All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Fevered Dream

Started with our little community theater group in Dream City, I'm in the second seat of the first row. The show is going, the audience is full of former cast members and parents, and friends, and the recently homeless, watching, and singing along. It is a run through, working rehearsal, but with a few stops as possible. It is going well. familiar music for everyone.

Take the stage with your friends, the writer and director urge, looking at me for permission. Who am I to deny these people, all these talents, their fun?

There is the digging to enlarge the stage, mounds of stored flats and frames and crates,
Lead down below the hall to the back of the ruined temple on the other side of the block.
And an exterior door.
Street Level.
A short walk to verify, Ware house of house of storage for house of horrors. (See us in Octobre)

It is one of my warehouses, holding a now defunct show's sets I cannot make myself evict.
I smile.

I walk through to a street, a band was set up,
Streets blocked, then been told their promised gig could no go forward.
This City must Move
Without them.

Pack it all up.

Interrupted Nuptials, famous vocal cords grown old, but still grasping at the youth promised of wedded bliss. Fran-San Cisco will not have them.

Take the stage, both of you,
Join the show,
Take the stage with our little community of performers, we're moving the audience into the ground floor,
Opening all the crates.
Under UV lights,
The faded sets like cartoon fireworks, all horror long faded.
We perform the Entre` Act
The choreographer adjusts.
Then a Wedding
Then Act II
Dizzying effects,
Unforgettable Nuptials
A community restoration
"Hallelujah" sung by hundreds of voices.
"We can't sing that, we don't have the rights!"
"I wouldn't worry about that," the silver-haired groom, and owner of the song smiles. "It's meant to be sung. Just, like, this."
He smiles.
"We have three more nights..."
The band, smiles.
My director and choreographer smile.
The excavators smile,
The bride and groom look at one another, all honeymoon plans fled, they take the stage.
And smile.
We finish the song with the crowd.
And smile.

I awake, music still thundering in my ears.
I smile.

Five Hundred Miles

According to the song in my head, that's how far I'd walk, then I'd walk five hundred more...
I wonder what part of my brain turns the volume up on the mix tape so loud that it wakes me up from what is (was) a lovely little dream of slipping across dimensions through doors that only I can see in closets and basements that don't seem to exist for anyone else.

Thatch, Wattle and Daub...

Mandolin and flute version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" only the lyrics were:
"Thatch, Wattle and Daub,
Woo ooo!
Thatch, Wattle and Daub.
Something something, something,
Gonna patch our doggone home..."

Seriously, my brain sometimes.

(It is over 100 degrees and im in the sixth day of a severe shingles outbreak, so there might be some extenuating circumstances.)

Olympic Flyers, Musical, Mutants

Three distinct dream events last night.

In the first, I was in KPFM watching a new team Olympic sport, Synchronized Triple Jump, Swim, and Gymnastics Tumbling, which we didn't get to see before the dream ended. My friends and I had a center booth along the wall separating the upper and lower level, we had a great view of the main TV screen. We were following the progress of a double's team from China and the USA. Each had lost their partners just before the competition started, and the Olympic committee agreed to allow them to compete at partners, if their countries agreed. Since neither of them were the favorites in their previous teams, both countries coaches agreed. The had caught the imagination of the entire crowd, however, when they took a chance during the synchronized swim competition.They turned in a beautiful performance that included a one minute section near the beginning of them each going through their previous routine, modified slightly so that it became more and more in synchronization until they finished in nearly perfect synchronization. They stunned the crowd by coming in the top five (and would have been the top three if not for the marks of the Russian Judge...classic bit of history there.) At that time there were still two more events to go. The station we were watching replayed the swim event at least three times while the Triple Jump competitors were running through their paces. It was in the picture in picture box next to the performances of the other Teams as they went through the synchronized hop, skip and jump of the triple jump. There wasn't as much artistic interpretation in this event, but the pairs got an artistic mark, as well as a straight score for their distance rankings. I wasn't sure exactly how balanced that was, but no one expected a world record women's triple jump record out of these athletes. They should have. The mixed team arrived and both had chosen to wear their hair down. The Chinese athlete had trimmed her formerly long hair to match her partner's length, and they had plaited a strand between them. The walked in with their inside arms entwined, and this meant that they had to perform the triple jump by running in mirror image form. (Admittedly some of the previous teams had also done that.)

