WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GETTING LOCKED IN A RESTROOM during a party at someone's (one bedroom) house?
That's what I was asking myself, as I tried the old Victorian key for the 11th time. How stupid can you get right? As I hunched down before the old lockset, and made another attempt to find the mechanical sweetspot inside the box-lock. I could hear voices outside in the yard; laughter and music. A man and woman were in the kitchen, on the other side of the door which had designed to entrap me. They exchanged a few words and I could hear the distinct tinkle of beer bottles as the fridge door open and shut.
Though I'm fortunate to not suffer from claustrophobia, I was not unaware of the rising temperature in the little, unvented tile bathroom. It was the heat from my agitation, and my agitation was due to the potential for embarrassment - inherent in the situation.
It would be another fifteen minutes before I got out of there, which I only achieved by removing the hinge pins from the door - with a hammer and screwdriver passed to me through the window... The hostess, Lauren, walked up just as we were taking the door off of its hinges.
"What on earth is going on here?" She asked.
"Nothing much. Vince just got locked in the bathroom."
Saturday, May 17, 2003
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
I went to see WINGED MIGRATION a couple of nights ago. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a poetic documentary film about migrating birds. I was very stirred by it, and on many different levels. In that respect it was like everything else these days.
The remarkable thing about the film is the proximity they achieved to the birds. The filmakers literaly accompamnied the birds in ultra-light aircraft, as they laboured on their migratory paths. I'd seen footage on TV of such unlikely flying comrades: Sometime in the last ten years, human-animal understanding advanced astonishingly. A thought flashed across my mind two-thirds of the way through the movie, that if given enough time people would one day be able to communicate with animals, as well as we communicate with one another. That's if the animals are not all dead first.
For myself I've learned so much about dogs since I adopted Baby, my sheperd/labrador dog. When i raised my last dog, in the late eighties, no one knew anything about separation anxiety - the fact that dogs should not be left alone. A guy I know here in L.A. has two timber wolves, which he strictly refers to as *hybrid dogs*; that meaning lupus/canus mongrels. From him I learned that there's a whole system of establishing dominance wolves, and mainaining it. It's a language, as much as any other. Now with the www, even seriously marginal people can have user-groups, share knowledge... It saves a lot of reinventing the wheel. Instead you can get right to the good stuff.
So this guy with the wolves was telling me that there are signs you have to understand, which indicate that the wolf is getting ready to step. One sign is lying in doorways; another clue is the animal beginning to pass through doorways ahead of you. It'll build up, and then you have to, as he explained to me; "Put him in an alpha roll."
O.K. Here we've got some weird dog/man militia, supermax, gangster stuff. Read on.
An alpha-roll is when you put the animal on his back, and pin all four of his legs, so that he cannot kick, scratch or roll-over. Then, you hold tuck his chin down towards his chest. Thus all his weapons are cancelled, and he's ready to be your bitch again. I actually do something similar with my dog, when he's being more of a butt-knuckle than usual.
The remarkable thing about the film is the proximity they achieved to the birds. The filmakers literaly accompamnied the birds in ultra-light aircraft, as they laboured on their migratory paths. I'd seen footage on TV of such unlikely flying comrades: Sometime in the last ten years, human-animal understanding advanced astonishingly. A thought flashed across my mind two-thirds of the way through the movie, that if given enough time people would one day be able to communicate with animals, as well as we communicate with one another. That's if the animals are not all dead first.
For myself I've learned so much about dogs since I adopted Baby, my sheperd/labrador dog. When i raised my last dog, in the late eighties, no one knew anything about separation anxiety - the fact that dogs should not be left alone. A guy I know here in L.A. has two timber wolves, which he strictly refers to as *hybrid dogs*; that meaning lupus/canus mongrels. From him I learned that there's a whole system of establishing dominance wolves, and mainaining it. It's a language, as much as any other. Now with the www, even seriously marginal people can have user-groups, share knowledge... It saves a lot of reinventing the wheel. Instead you can get right to the good stuff.
So this guy with the wolves was telling me that there are signs you have to understand, which indicate that the wolf is getting ready to step. One sign is lying in doorways; another clue is the animal beginning to pass through doorways ahead of you. It'll build up, and then you have to, as he explained to me; "Put him in an alpha roll."
O.K. Here we've got some weird dog/man militia, supermax, gangster stuff. Read on.
An alpha-roll is when you put the animal on his back, and pin all four of his legs, so that he cannot kick, scratch or roll-over. Then, you hold tuck his chin down towards his chest. Thus all his weapons are cancelled, and he's ready to be your bitch again. I actually do something similar with my dog, when he's being more of a butt-knuckle than usual.
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