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.

Dream City Moviplex

I was visiting the owner of the Dream City MoviPlex, located in the Old City Center's now aging mall. The carpets were starting to look a little worn, hundreds of thousands of eager steps, spilled soda and popcorn as well as the occasional toppled rope stand had taken their toll. The sound of kids eagerly headed to the latest big screen entertainment hadn't changed, though, and the place was filled with happy voices and the hubbub of pre-movie preparations and after movie celebrations.

I went up to the show office with the owner and we were conversing about the place, and the renovations he wanted to make. He knew I had some warehouses recently repaired, and wanted to move his theater equipment into storage during the renovations (as my warehouses were the closest ones to the theater.) I told him I would love to rent him the space, but perhaps he might be willing to make a different deal. I wanted him to give me a couple of passes that would allow me and a guest to attend any show that wasn't sold out when we arrived. While he was thinking about it I bumped the play button on his messaging machine. An old man's voice rang out of the office speakers with measured cadence and a sort of delightful passion - reviewing one of the theater's most recent offerings. The audio review was not particularly flattering, but was delivered with a great sense of respect and humor about the film, its director and actors, and the theater in which he saw it. I understood why the owner wanted to renovate. I then realized that the caller was actually me... True to this type of dream, once the recording was started, I couldn't find a way to turn it off. Though profoundly embarrassed, I also found the audio very entertaining, then felt guilty at my narcissistic pleasure. The plots and images of dozens of other films I'd seen there flashed through my mind, good memories, all of them, even the bitter-sweet memories of good times with past loves.

I suggested that the owner use the review of the theater as part of his web site explaining the need for the renovations, as well as capturing the lure of the place and the love for the whole enterprise. He admitted that he'd kept all of my reviews and suggestions on tape. I was flattered.

He actually wanted to put them up as a podcast about the theater's history, as my "reviews" apparently went back a couple of decades... I had no idea.

When I woke I was actually sort of stuck on the idea of the podcast, not so much for the theater review, but for the reviews/descriptions of the movies I'd seen there. They weren't anything like any movies I've actually seen in my waking city.

I wish I could recall more of the stories I'd seen on that big screen (realizing, of course, that the memories whether real or dreamed, would all be of stories that I created, remembered, or modified from my waking world.)

Sent Out

The step grand daughter and I were sent out, instructed to not return for at least six hours. Dad was having a party and didn't want either of us hanging around the house underfoot.

So, the teen and myself headed out to the boardwalk to kill six hours. Fortunately there was a movie playing that we both wanted to see, and I had to promise, after getting our tickets, to let her go into the theater on her own, just in case her friends were there.

We ended up sitting together in the movie anyway, it did take a few minutes into the preview before she gave up on finding any of her friends and so sneaked in next to me. We reviewed the upcoming movies based on their trailers, making a list of the must see on the big screen, wait for it, and the "what were they thinking?" which we'd look at if we were bored, and finally the no and Hell no films. Oddly, we pretty much agreed on most of the films. Wish I could remember more about movie, as it was pretty funny. I thought that was probably too bad for her future dating self.

We then did some window shopping along the boardwalk. I pointed out that the theater was shaped like a ship, realizing as I did so that I'd probably told her that before, in fact, probably every time we'd come down to the boardwalk. To her credit she simply looked over at the theater, and agreed with me. I decided not to tell her that it sank once, as I'm pretty sure I'd told that tale before as well. "I'll save it for senility," I thought to myself.

"You do know why they sent us away, don't you?" She looked at me with a funny little smirk.

I nodded. I was pretty sure I did, the two of us had a way of taking over any conversation we were part of, not intentionally, but it was what it was. Frequently we'd be conversing and other people would drift into range. We'd open up the conversational circle, and then they would never leave.

"They're going to talk about sex."

I laughed, not exactly the reaction she was looking for. I searched for something truthful but generic to say, as I wasn't really ready to talk about parents talking about sex and flirting it up at their parties. Not really Grandpa material, I thought. "I'm pretty sure at their age the topic still has some interest."

"Ick."

I steered the conversation onto the topic of cute shoes and purses. Despite her rather tomboyish behavior, she was, at least in the clothing and accessories department, a girly girl.

