higamus hogamus hatlemus

(if you don't understand the reference in the title, read this link first, then come back.)

Last night I dreamed up a bit of doggerel.

Picture a Busby Berkeley-produced black-and-white filmed sketch comedy show (like a Saturday Night Live, except that it's funny). The star of the show is a blond flapper girl, who I'll call Nadine. She's fresh out of journalism school, and ready to make her mark in the big city. Picture a 22-yr-old Vivian Vance with a dash of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine attitude. She's performing the news in a sort of Operaman role, only hunt-and-pecking behind an old round-buttoned manual typewriter.

As the film begins, the orchestra is playing Nadine's theme song, a lively staccato cha-cha-cha piece. Nadine hits a key for every note and the orchestra plays a bell every time the typewriter is returned. The song plays for a few measures waiting for the applause to end. After the crowd quiets down, without breaking rhythm or looking up from the keys, Nadine starts reading/singing the news items. Each item is a rhyming couplet, with each line ending with the cha-cha-cha ...ding! rhythm.

The first news item is apparently about a playwright who made a spectacular comeback from a notoriously dismal failure:

"Francis Foley is forgiven for that other flop. (...ding!)
He wrote a great new play and it came out on top. (...ding!)"

And the crowd thought it was hilarious...

podcast blogdream

I had another blog-related dream last night, which was related to the IMAO podcast.

In the dream, Spacemonkey and FrankJ were auditioning me to do funny voices for the podcast. We were all in a dark recording studio, (something like this) and they were asking me about how much experience I had doing voice work. I told them I had made up funny voices for about twenty years, but didn't have any professional experience in the field. Hearing that, they rolled their eyes and gave each other an "oh-great-we're-wasting-our-time-here" look, so I knew I needed to catch their attention quickly.

Somehow I was inspired to improvise a character based on the Matrix Reloaded movie, and made up a scenario which could be called "Interview with the Replacement Architect".

Using a voice which was a comic nasal version of a cheezy east european movie villain, I said something like this:

"Ya, I are the second Architect. Ze first Architect retired six yearrrs ago, und he trrrained me before he left. He vas verrry hard to please, und it took many years of trainingk until he trrrusted me vith da operrration of da Matrix".

That got a few laughs, so I continued.

"Ven I first go to work for him, it vas alvays 'Meester Architect' dis und 'Meester Architect' dat. Only after I passed mein final test did he allow me to call him Lenny".

"Oh ya, I remember mein first assignment. Meester Architect vould not even trust me to rrrun a whole city, even a small one, so mein first assignment was to remodel a bathroom in Peoria using only my mind".

I wish I could remember more details of what I said, becase it got a lot funnier and weirder from there.

The dream ended when my one of my co-workers came in. He started acting disruptive - interrupting me, messing up the settings on the mixer, etc. - because he had already tried out for the part and lost.

---

update: I had no knowledge of the "Matrix" spoof produced for the MTV Movie Awards prior to this dream.

funny ER dream

ER was a mainstay of the latter days of my TV addiction. At that time the local station was rerunning episodes from the first three or four seasons, at 10:30 every night of the week. It was rare for me to miss an episode, and after a while the show worked its way into a dream.

(Like all the other dreams, this is edited for clarity, but not for content.)


The dream starts like a typical episode of ER - without the opening credits. It's a slow afternoon, not too crowded, and most of the characters from the earliest seasons are there: Dr. Carter (Noah Wyle), Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards), Nurse Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), Nurse Adams (Yvette Freeman), but not Doug Ross (George Clooney). However, I also work in the ER. I'm not a doctor, nurse, janitor, clerk, or receptionist; apparently I'm some sort of equipment technician or repairman, because I'm never directly involved in actually helping patients. Whenever an emergency comes in, I stay out of the way, except to move a piece of equipment in or out of a room.

After several hours of this, as I'm replacing a bulb in an X-ray lightbox, I begin to have chest pains and tingling in my left arm. I start to slump backwards off of a stepladder, but fortunately Nurse Adams is there to catch me. She and some other nurses pull me up onto a table and call doctors Carter and Greene, who begin to ask questions about my symptoms. Everyone around me seems pretty worried as they're hooking up the equipment, giving shots, etc. Eventually it gets fuzzy and dark...

...and then I'm watching my own open heart surgery from above. It's not a near-death thing, I'm just seeing what the TV camera sees, which surprisingly doesn't look very gory...

