In the Limo

MORNING OF JULY 30, 2009

I did not remember entering an online movie tie-in contest, but apparently I won it anyway. I think it had to do with the Julie and Julia movie that's being promoted heavily here lately (probably because I saw an interview about it on Conan the day before). As the winner of the contest, I was flown to Hollywood for the premiere.

I met with a very severe, business-like lady who explained to me that I would ride around in a limo and interview a handful of celebrities, one at a time, for a given period of time. This sounded weird to me, as I have no desire to ride around in limos with celebrities (though I did find myself hoping Amy Adams might be one of them, as it was her movie that had apparently won me the contest).

I have a vague memory of being in the limo, and people, I presume celebrities, though they have no specific faces in my memory, were getting in and out frequently. I didn't "interview" anyone, we'd just speak. And it didn't seem to be more than five minutes with each individual.

My next vague memory is driving around a strange town in my car. Perhaps I was still supposed to be in L.A. I believe I was, not surprisingly, looking for a pizza place. It was early in the night, and I was supposed to meet friends there.

Finally, it was late at night and Richard and Eric and I were walking through a huge neighborhood for exercise. At one corner, Richard paused and pointed out a house at the far end of the street. It looked very much like the classic image of a haunted house. After taking it in and commenting on it for a moment, we started to resume our walk.

Just as a joke I said, "Hey wait, you guys--is that a person walking around in the driveway, I can't tell..." I was trying to make like I saw a ghost. They came back to look--Richard most excitedly--and suddenly began freaking out. I wondered why the freak-out since I had only been kidding...until I looked again.

In the driveway there was a faint, bluish-translucent figure floating toward the street in our direction.

Hercules, Injuries, and Kitties

MORNING OF JULY 26, 2009

Apparently my mom was going to direct a childrens' play at her church (directing a play is a very fictitious activity to assign to my mom). Apparently the play was a version of the "Hercules" story, but told as a comedy (I suppose not unlike the 90's Disney adaptation). Even though the play was starring children, they needed an adult to play Hercules, so she asked me. (If I was eligible to play that role, then it must have been a comedy adapation indeed!)

The thing was, her asking me was very last minute. There would be no rehearsals or anything. We'd go to the church, where the play was to be held, and I'd just have to improv my part throughout. For some reason I agreed to this. I had to wear a long blond wig to be Hercules, so I put it on and began thinking how to play a skinny, comedic Hercules. I just kept going back to the Disney version in my head.

We got to the church and everyone was talking about the play being a Harry Potter play, and so all of the sudden that was the proper reality of the dream (I just saw the latest movie adaptation last night, so that explains this). I couldn't believe a church was going to have a Harry Potter play, but I thought it would be fun to be in it.

I was still with my mom, and we were entering a stairwell to go down several flights of steps. We saw a middle-aged woman and her young adult daughter, and it was supposed to be one of my old high school teachers and her daughter (though this was all fictional).

My mom and my "former teacher" talked all the way down the stairs. The daughter was ahead of them and I was behind. Suddenly the duaghter tripped and fell down the entire last flight of stairs. It looked like a pretty nasty fall, and scared us all. Her mom and my mom began tending to her immediately, and she seemed to be unconscious.

The two moms began removing my shoelaces. I asked why, and they said they needed them to tied a splint to her leg, which was broken. Eventually the girl came to, and seemed to be mostly okay except for the broken leg and being generally beat up.

Suddenly, there was a litlte dog, perhaps a Yorkshire terrier, that had supposedly been with the other mom and daughter the whole time. I tended to the dog, keeping it out of the way, while they tended to the daughter. Then a man who was supposed to be the father and husband came up to check on things. He took the dog from me and began telling me stories of how every morning he'd crumble up a bagel, mix it with honey, and feed it to the dog. He seemed pretty oblivious to his daughter's plight while he held that precious dog.

Then I remember flipping through the pictures on my cell phone, but the whole thing operated more like my actual real camera (which is a new one). There were pictures supposedly made at my aunt and uncle's house, though it was actually a house I lived in several years ago. I was color correcting all the pictures on the phone/camera, and then suddenly realized that they were only pictures of a messy house, so why wasn't I just deleting them instead of taking the time to color correct them?

There was one other dream later on, and it involved a mother cat, a stray I had apparently taken in, giving birth to kittens. The newborn kittens actually looked a few weeks old, but that was of no notice in the dream. I made a box into a makeshift bed and left the kittens in it in the kitchen of my fictional dream-house.