They ran, they hopped, skipped and jumped, but their jump saw them windmilling their legs in tandem, almost as if they were tied together for a three-legged race, and they just didn't come down. Literally, they kept moving all the way into the observing crowd, who parted for them, and beyond, across the track, and into the most expensive seats in the stadium, where they made it almost to the back row. The crowd sat stunned. One man with long hair and a kilt stood up in the back row and applauded. Every in our group thought it was our friend MS, but I pointed out that this fellow was much shorter and rounder than MS. (MS was there, though.) It took a couple of moments, but the rest of the crowd, including everyone in the restaurant joined in. As the camera panned around the crowd, we spotted our friend and his wife in the second tier seats with other NG employees.

I was coming out of the dream, because the break with the laws of physics was a bit too much, but we soon got a text from MS saying he'd witnessed a miracle and we should turn on the Olympics. The dream dissolved before any of us could respond, though.

_____

In the second dream of the night, I was at a musical performance, wish I could say now what it was about. I was watching the show for the third or fourth time, as a friend of mine was in the show, and I'd managed to make friends with several of the other cast members as well. There was a lot of audience participation throughout the show, and during the intermission the players chose an audience member to come up and sing a song at the beginning of the second act. The person chosen was a little nervous, but she did a great job. After the show, the pianist stayed behind to allow anyone to come up on stage and sing songs from the show. I really enjoyed this after-show, as there are a lot of talented singers out there. I was also waiting for my friend, as I was her ride to dinner with some of the cast and then home afterward. When she came out she insisted that I go up and sing with her. I tried to warn her about my voice (which is a-tonal) but she and her show-mates insisted, so I did. I asked for the mike with the auto-tune (which they didn't have) and that made everyone laugh, but after I sang they decided that might not be a bad idea. My friend said she loved me anyway, she did so in a way that made it clear that wasn't in a "just good friends" way. I was pondering the implications when I awoke.

_____

The third dream was more of a roiling mass of partially clothed madness, it was some sort of overly stuffed pool party and the guests all had multiple extra limbs, protuberances and depressions. I was the only non-mutant looking person there, so some wondered why I had been invited. (Indeed, I did, too, at first.) The party started to go into a decidedly clothing optional direction, which I'm not so sure was a good thing, given how we all were apportioned. It was at that point that I discovered that I was a mutant, too. My legs looked like they had two knees each, and they bent the wrong way back when I crouched. (Short thighs and long feet.)

The Girl from Yukishima

J and I were starring in a Jimmy Stuart style black and white romantic musical comedy, "The Girl from Yukishima." I don't remember much of the plot, but a good deal of it centered on the antics of J and J's (in the film) younger sister. In the film, J's sister was home during a break from her much beloved Yukishima Blue Monkey University, where she was attending their College of Western Studies -as in the American Wild West. Much of the file she flip-flopped between traditional Japanese and American (movie) Western outfits. J changed between a black evening gown and a Grey puffy sweater over skinny pants. I seemed to always be in a narrow-striped grey three piece suit with a black bow tie. If I was outside, I was wearing a matching pinch-front hat.

There was a particularly rousing pseudo western number (in Japanese and English both) at one point where everyone in a recreated "Rick's Cafe Americain" was joining in and singing along. J played quite the rabble-rouser in the film and when she and her little sister, who was actually taller than me in her heals, got going, all sorts of musical mayhem erupted. Like a Jimmy Stuart character, I kept finding myself in the eye of this blonde, musical, two-woman tornado. I was forced to run to keep up, lest I be engulfed by the surrounding storm. In the tradition of such films, I was working much harder than I would if I'd just let myself be swept up and carried away by the events around me, and that created the central engine for the comedy.

It's been a long time since I've had an all black and white dream, and even longer since I had one with an opening title and end credits. I wish I could remember more than the title. One of the neat things about this dream is that we were playing characters our own ages.

