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From the former honeymoon capital of the world, not Niagara Falls, this is obscure

season four in American Tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your lover, and literary mansplainer in chief Michael.

Ian Black, you may hear some chewing noises.

They are not coming from me. I am not the masticator in

question. They are, the dogs are chewing some raw hide treats. I just returned from the veterinarian

to have Oli's tail inspected. You know, he's 11 and a half years old. And his time on the earth is probably

limited. You know, he's probably got a year or two left in him. But he's got this thing on his tail,

and Martha was concerned it was cancer because, well, we lost a dog to cancer. The very first dog we ever got.

Yellow Lab named Maddie.

We got her when we were just kids ourselves. You know, we were in our 20s. We were living in New York City and I wanted a dog.

And Martha and I had just met and we were becoming serious and we got Maddie and moved in together and Maddie lived at

then we moved to LA we moved Maddie to LA and she was enjoying being a

West Coast girl briefly but at two and a half years old she developed cancer and

we did everything in our power to save her. We were unsuccessful in those efforts.

And so, you know, we're a little bit haunted by that.

So when something scary-looking shows up on the dog's tail,

you say to yourself, oh, geez, I hope it's not cancer.

Now, all that being said, would it have been okay? Let's just, I'm just throwing this out there. If the vet had said, ah, geez, it's cancer. And the vet did not say that, by the way. The vet said, it looks like a hot spot here, some ointment. But if the vet had said, oh, you know, it's cancer, my response would have been, that's too bad. All right, let's go home. Because what are you going to do? We're not going to put a dog through an 11 and a half year old dog through chemotherapy. So I'm not even sure what the value in knowing or not knowing was. I guess it's just better to know. So anyway, $159 later, I have some ointment for a hot spot. Annoying, but, you know, I guess it's better than it being some terminal illness.

Speaking of terminal, my goodness, there is a death that we are exploring ourselves in American

...