Behind that adorable black face, behind those sweet mournful eyes lies the soul of an unapologetic shit-eater.

For real.

That is not a metaphor. She’s gone from stealing fruitcake and puking it under the tree last Christmas to full-blown coprophagia, gobbling it right up from between dead leaves on the ground at night. Cold and hard or piping hot and still steaming, she doesn’t care and she does it quick, too, too quick to catch sometimes. She just can’t help herself.

Layla’s my sister Jess’s dog, half-beagle and half lab with incurable separation anxiety. She was taken from her mother too young, and consequently has massive incurable anxiety. Jess has tried training camps, reading dog books, everything. Nothing works. Every time Jess is gone for a little while, Layla overindulges in something she shouldn’t: fruitcake, shoes, a purse, now fecal matter.

All training methods exhausted, my sister now just spoils the dog completely rotten, talking to her in a high, squealing voice, carrying her in her arms like a large infant and allowing the dog to “kiss” her directly on the lips.

A few weeks ago, Layla vomited a five-inch turd onto my parents’ living room carpet. My mom called Jess up immediately to report the news, saying only

“Your dog has vomited a massive turd onto the carpet. Yes, a turd. Go ahead and let her lick your lips again. As a concerned mother, I hope you’ve got good health insurance,”

and hung up.

Such was the climate of the household this Thanksgiving. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated with this new habit, this repugnant fetish for a newly repulsive creature that’s far too cute to kick.

Jess and I spent Thanksgiving day over at my aunt and uncle’s taking care of my grandparents. They moved in sometime last summer for a few weeks while my grandpa recuperated from an operation, and it’s become clear that they’re in no shape to live independently. My grandpa’s 88 years old with congestive heart failure, kidney failure and diabetes. He needs a walker to get around now and can’t lift his legs by himself.

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This is the Jesus Lizard performing their classic jam “Nub,” live in 1994.

The song itself is a hellish deep-fried crotch-grinder made even more frantic by the band playing it at double- speed. In the end here, Duane Denison and David Yow double-team a meddling audience member who makes the horrific mistake of fucking with Duane’s amp, earning a mid-song beatdown. David Sims and Mac McNeilly never miss a beat.

The Jesus Lizard were one of the few authentically scary bands that I’ve ever seen. When all four members locked into their respective grooves, they opened a mildly Satanic portal to a moist, sweaty hell. Imagine teleporting into a dark wooden shack in the middle of the desert at noontime. There is a shirtless, sweating man drinking heavily at a knife-scarred table who looks you deep in the eye and cackles as he offers you a beer. Nothing actually happens, but it could get very, very bad at any moment.

That’s pretty much what the Jesus Lizard felt like in concert, plus a very real fear of being trampled or accidentally touching the singer’s exposed penis. It was easier to do than you might think.

I can’t even say that shows like that were even fun, in a traditional sense of the word. They were just so magnetic and powerful that you had to go, just to see what was going to happen. I always came out a little different, changed.

I worry that those days are gone. Now when I see live music (less and less with each year), I love it but get a little bored. I don’t feel the thrill and terror that I used to get. Sometimes I worry that it’s me, being too adult and jaded. Other times I worry that it’s the music itself, that we are in a wash of pissweak derivative bands that really actually can’t hold a candle to the jams of days long dead.

I happened to run into Ian Mackaye (yes, that one) at a gallery opening in D.C. for Suzie Horgan’s book a few months ago, and I asked him about this phenomenon. His bands basically triggered TWO major revolutions in American rock music, I figure he should know a thing or two about it. This is what he said, reconstructed in its essence from my memory:

It’s all in your head. Trust me, music is safe and kids are still doing incredible things. It’s just that you, at this point in your life are unaware of it. Take a look at this picture, for example

He walked me over to this photo:

If you, in your life now, happened to walk past this you’d just think it was a bunch of kids in a parking lot. You wouldn’t have known that it was historic hardcore, or thought anything other than some kids hanging out. this stuff is all around us, all the time, little groups of people forming communities and trying out new ideas. Good, new ideas happen in small groups and the word doesn’t always get out very well — but the results can be so incredible if you’re right at the middle of it all.

On a grand, humanist scale, I am completely relieved: weird music is safe, rock is still scary and shows are still dangerous. Just in different ways. But I’m really sad, too — because while music is wild and life is still weird, it’s harder and harder every day for me to walk into that little room in the desert and cackle over beer with the sweaty man.