Terriers of Anarchy

Oh dear, once again, I’ve let weeks slip by without posting. It’s not that tons hasn’t been happening around here. It has. But — and blame John the Baptist who introduced me to it — I’ve become addicted to Sons of Anarchy. Now all my blogging time has been swallowed up as I race my way through four seasons worth in preparation for Season Five. Let me describe Sons of Anarchy this way: if Shakespeare were alive today and writing a TV series about a California biker gang, this is the series he’d be writing.

The action takes place in the incongruously named town of Charming somewhere in the Central Valley county of San Joaquin. The Sons of Anarchy biker group is led by Hamlet doppelgänger Jax Teller, his stepfather, Clay Morrow, and his Lady MacBeth-like mother, Gemma. Apparently California is just filled with biker gangs because The Sons of Anarchy never run out of groups to fight, absorb and create shaky alliances with. There are several flavors of Mexican motorcycle clubs, a Black club from Oakland, a White supremacist group, various chapters and subgroups of the original Sons of Anarchy. And that’s before we even get into the run-ins with several factions of the IRA, and all manner of shady businesspeople. With that description, you’d think the series would be filled with violence. It isn’t. More attention is paid to the characters and their shifting loyalties and motivations. Think The Godfather Trilogy on Harleys. You are never quite sure who the traitor is going to be and even when he is uncovered things are still not what they seem. Every single one of the characters — even the guest stars — are fascinating, well-written and well acted. Well, there is one character named Opie who so grates on my nerves I almost need to fast forward through his scenes. I was hoping he’d be one of the characters killed off, but he seems to have survived through Season Three. However, I’ll forgive the series creator for Opie when he gives me gems like a cameo by novelist Stephen King who plays a “cleaner” or body disposal person who creeps out event the toughest members of the club. Oh, did I mention there is a lot of black humor? Lots.

Anyway, the series is so good  it has the terriers and me thinking we should start our own club. (Admittedly some of that is just the long nights staying in a barn in the middle of nowhere with no TV or radio. We’ve got lots of time to make extravagant plans.) Now, joining an outlaw biker gang has never been one of my dreams, but Sons of Anarchy does make it look pretty fun.

Everyone has a lot of ink in this show, including the SOAs cool logo featuring a Grim Reaper.

But Oscar, Lucy and I aren’t sure we want ink. It wouldn’t translate well under terrier fur and I don’t like the idea of tattoo needles. But two of us are microchipped. So maybe in OUR gang, initiates will be chipped. Much more subtle.

Lucy was skeptical about that tattoo idea as well. And as she says: "I already have natural ink, thank you very much."

Of course, the Sons of Anarchy ride super powerful classic Harleys. But we’re still working through that one. I do have a Vespa, but I can’t figure out how we’d roar into town on it. Strapping the terriers to the sides clearly wouldn’t work. See Lucy and Oscar aren’t great passengers.

This is their normal mode of travel. Bad enough in a Range Rover, but positively humiliating in a Prius. No street cred for a gang that rides Priuses.

Now Oscar and Lucy do much better in the ATVs. So maybe our gang will cruise in ATVs. Well, on the property 'cause ATVs aren't street legal and we're kind of a law-abiding gang.

Now Andy does have this nifty little number...

Yeah, the hot rod Ford would let the dogs get their gang faces on. Without mussing their fur.

But, for us, it’s really not about the vehicles. One of the most intriguing things we’ve learned about motorcycle gangs is a tradition called “patching over”. As you know, all the full club members have their jackets with all the club patches on them. But when a larger or stronger club makes an alliance with another club, they have a ceremony called a “patch over” where they literally absorb the smaller club by accepting the new club as full members, thus giving them official patches.

We’re going to be patching in a lot of the local “gangs”. There are the turtles, the coyotes, the foxes, the hawks. And those are just the tough guys. If we want to get our numbers up, we might just patch in the deer. And, of course, John the Baptist and his crew because they’ll drive the vehicles.

We might not become the toughest gang, and certainly not the one with the baddest vehicles or the most ink. But we’ll definitely be the most eclectic.

We just can’t decide if we should make new members honorary terriers or if we should change our name to reflect our diversity.

Hell’s Critters? The Forest’s Disciples? Wine Country Maniacs?

We’ll get back to you on that.