation is a really funny run of tough guy language. After besting him in the verbal jousting match, Clete follows him, planning to catch him and Grimes together and beat them both. He parks outside Grimes' apartment house and watches as Golightly goes in. Unbeknownst to Purcel, Golightly has found Grimes dead inside. As Purcell waits for Golightly to come out, the police come by and spot Purcel, but go on about their business. Then Golightly comes out and goes to his car, when a shadowy figure emerges from the doorway next door and shoots Golightly three times. Purcel hides in the alley and watches the shooter walk away.

12:58 I just finished watching “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” which I like a lot because the questions are a combination of common knowledge and logic, so I can usually answer them. I wish I could get on the show, because they definitely do win a lot of money. I complained about Cedric The Entertainer when I first saw him, because he was so boisterous and loud, but I'm used to it now and I find him funny. He pulls some funny facial expressions and hasn't shown any bad taste, like I thought he might.

More reading. Blue Melton, Tee Jolie's sister, was also missing. She shows up a couple of days later floating in a marsh encased in a large block of ice. Robicheaux is called to the scene and identifies her. The coroner examined her and found a red balloon in her mouth in which a message was inserted. It was in Blue's handwriting and said “My sister is still alive.” She had received a “massive” overdose of heroin, and had a puncture mark on her body. The coroner concluded that she was injected while in the water or was put in the water shortly afterward. The author didn't say why the coroner thought that, but I conclude she probably had water in her lungs. There is no trace of humor in the author's writing now. The narrator Robicheaux, after leaving the coroner's office, sits by the bayou and watches a cottonmouth moccasin come out of the water and slither into the bushes. The only reason I can imagine for the author to include that is to heighten the suspense, which was already created by the bizarre fact that Blue was imbedded in a block of ice when she was found. Definitely spooky.

Purcell has a problem. He saw the shooter when he was hiding in the alley and recognized her as his daughter whom he had met only once when he bailed her out of jail at her mother's request. As a result, he didn't go to the police to identify her as the shooter. He was looking for her instead and finally met her in a bar, but didn't identify himself to her. He finds that he can't help noticing her beauty as a woman and doesn't want to show it. He leaves the bar and drives to the gangster's apartment who was said to be holding the IOU against him. He asks him who hired “Caruso,” who happens to be his daughter. He takes his anger out on that man when he says he doesn't know, and tells him to pack up and leave the city. Robicheaux, meanwhile, is still looking for Tee Jolie Melton. He goes home and finds his daughter there looking at a series of photographs of paintings at a new exhibit. He looks at them and thinks the model on one is Tee Jolie. Alafair his daughter tells him he's been imagining things about seeing Tee Jolie, but agrees to go with him to his apartment to talk to him. The painter Pierre Dupree tells him the model isn't Tee Jolie and he's never heard of her.

Purcell shows up next in the police station being questioned about the murder of the gangster. It seems he made it on the bus to Baton Rouge where he went into the men's room and the mysterious shooter kills him. They throw Purcell in jail until they release him on bail. When he gets out he finds the woman from the bar (his daughter) who bailed him out. He gets in her car and they go to a cafe. They make some introductory conversation, during which Purcell still doesn't tell her that he has recognized her, and instead asks her if she wants a job working for him. Her answer is that she isn't big on clocks and calendars. She thanks him for the beignets and asks him can he walk to his office, that it's only two blocks, and leaves. He is wondering how she knows where he works, thinking she had followed him from the gangster Frankie's apartment to the bus station, and then followed the bus to Baton Rouge.

Robicheaux wakes up at four in the morning hearing the phone ringing in the kitchen. He gets up to answer it and it is Tee Jolie who has called to tell him she is okay. He tells her about her sister being dead, but she says the static is so bad she can't hear him. She says goodbye and hangs up. His wife Mollie asks him what he was doing and she doesn't believe him when he tells her. She says she can't deal with his delusions. He goes back into the kitchen and sits in the dark. She calls him back to bed and said she didn't really mean it. She asks him what he was dreaming about and he says he can't remember, rather than talk about it.

5:46 Time to eat and watch the news. More reading tomorrow.