High-Stakes Quickfire Challenge
Sep 20, 2009 in Dreams
The Top Chef of your dreams may involve outrageous ingredients, inspired chefs, and aggressive, coolly-confident characters; mine apparently involves chefs marooned in space. In my dream Top Chef, the contestants, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, and me, were all sent out to a far-away planet, along with a shipful of miners and farmers and builders, to establish a new colony (Gail Simmons had her own ship and went back to Earth between episodes). The winning chef would be the head chef at a brand-new luxury resort on a distant continent; the losing chefs would all be sent off, together, to colonize another planet. Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Boy, Seth Rogen's in a Lot Lately!
Apr 13, 2009 in Dreams
My gig was watching Jonah Hill. From a distance, that is; I was in hidden surveillance. He hung out at an intersection in the city, with a brownstone at one corner, an art deco skyscraper at the next, a small copse of bamboo -- in which I'd encamped myself -- opposite from the brownstone, and a white brick industrial building at the other. At the bottom floor of the skyscraper were the comic book store and sub shop Jonah liked to hang out at. He was talking to Seth Rogen, who stood on a black metal balcony on the second floor o the white brick industrial building. I couldn't hear them but I could see the laughs. I could also see Seth startle, stand straight up, and point as the four ninjas swooped out of the shadows and snatched poor Jonah. Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Whipping Gretzky
Feb 24, 2009 in Dreams
We were playing a three-way game of hockey -- us, the Finnish national team, and the Swedish national team, that is. With only two ends to the ice, we'd switch one team out when enough goals were scored against them. Except those darned Swedes never seemed to get scored on -- they had their strategy down, and Wayne Gretzky in goal. Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Starring Michael Cera and Ellen Page
Sep 18, 2008 in Dreams
Michael Cera's character runs cross-country; he's counting on his coach to get him a college scholarship. It's a good thing that his coach is having a big recruiting day for all the area cross-country standouts on Thursday -- all the college scouts will be watching! Or at least that's what Mikey1 thinks, the coach is actually a charlatan. With that great slack-jawed look that Cera can do, Mikey discovers that he needs to fill the event with some kind of ringers, or the scouts will be pissed off and not give him a chance. Read on...
Best Renew The Library Books
Mar 31, 2008 in Dreams
Waiting in line to check out my new book, I realized I'd forgotten to bring back the overdue book that I owed. Checking in my pocket, I only had a few Mexican coins -- two large five-peso coins, a small three-peso coin, two tiny two-peso coins, and a medum-sized one peso coin. She'd take them.
Read on... (plus 2 Comments)
And This Just In: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead
Mar 12, 2008 in Dreams
We -- that is, myself, the various madly-retreating Spanish Nationalist troops with which I was traveling, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco -- were trudging through a lightly-forested area of gently rolling and quite verdant hills. The sky was clear and the sun bright, but we didn't expect the three Republican fighters that appeared in the distance, charging towards us. Read on... (plus 3 Comments)
Orage
Dec 22, 2007 in Dreams, Otherwise Uncategorized
The night Rick died, his ex called me in the middle of the night to tell me. But her voicemail was unintelligible; and I was already up. I'd been up for an hour, and I'd spent that whole time in terror. Because I was sure he was coming to get me.
Read on... (plus 3 Comments)
Like a Drowned Cat
Dec 14, 2006 in Dreams, True Life Stories
My third cat, Percy, we got from a farm in Western Maryland when I was in 7th grade. Out of a barn or not, Percy looked like an Abyssinan with the coat of a Russian Blue. When we first got him, I held Percy on my lap as we drove him home; he sat bolt upright and peered out the window for the whole trip. About 20 minutes in, he peed on me, the good, solid, sustained pee that comes from holding it in for a while and then finally letting go when you need to. Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Intergalactic Colonization
Aug 18, 2005 in Dreams
Humans had gone to the stars, filled with hope, and colonized one planet, many light-years away from Earth. But, as we entered the universe, we made enemies, and one of these enemies attacked earth and rendered it uninhabitable. Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
All The President's Scandals
Jun 12, 2005 in Dreams
While on the campaign trail, I thought I would take a break and see an old friend for dinner. My car drove me and my chief of staff along the 1, up the curves of the coast, to a restaurant on the top of a small rise overlooking the Pacific. Inside, we ate a grand gourmet repast. Read on...
