Saturday, July 31, 2010

Improvising Vampires, Editing Cartoons & Jenn & Bueno Dolls

MORNING OF JULY 31, 2010

In real life a couple of friends and I are taking a summer improv comedy class at a local college. The first few classes have been a lot of fun. In my dream, we were at one of those classes. We had the same teachers, but there were more students than there really are. Also, there were a couple of the members of the actual improv troop from which this class spawned.

In one of the exercises we did, the first coupe of people to start the scene were acting like they were in some sort of creepy house, or perhaps a haunted house, or something long those lines. When I saw an opportunity, I chose to jump into the scene acting like a vampire who secretly lived in the house. Only I chose to be a very effete vampire with a "Paul Lynde" sort of voice. I wasn't interested in hurting them, but I was so glad to have company.

For some reason this really worked well. People laughed and I felt good about it. There was another exercise in which I had to wear a blonde wig for my character. I tried to create a silly girl character, but didn't feel like I did as well with it as I could have.

There was another dream, perhaps a later part of this one. I staying in a house with another family. The grandfather of the family was supposedly a famous cartoonist of a newspaper strip. (As far as I can remember, the strip itself was fictional.)

He gave me the original art for one of the strips. For some reason, I had to censor or change what was in the final panel. I remember being in the floor, whiting out part of his original art, and I felt horrible about it. One of the cartoonist's grandchildren came in the room and asked why I was doing this. I told him I was going to hang the art in my apartment, but my apartment was smaller than this house, so I had to reduce the size of the art in the last panel so it wouldn't look cluttered. And this made perfect sense to me.

Suddenly Bill O'Reilly (??!!??!!??!!??) came into the room. He told me I was a "patriot" because thousands of people everywhere enjoyed my "Jennifer & Bueno" cartoons. I tried to explain to him that he was wrong; that only the tiniest handful of people anywhere knew who Jennifer & Bueno were (reality). He wouldn't listen to it.

He went on to describe how hundreds of Jennifer and Bueno dolls had been shipped out to our troops overseas to boost morale. As he explained this, I was seeing in my mind's eye, like a video clip, a bunch of Barbie-sized Jennifer dolls and little Bueno figures to go with them. It was so cool that they existed, but I wondered how they got made without me knowing it.

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