The Cookie Chronicles

Next Stop – Hollywood

Mrs. G and I have long believed that Cookie has that something extra that sets all celebrities apart from the rest of us. The “It Factor”—personality, pizzazz, and the natural ability to light up a room simply by entering it. It’s talent and good looks, a warm and welcoming demeanor, and knowing intuitively that when the spotlight hits you, it’s showtime! Cookie passes all these tests with flying colors.

And yet... stardom has evaded her.

Every day you see dogs in tv commercials selling cars, hot dogs, beer, snacks, pharmaceuticals, you name it—dogs that by no stretch of the imagination are as beautiful and charming as Cookie. Lesser dogs are bona fide (or should I say bona Fido) stars on YouTube and Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. So we have to ask ourselves, how have we failed our little angel?

You could point out that we don’t live in Los Angeles, and on our last visit, we didn’t even take her with us. She’s been to Palm Springs on numerous occasions, but have we done a single casting call? Sadly, we have not.

As I pondered what might help to propel our pup into the glitzy glamour world of Hollywood (and full disclosure—maybe along the way generate a little extra income), several options crossed my mind.

Appearance is important. Cookie is a bit of a tomboy, not the show dog type. So maybe some costumes would fire the imagination of some casting director in LaLa Land. One holiday we tried putting her in a Santa suit. That went nowhere. The Hawaiian shirt we tried on her never made it out of the pet store. She did win second prize in a beauty contest while wearing a rescue dog coat. But none of these outfits brought talent agents knocking on our door.

So then I thought, maybe she needs an actual talent. Why not wine tasting? After all, it runs in the family, and a friend of ours had a talking bird that could drink Champagne and comment on its quality. Cookie isn’t shy with her food opinions, so this seemed like a solid option.

I tried Cookie out on every kind of wine there is – sparkling wines, sweet wines, dry wines, red wines, pink wines, white wines. In desperation, I even tried beer. No interest whatsoever. Her comment on everything, if I understood her correctly, was ‘Bleah.’

Not the sort of spark I was hoping for, one that could lead to the next starring role in a Bud Light or even a Bartles & Jaymes commercial.

Then it dawned on me. Every undiscovered talent needs a press agent. And what does a press agent do? A press agent generates press coverage.

Now this was a gold-plated idea, and one that I could jump on quickly. As fate would have it, I myself have been a published writer in myriad newspapers and magazines since the invention of the printing press.

With the ghost of Johannes Gutenberg whispering in my ear, I began writing the Cookie Chronicles. A simple enough project—compose a weekly newspaper column, focus on how smart, cute, friendly, and product-savvy Cookie is, and it would surely pave the Yellow Brick Road leading straight to Hollywood.

So eager was I to follow the upcoming trail of accolades that I assigned a Google alert request to ‘Waitsburg Cookie’ just so I wouldn’t miss anything.

Now, 14 episodes later and counting, nada. The Waitsburg alerts come flooding in, with all the news and comments that run weekly in this fine publication, and the occasional cookie recipe. But never once has the Cookie Chronicles showed up. Never once!

And I finally figured out why. I have utterly failed to mention Waitsburg in any of these Chronicles. And Google, being a bunch of algorithms just killing time until the singularity occurs and robots take over the entire world, is meanwhile searching the internet far and wide for “Waitsburg Cookie” and not finding it. So they have simply skipped over my weekly essay. As a press agent, I’ve been a dismal failure.

But a failure no longer my friends. Let’s just see what these too smart for their own good algorithm bots do with this: Waitsburg. Waitsburg Waitsburg Waitsburg! Waitsburg Cookie. Cookie Waitsburg. Cookie Cookie Cookie Cookie Cookie Cookie! Ha!

Steven Spielberg, if you’re reading this, this could be your greatest op-paw-tunity! Cookie awaits your call.