This Dream Would Make More Sense If I Watched More TV
Nov 25, 2004 in Dreams
I am on the starship Enterprise, from the Next Generation TV show (a fine show, even if certain people think it's boring). We find a spaceship (is it an alternative Enterprise? I'm not sure) stuck in between two dimensions, partially in ours and partially in another. This ship moves close to us to transfer its crew over; "it must be so horrible to be trapped between dimensions, they'll try anything," says Captain Picard. Their ship touches ours, at the bottom of our saucer section, then winks out of existence. Picard and I ride the turbolift down to see who we've taken on board. At the bottom of the turbolift shaft, the door doesn't open; I am about to force it when Picard pushes on the door; it flexes in and out like the safety button in the middle of a juice bottle's cap. The area outside is depressurized; the bottom two levels of the saucer section were opened to space when the other ship disappeared. If I had opened the turbolift door, Picard and I would have been killed. After a few anxious moments, the turbolift takes us back up to the bottom "living" level. I comment how awful it would have been to get stuck down at the bottom floor; Picard agrees. Now the day is over, so I leave the turbolift and go to sleep on my bunk, a hospital gurney in the middle of the deck, which is open from one end of the ship to the other. Nobody is there. I turn out the lights. In the middle of the night I wake up with the feeling somebody is watching me. Nobody is there, but there's a tricorder on the floor, its screen glowing in the darkness. Are the people from the other ship really gone? Am I really alone?... Read on...
Cowboy Revenge
Jun 29, 2004 in Dreams
Four rustlers shot my brother, so I had to track them through the dusty southwest to exact my revenge; in parallel, a posse rode after the rustlers to catch and hang them. Several times, I came close to finding the rustlers; each time, I ran into their beautiful sister, and we drank whisky together in the dry heat. Finally, we fell in love. I chased the rustlers into an underground cave, where we shot it out; I killed some of them but they shot me as well as they fled from the cave. I rolled into the cave entrance to hide and bleed; the sister was there, and she began to treat my wounds. Then the posse caught up behind us. They thought, since I was in the cave, I must be in with the rustlers, and rushed the cave and captured me and the sister. They didn't give me the chance to explain; instead, they fixed explosive collars to me and the sister, planning to execute us by blowing our heads off. Then they poured battery acid on our heads; the sister's face melted, but mine was somehow unharmed. Fearing that the explosive collar wouldn't actually blow my head off but just wound me grievously, I begged the posse to understand that I was also chasing down the rustlers. They let me go, and the now-wounded sister treated the bullet holes her brothers put in me.... Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Bad Driver
May 8, 2004 in Dreams
The dream started out in the hardware store. I don't remember anything about what I shopped for, because the important part came after I left the store and went to my car in the parking lot. I put my Lexus in drive but went nowhere. More gas, still nothing. Again, and I started rolling. I pulled out of my parking spot, and started to break, but, again, nothing -- I kept rolling, into a little hatchback, pushing that car through the front of the hardware store. After offering my apologies to the Latino driving the hatchback, I got into my car to back it out of the mess I'd just made. But I couldn't see past the water truck parked next to my accident site; I decided to back up slowly. As I pulled out, a black Toyota pickup suddenly appeared from behind the Sparkletts truck; I lay on my brakes but, of course, they didn't work, and I hit the Toyota. I rolled forward and, somehow, stopped, then got to look at the damage to the back of my car. You could see sunlight poking through the holes in my smashed trunk lid (a lid that, incidentally, looked like the lid of my old real-life Taurus. What a mess! Of course, it was hard to drive today, and I expected disaster at every moment.... Read on...
The Passion of the Dream
Apr 22, 2004 in Dreams
Somehow, I've managed to miss everybody's favorite new movie, The Passion of the Christ. I actually considered seeing it over the weekend, but, instead, I ended up seeing "Goodbye Lenin". My brain apparently decided that I should have seen The Passion instead, because I had a dream I was watching the movie. Actually, I think the dream was about a dream sequence in the movie, a scene which I'm sure doesn't exist but which I, clearly, would have included in the movie. In this scene, Christ is dreaming about getting crucified, or perhaps He's imagining it. He's first tied to the cross, then His head and arms are draped with red silk, then He's nailed to the cross. As I watched the scene, I thought to myself, "this isn't going to be the gory crucifixion scene, that comes when He's really nailed to the cross." And I was right! The nails were clearly not driven into Jesus's hands, but instead into the cross between His arms and the red silk. As all this happens, passers-by talk about what's going on in English. Then, of course, I realized that the movie was supposed to be in Aramaic, so the language of the actors changes. Two people mock Jesus in what is probably actually German but heck I don't speak German anyway so it might as well be Aramaic. Then I woke up. This dream, I really don't know what it means.... Read on...
