Okay, really I was minding my own business.

I went out for a drink last night with my good friends Adam and Melanie. They were concened that I was "too lonely" this week because Gabrielle is in London. I guess they were right if by lonely they meant 12 hours of typesetting Kill Whitey.

As a tangent, I finally have an answer to the inevitable question I've been getting these past two months. Perhaps the only good thing about Gabrielle being out of the house is that I don't have to make the bed every day. Question: Do things feel any different now that you're married. Answer: Yes. I now spend a measurable amount of time actually thinking about the made/unmade state of the bed.

Back to last night's drinking engagement. I park my car in a dark alley in Eagle Rock. The E-Rock is a neighborhood on the eastern edge of Los Angeles, a place where the priced-out Silver Lake hipsters have settled. It's not particularly dangerous. I'm not an overly frightened person to begin with. So why not park in a dark alley. All the spots on the main drag were taken. And the Eagle Rock does not have the valet parking. Yet.

I'm walking along a path -- to my left was a stylish ghetto chain link fence in front of a falling down shack. Then, in the darkness, the fence buckled out toward me and a mangled mass of fur roared at me.

I screamed like a little girl. If you're going to scream, don't pussy-foot around. So I didn't. It was a real and loud scream for mercy.

After catching my breath I realized it was a dirty German sheppard with hollow eyes and black gums. But most remarkably, the dog only had three legs.

People, this was a beast straight from the bowels of hell itself! If I had stayed, there would have been pea soup, children in snowsuits and meat tenderizers, and most likely Alice Cooper. Nearby, elevator cables were snapping. Churches were infested with flies.

Inside, Adam and Melanie bought me a glass of champagne. Suddenly, typography and three-legged dogs seemed a little farther away.