Mobile Home (Wet)

J and I couldn't decide where to live. So, we bought a boat.

At the end of a trip from Monterrey to San Diego we ended up docked outside a amphitheater like venue, where I was repairing the rails. A rock and roll concert started. It was a group of older rock-n-rollers, covering a lot of sixties and seventies songs we both liked. Grandkids N and M were visiting along with Dad, and had never been to a concert before, at least, not on a boat.  They were having a great time. Our boat rode pretty high out of the water, and the two electric masts were gleaming pink in the setting sun. The raked main mast had the booms tied in tight and we were anchored both fore and aft. (The boat was all electric and wind/solar powered. It had two re-conditioned torpedo motors in addition to the sails.) I loved the dark oak color of the decking and sides.)

The band invited us to come backstage during the break between sets.

All the while this was going on I was replacing the old thick wooden railing with lighter, stronger, and more weather resistant composite railings. I was almost finished by the time the concert was done. I was just finishing the composite so it was the same color as the electric masts.

J was concerned about N's first back stage experience, but I pointed out that he would be fine (he was an adult in the dream, with dark curly hair.) Besides, she'd be there. Her son tried to remind her that she was almost seventy and needed to behave like it. I just laughed, figuring that's not going to happen. I did clip  her into a safety line before she climbed down over the side of the boat, better safe than sorry, right?

Stage

For some reason, the sound system controls were in the podium, on the stage. I presume the assumption was that the setup would be done once, and then no one would have to monitor the audio setup. That was probably true, if there was only one speaker.

I had to run the sound for a series of six speakers, however, and that meant I had to keep going out on stage to adjust the sound for each new person. I wondered why no one had invented an expert system to take over the sound board operator's job, it seemed like a perfect place for automation. After the speakers were done, there was a student group coming in to use the space. I stayed to help clear the stage in preparation for that event.

Unfortunately, one of the props from the previous presentation was a large safe. The people who'd placed the safe (with a forklift) were long gone. We tried lifting the safe with a half dozen burly men, but that wasn't particularly successful. I got the idea to use a couple of four by fours to use as levers to lift the safe and pivot it on one point at a time to move it upstage behind the curtain line so it was out of the way. A couple of the engineering students smacked their heads, wondering why they hadn't thought of that.

The students invited me to stay at their party, and I did for a bit, helping line up the comfy chairs for their presenters and then adjusting the sound for their music. As the crowd filed in, I noticed there were a lot of very affectionate couples, and that got me to missing J, so I excused myself and headed home.

On the way off the stage, I remembered the title of the dream from last week (which I told the folks at Pizza Night, then promptly forgot it.) "Destiny Dog."

On Location: Forested Plains

I was working on a movie, helping move set pieces and vehicles around. At one point the director asked several of us to step in as extras, as were were on location in a remote area, and he didn't want to wait for people to be bused in from several hundred miles away.

We shot a fairly large number of scenes, and the writer and director liked what they saw and wrote even more for us to do, telling us it might all end up on the cutting room floor, but since we were here...

Several days later, we were wrangling the vehicles and animals onto large rail cars to be taken back to the border, where we would load them on trucks for a short hop to the next set of trains. It was getting cold and everyone was looking forward to getting back to California. I wondered how I had gone from driving vehicles to leading cows and horses, and a bear around.

Time jumped ahead, and we were in a San Diego theater for the premier party, when we arrived, there were several dozen reporters gathered around the cast and director. S, G and I were about to go by when we were spotted and dragged into the cast photos. At first I wondered why, but then saw that the image that they were using to promote the film was from one of our location shots. There S and I were, me with an ax over my shoulder, offering a quilted jacket with the other hand, S with a chain saw and G sitting on a log opening up a  steaming steel thermos, the rest of the cast huddled around a small fire looking up at us. The blue light of the Canadian dawn cast very dramatic light across our features. The funny part of this was, I knew this was an non-acting production shot, we were actually in camp trying to get our cast warmed up on a very cold morning.

