Waves and The Simpsons

              I had two dreams last night that were at least partly memorable. The first started with N and I visiting the seashore. We were walking along the beach, greeting and being greeted by the other beach-goers, when we began to get hungry. There was a concrete building up against the cliffs a mile or so ahead of us, so we decided to head over to it, as there were people gathered around like it might be a restaurant. We arrived, and I commented on the large set of pilings out front with a watch tower on top. It made it look like it was tucked under some sort of pier.
              Sure enough the building had three counter windows about ten feet across each. Business was brisk, but to N the food looked and smelled a little bit off. I'm usually the one who can detect bad food, but it didn't smell off to me. It smelled like something out of the deeps and was oddly attractive. I stepped up and got a little oily fish taco. I noticed that the building was much deeper than it looked as it was built into the cliff face. It had ship style bulkhead doors behind the little shop areas, one of which was open to reveal a long copper verdigris lined hallway. I thought that was a bit odd.
              N squeaked out that the tide was coming in. I looked down the beach to where she was and told her there were stairs on the opposite side of the Under Pier food court here.
              It was too late. I saw a large wave surging ashore between her and I. It knocked her off her feet and pushed her back against the cliff, she managed to stand. She started running back up the beach the way we'd come, rather than towards me and the stairs.
              “Swim out and come back this way!” I shouted after her and headed out into the water. I looked back over my shoulders as I headed out into the waves; the other beach goers had all scrambled up the stairs and were also piling into the watch tower, having climbed a narrow ladder. Another large wave broke towards the shore, and N. “Dive under it!” I shouted and then did so. Even though I was under the wave I could feel it pulling me back towards the concrete building and the pilings. I managed to get myself past the uplift of the wave without being flung back, but just barely.
              I came to the surface and shouted for N.
              There was no response.
              I swam down the beach to where I had seen her last.
              The water kept rising and the tide was smashing against the cliffs. I bumped into a cooler and used it to haul myself up higher out of the water, trying to find N out away from the cliffs where the water was choppy but not surging quite as hard.
              The people in the watch tower had launched a large grey/green floating blob, and were helping pull swimmers out of the water. The blob had a large central floating mass that was hollow, and I could see people in there with oars and rifles. Every so often one of them would shoot at something in the water.
              One of them aimed at me and I dove just as the rifle bullet struck the water in front of me. I spun out of the way, and noticed that my feet were webbed with green and black scales. I noticed that I could also breath under the water. I could feel the salty dirty water flowing through my gills. I touched my neck and face, with webbed fingers, felt the gills flaring, the smooth scales replacing my beard. I swam hard and pulled myself to the surface where I saw a small figure like N's in the water. She was splashing towards a long floating green tendril. “N!” I shouted at her.
              “Don't touch it, it's not for us!” I warned her.
              She shouted something and scrambled to climb onto the tendril that would take her back to the main mass of the green gloop.
              One of the people in the central chamber raised his rifle to shoot her. I charged the base of the tendril hoping to knock off his aim. “Dive!” I shouted and slammed into the gloopy tendril, in an effort to shake the mass and save N from being shot. The central mass didn't budge, but the tendril whipped away from N and attempted to snatch me up out of the water. She turned to face me, a terrified look crossed her blue and green scaled face.

              Later I found myself on the top of a hill with Bart and Lisa Simpson. Lisa was saying that Katie had been turned into a dog in the Under, and if we didn't get to her she was going to be taken to the pound and killed.
              “Or spayed and adopted out, how bad could that be?” Bart quipped.
              We raced down the hill, stopping at the library, which also served as the gateway into the “Under Springfield.” Lisa and I talked to the librarian, there was some sort of big Under Springfield secret plan, and we convinced the Librarian that Katie being a dog would undermine that plan. She gave Lisa a sheet of paper that would act like a pass that would allow us to get assistance from any citizen of Under Springfield who we happened across.
              Bart was anxious to be going and so we raced back the portal hidden in the stacks of the reference room. “Has this been here the whole time.?”
              “Yes, Bart,” Lisa started.
              “Good hiding place, what nerd would ever come back here!”
              “Who, indeed, Bart.”