Later, I came back to the box to find it was filled not with kittens, but with very large rats. They werent' scurrying away from me, either--they were chilling in the box like the kittens had done. Just looking at me.

I looked outside the window, and saw the mother cat was walking around in a field. A large cougar suddenly confronted her. I saw the kittens weren't far behind her, and she began to arch up and hiss at the cougar. I began to panic, but before I could do anything the cougar pounced on the mother cat and began to viciously kill her. I woke up.

MST3K and Coraline

MORNING OF JULY 24, 2009

I was going through my old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS, with the intention of dubbing them to DVD (a project I began once, but have never finished). I also had a stack of ones I'd apparently bought online, from eBay or something, and I was reviewing those tapes to see what episodes were on them. I recall one MST3K on these tapes being followed by some really weird sci-fi show. I kept assuming the person who had made the tape just caught the beginning of that show, but as I kept fast-forwarding there seemed to be a whole episode on there.

Next I remember something about seeing Coraline in the theater again (I'd just bought that on Blu-Ray when I had this dream, but hadn't watched it yet). The picture quality was very grainy and ugly, and even though this was a theater in the dream, I thought it was disappointing that a "Blu-Ray" copy looked so poor. It was also regularly interrupted by commercials.

Andy's Bernard's Cell Phone

MORNING OF JULY 20, 2009

This is another one of my dreams that involves the cast of The Office. (This time it is a little surprising, as I haven't watched an episode since the season finale last spring.) Anyway, I had gone along with pretty much the entire office staff (as though I were one of them) on some kind of retreat.

We were lodging in a big house, and my first clear memory is all of us being in the very large basement area and unpacking our things. Andy Bernard was freaking out because he couldn't find his cell phone. True to character, he was trying to be cool and not lose his temper, and only marginally succeeding.

I actually noticed his cell phone lying on the floor in an adjacent room, but I didn't tell him, because I had the idea for a prank that Jim could play on him. In the dream world I thought it would be funny if Jim pretended to be some important client and called and left a series of increasingly agitated voice mails on Andy's phone while he didn't have it. Then we'd reveal the phone to him and watch him freak out as he played his missed voice mails.

I waited for Andy to go into other parts of the house on his search before trying to explain my idea to Jim. It seems, however, that every time I attempted to do this, we would be distracted and interrupted before I could explain things.

Then, suddenly, a tremendous, severe storm hit and caused some degree of damage to the area. Andy and a few others from our group, including Michael Scott and some random old man who was supposed to be in charge of things, left to go search the area in the storm. We didn't mean to let Andy actually leave without his phone, but he did.

About this time I noticed that the adjacent room that his phone was in had flooded a little bit during the storm, and his phone was totally wet and probably ruined. I felt bad.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I remember a scene of just Pam sitting and reacting to something with odd expressions. She had a weird and slightly unflattering hairdo--trying to look too glamorous, I thought.

Finally the crew that had gone out in the storm returned. Jim and I gave Andy his waterlogged phone, and he was really upset because apparently he had some irretrievable info on there that was gone now. Besides feeling guilty, this all just seemed to reflect poorly on us that we were goofing off and didn't tell him where his phone was before it got ruined. We were afraid we'd be in trouble with the bosses, but, somehow, something we had inadvertently done was viewed by that old man who was in charge as being a very good thing (I can't remember the details). So we got praised instead of getting in trouble! How sitcom-esque is that ending?

Also something in the dream about being back in the Kentucky neighborhood I lived in for a few years during my childhood. I seemed to be my current age, but all my neighborhood friends that I saw looked like they did back then. I was in the bedroom of the little girl that had lived next door, playing with Transformers or something.

I suddenly noticed there was a large rug that covered the floor. It had colorful pictures depicting a scene of teddy bears riding plush alligators as though they were horses, taking them across a finish line. I kept looking at it and feeling very nostalgic, even though this rug is not a real thing from my past. It's really strange how overwhelming the sense of nostalgia was.

Forbidden Fantasy Forest

MORNING OF JULY 18, 2009

This dream starts out mundane and quickly becomes increasingly fantastical.

First I remember being in some sort of store like a Wal-Mart. I saw some cool T-shirts, but none that I really wanted (which is weird, because in one of the last dreams I had there was a store with T-shirts I liked-but-didn't-want). I remember for some reason I stopped at a magazine rack and browsed a really interesting magazine with some kind of cartoon art in it. I was surprised to find such a magazine outside of the Internet or a comic store or something, and I think I put it in my cart to buy.

