Why good evening, Madam! "9 Fellows Walk into a Bar... (Pt. 4)"

Ryan and Elaine love Corgis. Of course corgis are basically chubby foxes with tiny little legs and a forever-happy demeanor, so it’s easy to understand. But I mean they LOVE corgis, as in they send videos to us of baby corgis slipping on hardwood floors, and with their political slant they obviously share a particular fondness of the Governor’s own corgi named Sutter – who has an inexplicable cult following in San Francisco and a regular column in the Chronicle. Odd perhaps, but we really enjoy our up-to-date news on anything.

And so the story continues. On our late night stroll back to the hostel from Spin – which is a burger joint bar with street bikes wired to a computer and projector for the purpose of digital wind-sprint races – several of the Fellows and I suddenly stumbled upon an enormous, fanciful building (like a splice of museum, synagogue and 1780 colonial brick architecture) that we slowed down to inspect out of curiosity. It was incredible, but unexpectedly large buildings often seem incredible after 3 open-bar receptions and a night out with politicos.

As Chance would have it, a woman in a fine coat was taking a corgi out for a late-night walk along this building at the same time, and Ryan and Elaine noticed. “Oh my god a corgiiiiiiiieeeeeeiiieeiee!!” they screamed as we all pounced on the dog. The flurry of shouting and baby talk was actually met with a happy invitation to play with the excited dog. Of course we did, and the pup just ate it up.

“Oh look at you, you’re so cute! And such a little attention whore, aren’t you!” Ryan exclaimed at the corgi rolled around on its back, pretentiously.

“Oh, he is such an attention whore!” the woman laughed. “He does this all the time.”

Meg eventually looked to Elaine, smirking. “Wouldn’t it just be great if this were Sutter?” she said not-quite-quietly and everyone laughed. This was Elaine’s dream, of course. “He is so adorable. So what’s his name?” She asked.

“Sutter.”

“Wait…… like the governor’s dog Sutter?”

“Well, he IS the governor’s dog Sutter.”

@__@

"... ... ... OMG YOU’RE SUTTER!!!!!” Everyone went crazy, and I’m absolutely certain we looked nothing less than crazy to this poor woman standing next to us. It took a few moments for someone to ask the obvious question. “So why are you out this late walking the dog? Like, how do you know Jerry Brown?”

“Oh, I’m his wife.”

We stared at her. And then suddenly, a photo clipping of her face from an article I once read popped into my mind. Yep, it was her.

This was very exciting and all, but when you recognize the First Dog before the First Lady, and the First Lady is also effectively the Governor’s Chief of Staff, and it’s very late at night and you’re trying to get home, there’s not a lot you can do to recover a sense of professionalism. But fortunately, she thought our resulting shock and fumbling of gracious words were hilarious.

"So lemme guess, you're out here this late to avoid the paparazzi that love your dog?" Dani laughed.

"Well, yes. That was the idea."

"And then you ran in to us? Lucky you!"

"Oh, so it would seem...".