              We jumped through and found ourselves on top of a large mountain. I could see a road off to the left, down about two hundred yard and a ridgeline, sort of climbable straight ahead. The road snaked its switchback self down the mountainside to come out at the base of a large lake and followed that around behind the foothills and eventually into the city. The whole thing was real rather than cartoon-like as was the hillside and library previously. Bart and Lisa were also now human looking teens. Bart saw me eying the route and shouted.
              “Take way too long, man! This way!” He jumped on his skateboard and headed down the stone cap of the mountain. “Kowabunga, dudes!”
              “Bart!” Lisa shouted.
              “Let's go,” I grabbed Lisa's hand and we ran after Bart, who, miraculously managed to survive not being a toon.
              There at the base of the rounded dome top of the mountain was a large construction site, It looked like a tunnel came out from under the granite dome, and a channel was being cut all the way down into the city.
              “The Under Springfield Viaduct! Brilliant, Bart!” Lisa shouted and ran down the center of the large cut.
              “Via duck? Don't you mean via foot,” Bart quipped in a really bad Groucho imitation and then raced after his sister.
              I took a deep breath, all this running was starting to make it difficult to breath. As I stumbled along behind them I searched my pockets and found an inhaler. I suddenly realized that I was Millhouse.
              I managed to tumble out of the viaduct as Lisa and Bart were arguing over a map of the city. Bart was arguing that he should just skateboard ahead and Lisa could ride with me. He took off and Lisa shouted after him.
              I puffed up and grabbed the paper from Lisa and waved down a cab. “What are you doing?”
              “This thing makes people help us, right?”
              “Well...”
              “Let's take a cab, all the running's killing me.” I took another hit off the inhaler.
              The cab ride was uneventful, and the cabby didn't even charge us for the ride. We got there just as Katie was being put in the cage to go to the pound. Bart was distracting the Dog Catcher, and a police officer trying to delay them until Lisa could show up with the document.
              Katie growled at me. I realized that she could tell that I wasn't really Millhouse. While Lisa was showing the paper to the dog catcher, I whispered into the cage, “Play along Katie, we're here to rescue you, once you're safe I'll be out of here.”
              She immediately calmed down and I hammed it up “Good girl, you're going to be okay now. Good girl.”
              The dog catcher let her out and I made a show of hugging her and scratching her behind the ears.
              Katie gave me the “you are so going to pay for this” look.
              We went back into the house and I grabbed a long coat from the front hall hangers and a skirt from the floor of a bedroom we passed. “You might want to put these on.”
              “What does a dog need with clothes?” Bart asked.
              I didn't hesitate, and left Millhouse and took on the point of view of the dog, then stepped out of Katie. Lisa had just finished zipping up the skirt.
              “Whoa! Boobies,” Bart whistled.
              Katie yelped and quickly pulled her jacket closed.
              Millhouse blushed and took another hit off his inhaler.
              I turned into myself, grabbing a pillow to cover up.
              “Who are you?” Lisa asked.
              “An old dude, dude”
              “You have asthma, too!”
              “Thank you,” Katie turned and waved to me.
              I started to wave. The dream ended before I could even say good bye.
              One of the delightful things about this dream was how normal the kids looked in the dream. You could still tell who they were but they were not cartoon like at all. Bart was a regular looking crew cut wearing blonde kid, Lisa had short curly hair (also blonde) with a button nose and a great smile. Millhouse looked like young Toby McGuire and Katie was a cute brunette with dark brown eyes and full lips. All of them except for Lisa looked like college kids, and she looked like she was in her late teens at least.
              The city of Under Springfield was interesting as well. It was connected to the city I dream about by its architecture, the long blocks of covered sidewalks and shops that came right out to the edge of the street, so you would have to walk through them rather than in the road. Even the winding road had similarities to the one in the mountains outside my dream city. There was an odd tint to the sky, a sort of darker than normal blue that colored the buildings and streets of the city a little bit on the cool side, even in broad daylight. All of the cities official vehicles, police cars, the dog catcher's Van, even the taxis, all had the look of the 1950s, streamlined, fins and portholes, but I also knew that they were in fact fairly new.