Next I remember meeting a girl and we went to her house. She still lived with her parents, but there was no one home when we got there. We sat in her rather dirty and dishevled living room and watched TV. She put in a VHS tape which she described as being her favorite tape that she loved to watch over and over again. It turned out to be a tape of women's wrestling (the blatantly "sexy" sort). I found it a little odd that this girl was so obsessed with this tape, and so anxious to share it with me.

My next memory is exiting the girl's house into her yard. There were a lot of trees and empty lots around. She followed me and we walked down a dirt trail. Once we were deep into the woods, there was a curve in the path. There, off to the side, I noticed a large rock where several tiny little faeries or sprites were gathered, sitting and talking. They were all female and all naked. Their indescrnable chatter was high-pitched and giggly. When they saw us, they quickly hushed up and closely watched as we passed, still stifling the occasional giggle.

Having seen this, I was perplexed. I was trying to process it as something real, but, obviously, could not. I began to try to convince myself that this must be some kind of elaborate "special effects" decorations this girl's family kept on their property. It couldn't be real.

As we walked a little further, we came upon a pair of tiny creatures that seemed to be some kind of hybrid of dwarf/elf/goblin. They each stood about a foot tall and had long, dark, scruffy beards that covered much of their otherwise naked bodies. They also were armed with proportionately tall spears and approached us in an agitated manner. We began to back up and retreat up the path.

Soon there was no longer any sign of them behind us. We passed the faeries/sprites again, but I didn't spare them much of a look...they felt dangerous now and I was too scared to look their way.

When we came back out into the main "yard" area in the front of this girl's house, we thought we were safe. Then suddenly we turned around and the angry dwarf-like creatures were right in front of us, still acting very aggressive. They were grunting, waving their spears, making abrupt charges in our direction.

There were only the two of them, but any direction we turned in, the two of them were standing right there. It's like they were moving without actually moving. At this point, I was freaked out enough to wake up.

New York City

MORNING OF JULY 16, 2009

I had a great (or at least great in the dream) idea for a children's book that I wanted to write and illustrate. It had something to do with a class of little kids taking a field trip to New York and one little girl got lost, having her own adventure.

I was really excited and inspired by this idea, and felt ready to actually pursue it. But then I realized that I'd gone and written a story that relied heavily on illustrations and took place in New York City. I can't draw buildings and cities and generally inorganic scenery to save my life. Not to mention I've not yet been to New York myself, so how could I write a convincing story--even for kids--about a girl having adventures there?! Disappointment set in.

The next I remember, I was actually in New York with Richard, Jessica and their daughter Cailey. For some reason we decided to split up for a little while, and I took Cailey with me. She was having a lot of fun seeing the sights, and at some point I bought her a DVD (some kind of cartoon, I think, but I can't remember what). She told me it was really "cool".

Eventually we come to a long line of people on a sidewalk outside a building. Richard was now with us again. As we all waited, a man in a trendy T-shirt, trendy jeans, and trendy glasses walked by and put away his cell phone long enough to announce that he was "The Head of Broadway" or some such. He then said that anyone who would like to appear as an extra or in bit parts in a Broadway show--tonight only--should come meet with him now.

Pretty much the whole crowd from the line followed him into an abandoned storefront. He sat in an old metal folding chair while the rest of us stood gathered near him. Before he could even finish asking for a first volunteer, Richard ran up with his hand raised saying, "Me! Me!" The man said, "Okay," and then asked who else.

I waited until he confrimed that there were minimal lines and no singing before I volunteered, because I wanted to do it, but not if I was expected to have real talent in the field. Once everyone who wanted to volunteer had taken their place, the man explained we'd be appearing in a new Broadway musical called "Beer!". I don't recall what he said the plot was. He also went on to tell us about the individual parts we'd be playing, but this is where my memory gets foggy.

Next, I recall Richard and I, along with many other of the volunteers, were riding along the city in a caravan of cars, not unlike a parade without any onlookers. We were in a convertible, and I just remember taking lots of pictures of the city as we drove by. We were going just fast enough that all of my pictures were either blurry and/or poorly framed, and it annoyed me. I only realized after waking up that, even though this was New York, there were no skyscrapers or especially tall buildings. It just looked like any old town.

There was another, I believe separate, dream that had to do with walking around in a mall. There was a toy store with really tall shelves and a few particularly cool toys. There was a bookstore where I saw a new Calvin & Hobbes book, featuring a new series of watercolor illustrations by Watterson. There was a store with CDs and T-shirts, and I remember browsing there. I have vague memories of other stores and places I visited in the mall, including the parking lot where Courtney and Brandon were. I finally ended up in a restaurant in the food court, but it looked like the inside of a stand-alone fast food place. It was very late at night, and it seemed they were closing down.