I would go see this film in the theater. *****

Moon Two of the Tetrad Disco Party.

Getting up for the second moon of the Tetrad allowed me to wake mid dream, something loud and raucous with lots of dancing folks and disco lights.

Unfortunately there wasn't any sort of plot, just the sweaty teen dance floor smell, that funky combo of sweat, deodorant, wood floor wax and rubber dance mats. Flailing arms and legs, slinky dresses and shiny jewelry, bell-bottom polyester pants. One cool thing, was when the alarm sounded, I stayed in the dream for a bit, and the conversations in the dream turned to the "Blood Moon" and why it was the cause for this celebration. I don't, of course, remember any of the specific details of the reasons for celebrating other than "reasons."

I did snooze a bit before getting up for work, but the dream was just one of those frustrating ones where I was reading something printed and was awake enough to realize that it didn't actually make any sense. That and the singing cat (which may well have been real, Ms Ember sings the "I'm a mighty hunter" song while she's putting all the cat toys away.)

Sleeping in, Until the Party was Too Loud

I was sleeping in this morning until the party next door was too loud. I got up from the bed, and a couple of people entered the room. They were as surprised to see me as I them. I showed them my room key, and we re-tried the keys in the door, sure enough, all of them worked. Mom and dad were a bit grumpy looking about it, but the daughter thought it was cool to share a room with "Santa."

The parents wanted to argue about whose room it was, and I pointed out that I was leaving today, but the checkout time wasn't until eleven. I offered to call down to the front desk to get them a porter to put their luggage in storage if they didn't want to leave it in my room until I checked out. The dad and the child were very obviously tired, but the music and laughing from next door was going to make it difficult for them to sleep, so they decided to go back down to the front desk and ask for a different room, anyway.

I showered and then put my luggage in my car. I checked out then on the way back to my car, on a whim, I knocked on the door of the adjacent room. The party goers were pretty blotto by then, obviously a number of spring break women, they just about dragged me into the room, offering to make up for waking me up.

We danced and I found out what they were all majoring in, I was just enjoying the feminine company, my age apparently making me safe from any sort of "hookup" pressure (unfortunately.) Some musicians arrived, and there were a couple of live sets going on in different parts of the suite, pretty soon the pretty boy musicians were being plied with liqueur and clothing started to become optional.

One of the history majors got upset when one of the "Luke Duke" clones made fun of my Santa like appearance. "Wow, twice in one morning," I said. The musician then pointed out that it was evening. I'd intended to be on the road long ago but didn't really want to rent another room for the night.

The woman said "good night" to everyone, and then leaned over me, covering my face completely in her long black curly hair she asked if I would walk her back to her room. A short ginger haired woman, who was equally curvy, joined us. I hadn't spoken to her much during the party, as she seemed to always be surrounded by a fairly large noisy group, all competing for her attention. I soon figured out why, she was funny and sweet and totally adorable. She was also probably the least drunk of the three of us. Turns out they were sharing a room.

They both plopped down on one bed and offered to let me spend the night in the other if I promised to behave. Soon we were lying in our beds, but still talking. The room grew dark as the sun set, and eventually our conversation faded with the light. A few minutes later I felt someone climb in with me. "I just want to cuddle, no sexy stuff, okay." I was really too tired to argue, so agreed. Just have her curled up against me counted for sexy stuff in my book.

The tiny red-head joined us a little bit later, just as I was falling asleep. "I want some of this, too," she purred at me.

"We're just cuddling, no sexy stuff." I muttered.

"Okay." The little red-head burrowed in under my arm and turned and gently bit my chest just above the armpit, "For now." She then almost immediately relaxed in the sort of totality that could only be a strawberry cooler induced narcolepsy.

Dance Hall Renovations

I was in a large hall with dark tiles, all variations of a reddish brown granite material. About one fifth of the tiles were missing where a set of offices had once taken up the back two corners of the building. The carpeting had been removed along with the office walls, but instead of replacing the flooring the contractor had left it bare cement. It hadn't even been painted.

