The Pug of Casablanca

This supposedly “true” story of the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman classic Casablanca was inspired by the time Hack desperately tried to hit on a drunken divorcĂ©e with three bratty kids when he was on a break from his job as the night janitor at the Van Nuys Shakey’s and thought it was a done deal until his cover artist Jonny M.’s pug Boris sat down next to them and she was so charmed by Boris that she forgot Hack existed. The pug talked her into giving up drinking that night and being a better mother to her kids while Hack made another of his countless failed suicide attempts by sticking his head in the pizza oven but only singeing his left ear to a crisp.