you
well thank you very much for barking
that was a very good beginning however I
can see there's a few of you haven't
been too bright barking practice lately
if you wait a few minutes i'll give you
another opportunity and for those of you
who feel a spontaneous need to bark
during my talk please wait for another
10 minutes the thing is that young kids
love the bark they see it it's a hoot
it's fun it's spontaneous it's silly
it's wonderful and if you ask them why
they'll say because my sister Miriam as
a young child used to bark with such
conviction that dogs would follow her
down the street and if you asked her
she'd say because but as we grow up we
forget the word because we become more
worried about words like insult
embarrassment snide comments we're
self-conscious and then we grow up and
as grown-ups we crave one thing and that
one thing is respectability and if you
had met me at the age of 39 you would
have thought that I was respectable and
the truth is I was very respectable I
was a University scientists studying how
bacteria interact with the mouth I had a
bunch of papers I was up for
professorship I had innovations and
inventions in the oven
I was up and coming but inside I was
down and out I was a wreck a train wreck
I was afraid of failure but I was afraid
of success I was afraid of dying and I
was also afraid of being alive from a
very young age I had noticed that once
in a while my heart would go into some
kind of Brazilian Samba beating wildly
in my chest and once i was diagnosed or
maybe i should say misdiagnosed as
having a very rare heart condition and i
spent the next 20 years in mortal fear
of dying when i was 39 my wife said to
me why don't you check so i did i went
to a famous cardiologist he looked at my
electrocardiogram and he said you have a
wacky electrocardiogram but your heart
is normal I said what he said yes you
are going to live and he was right that
was my first wake-up call at the age of
39 because a few months later I found
that I had a completely separate chronic
medical condition that I have to deal
with on a day-to-day basis so I cope
that was my second wake-up call the
third wake-up call was getting a puppy
family dogs teach us a lot about
ourselves
the kids called him Elvis Presley he
didn't bark but boy did he ever have a
life he didn't sing he barked and Elvis
had a girlfriend named Camilla and we
didn't approve of that relationship she
was a and we locked him up in the
second floor sure enough Elvis flew out
of there one day over the balcony to be
reunited with his true love and he
wasn't wearing very much that's what i
call barky and after those three wake-up
calls as I approached the age of 40 I
realized that I had to get myself
something a life and so I began barking
my first port of call as a Barker was my
university career because I had become
interested in something called bad
breath and I went to the library once
and I saw that nobody was doing research
on this subject which is so worrisome to
all of us I came home that night and I
said to my wife I have found my
scientific career it's a scientific
goldmine a stinky one and in work my
colleagues made fun of me they called me
Mel the smell they even coaxed me to
leave my scientific papers on bad breath
out of my CV so that I would be promoted
in the end that I followed my nose I
wrote dozens of scientific papers I
smelled about ten thousand mouths more
than most people now I do it only for
fun I wrote books I organized
international meetings I became the
world expert on bad breath and I say
this to you with a degree of modesty
because there's only three of us and
each one claims that he's the world
expert my second barking career was
writing children's books I'd wanted to
write children's books from my 20s I
started in my 40s my first books were al
biet closer to my comfort zone I wrote
books about bacteria I wrote
about dentistry witches dental witches
toothbrushes tooth fairies but then I
really began to bark with the help of
the wonderful illustrator Rotom Omri we
created a whole zoo of characters they
all share one property they are forced
in their lives to cope with a challenge
and to overcome it if you look on my
left shoulder you see Tim the porcupine
he wakes up one morning his quills are
on backwards he rubs everybody the wrong
way in the palm of my hand you see Kenya
Kenya can't hop and that would be okay
except she's a kangaroo but my favorite
character is glue merous glue muris is
serious he has absolutely no sense of
humor and that might be okay except the
glue muris is a laughing hyena funny
enough I don't have any dogs in any of
my stories but all my animals learn to
bark finally and perhaps most important
I became a professional musician at the
age of 47 it started when I was 41 I was
at a party and there was a saxophone
there and I'd been dying to play sax of
room for years I don't know why I didn't
but at the age of 41 I was there I was
ready to change my life I grabbed that
beast and I put it to my lips and noise
came out terrible noise but I got all
excited and I called my friend Chris
McCullough in Toronto and I said Chris
am I too old to learn to play saxophone
and he said something important he said
now you're never too old to place axel
the next thing you know before you can
say maple syrup Chris had bought me a
saxophone shifted from Toronto to Israel
and I began to play not now and then not
here and there but every day I drove my
family crazy the neighbors threatened me
I sometimes practiced in the car but I
persisted I had a wonderful teacher who
took me to a gig he said you see that
guy playing saxophone Bennett all he
started when he was 35 I was incredulous
but five years later sure enough I was
gigging with my own band we've had some
amazing gigs we played as Shimon Paris's
80th birthday before he was president
now he's president he's having a 90th
birthday party they've invited some
other performer named Barbara Streisand
that's okay I can wait another 10 years
but what about Barbra Streisand what
would have happened if somebody is
salted her when she was nine or ten
years old and said to her Barbara you
don't sing well you're off key and she
had stopped
for years we would have lost one of the
world's great performers and I want to
ask ourselves how many of us when we
were kids wanted to draw to paint to
play an instrument to sing and somebody
told us that we weren't capable or we
thought that we might be ridiculed and
we haven't done it up till now how
unfortunate that is I stop thinking for
25 years you can't stop me now in the
meantime the years are flowing by and
Elvis is dead we have we have a new dog
and his name is fudge fudge not only
loves to bark he also saved and I want
you to have a look at this instructional
video because afterwards we're going to
do something that has never been done in
the history of mankind so will you have
a look with me please
Oh
get that creature he's in his groove
he's singing with me he doesn't care if
he's been criticized if there's jazz
police whether he's on the key maybe
doesn't get the words right and I figure
that if dogs can sing the very least if
human beings can do is to bark and I'm
going to do an experiment that's never
been done in the history of mankind and
you are going to join me and make it
happen and it's very simple because
changing your life can start with a bark
and I want you to bark with guts with
spirit I don't care whether you move
growl Yelp or it doesn't matter because
your life does kind of depend on it
doesn't it you can sing only in the
shower or you can sing in a choir you
can step up to bat with the bases loaded
and two outs or you can watch the
baseball game from your living room you
can do your thing or not but one thing
is for certain whether we live our lives
and borrow car dreams at the end of the
day we all end up croaking so on the way
why not bark so what we're going to do
now is you're going to Yelp growl bark
with all your might and we're going to
make this a dream come true and a it
doesn't matter if you don't understand
the words just let it all hang out okay
please follow the magic ball are you
ready
Oh
let's go
Oh
Thank You Mel oh thank you thank you hey
you do know by the way that Israeli dogs
bark hug an American dogs got wolf it's
know someplace different kind but when
one dog from israel says woof to a dog
from the United States they understand
each other if you're saying so thank you