Imaged to get a copy of the contract, and it was clear that the floor of the whole building was supposed to be replaced. A couple of calls led me to find that the natural looking tiles were manufactured, and there were plenty in stock. Armed with that knowledge I met with the contractor, pointing out that they could either be on the hook for the whole floor, plus penalties for not making the deadline, or they could spring for the tile I had found and send a couple of workers out to help me lay the tile before our big dance event.

My volunteer team had taken the measurements of the floor, then covered it with colored butcher paper in hopes of making the best of it. With only three days to go before the event, I managed to get the flooring contractor in there, and working with them, we got the floor installed, and recovered it with the paper.

On the night of the event, everyone was gathered as the host explained the problem with the floor. Myself and about a dozen volunteers stepped out of the crowd and pulled up the paper to reveal that the floor had been replaced. The tiles were a perfect match, and the host was astonished. We rolled the bandstand in from the back room and let the festivities begin. The colored lights reflected nicely off the faux granite tiles making a bright warm atmosphere for the dance.

Happy 50th?

        I would have thought that the occasion of my 50th birthday would create some sort of dream presence. I wasn't exactly expecting any great revelation or wild dreamlands party event, but, well, something a little out of the ordinary, perhaps.
        But no, just the usual jumble; a plotless mishmash of friends and strangers trying not to look like zombie chow and a one-line musical refrain. This morning's musical selection, courtesy of Counting Crows: "And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls..."

AV Nerds in Trouble, Musical Bits

              SCV, his wife, mine and several friends were gathered at our house for the premiere of a television show on the SciFi channel. In truly “frustration at accomplishing the normal” dream fashion, I was unable to get the old video projector connected to the cable box so we could project this personally historic moment.
              In the context of the dream, the premiere was for the first nationwide broadcast of a show created by SCV and myself. We'd written the pilot, the show bible, and the first three episodes of what was being billed as a “dark SciFi comedy in Easy Doses.” I'm not positive but the name of the show may have been, in fact “Easy Doses.”
              There was a sort of bitter-sweet cast to the event, as neither of us had been hired to actually write on the series writing team. (About 20 weeks of work at around 3K per week.) We'd been invited to continue to submit script and story ideas, and they had indeed bought a half dozen stories; four of SCVs and two of mine. It seems my story ideas were “too expensive” to shoot, so they weren't as readily producible. I suspected that the real reason was that my stories frequently involved too much character growth, or change, for a comedy series they intended to syndicate.

              As soon as I woke up I wondered what all the drama surrounding the video hookup was, we have a RCA-video to s-video splitter and a long s-video cable in the cabinet right under the television.
              I just checked, and all the stuff to hook up the now ancient projector is right where it's always been. Part of the frustration of this type of dream I think comes from your brain actually knowing the solution but, because of the dream logic, not being able to implement it.

              I also had a very musical night, 'The Mighty Quinn' weighed in, as well as a much mutated version of 'Plastic Jesus' and 'Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?' or whatever the real title is. The first had been playing on the radio yesterday, the second had been badly mangled by myself to give one of my WoW characters something to /sing while killing scorpions in the starting area.
              “I don't care if it rains or thunders,
              long as I have my paste board wonders
              glued up to the chest plate of my gear.”
              The third song, I can honestly say I have no idea where that one came from. It's probably been years since I've heard that song anywhere.

Flu Dreams

       I have been quite sick, and that always leads to some interesting dream. Unfortunately, that is also coupled with no desire to sit and record those dreams. Here is what I remember, though, from the past few days.

       N and I were walking along a narrow bit of blacktop in an eerily abandoned seeming bit of woods and broken down homes. The air was still, no sounds of birds or insects, some small bit of heat coming from the roadway kept the chill in the air from being too severe. As we strolled I spotted a bright orange cone sticking out of the roadway. The cone was small, about three quarters of a centimeter across and a centimeter tall. As I drew near I saw that the last couple of millimeters of the cone was silvery. There was a sudden crack! Simultaneous with a zing! The crack was the cone bouncing past my ribs and lodging in my shoulder blade. I think I experienced the crack first as it was inside my body, while the zing was outside.
       I fell in a hump on the ground, consciousness fading away. N leaned down over me to see what was the matter. I couldn't catch my breath to warn N, I could see that there were dozens of the little cones on the road in the direction we were headed.