...and then I wake up back in the ER. There's an IV in my arm, and other monitors, but no oxygen mask or nose tubes. There's not much pain at all, but I feel a little groggy. Someone wheels me from the ICU to a different room, where I eat a couple of meals, watch TV for a bit, and generally make an extremely rapid recovery.

That evening, Dr. Greene comes in and tells me I'm okay to leave, but I should stay home and rest for a week or so. After he leaves, I get dressed and start walking down the hallway to the big sliding doors. But before I pass the desk, Nurse Hathaway walks up and sits me down in one of those double chairs along the wall. She compassionately takes both my hands in hers, and says, "We're all relieved that you're okay, and we are so glad that we could help you. But if you happen to get sick again, you should go see a real doctor at a real hospital. We're just actors and don't have any medical training. Okay?"

Blogdream 5

(edited for clarity, but not for content)

There is a theater has showed up in my dreams at least a dozen times, but to my knowledge does not exist in reality. It's rather large, with a slightly sloping floor, generally warm light colors, probably built in the late 60s. Two aisles run the length, extra room at the front and back, and one crossways aisle halfway down. Two doors at the back and one on the left side. Dusty pleated heavy cloth wall covering. Older style padded seats with the bottoms that bounce up when nobody's sitting in them. (In the first dream I can remember that was set there, I was waiting for a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev.)


In the dream, I'm sitting about a third of the way back in the middle back section near the left aisle. The lights are still up, and it's a long time until the next show. There's about 40 people sitting around, and two of them are seated one row back and a couple of seats over. Two young women, who I find are from some (unnamed) former Soviet Bloc country in eastern Europe. One of them reminds me of the younger woman on the space station in the movie 2001, and the other sort of looks like this photo of Risawn with the new haircut.

They strike up a conversation in English, which they speak fairly well but it's obviously not their first language. They ask several touristy questions about the town, state, and country, about other places I've lived, recommendations of other sights to see, etc. Eventually they steer the conversation to ask "What's this blog thing we've been hearing so much about?" As I explain the concept, they seem more and more interested, until they exclaim "We want one! Can you set it up for us? We can give you $1200!"

I agree to set one up, but did not want to take their money just for a few minutes of showing them how to use blogger.com. However, they pull out an odd looking purse, shove a wad of bills into my hands, and hurry out, saying they would meet me later in the lobby. Because other people are starting to look my way, I sit there for a couple of minutes and nonchalantly look around. In the back corner, there just happen to be some computer terminals sitting on tall wooden tables, and after a few minutes I walk over to them. They're about the quality you might find in an underfunded library - dusty 486s with a 13" monitor running Win3.1 - but just enough to log in and set up a blogger account.

After that, plus a little bit of surfing, I go out to meet the women in the lobby. It's sunset, and there's a golden glare from all the shiny surfaces in the room. They walk back in with someone, who they introduce to me as their "friend", exchanging surreptitious glances as they say that word. He launches into a spiel about how he is a native of Ghana, about his credentials in some international agency I've never heard of, and about what his authority is and what my legal responsibilities are, stemming from my acceptance of the terms of the contract, and payment for services... blah, blah, blah, he starts to sound like a MoveOn protestor yelling the text of a Nigerian email scam at me. The only point he makes clearly is that I am to relinquish ownership of any rights I have to the "Hatless in Hattiesburg" name.

I try to object to the few bits that I do understand, but he does not miss a beat. After a couple more minutes I realize that he is not really looking at me, but staring straight ahead, and not moving from where the women (who are no longer anywhere to be seen) placed him. I take two steps to his left - no reaction. Walk behind him - still yelling. Wave my hand in front of his face - no change. So I shrug, chuckle to myself, and walk out.

Just as I put my hand on the door handle, I take a look back. A six year old boy is walking around the lobby and looks up at the man(?) still yelling at nobody. The boy loudly asks his mom "What's that man doing?". His mom hurriedly pulls him back, protectively walks them both away, and whispers "Don't go up to strangers like that."

I leave, and begin to wonder if the $1200 is counterfeit.

last blog-dream bit

In addition to the three blog-related dreams already posted, there is one other blog-related fragment that has occured a couple of times...

Many of my dreams include lots of driving. Although it feels like there is a reason for the travel, the resulting path usually meanders aimlessly across a city (or even several states).