When they showed the movie, that scene was part of a very touching montage (as they had no actual audio to go with the story) and it blended into the film so nicely that we were the only ones who knew that it hadn't been shot for the film. The way the film was edited, they had to have used nearly every scene they shot with our hastily written dialogue and our ad-libs as well. When it was done, there were a ton of questions from the director; about whether or not there would be a follow up to tell the story of the three woodsmen.

It was not what I was expecting. The director turned to us and asked (in front of the reporters) if we might be up for a prequel.

I looked at S and G, then back at the main cast, who were all nodding and saying things like "go for it!"

One of the reporters, a little grey-haired woman, said "please, it would be so nice to see a film with people our ages, no offence to you youngsters." She smiled over at the very twenty something main cast of our film.

It was a little weird that we were getting more press activity than the main cast, and I was thinking that wasn't really a good sign for the film.

When they unveiled the giant movie poster. Our three pictures had been added to the cast's photos along the bottom of the image. The producer and a couple of lawyers rounded us up after the photo session at the end of the night and told us they were going to offer us a slightly improved contract, as we'd taken on a slightly larger role in the film after it was all said and done. The money was nice, it was a few thousand dollars each. The offer of a new contract with us in starring roles was the real surprise.

I really didn't want to wake up from this dream.

Dropping in on a Class

I dreamed I was working at a college and dropped in on a Drama course. While this was obviously influenced by the movie we'd seen last night, "Middleton," it felt a lot like my other theater dreams where I am out of my element and not prepared for the class/performance. This one had the additional feature of my being shirtless. (The covers had been pulled off and I was getting cold, I think.) There was a prop piano that I was setting up with a microphone, not for the instrument, but for the folks who would be sitting around the prop. The piano was going to be staged so that the audience couldn't see the actor's hands who was supposed to be playing the piano. This was because there wasn't actually any keys on the piano, it really was just and empty shell.

I was very self conscious of my flabby old self, but the students didn't seem to even notice. They even climbed up around me to help move the piano into position and then we all sat together while the audio engineer adjusted the microphone settings.

There were other dreams as well, small snippets that vanished between the bed and the water closet, I do know that one of them was full of warm, fluffy, cuddly kittens. I was so happy to be the center of their little world that I didn't want to wake up.

"Instead of Rhetorical Hope,"

"...we could offer real hope."

That was the phrase I heard during my waking paralysis this morning. Being paralyzed, I couldn't turn to see who it was standing in my front hall saying it, though. Whoever it was left and closed the door, locking it behind them. I could hear that quite clearly. I know it was a dream because the lock was not locked when I checked this morning.



I dreamed, much earlier in the evening, before the second coughing and not breathing spell woke me, that I was at my old work site, bringing cables to help set up a production. Not the student production that was currently happening, but an "Inspirational Speaker" the district had hired for more than I make in two years. Yep, I was a little bitter about it.

When I got there, the Director told me they were having a bit of a crisis, as on of their minor players decided that he really wasn't needed and therefore quit. The costume, a WWII bomber jacket and boots happened to just be my size. So she thrust a script in my hand, telling me to let the cast lead me through the blocking (since I had no way of knowing it.) "Your character only has six lines, and then you sleep on stage until you're shot, and then the rest of the time you get dragged around."

"Uh, okay..." I figured I might as well help, since I obviously couldn't rig cables in the middle of their closing night.

The show was more of a reader's theatre production than an actual staged play, except for the nosecone of the B-17 the pilot and myself were seated behind. The stage was steeply raked, and there were machine guns and a belly and tail turret also on the set. There were a couple of dozen chairs to either side.

The little makeup girl dyed my beard brown while I read through the script. I then placed the script in the center of the control yoke.

The lights went up, there were flashes of light. the thundering boom of AA fire, bits of shrapnel flew across the stage, pinging against the metal chairs and the other set pieces. The dialogue started. Since my character was suffering from an acute panic attack, it was fairly easy for the actor suffering the same to come off as having an acute panic attack. I got through the first set of lines, five of the six, and a stage hand managed to get my attention and pointed me upstage, where I crawled to where one of the machine gunners lay, it was just a dummy, but the one behind me wasn't.

"Pull the dummy upstage and take his place on the machine gun," he whispered to me.