The Special Rock Trophy

MORNING OF JULY 14, 2009

I was in a fictional, suburban house late at night, alone, though there seemed to be the sense that maybe a couple of others were in the house somewhere. There was the general feeling that many others had only just left...like perhaps the end of some sort of party.

I was standing in the living room of this house, which was very large and ornate. Every wall and every table was covered by a collection of large, shiny, polished rocks mounted on bases like trophies. They averaged anywhere from a 6 inches to a foot in height. Though many different rock types were present, obsidian actually seemed to be predominate.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door and I answered it. A couple were standing there; the husband was dressed in a suit and his wife, an attractive thirty-something, wore a blue party dress. She was obviously a little tipsy, if not full-on drunk.

As the husband stood back looking annoyed and hurried, the woman held up another rock trophy. She explained how she'd "won" this at the party earlier, but wanted to ask if she could exchange it for one of the other rock trophies.

I told her that was fine, and let her into the living room to pick which one she wanted. She went immediately to a particular rock which was very large and extremely phallic in shape. She took it and retreated back to the door where her husband, now looking not only hurried but embarrassed, still waited.

As the woman left she turned to me holding up her new trophy and giddily exclaimed, "I just like this one so much! It's got a shape I'm not really used to!" Now her husband was pulling her away, off to their car. She spared one knowing wink in my direction and cackled in a bit of a drunken fashion as they disappeared down the darkened driveway.

I was perplexed and sort of sorry that the woman hadn't been here alone.

Girls In Prison (But Not Really What You Think)

MORNING OF JULY 13, 2009

I remember I was driving my car and Eric was riding with me. A pair of cops pulled me over, I assume for speeding, though I don't really remember. The thing is, this was the third time they had pulled me over in the course of this day (I don't know if I really dreamed the other two times and forgot them, or if this is just a fact written into the dream at this point).

Since this was my third offense in a single day, there would have to be consequences beyond a ticket. The two cops (a skinny, tall one, and a short, fat one who did most of the talking) climbed into back seat of my car and told me to drive us to the local police department. They actually vaguely resembled a pair of cop characters that used to be in comics I drew in high school...but only vaguely.

We ended up at a facility constructed of concrete and steel that was more or less a type of prison, only it seemed to be fairly deserted. Details are a blur for a while, and then I remember walking down some of the empty corridors by myself, exploring the place.

I came upon a cell that had a small group of women packed into its relatively close quarters (all of them young and "sexy"), along with a small camera crew. They were taping what appeared to be some lame reality TV show. Three or four of the girls were seated on a bench, looking anxiously at another girl who appeared to be the host of the apparent show.

The host announced which girl had been selected and called her to the front. A blonde girl stepped forward, looking defeated-yet-good-natured, while the remaining girls looked very relieved. The host then led the selected blonde to a small compartment in the wall behind them.

The wall compartment was rectangular in shape, and had only enough room for the girl to stand straight up in it with no movement whatsoever. The host locked the girl into this compartment, and then it shot upwards along the wall and out of sight, as though it were some sort of elevator!

Even though I had been standing and watching this display from outside the cell, I could now see that there was a camera inside the compartment with the blonde and I was watching her predicament as if on a TV. The compartment was moving at very high rates of speed through the interiors of the building. As it passed through one area that was full of gears and cogs--basically like the inside of a giant clock--the box broke apart and the girl fell out.

The fall was not from a great height, but the girl bumped a few pieces of machinery as she dropped to the floor. She was okay, but very angry. After this there was some big ordeal where the blonde was threatening to press charges against the other girls because the "ride wasn't safe" or something to that effect.

The police officers from before were interviewing me about the incident since I had observed it, but when I took them to the cell the show had originally been taking place in, it was abandoned and empty. There were a few traces to suggest something might have gone on--the bench was still there and a couple of camera cables were lying around--but otherwise there was nothing to go on, and the cops seemed skeptical of the story.

The Cartoon Fireworks

MORNING OF JULY 10, 2009

I was leaving some residence--it actually looked kind of like a hotel--and was preparing to get into my car. Suddenly I heard some loud explosions and turned to see that there were fireworks going off on the horizon. It only sunset, but they were still easily visible. I stood beside my car and watched the show for a few moments.

I quickly realized these were very special fireworks. Upon exploding, they'd leave behind a giant cartoon image of some character which would linger in the sky for a few second and then fade away. It wasn't that the fireworks sparks formed shapes that merely suggested characters; they left behind actual animated cartoon images.

