A DUPLEX THAT’S GOING TO THE DOGS

Those who flocked to the “Sunshine State” during the population boom of the 1920s and ’30s, were mostly “easterners” who had only known tenement living, cut off from the world outside on the upper floors of some aging brownstone and reduced to the numbers of their apartment door. But the city they crossed a continent to reach had land and climate, and built distinctive dwellings for these new residents; small homes with front and back doors, and spaces between each with walkways and grassy yards, where strangers could socialize and perhaps become neighbors.

No other architectural style is as synonymous with early Los Angeles as the “California Bungalow.”

The projection on the wall at the Broadwater Studio, greeting audiences as they entered, is one of only 300 such structures still existing today; a modest West Hollywood “duplex bungalow.”  A stone walkway leads towards the structure, bisecting a neatly trimmed green lawn, before it parts into separate paths that each arc to the tenants’ respective front doors.

The symbolism of this photo reflects the story behind Richard Lucas’s one-man show, based on his bestselling memoir of the same title, The Dog Log.

The preshow announcement of the emergency exit’s location and reminder to mute one’s cell phone is interrupted by the insufferable yapping of a small dog. Welcome to Lucas’s hell, careful when stepping over sulfur pools of dog poo.

Lucas opens at the low point in his life. His hopes of breaking into the music industry had flatlined, he’d fled from his teaching position before the LA Unified School District could find the straws needed to suck out the last remaining drop of his soul, and finally, the love of his life decided that while life was treating him like an illegal immigrant piñata at Majorie Taylor Greene’s birthday party, it was as good a time as any to rip out his heart and stir fry it.

But the radioactive hemlock-soaked cherry on top of his Chernobyl sundae is that a new neighbor has moved in next door to him, a human labyrinth overflowing with the wreckage of a life miss-lived and reeking of dog piss; a half-blind, partially deaf, and totally aggravating octogenarian minotaur named “Irene.”

Joining Irene in her task to dump the torments of hell on Lucas are two pint-sized furry furies, Sophie and Nelson, whom he describes with simmering bitterness.

Sophie: “Beady little glassy brown eyes snarl from her pointy face, and her sweaty black nose twitches constantly like a divining rod to the devil’s lake of fire.”

Nelson, the Renfield to Sophie’s Dracula; “He’s mute,” writes Lucas of him, “the best kind of Yorkie.”

For Lucas, it is the Chinese water torture but with dog barks. In desperation, he turns to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station, and is informed that the only recourse he has is in taking Irene to court, and to do that requires a “dog log.” A six-month record compiling a running account to show the judge of the offending hounds’ barking day and night.

Thus, The Dog Log is born, and from such a humble beginning evolves an epic tale of humanity’s greatest resource and principle tool of our unlikely survival – compassion.

Lucas suffers the world like Jean Paul Sartre, but writes about it like Richard Pryor. He fills his tale with humor, but a humor that resonates on a far deeper level. Scratch most comics and you’ll find an intellectual. With Lucas, you’ll find an intellectual who also happens to be a practicing human being.

The Dog Log in its present form as a solo show at the Hollywood Fringe is constructed from only the first half of Lucas’s novelized memoirs (and, having read the full work, if I found any flaw in this show, it was that I long for the rest).

The strength of The Dog Log lies not only in the laughter it provokes but in the inspiration it provides, as Lucas, like a modern Orpheus, descends into a hoarder’s hell of the debris of a failed life and layers of hardened dog poo to rescue the injured Irene from a convalescent home.

As produced by Steve Vlasak and so deftly directed by Bruno Oliver, The Dog Log pays honor to our humanity and does so quite humorously.

The Dog Log
The Broadwater (Studio), 1078 Lillian Way
part of The Hollywood Fringe Festival
ended on June 29, 2025
for tickets, visit The Dog Log