I wanted to just lay down next to the dummy as I had no idea of what I was supposed to be doing with the machine gun. "Do what I'm doing," the other gunner said.

So I did, I watched him from the corner of my eye and pretended to follow the planes that got by him as they flew over or under us. Whenever I pulled the trigger there were bright flashes of lights and the sound of gunfire. All the effects were electronic, and very cool.  Every so often on of the actors dressed as a German Pilot would buckle and fall out of one of the chairs on the side of the stage, slipping away when the spotlights tracked back across to the other side of the stage. At one point the back of the gun flew off and red powder went everywhere, I guessed that was my queue and dropped to my knees and said my last line, falling face down. "Get back up, you have to drag me and the others back to the exit!"

He gave a loud scream and fell clutching his leg.

"Abandon ship! May day! May Day! Bail out, Bail out!"

I dragged the other gunner back to the plane's "door" and he tumbled out and then danced off stage, pointing to the tail gunner next, who told me to get the belly gunner and then go for the pilot, where I would really get shot.

"Thanks," I whispered as I helped her out of the plane, then did the same for the others. The pilot got out with my help and then I was really "shot" the whole stage was lit by strobes and there was the sound of silence, I fell, the red powder making me look like I was covered in blood. "Oh, shit." I said my line again, using the expletive instead of the euphemism hand written into the script, in my excitement I had forgotten the edit. "Oh well," I thought, "win one for the playwright." There was a stifled giggle from the female stage manager. And I stayed on the stage during the whole rest of the first part of the act, about fifteen minutes, being dragged here and there by the pilot. All the while I was on stage I was thinking that this was the craziest thing I'd ever done, to take the stage in a mature production without know a single thing about what was going on. I also realized that I have dreams like this a lot, but somehow that didn't toss me out of the dream.

At the end of the act we met back stage with the director and the students wanted me to stay and do the rest of the show, but the director and I talked them into re-dressing the dummy and allowing me to get on with my work. Which I would have to wait for intermission to accomplish so was looking forward to seeing the rest of the play.

Monkeyshines

I awoke, and immediately knew the whole world was, different. I had a phone message, so went to listen. People wanted to meet me at the movies. I checked the clock, I had just enough time to get to the theater, so off I went. Everything looked very similar to what I knew, but there was still the occasional oddity, such as the brown stop signs and traffic lights.

The lights themselves were the strangest thing, how do you make a "brown" light? I decided not to ponder it too much and continued my trip, lucking into. Parking space near the front of the theater. I joined the crown around the ticket office, waiting my turn to buy tickets at the window. Prometheus, which I hadn't seen yet, and still haven't.

While I was waiting I spotted little R, she was bing teased by other kids, because she didn't have a tail. "That's because she's an ape, not a monkey. I don't have a tail either."

It was at this point that I discovered another very obvious difference in this world. All of the other people had tails, and large round monkey-like ears. I was also at least a head taller than any of e others there. I thought we were going to have trouble, but suddenly the crowd grew quiet and parted, leaving a clear path to the front of the ticket line.

"We're not in a hurray, we can wait out turn, but thanks for the offer."

The crowd was looking restless, I felt there might be a challenge coming, so I barked, "So, get back in line and get your tickets, all-ready!"

Oddly enough, that actually seemed to work.

Alien Turnover, Lost Charges

Tumbling at LH's house to end up down in the canyon with aliens attacking overhead. The fun part of this dream was the detail and excitement of trying to keep upright and out from under tumbling furniture as the house was turned over with unusual slowness and care. Like the aliens were turning over a rock looking for something underneath.

In fact, the aliens were still making their way along the ridge line turning over houses as they went.


At a theater conference awards show, trying to find the group I'd been asked to chaperone. Since I didn't actually know any of the kids, I couldn't figure out where they were seated.