Doctor's Office
Dec 2, 2003 in Dreams
I had to make a visit to the doctor's office, so I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor of the building. I'd been to this office before, and I hated going -- at the top of the stairs was a railing, and I had to climb over this railing and walk along a thin ledge jutting out next to a four-story drop in order to get to the hallway the doctor's office was on. When I got to the top several people were climbing over the rail to go to the doctor, but I suddenly became very scared as I approched the railing. A nice blonde technician in scrubs said that many people become scared climbing over this railing and helped me get to the office. After I left the office, I ran into my mother -- who also saw the same doctor -- in the waiting room, and we left together. She planned to take the elevator down, so we walked to the elevator which was just down the hall. There was a small hatch in the wall leading to a small shaft in which an elevator barely large enough for two must have traveled. I was apprehensive about taking this elevator and proposed using the stairs, but my mother assured me that the elevator was OK. The man in line ahead of us opened the door to the elevator shaft and reached in -- I told him to watch his hand because the car might be coming. He shot me an odd look with his head cocked to the side, then pushed a button inside the shaft. A large platform rose through a hole in the floor and my mother and the man stepped on. I joined them, and the platform began to descend. It turned out that my mother had worked with the man, who was a lawyer, in the past; they talked about stories of the case they had collaborated on. Suddenly, the elevator gave a lurch and the platform tipped sideways. The man was undisturbed, but I had to grab the floor to keep from falling. I yelled to my mother to hold on, but she fell into the shaft. We were only about a story down, so I feared she'd died in the three-story plunge. The man was totally unperturbed. I frantically asked him if he thought my mother would be ok, and he said yes; then, up the shaft came her voice: "I'm ok!". Then we reached the first floor.... Read on...
Am I Evil?
Sep 9, 2003 in Dreams
My family was out of the house, and, as a young teenager, I wanted to be a bad boy. So I peed in the tub. In dreams, peeing in the tub is apparently surprisingly enjoyable. Later, my little brother, who's just such a goody-two-shoes, was taking a bath in the tub and I decided to pee in there again. I straddled the tub and peed against the top wall of the tub, near my brother's head. So he wouldn't get directly peed upon, my brother took a deep breath and went underwater, while my pee ran down the wall of the tub and into the water my brother was in, coloring it light yellow. My brother's eyes were squeezed shut very tightly. When I stopped peeing, my brother broke the surface. His skin was covered with a light green scum, like a tarnish. He dunked himself back under water to clean it off, and I reached in and started to rub his face to clean it. But I just opened a big tear in his cheek! It didn't bleed, but was just a deep black. He broke the surface again, told me not to help him, and dunked himself again. The tarnish lifted off and his cheek healed. As he came above water again, I asked him: "Am I good like you and dad, or evil like mom?" He just smiled.... Read on...
Morningsomnia
Jul 19, 2003 in Dreams
For the past week or so, I've been waking up — regardless of what time I go to sleep — at sometime between 5 and 6 am. I'm tired, but I've slept enough off that I'm wired and can't get back to sleep. If I do stuff for about an hour, maybe two, I work off some of that nervous energy and can go back to sleep (thus this post). See, I'm big on sleep. I love it, and it loves me back. I'm an 8 hours guy, every night, maybe 10 or 12 once on the weekend. Sure, I can do less and feel fine if there's a reason — but for hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer, our ancestors have been sleeping more than 8 hours a day, with the exception of a few days around harvest time. It's what my body's evolved for, why should I deny it? So not getting sleep — and particularly, waking up when I'm specifically planning to be sleeping — is annoying. And then I need to sleep in later, because otherwise I'll be tired all day long and fall asleep while I'm driving to my wonderful girlfriend's, crashing my car into a tree or, if it's a Friday night or Saturday, one of the many Hasidic Jews walking to and fro. This morning I woke up at 6 am, after a dream about a hot new comedy variety show on Fox. You know you've been living in LA way too long when you dream up TV show concepts. But this one, see, it involved funny comics, customized matching New Beetles, and said comics jumping said Beetles through a ring of fire. I really think this is a can't-miss concept. Okay, it's 7:30, I've got to find a way to get back to sleep so I can get up and go out with my friends and do important things like paying my bills. Although, if I could turn this dream into a TV show, well, that should pay the bills pretty well, eh?... Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Picking Up My Girlfriend
Jul 10, 2003 in Dreams