One of the oddest images I remember was a Simpsons-style Hank Williams Jr.! It was just his head, and it appeared in the sky, winked, and faded out. I haven't seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Hank Jr. had a cameo in ages--nor have I given any other conscious thought to him in recent history--so this appearance is incredibly odd to me.

Another explosion left behind a cartoony, purple hot air balloon. By now I had reached into my car and pulled out my conveniently placed camera. Surely no one would believe me if I did't get pictures of these things!

The first blast to go off after I had the camera was one that left behind an especially gigantic cartoon sun. It just bobbed around, smiling happily and looking down on the world below it...including me. It actually lit the sky like an actual sun. I snapped several pictures, but by now this experience was beginning to feel more surreal and creepy than amusing.

Later I remember sitting at a long table in a cafeteria sort of setting with many other people. Richard was near me, and we were talking about something. Off to the side there was a display of several video game systems, and a screen showing trailers for upcoming games.

I happened to look up to catch one of the game trailers in a moment that it was showing a man with a handlebar mustache. I thought it must be something set in the 19th century, but then this character donned knight's armor, and I realized it was a medieval setting. The object of the game was to slay dragons and save maidens. It actually looked pretty cool, even though I'm not really a gamer.

About this time I realized I was terribly hungry, and I wanted to get something to eat. Richard beat me to the punch by suggesting we do just that. My last memory is getting up to leave.

Milkshake on a Rail

MORNING OF JULY 3, 2009

I remember being at my grandmother's for a Fourth of July family gathering. The odd thing is, we never do family get-togethers for the Fourth in real life. I remember a group of us were going out to get milkshakes from Chick-Fil-A. Two of my cousins and I were going to ride with my dad, while another group were going in another car.

As we were walking out to the car, I had some Nerds candy in my hand. I haven't had Nerds candy since I was a kid (or at least a teen). And it was in one of those plastic containers sculpted like one of the "Nerds" (I don't even know if they still make those anymore, but they used to). I stuffed it in my back pocket as we were getting in the car. Only after I sat down did I stop to think that, #1, it was rather large to be stuffed into a back pocket and sat on, #2, I had apparently stuffed my digital camera in the same back pocket, so it was really crowded!

My next clear memory is that we had our milkshakes in hand and we'd gone to a fictional mall to drink them. We were on the second level of the mall, standing beside the thin metal railing that served as a guardrail as you looked down on the floor level. Suddenly my dad and some others climbed up on the railing and sat on it, with their legs dangling nonchalantly over the side.

Besides the fact that railing this thin would truly be perilous to sit on, my terrible fear of heights would keep me from ever climbing on it like this even had it been of safer build. But in the dream, I just climbed up there and sat like everyone else, and wasn't really very nervous about it.

Down on the floor level, around a corner that obscured our view, I could hear some apparently young guys talking loudly about a movie they'd just watched. They were laughing and describing favorite scenes. I was trying to figure out what movie they must be discussing, and apparently was subconsciously leaning in a bit, because I suddenly began to lose my balance on the railing!

Fortunately I was able to make myself fall backwards on the the floor behind me as opposed to falling forward down to the level below. The others asked me if I was okay, and, though my heart was pounding overtime in my chest, I realized I pretty much was. Still, my knees were now too much jelly to allow me to stand, so I lay there on the floor for a minute. Suddenly I realized there was actually no railing on the edge at all, and the floor just dropped cleanly off to the bottom with nothing to stop anyone falling. I wondered what we'd just been sitting on.

That's when I realized I wasn't lying on the mall floor at all, but was lying in my own bed (but still in a dream). My alarm was going off. In reality usually alternate what type of alarm I use, and this time I had used the radio. I heard just faint radio static coming from the alarm, as though the station it was tuned to had lost signal. Still, the alarm was turned up pretty loud, so the static was extremely annoying.

I tried hitting snooze. Nothing happened. I kept trying. Just more loud static. I was more fully awake now, and listened hard to make sure the static was actually coming from the radio. It was. So I turned the alarm completely off. Still the static noise. I tried turning the actual radio itself on and back off. Still the static. Now getting a little freaked out, I unplugged the entire alarm clock. The digital clock readout went to black, but the radio continued to blare static.

I kept trying different ways to turn it off and never reached any level of success. Finally, in a combination of frustration and panic, I began physically destroying the alarm clock. It was lying in pieces on the floor and the radio static was still loudly emitting.

You've probably already guessed that this is when I really woke up, and my actual alarm was playing radio static. And it went away when I hit snooze.