Theatric Spirits

              I dreamed of trains with split spirit riders, part of them was on one car and another part rode a different car. Talking to a spirit involved moving from one car to another and trying to get the parts connected.
              Later I dreamed I was in a large dark hall with hundreds of metal theater style seats. The metal seats were black and they had the remains of black and red fabric cushions on them. The sound system was similarly old. I had it working for the first part of a presentation, a lecture of some sort, the topic is now long forgotten. My audio engineer had gone home, ill, so I had run the sound board while calling the light and effects cues.
              I took a break, heading out into the dilapidated lobby for some water and a cookie. I talked with a couple of my lighting technicians and we were commiserating on the delicate state of our electric system when all sorts of strange feedback noises arose from the auditorium. I handed one technician my water and the other my cookie.
              I raced back into the auditorium to find that a couple of young theater board members had taken it upon themselves to re-patch the sound system.
              “What have you done?” I asked, working hard to remain polite.
              “We didn't do anything.”
              “I need to find out what was changed, or it's going to take me a considerable amount of time to trace out what needs to be re-wired, repaired or replaced.”
              “Can't you just make some adjustments to make it right.”
              “Only if it wasn't re-patched.” I reached over and turned the main amplifier off, then turned off the mixing board and adjusted all of the channels to reduce their output gain. I quickly noticed that the back of the board where the inputs were had been re-patched.
              “There are different types of input from the items on the stage. I didn't patch this show, and the engineer who did, didn't leave any notes as to what was patched where.”
              “Does it matter?”
              “Yes, there is a mix of line, stereo, and preamp signals coming from the stage. Not to mention different output assignments for each of the monitor channels. There are also a couple of haunted channels that we try not to use for certain types of inputs.”
              “Haunted channels?” the young board members were incredulous.
              “Not literally haunted, just broken in such a way that you don't use them for women's alto or soprano voices or for high pitched instruments. Likewise there are some channels that won't properly process a preamp signal. There's a couple that won't output to certain monitor channels.”
              We stood looking at one another, they realizing that this was more complex than they'd thought. Me waiting for one or the other to admit to changing things around, or contacting the person who'd changed things. It soon became obvious to me that they weren't going to confess, or lend a hand in fixing the mess. I pulled out my cell phone and started to call the sound designer. The board members stopped me.
              “This is going to cost extra, isn't it?”
              “Maybe not, the designer was supposed to leave a patch diagram for us, and it looks like he didn't, or at least not where I can find it.”
              “We really didn't touch anything. It was all flying around when we walked in here.”
              “Kind of like that,” the other pointed over the short wall that separated the booth from the rest of the house.
              Out in the theater, cables for lights and sound had been unplugged and were waving all over the place. Theater patrons were falling over themselves to get out of the way. I saw an old Fresnel flood dragging across the front row of seats by its cord, which was making snakelike strikes against a young woman who was trying to force the large man in front of her to go faster. I reached for the main power and turned off the electric grid to the stage. The theater was plunged into darkness, save for the modern battery powered emergency lights. I could see several glowing shapes hovering over the stage and the front rows of seats.
              “I think you just found a new advertising slogan.” I noted.
              “What's that?”
              “The most haunted theater in the west.”
              I stepped out of the booth to go negotiate with the spirits. I had the feeling they weren't really happy with the content of the previous lecture presentation.
              “Hey guys, do you prefer musicals? Well that would have been up next, if everything hadn't been unplugged.”
              The wires stopped moving and the Fresnel cord relaxed from around the woman. I helped her to her feet. “I've only got half an hour to get everything back in place. Any idea how I might accomplish that?”
              The board members suddenly burst out of the control booth, shouting that “It's happening again!” I realized that things were being fixed, but still wondered what had triggered this never before malevolent display.
              “I'm not coming back there!” I heard a tinny disembodied voice. I was worried for a moment until I realized it was coming from the cell phone in my hand. As I raised my hand to ask about the patch diagram a part of the front of the stage fell away into the orchestra pit to reveal a very old and probably forgotten sub patch panel. The frayed wires and loose patch cords could easily explain the quirky nature of the sound system. There was even a series of old phantom power units along the bottom of the unit, some still churning away, and some long broken down.
              “Thank you,” I said to the spirits on the stage, “We'll get these fixed as soon as this show makes its bills.”
              “But, we're going to close the theater after this show.” One of the board members whispered in my ear.
              “If you don't shut up about that in here, you won't have to wait.” I told her, understanding what had ticked off the spirits.
              “If I had enough money I'd buy this place myself, it's really got tons of potential.” I said out loud. As I walked away from the board member I spotted a spirit flapping open a door I'd never seen before, a door that had been wallpapered over and sealed for who knows how long. The door lead down two flights of steps and into a practice room. There was no safety light in there, so I had to use my flashlight. The dust covered a mirror and bar, the floor was light brown. An old upright piano whose cover had rotted away sat in one corner. There was another door across the room, which I noted was the same size as our stage. The spirits swirled and dust gently wafted into the air behind them. I opened up the room, it was a small office, complete with old typewriter, fan and waste basket. The desk drawer shivered and rattled. I opened it.
              The deep drawer was filled with silver dollars, the top ones were dated from pre-civil war and were older the deeper into the drawer I looked. Another drawer contained stock certificates, dry and cracked, but presumably still valid. There was another door, and that led to another flight of steps. There was a bedroom and small water closet. A tiny slim window looked out over the garden, half of which had been sacrificed for more parking several decades ago. I'd thought this window just one of several decorative windows along the side of the building, and had no idea this room, or the practice room were even here. Now that I knew, I realized this was the mirror image of the music recital room and what we called the music director's office on the other side of the theater. The entrances were just in a slightly different place. (I'd though the old boilers and such were down here, long sealed off and unused.) I looked across the desk at the glowing spirit forms, behind them was a mirror, brown with dust, but still usable. In the mirror I saw myself with a tophat and tails. Three men stood around me, pointing to the coins and the certificates, and finally me.
              I woke up with chills running up and down my spine.
             