It's a beautiful sunny afternoon and I'm walking through a public park. On one side of me is a golf course; on both sides, the grass is green in that way it only gets on the east coast when it's summer and the light is diffracted by the humidity. But it's not hot and humid, it's pleasant. I'm walking along a two-lane paved road passing through the park, I'm wearing my comfy hiking boots and I'm happily tooling down one hill and up the next, for it is a rather hilly park. I'm waiting for my parents to come along and pick me up. Soon they drive by, in the maroon '92 Ford Taurus that was once theirs and is now mine. I get in the back seat, on the passenger's side; the back seat on the driver's side is filled with boxes. I ask them if they've picked up my girlfriend (my current one); they say they did, they took her for a while, but now it's my turn to ride. I say, no way, let's get my girlfriend, we can fit her in the center seat in the back. She shouldn't have to walk! So we turn around and drive back to get my girlfriend. On the way there, my father comments, "It's lovely out here, you'd have a lovely place if you just cleaned up out front!" I flash on the place I live, seeing a tangle of gray brush through a sunny window looking out from the entrance foyer. The house I rent is a simple place from the '70s, somewhere in West Virginia. About a one minute drive behind me, there's my girlfriend, walking up a big, grassy hill. We meet her at the top, she's wearing a black turtleneck and a plaid skirt, with brown boots. She looks lovely! I ask her, do you want to squeeze yourself in the middle, or should we walk to my parents' place together, it'll only take a couple hours, but it's only a five minute drive there. As I begin to wake up from the dream, I realize it would've been most efficient if my parents took one of us at a time, since it only was a five minute drive.... Read on... (plus 1 Comments)
Ghost World
Jul 8, 2003 in Dreams
So, as prologue, the house I grew up in was haunted (probably more on that later). One of the loci of supernormal behavior was a large room on the third floor, and probably the attic that connected to that room. In this dream, I was living in this house with my current roommates. I had the whole third floor (a bedroom, the big haunted room, and a bathroom) to myself. We were planning to move out to a new, smaller, ranch-style house, with just one shower that we used to wash cans of vegetable soup down the drain. The smaller house had gray and white wooden walls and yellow tile in the bathroom; the ceilings were low and the house was dark, and the dirty beige carpet just made it more so. Both houses were owned by the same landlord, our old landlord, a nice guy named Bob Schock, and the small house was much cheaper. Hey, it's a dream, don't knock it. I went back to take a shower and brought a friend with me. As we climbed the stairs to my floor, my friend saw a little girl at the top of the stairs. I told her not to, but she followed the girl. The girl grabbed her hand and pulled her through the large room and into the attic. A door had appeared in the back of the attic leading to a supernatural world. I followed her in, running after the two of them. As I ran into the attic, the world changed from the beige carpet, beige paint, sunny openness of my house to a wood-paneled complex of mostly-open rooms; mahogany railings and cheap pine walls lay next to each other, with doors and windows in the walls promising a variety of services offered to the undead. The effect was much like a Las Vegas casino, with a warren of walkways inside a building, and faux buildings along the walls. Turning a corner, I found my friend seated, waiting in line at a processing center to be permanently trapped in this ghost world. I grabbed her hand and we ran for the door out. Down the stairs we went and out of the house to get away. But when we got outside I realized we were still trapped in the ghost world. While it apparently wasn't surprising that the house stood alone on the Scottish moors, the fact that there was a storm rolling in showed that we were not free. We linked up with some other Sunday hikers and decided to walk out of the moors in the rain. And then I woke up. It was 9:30am. Aren't you supposed to have these dreams at 3am so you can wake up and be scared and alone? Sunlight streaming through the windows don't do it for the frightening part.... Read on...
I Musta Slept On It Funny Or Something...
May 31, 2003 in Dreams
I had the weridest dream last night! Unexpected, new dream too. I was in a college (but I wasn't in college, see? It wasn't my college. Maybe I came back to it? I think I was visiting a friend's class...). I was in a class taught by a fairly young male professor, possibly a young version of the one from Good Will Hunting or possibly that guy from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Northern Exposure. I'd brought Junior to class for some kind of show-and-tell (it was a discussion class, not a lecture class). We were all sitting in those desk-chairs in orderly rows in the blue-walled rooms, and I was showing Junior off to students. Junior had a bit of a plucking problem, much worse than the one he has in real life - his wings were bare and his sides too. Suddenly I could see that he had poop backed up inside him, all the way from his little butt to his neck! I had to take him to the vet, but I had to find the professor to get out of class. I looked in a lounge for him - it was a small lounge with a white microwave (in fact, I think it was my girlfriend's white microwave) - and I looked for him in a blue bathroom with showers in the middle. No professor! Then I woke up and sat straight up. What could it all mean?... Read on...