Anyway, 3 or 4 times now, those dream travels have brought me to Minneapolis. Having never actually seen the place, the scenery never looks the same twice - once it even resembled the adobe style of Santa Fe NM. Each time, I find out that James Lileks is signing copies of his books at a bookstore in a mall somewhere downtown. Each time, I hear about this just as I arrive in town, and for various reasons can never get there in time - either I can't find the mall, or it closes just before I arrive, or the car has trouble.

---

Okay, that's all the blogdreams for now. I'll post if there are others, but I don't think I could top this one by A Little Aardvark. Has anybody else had any blog-related dreams?

Blog-related Dream 3

This one is kind of like that "slacker" movie, pointless and taking random turns along the way. The only background information you need is the various blog names used (which are linked). Edited for clarity, but not content.


In the dream, a female friend (nobody I know in real life, I'll call her Jenny) and I were leaving from another friend's house in a northwest suburb of Houston. She was planning to drop me off at my house a couple of hours north, then go home, somewhere near Dallas. Unfortunately, just a couple of miles down the road, her Saturn sedan started having problems.

We coasted in to a (national chain) repair shop, which was getting ready to close for the Saturday evening. The salesman was professional and didn't make an issue of it, but it was clear that the shop workers did not want to delay their weekend plans for one last repair. However, they went ahead and pulled the car into a repair bay and plugged it into their diagnostic computers. About five minutes later, the computer printed its report, and a mechanic brought it up to the sales counter. The salesman pressed a few buttons at the register, then told Jenny what the problem was and how much it would cost.

A brake job, with replacement front rotors. FORTY-EIGHT HUNDRED dollars, using generic parts. Over SEVENTY-TWO HUNDRED dollars, using factory original parts.

Jenny wasn't fazed by that number, and pulled out her checkbook. I stopped her, and whispered to her that the price was "just a little bit steep". Then I made some excuses to the salesman, and got her out of the shop.

As I was explaining to her just how much brake jobs should cost, and trying to figure out how we could get her car to another less expensive shop, we started walking towards a Chinese restaurant in a small, less than half occupied, shopping center across the street. It smelled really good, and we were getting hungry, but as soon as I opened the door for her, I saw a shop next door with several people I thought I recognized, but couldn't quite place the faces. Jenny was too hungry, so she went on in to get us a table. I went in to the other shop which had no signs, except for some small white vinyl letters on the door showing a phone number under the name "I Love Jet Noise".

There were five people in the front room, sitting around a glass dining room table, having a friendly discussion over several small piles of official-looking papers. I also heard a couple of other voices in a back room. They were all twenty-something guys, all with short dark hair, and dressed very casually. Without introducing myself, I asked what they were doing. They began talking about the band they had formed while in college, and were excited about the prospect of a big tour they were going to start, opening for Flying Space Monkey.

I asked what style of music they played, and they all looked at each other for a second, started laughing, and said "well, it's difficult to describe". Two of them began listing the bands that influenced them, including Scrappleface, Blue Goldfish, and A Little Aardvark.

As I noticed that many of the other (non-blog named) bands were the same ones that influenced me, it occured to me that they might have heard my music, so I finally introduced myself by saying "Hi, I'm Hatless". They all looked at each other in surprise, and stood up to shake my hand. One of them had my first CD, and asked if I had any others. I told them I had a couple in my car, and got up to get them, but once I saw the parking lot I remembered that my car was not there. The guys also got up to leave, turned off the lights and locked the doors to their place. Standing in the parking lot, we discussed the possibility of recording together, and exchanged email addresses. Looking at the address, it slowly dawned on me that they had just stolen their names from other blogs, and I made a mental note to mention it to the respective blog owners that someone else was using their blog names.


Remember, I did say it was pointless...

Blog-related Dream 2

This one isn't nearly as long as the others. The only background info you need to know is about IMAO (Frank J) and the T-shirt babe (Sarah K).


In the dream, Frank J invited me to have supper one night with him and Sarah K at her apartment in Amarillo. It was a nice place, tastefully decorated, cozy but not frilly. Typical apartment layout - large living room turning into a dining area in the back, with a small kitchen next to it.

