Loathing (Just Loathing, no Fear) in Southern Brooklyn

Goddamn DOG!

Okay, so the next door neighbors have a very loud dog that runs up and down their apartment. It doesn't really bug us. Whatever. We're easygoing here. After all, the apartment on the other side of us has "Angry Baby," a child with the amazing ability to scream and cry at the top of its lungs all day and night long WITHOUT CEASE (the child has hit toddlerdom now, and words are beginning to appear in the midst of the screaming; I saw her once briefly when I went to get a package accidentally delivered to them by mistake, and the child had the TENSEST and most SUSPICIOUS face I've seen on any human under 12).

Again, Angry Baby, like Big Damn Dog, is more an item of bemusement than annoyance (I swear the kid has somehow naturally learned circular breathing). The sounds of Angry Baby and Big Damn Dog come through the walls quite clearly, so we just remark on it when they're being particularly boisterous. A shriek will start up, and either Berit or I will say to the other, "Angry Baby is angry," and we're prepared for anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours of non-stop shrieks. Then we'll hear the sounds of mad, racing feet running up and down the mirror image apartment on the other side of the wall, and something crashing off a table, and occasionally a human voice screaming, and we know that Big Damn Dog is on the move again.

However.

While working here at the computer a while ago, with my back to the living room window -- open so that I can enjoy the lovely weather, a cool breeze, and the smell of mown grass; screened so that the kitties don't escape -- there was a GODAWFUL loud noise that caused me to jump and spin - as I saw the cats running frantically away from the window (they had been resting on the sill) - and find the snarling muzzle of Big Damn Dog sticking THROUGH a nice new hole in the middle of my screen, trying to get to the felines! I shooed the foul beast away, with much waving of hands, and, realizing I now had a cat-sized hole in the screen, slid the window down so my sweet things couldn't go leaping out -- being cliched little cats, they had already run BACK to the window, even though they were obviously terrified (Moni was shaking and making little crying vocal sounds), to continue to watch the nasty noisy thing trying to get in.

You see, there is a "patio" area outside my (and the neighbor's) first-floor apartments. It's actually the roof of the building's parking garage, but all of us on it have doorways out to it, and we were somewhat sold on the apartment by having a "patio." Of course, we now have gotten messages from the management company (my old bosses) telling us that this area is, in fact, off limits and we can't use our doors, and all the nice little plantings and barbeque areas and so forth that people had created out there had to be removed, immediately (we had to get rid of some outdoor chairs and a table we had, but it really wasn't a great loss, as it turned out no get a little windy and dusty to go out there for breakfast, as I had hoped).

Still, Berit goes out there to paint props or when using some kind of adhesive or solvent that shouldn't be used in an enclosed area (to my latent-huffer disappointment), and some others let their dogs out there, not to crap (thankfully), but to exercise. This includes Big Damn Dog, who I (and the cats) have seen on one or two other occasions. Today appears to have been the first time he noticed the cats, and it flipped him out.

So I dealt with the slobbering pea-brained mastiff while simultaneously trying to calm down a cat that was both terrified and fascinated by what was terrifying her and trying to get closer to it while wailing piteously. Great.

I got the window closed (at least enough that the cats can't get out) in the middle of this, and the cats began to lose interest as the dog went running off elsewhere for a bit, but it kept coming back to the window and sniffing around, looking for the felines. It's a big, cute dog, to be sure. I prefer cats, but there are some dogs I like, and big, dopey-looking ones with big sad friendly eyes are up there, so I was a little taken with it for a moment.

Then I remembered what it had done and looked again at the hole it left in the screen and I took the squirt bottle of water we use to discipline the cats and gave the big fucker a good shot in the nostril, and it went loping away, not to return.

(and I thought that anything I wrote today would NOT be influenced at all by the fact that I just reread Hunter S. Thompson's The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am again partway through Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 -- no, I'm back in the Raoul Duke mindset; I used to occasionally go to costume parties as Thompson/Duke, and the character comes back easily . . . selah . . .)

Now the damn monster is back indoors, and in between writing bits of this I'm doing loads of laundry, so every time I cross from my apartment door to the elevator to the basement, the hound hears me and begins barking and clawing at the front door of the other apartment, causing me to shit myself EVERY time I pass by, even when I know it's coming.