Furniture Polish, Ghosts, Returning to HS, N Gone

       I dreamed that someone had poured a dark wood polish on a silvery white wood table. I managed to get it wiped off, and blended in the darker spot so it wasn't so obvious. I then took the polish soaked rag and went around the house touching up all the dark stained wood furniture.
       
       I then found myself in a haunted house, ghost-busting. I had a small hand device that would zap the ghost. It would run/float past me, and be trapped in a device I carried strapped to my back. There were other ghost busters there, with the larger proton colliders and the traps. There seemed to be a sort of friendly competition going on. My trapping process was faster, but I was talking to the spirits to determine if they needed trapping or not.
       
       I dreamed I almost fell down a set of poorly constructed stairs on the stage at MCHS when I was sent to work on the computers connected to the sound system. I gave the “No theatrical effect is worth risking the safety of your cast or crew” speech to the assembled tech kids.
       “Well, how should we build the stairs?” One defensively asked.
       “Here's some basic engineering principals for the stage here,” I began, and then pulled up the white board and showed them how to build trestles, and brace using triangles. I spoke about the high center of gravity of most set pieces and proper counter-balancing to fix that issue.
       The director asked if I would be willing to take over the technical direction of the show. I offered, instead, to be available as a resource for a student technical director.

       When I got to my office, I realized that I didn't have keys to get in, so made my way across a very crowded quad to the main office. I wasn't the only new staff member checking in, S was there, returning also, but instead of as a student she was now a teacher, Literature and Writing was her major.
       “Not theater?”
       “No, I found I actually like the history and the creative writing aspects more than the directing or managing aspects.”
       “How about acting, you are very talented.”
       “I'm too short, and too red-haired and too freckled for professional work. I still perform with a local group, though. You should come a perform with us!”
       “Thanks. I'll come check it out.”

       I dreamed that I was climbing, well more sliding, down a steep hillside. When I reached the bottom I fell into a patch of cactus. As I struggled to free myself with a few punctures as possible, a layer of sand fell on me and then came a cascade of fist sized rocks, pummeling me through the sand. I was trying to stay under the sand, as it was distributing the blows, and still hold myself up off the cactus bed.

       I dreamed I was sitting my my browning back yard, a couple of cases worth of empty brown beer bottles strewn about my feet and overflowing the small resin table. I was drinking. I was also trying to set the empties all upright in neat rows, with my feet. S showed up and asked how I was doing. I gestured to the bottles and the neglected yard.
       S forced me up and helped me inside to the shower. I complained but was ineffective at resisting her. The hot water stung and felt good at the same time. S was so wet from helping me shower that she finally stripped down to her underwear and climbed in with me.
       “Don't get any ideas.”
       “Oh! Way too late.” I was erect before she'd even finished peeling off her blouse.
       “Yeah, well: Clean. Sober. Rested, before you get any of this,” she struck a sexy pose.
       “That's some motivation.”

