My Sports Dream

Actual conversation snippet from a dream I had this afternoon:

SOFTBALL TEAM COACH JASON BATEMAN: Well, here we are. Phoenix.

ME: We're not in Phoenix.

COACH: Well, we're in Kingman. Close enough.

ME: The signs say "Placentia." We're in California.

COACH: Well, San Diego is IN Kingman.

The Dream in Which I Am a Bad-Ass Action Star

I had another weird dream last night. I was trying to get to a college to do something (I can't remember what) by a deadline, but I ended up on some strange university campus on the other end of town. I asking around for directions, hoping to catch a ride from someone, when I met two lovely young single mothers pushing strollers with super cute babies in them. They wanted to find the same college, but didn't have any transportation either. I thought that I should leave them behind and try to go it solo, but their babies were, like, sooooo ridiculously adorable that I decided to let them tag along on my quest.

After wandering around a bit, we began to realize that all the shop and street signs were in Spanish. I thought we were lost in Santa Ana, California, but soon realized that we were stranded in a scary Mexico border town. None of us had a passport, and we were all afraid that we wouldn't be able to get back to the U.S., so we found a trench that we knew would lead us across the border back to home. The trench led to a concrete-walled tunnel. As I advanced through the tunnel, I suddenly realized that my travel companions had vanished. As I began to reach the end of the tunnel, I sensed that something horrible had happened to them.

I was just feet away from the exit to America, but it was being blocked by some creepy Josef-Mengele-looking dude in a white lab coat, and his tough-looking Mexican henchman. I knew that they had killed the young ladies and their babies. I was enraged. Suddenly, I was Danny Trejo (awesome, I know). I'll spare you the details, but there was horrific Robert-Rodriguez-movie-style bloodshed involving an ice pick, a sharpened chisel, and a box-cutter.

I made my way past the bodies of my slain foes and walked through the door leading to Main Street, USA. People lined the streets, watching a marching band in a parade. I made my way through the crowd and on to freedom, but the sweet relief of my homecoming was marred by the horrors that I had faced. I was a survivor. And I was still Danny Trejo (still awesome, yes). Then I woke up.

The Dream About the Moon Cat

I had a dream last night that my friend Ben Stumpf had traveled to the moon and had just returned to Earth. I was quite impressed, but I also found it a rich source of joke material. I made a nuisance of myself making lame moon jokes. At one point, for some reason, Ben was standing in a vacant city lot doing some kind of weird Harlem shake type dance. I thought he looked like a spaz, but other people from the neighborhood were drawn to him, and soon, the lot was full of people centered around Ben, dancing the same spazzy, jerky movements, all without music. I shouted: "He says he just came back from the moon!" All the dancing stopped, except for Ben's. Everybody eyed the writhing astronaut as if looking at a lunatic whose lunacy might be an incurable contagion, and they slowly backed away from him, dispersing and leaving him dancing alone in the vacant lot.

I thought the whole incident hilarious. He did not, as he later made clear in newspaper editorial in which he soundly excoriated me for taking his greatest triumph in life (going to the moon) and somehow turning it into a joke to make him look like an ass. I felt horrible. I apologized profusely and told him personally that I thought he was a total badass because, after all, HE WENT TO THE FREAKING MOON!!! He didn't seem persuaded by my apology and was still visibly upset with me. Then things got much worse.

He had brought back with him the first cat to ever go to the moon. The cat wandered around the neighborhood, exploring its urban surroundings. Suddenly, a huge yellow dog the size of a small horse caught sight of the cat and gave chase. I grabbed a large club and tried chase him down in order to stop him from hurting the moon cat, but I was too late. I could hear snarling and cat cries coming from behind a dumpster. When the dog finally emerged, moon cat blood all over his face, I was filled with a seething rage. I lifted up my club to administer the ultimate punishment. The beast looked up at me, and I immediately feared that I might be next on his menu. He was massive--more like a bear than a dog. I realized that there was no way I could fight such a monster and win, but I was so mad, I didn't care. Then I looked into his eyes. They were filled with such innocence and trust. He had no idea at all what I had planned for him. I felt strange. Guilty. I lowered my club and started petting the bloodied dog. His fur was surprisingly soft, his nature surprisingly gentle. Suddenly, all was forgiven, and we walked off into a serene urban sunset.

The Dream That Turned Into A Cartoon

I had a lot of crazy dreams last night. One of them was a recurring bit with Margo Kidder's Lois Lane trying to find her voice in the world of arts and crafts ("Excuse me. What is 'de-COOP-age?'") in the hopes of making millions and travelling all over the world (because world travel is apparently not likely to happen when you're a star journalist for a major metropolitan newspaper).

My favorite, though, was an X-Files dream. Scully and Mulder were married suburbanites, retired from the FBI. Scully was visibly preggers. They were having a barbecue at their new suburban home, when one of their old FBI buddies shows up to tell them that the "insectoids" are attacking and that the FBI director is sending a car for them. At that moment, in the background, there are 30-foot high green creatures approaching that look like giant Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but with buzzing dragonfly wings. Suddenly, everything turns into some bizarre X-Files, Simpsons, TMNT animated mash-up as Mulder (yellow with blue hair) and Scully (now looking exactly like Marge Simpson) take off in a convertible, dodging missiles and laser beams being fired by hostile giant mutant ninja turtles. Pure awesomeness.