Flashback to childhood, at least ages 6 to 15 -- there was this tiny little connecting branch between the parallel-running Field Road (where I lived) and Valleywood Road (where my grandparents lived) in Cos Cob, CT, and I would often walk it to go see my grandparents or uncles if, for some reason, I couldn't go across Mrs. Hyland's yard (her backyard abutted ours, and her front faced my grandparents'). There was a house on this little road with a big-sounding, mean-sounding dog that seemed to live in the garage, with the garage door being kept open just low enough so that the thing couldn't get out, but it could bark at anything that passed, and scrape madly at the driveway and the door. I never saw anything more than a paw or two for all those years I walked that little, creepily-shaded road, but almost every single time I walked by, that DAMN DOG would find a way to start barking madly at JUST the right time to make me jump out of my skin. I hated that dog, and still do, and I never even got a look at the thing. I tried to figure out ways to get it to bark on cue, so it wouldn't startle me -- throwing pebbles ahead of me, stomping hard on the ground, whatever -- but they never worked consistently enough.

So now I have the same thing happening to me as a 40-year-old, walking across a Brooklyn lobby to do my laundry. I'm tempted to go over to the door and bark and snarl back at the thing until I confuse it enough to shut up, but I'm afraid one of the owners appears to be home, and I don't want them opening the door to find out what madman is trying to outsnarl their mangy mutt.

(oddly, I'm only concerned about what these damned owners might think -- the other people on the floor - the parents of Angry Baby, the nice new young couple that smiles at us all the time, the two other couples that look at Berit and I with an odd suspicion - I don't care what they might think of me barking and snarling in the lobby)

Of course, I have to be careful in any case because I can't be 100% certain that the dog that came by was the Big Damn Dog from next door. It could have been someone else in the building (or one of the three connected ones). I could be blaming the wrong people and the wrong dog here.

Just like I can't be sure the owners of Big Damn Dog are the ones that fog up the lobby with pot smoke from their apartment all the time, but I'm pretty sure they are. Again, not that B & I would mind the pot smoke, whatever, fine, but for eight years now we've been putting up with it being the foulest, SKUNKIEST damn pot smoke in the universe creeping out, and occasionally into our own home. I mean, really! The damned lobby, at least once a week, smells like when a semi runs over a whole family of the little smelly bastards on some remote Maine road. Damn.

Of course, on one occasion, there was a (justified) complaint that our catbox odors had made it to the lobby, when we let things get a hair ripe and were using a litter that just wasn't cutting it for a brief time. I was quite embarrassed and have been VERY MUCH on top of that since, but now I just feel that if it comes up again I may think about casually bringing up Angry Baby, Big Damn Dog, or Skunky Weed to the respective neighbors and seeing what response I get.

Meanwhile, Berit is off at Theater 3, working on the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas all day and night today, so she gets to have the iPod, which means that the Friday Random Ten has to come from the overloaded and bloated iTunes library itself. Yikes. Here's what comes up from the 71,057 tracks I have in there today . . .

1. "Love Is Fire" - The Parachute Club - Poptronica Romance
2. "Amor" - Ben E. King - Atlantic Rhythm & Blues vol 5 1961-1965
3. "I Got Love If You Want It" - Slim Harpo - Hip Shakin'
4. "Have You Met My Pet Pig?" - The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Where's My Daddy?
5. "Two More Days" - Little Eddie Mint - New York Notables
6. "Song Of The Healer" - The Sallyangie - Children Of The Sun
7. "The Sneak" - The Towers - Las Vegas Grind! - Volume 6
8. "Security" - Thane Russal & Three - Club Au-Go-Go 11
9. "Dirty Love" - Mandre - Mandre
10. "Shop Around" - The Miracles - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971

No new cat photos today, either (the charger has been misplaced again), so instead, four videos of recent note.

First, a (dubbed) word from FDR to a grateful nation . . .

Meanwhile, on the other side of the war, Adolf Hitler is having his own problems (as interpreted by Rick Crom, who I had the pleasure of working with years ago at the York Theater Company on Merrily We Roll Along):

And, considering that (as I've mentioned before, with shock and loathing) they're now planning movies based on fucking BOARD GAMES such as Battleship and the like, is the following any more ridiculous?

Finally, a LEGO and musical adaptation of a modern classic . . .

Tonight, I'm off to finally see Nosemaker's Apprentice at The Brick, which I hear is damned great. It's gotten me up and out tonight, at least. And having to run soon, so no updates on the shows right now, though I certainly have some. Maybe tomorrow.

Enjoy the long lovely weekend, folks.