Cardboard Car, Lingerie Party

       My boss and I were on stage presenting a brown cardboard vehicle “of the future” to a large audience. The car was so small, that to get into it, I had to open the whole front end and then pull it closed around me. My boss and I got in and tried to drive off the stage in it, but the front end dropped open again. I pulled it back up and inserted a tab or flap into a slot just behind the door post. “That should hold it.”
       With that we took off, hoping to hit that 120 miles per gallon mark. (I wasn't sure we could do that as I once had a motor scooter that got 115 MPG, but only when it had one person on it, and that person only weighed 125 pounds.) I kept looking for the control pedals, but I was in the passenger side where there were none. I kept thinking that I should at least be able to put my feet out the bottom to help stop it, as I was sure the brakes weren't designed for two people. Even while I was dreaming this I found myself wondering why I thought that it even had brakes, that made me even more nervous. We drove out of the theater and onto the street. Heading downhill we started to pick up speed. It was then that we realized there was no steering mechanism.
       My boss jumped out. I don't know how as there was no way I could see to get out without opening the thing up, but he managed. I continued to roll downhill, picking up speed, without any controls at all. I tried to slide over to the drivers side, but there wasn't any difference. I was essentially in a box with a window on either side and one in front. I looked out the front, there was no front end to the thing, just a flat box. That was odd, because inside, there was a little are that my legs and feet fit into. I looked back behind, trying to see if I could reach the engine compartment, hoping to pull the plug or something. There was no engine compartment. I was, from the outside, in a cardboard box with three holes cut in it.
       I rumbled down the road a while longer, shooting through an intersection, where the traffic signal was fortunately green, and then as the road curved, I didn't. The box bumped and banged over the curb and then down a hillside into a small stream. As soon as the box hit the stream, it got soggy and fell apart. I managed to recover the engine by ripping open the back of the passenger compartment and ripping the motor off the soggy engine mounts. I carried the thing out of the car over my head and waded to shore. The engine and fuel cells weighed quite a bit, and they weren't made out of cardboard. I hoped I would be able to use them in a new vehicle, not made out of cardboard, and not without controls.

       Later, I dreamed I was shooting photos at a large party of college women. It was some sort of lingerie party, so things started to get pretty racy after a while. I found myself wishing I'd brought more memory sticks. I knew that I wasn't supposed to overwrite the photos I took at the start of the party, as those were the ones I'd been hired to take.
       After the party I was editing the photos into a show, and mixing it in with the video I had shot. The video had been burned directly to DVD, and I'd had plenty of video at the end of the party, it seems. I had to be careful while video editing, as I was in a “public” editing suite and people seemed to be walking by and looking in on me at random times. When I was done I had two shows, the lingerie party I'd been paid to record, and a sort of “Lingerie Girls gone Wild” that I was sure would be a much better seller.

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.

Student Fair

I dreamed I was at some sort of fair for elementary or middle school aged children. I was looking after the sound and lights in a multi-purpose room that was a small theater. One of the comedians was a slender blond gal in Daisy-Dukes and a halter top, fitting in with the 'County Fair' theme, but a little racy for a kids show. She told her first joke:

"Two feet, talking to each other as they walk through the mud. Hey, look back, you see that?
"See what? the left foot asked.
"There's something wrong with our butts!
"What do you mean?
"There's nothing but smooth circles on the back end of our prints."

No one got the joke. The girl looked stunned. Someone whispered in from the side "This is a children's show, don't you have any kids material?"

I offered to sound a drumroll and symbol crash then take the lights out. "No, said the voice, let her come up with something."

I left and made my way outside to where the yard in front was sectioned off with yarn and twine, all at heights that kids could navigate through pretty easily, but that an old fat man like me was having great difficulty. Finally a bunch of the kids ran over to help me out because "You look like Santa!"

I thanked them, and they ran back to their game, happy. I met with one of the teachers, who pointed out, before I could complain, that I'd slipped out the side door of the MPR, one they hadn't planned on anyone using.