Daydreaming About Miss Gillan

It is 8 years in the future, and I am attending a gala fundraiser for my research team's work toward a cure for the newly discovered zombie retrovirus, Z1N1. Across the room I spy the most elegant and radiant woman I have ever laid eyes upon. My heart quickens as I make my way through the chattering throng of celebrities and wealthy socialites, till I find myself standing next to the stunning, red-haired beauty.

"Well, and who might you be?" I ask.

She turns to look at me, and an expression of dazzled awe crosses her delicate face as she encounters the dashing and distinguished microbiologist before her.

"I'm Karen," she replies, offering her hand.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Karen," I answer. "My name is Frank."

She blushes slightly at the gentle, yet manly touch of my hand on hers as she stands transfixed by my disarming, yet reassuring gaze.

"And what brings you to this event, Frank?" she asks, as a coy smile illuminates the soft, feminine contours of her lovely face.

"I am part of the research team," I answer with a cool, confident casualness.

She is visibly impressed. She senses that she is in the presence of a man whose brilliance is exceeded only by his masculine good looks.

I give her a sly smile. "I must say that it is truly a pleasure to make your acquaintance...Miss...Gillan, isn't it?"

A hint of surprised delight flashes in her eyes.

"Why, yes," she says, "I am Karen Gillan."

"Miss Gillan, would you care to have a drink with me?" I ask, offering her my arm.

"I would be delighted," she replies giddily.

And so we spend the evening chatting like two new lovers drunk with the thrill of having met their perfect matches. She is swept away by my easy charm and scintillating wit and is utterly awed by my encyclopedic knowledge of infectious diseases. I drink in the sweetness of her girlish exuberance and her playful joie de vivre.

And thus are our lives forever transformed.

In Remembrance of a Lost Love

Many years ago, I had an inexplicable infatuation for some bland, unimaginative, buttoned-down librarian type who liked non-kung-fu-related Chinese movies and who thought that rocking out to Aerosmith meant that she had a sassy, iconoclastic "wild" side. She told one of my friends that she felt that I was really intelligent, and that she often enjoyed talking to me because we had deep, interesting conversations, but that I was just too "immature" for her. I responded to this bit of news by telling my friend that this woman probably had cooties and that she was a stupid stinky girl anyway. Also, I may also have somewhat colloquially expressed a desire that she go engage in violent erotic congress with herself. I can't remember. I was a much angrier young man back then.

Not long after that, she married one of the most boring people I've ever met--some over-skinny, humorless, pasty-faced middle manager at the credit card company where we worked. I assume they now have 2.5 beautiful, boring children and live in a boring little house somewhere in Boringsville, AZ where they will live lives of quiet boredom until they can both retire to a boring retirement community in Boring Beach, Florida. Every morning at 5, they will have boring breakfast together, then split off for their boring days. He will go play boring geezer golf with other retired boring corporate middle-management types and reminisce about the various corporate down-sizings they experienced or barely escaped over the years. She will hang out with her boring granny friends and talk about the latest boring episode of American Pop Star, Inc. while knitting socks and ugly sweaters for the grandkids, and unattractive and boring but functional shawls for each other. Every Friday night, they will have a boring soup for dinner at 4, play a couple boring games of UNO, solve the boring newspaper crossword puzzle together, watch a boring rerun of CSI: Des Moines, then retire to bed promptly at 7.

And I will die young and good-looking in a steel cage match with a genetically-engineered velociraptor because I'm awesome and she's not.

Christmas is Dead, Long Live Darth Vader Day!

Since the passing of my mother four years ago, and the repose of my grandmother almost two years ago, the various holidays of the year have lost their luster. Until now, I had never realized how important a role matriarchal enthusiasm played in making holidays vital and festive occasions. I never would have set up a Christmas tree if it weren't for the joyful prodding of my mother every year, just after Thanksgiving. Indeed, I have never set up a Christmas tree in all the years I've lived alone, except for the one year that my mother sent me a small plastic tree with fiber-optic sparkly stars. Christmas trees are just not something most bachelors fuss with.

Now that I am comfortably set in my bachelorhood ("I'm a loner, Dotty--a rebel."), I assume that the holidays will run together like all the other days of the year, except that everyone outside of my wonderfully cozy little world will be seen periodically scurrying about with a frantic fervency that now to me just seems...tiring. I have neither need nor inclination to join in their insanity. I am finally in a position to make up my own holidays whenever I feel like it, and the ritual observance—set by me, of course—invariably consists of a 12-pack of delicious micro-brew, a frozen pizza, and a Korean horror flick of some sort. So to all of you, I would like to wish you and yours a very Happy Friday, or as I now choose to proclaim it, Darth Vader Day.