       A couple of nights later, I dreamed I was trying to get across the stage in between acts of a talent show. I would wait for the lights to dim, and then make my way to another set piece. It took me a couple of acts to make it across the stage. When I got there, I was greeted by some visiting dignitaries, and my boss. I described the recent improvements to the theater, and suggested that we could walk around outside to get to the dimmer rack and the new stage manager's tablet workstation on the other side of the stage, as the students were in the middle of a performance.
       "Nonsense, follow me," my boss said and led the group across the stage behind a dance routine/air band performance.
       I apologized to the assistant stage manager and went around the outside during the catcalling and laughter from the audience. When I got there my boss was angry that I hadn't warned him that there was an audience. I could tell that he really felt he hadn't been warned, but the rest of the dignitaries seemed to look at me with understanding. The stage manager was one of my former students, now in her mid twenties and with that slender but solid adult look that teens can only wish for. She greeted me warmly and demonstrated how she was in contact with the control booth in the back of the house to call the shots for the lighting and special effects queues. My boss wanted her to show off the special chase effects and the computer program used to create the light queues, but both she and I reminded him that there was a show going on. (Now there was a dramatic scene being performed by lip-syncing dialog read by audience participants.) I could tell my boss was disappointed. I had recommended against this particular timing in our planning meetings.

       This morning's dream was much more abstract, all shifting planes of various blues and greens, with a bright orange and yellow ribbon that wove around and through a multitude of the planes.
       There was music, the "Macarena" I think it was, and the sensation of other beings flowing along the ribbon with me, all looking to debark into their own particular blue or green plane. I had no idea how I was supposed to locate my particular plane, or even if I was moving in the right direction. A fellow traveller, or perhaps a passing thought, indicated that the ribbon was infinite. With some anxiety, I realized that it would be very easy to go too far in a direction. Though, thankfully, the ribbon seemed to be pretty much one dimensional, with no directions to go but forward and back. I could see indications of other ribbons woven through the planes, but knew, or was told, that you had to enter a plane to transfer to one of them. So I should easily be able to get back to the right plane simply by zig-zagging back and forth a little further afield each time on this same ribbon. I was fairly certain that I hadn't gotten off the ribbon I'd started on. I turned around and the "Macarena" got louder, so I felt that I was now headed in the right direction.

Musical Interludes, Lost Wild Child

       I only spent a little time, when I was younger, on learning the instruments my brother and sister played, trumpet and clarinet. In my dream this morning I was trying to play the trumpet, but could not maintain the proper 'buzz' with my lips to make the sound ring true for any length of time. (I had never really progressed much past the bugle stage any way.)
       My ability with the clarinet was slightly better, and my sister was there to coach. I tried combining the trumpet buzz with the clarinet reed, resulting in a weird alien sound. I had somewhere found an electronic clarinet, in addition to the normal buttons and studs, it had a set of electric buttons that changed several of the sound characteristics. It still needed the reed mouthpiece to work properly, but seemed to be a little bit more forgiving than the traditional instrument. When I started playing with the various electronic settings my sister said "You're on your own here, I never had anything like that."
       I played around a bit, added some rhythm elements and a chanter like found on bagpipes. It was exciting, but I kept having trouble keeping the mouthpiece of the clarinet in front of my teeth, I kept pulling it in and chewing on it, making it nearly impossible to play correctly.