For some unknown reason, I showed up rather late, and the meal was almost ready when I arrived. Frank greeted me at the door, followed shortly by Sarah's greeting from the kitchen. After brief pleasantries (with no mention of monkeys, ninjas, or space lasers), he shows me to the table. As soon as we are seated, Sarah comes out of the kitchen with a large silver platter with a pile of crispy, fresh, home-cooked...


Chicken-fried alligator strips.


I kid you not. Somehow none of us was surprised by this, and we all thought they were quite good, as were the green beans and mashed potatoes.

Halfway through the supper, I began to notice the two of them exchanging glances and trying not to laugh, like they knew something but weren't supposed to tell me. Somehow I already knew what their secret was - they had invited me to supper to let some people do an 'extreme makeover' on my house.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that I already knew about the plan.

I also didn't have the heart to tell them that my house was rented...

Blog-related Dream 1

This dream might actually be the most interesting of the three blog-related dreams I plan to post, but they will be posted in chronological order. I dreamed this one over a year ago. It's edited for clarity, but I am not making up any additions after the fact.

First, two bits of background info:

1) On I-40 between Amarillo and Albuquerque is the town of Tucumcari, New Mexico. My family used to travel through there fairly often, never stopping for much more than a quick meal or a tank of gas. Historic Route 66 branches off of the Interstate, so there is a little bit of that particular sort of retro-tourist-y stuff in town.

2) James Lileks has many photos of retro 50's, 60's & 70's buildings, like motels and restaurants. If you haven't seen those photos, or don't remember the style, go take a quick look at the links.

So...

In the dream, my family had decided to meet and have supper at this (in reality, nonexistent) tourist-trap-restaurant on the west side of Tucumcari. Several aunts, uncles, cousins, plus my immediate family and grandmother were all going to converge on this place from various directions in various vehicles (not an uncommon occurence for our family). I arrived shortly after my parents, and we all wandered around the place while waiting for everyone to arrive so we could all eat together. I wasn't too sure about eating there, but apparently "this was where everyone decided to meet..." before I was invited.

This place epitomized the retro look shown in the aforementioned Lileks' photos, in the tackiest possible way. In the restaurant, orange laminate tables and shag carpet under an angled ceiling with fake exposed beams holding up acoustical tile. Cheap paneled wainscoting below velvet paintings of tigers, bullfighters, and sailing ships. Geometric wood and brass light fixtures. A skinny woven basket full of two-packs of Captain's Wafers, next to textured red plastic water glasses with faded white logos.

The bar looked something like this, only darker.

Other rooms were divided with fake paneled half-walls with lathed posts on top. All the woodwork had the darkest wood stain available, possibly applied with a mop. Some places had indirect lighting with cheap buzzing flourescent bulbs, including the restrooms which had burgundy velvet wallpaper with a floral pattern only visible by its glossiness. The gift shop had the typical tourist trap variety of toys and souvenirs for sale, like state emblazoned ashtrays and $1.69 rubber tomahawks with fluorescent feathers. The bric-a-brac was displayed on racks in several stages of disrepair, which stood on gold-flecked linoleum tiles underneath giant gray concentric-circular air conditioning vents. Near the entry was a gold spray-painted concrete fountain with water-spouting cherubs and fish.

Past the gift shop, there was another room, which was relatively empty. It had some sort of fake reddish stone flooring, with a matching circular fireplace in the middle, with a black conical hood suspended from the ceiling above it. A small cash register (mechanical, but not antique) stood in the corner near an alcove for the pay phone and restrooms, next to a set of large windows to the west. The windows looked out over the huge but almost empty gravel parking lot, with its one-skinny-letter-per-pastel-colored-rhombus sign, across a scrub prairie with a couple of old trailers, up to Tucumcari Mesa. The windows probably hadn't been cleaned that year, and there were dead flies in the windowsill.

Get the picture?

My thought was exactly that - I wanted to get some pictures, thinking of how much Lileks would get a kick out of seeing this place. Then I realize I didn't bring my camera. The gift shop (oddly) didn't sell any kind of cheap or disposable camera . So I start asking family members if they have brought theirs. Mom had hers, but it was without film, and she had already found that the gift shop didn't sell that kind of film either. My aunt was carrying my grandmother's polaroid camera, but we discovered it was broken, as was my cousin's small digital camera. Finally, everyone arrived, and we took our seats in the restaurant, but I woke up before we even got to order.

When I awoke, my first thought was one of disappointment that I didn't get any photos of the place for Lileks...