       In an other dream I woke up with a small kid curled up against my sleeping bag. I was camped in a forested area, a small stone bound fire was just embers a few feet from me. The kid was not someone I recognized, and seemed unnaturally small for the size of its head. I rummaged around in my bags for breakfast, pulling enough out for both of us. My pack was actually up a tree several yards away from where I was sleeping. I knew there were bears and wolves around.
       The kid woke up when I stoked the fire, making it large enough to cook with. (The watch fire was really to keep a low level of smoke going, to keep the animals away.) For a moment she looked like she was going to run away, she looked out into the forest, sighed and settled in, pulling the sleeping bag around her tattered and too small pink clothing. At one time it may have had a 'Hello Kitty' design on the bib of the overalls.
       I gave her some water and dried fruit. She ate, watching me with almost totally black eyes. I shared my bacon and eggs with her and had some orange juice (from concentrate) which she turned down.
       I spoke to her, but she never responded, except in that she would help when I mentioned I was going to do something, and seemed to listen intently, no matter what I said. When I picked up and broke camp, she helped roll up the bag, and then helped move the stones back down to the creek bed. She washed in the creek. I gave her one of my plaid shirts and she changed into it, rolling up the sleeves and wrapping the shirt around her twice. She used some of her previous clothing as a belt, a strip torn from her too short pink pants. I took the rest of her old clothing, wrung the muddy water out of it and put it in one of my spare bags, just in case someone might be able to use it to identify her later.
       I flipped open my phone, but only the GPS portion was working. (I wish I could remember the coordinates.) I plugged in the charger to the solar array on top of my backpack and set out to work my way uphill, hoping to come into range of a cell tower so I could call someone to come a get the girl.
       As we climbed the game trail to the top of a nearby hill, she invented a game where she would race along with my walking stick, jumping to the spot where I planted it, and then she would wait until I swung it forward again, running to catch up to me, and then leaping to the new spot. Every time she landed she would grab the walking stick and turn and smile at me. Her grip on the walking stick encouraging me forward a little faster. I found myself wondering how long she could keep that up. As I watched her run and jump I realized that she was older than I had initially thought, more like ten or eleven rather than six or seven. She was humming some sort of tune, I didn't recognize it at first, but then realized that it was "Happy Birthday" with lots of odd little flourishes and improvisations.
       I sang the birthday song to her, and then, to my surprise, she sang it back to me, again with lots of odd little improvisations and animal sound flourishes. Some of the animal sounds seemed to be echoed in the forest around us. I began to feel like we were being followed, or paced, really.
       We came to a part of the trail that led into an open meadow and the top of a hill. We were on the edge of a couple of acres that had been clear cut some time ago. There were small trees getting started amongst the ferns and grasses. She looked nervously at the forest edge and then followed me out into the meadow. She barked "Happy birthday" back out to the forest.
       There were echoing barks, and a couple of whines from the shadows of the forest. We had been followed, but I suspect from her behavior, they were friendly, almost a body guard. I believe the forest animals, wolves I suspected, had actually delivered her to me, and were keeping on eye on us to make sure nothing bad happened to her.
       I smiled and said "happy birthday." to the shadows in the forest. I tried to keep us as close to the edge of the forest as I could, taking a little bit of a longer path to reach the top of the hill. The girl didn't seem to mind. By the time we climbed up to the top of the hill I was able to make a cell call, and to give them my position. The local sheriff was sending a helicopter, although they seemed mystified because there were no reports of a lost little girl in the area. If it weren't for the bag of too small clothing, I would have been worried that her family might be lost out there, but I suspected that she was lost out here a very long time, at least three or four years.
       I pulled out my camping lights and began to charge them up (hand cranked), she sat and charged up the flashlight, then while playing with the dials discovered that it was a radio. She eagerly tuned it to a music station and began humming, and occasionally singing along with the music.

Two Hours Of Sleep, Neither Happy

       I dreamed, over and over again, for the short time I was asleep last night, that I was climbing on some large pointy rocks. I kept slipping and piercing my hands and feet. I had shoes back down at the campsite, but I didn't want to go all the way back down to the campsite for some reason.
       There was no overtly frightening portion of the dream, but I still woke up sweating and anxious. Time to switch to the summer linens, I think.
       While I was drifting off from the previous dream I kept hearing people calling my name and shrieking in my ear, I would jerk awake and roll over, but not even the cats were around. Some mornings, I believe, my brain hates me. By the time I fell back to sleep, my mind was playing the same couple of lines of a song over and over again. "...I wanna know, Have you ever seen the rain?..coming down...in purple harmony?" I don't believe those are the actual lyrics of the song, but the music was accurate, and loud.
       The tune is still stuck in my head.