I laughed and asked "where are the hot dogs."

Recording, 3D Mummy, Desert Road Trip

       Recording of "The King and I" for the drama group at the small town HS I had started working for. I had made a recording directly off the mixer board to demonstrate the quality you could get from it. I put it in the drama teacher's office and had it playing through her small desk speakers so she and the kids could hear it when they came in after their rehearsal. It got a very good reception and we agreed to use the mixer board to feed the audio track of the video they were making.
       I then dreamed that I had made, textured and partially colored a virtual miniature of a headless mummy. I stopped coloring it because it didn't look right. I then constructed and rendered a diorama (again, virtual) of its tomb, including its sarcophagus, which had some rather intricate carvings on it from a dream I'd had. There was an adjacent throne room, I had some trouble moving and placing the mummified deity on the throne, it wouldn't sit upright. I thought I'd accidentally applied some sort of physics or constraints, but couldn't find them in the model tree. Finally I gave up and left the mummy slumped over almost sliding out of the throne like it had just not had enough energy to make it fully to the throne.
       S and C and A and C were traveling with N and I in some sort of adventure/roadtrip. We'd rented a truck to tow the caravan wagon I'd built, and N and I had all of the cats with us. We were out in the desert in New Mexico or Arizona exploring an old abandoned mine (rumored to be haunted) when a section of the tunnels rumbled some distance from us.
       We raced over to see what was going on. S and I winding up our LCD flashlights as we approached. When the dust settled, we were in a carved room that looked just like my diorama, even down to the relief carved into the sarcophagus. Only S and I wanted to go on after that.
       I quickly found the opening to the throne room, and there, in the bright blue light of the our LED flashlights, was the decayed remains of the mummy slumped against the gilded throne. It looked, from the layer of dust on it, like it wasn't finished being colored either.
       "Now, that's just creepy," S ventured.
       "Better get some pictures, or no one will believe this. Good thing my Blender files are time stamped." I pulled the camera out of its case and handed the remote flash to S.
       About the third shot of the room and we heard a noise behind us. The mummy, though headless, had straightened itself in the throne. I took one last shot and then S and I started running.
       "I don't remember that happening in the game!"
       "We never got that far..."

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Theater of the Damned

       I found myself in a mixed crowd of ordinary and ordinarily dressed people, and extraordinary persons, all of whom were dressed in everything from Medeaval to Edwardian garb. I've never seen so much velvet and brocade in one location. As we milled about in a large courtyard, I had the feeling that we were actually being herded or prepared for something, that put me on my guard.
       The theater opened and we made our way inside, we were carefully mixed in our seating arrangements, never more than two or three of us ordinary folks together in a row, and never more than five or six in a block. I thought that was peculiar, and started to notice things about the costumed guests. One of the things that I noticed is that they seemed cold whenever I bumped against one. There was a musty odor about some of them. I could swear that a couple of them couldn't, or at least didn't, blink. Their eyes lacked a certain sheen of wetness. I communicated my unease to my seatmate, but she seemed mesmerized by the handsome vampire looking fellow seated to the left of us.
       I noticed that several dozen of us ordinary folks were also looking mesmerized. The Edwardian fop next to me didn't appeal to me, but it was obvious from his conversation that he thought he should. I pointed out that it's a kilt, not a skirt.
       "But it's not plaid!"
       "Welcome to the 21st century."
       "Oh! My." He seemed to take in the thick socks and combat boots for the first time. He turned away and didn't say anything more, for now.
       I heard the sound of curtains opening behind me. I was now fairly certain that this was some sort of trap to catch us more ordinary folks. I turned around, and looked into the projection room that was opening up behind us. The technician made no effort to hide his vampiric nature, and looked quite surprised that I'd been able to avoid the hypnotic lights and music in order to turn around.
       I smiled a huge smile at him. He reflexively smiled back, revealing large fangs. His had flew up to cover his face when I pointed my finger at him and whispered "bang." His eyes grew large and he hurried over to the other side of the projector.
       I turned back to the stage as the main curtain drew open and I saw myself standing there, in ruffled shirt and silk and velvet and brocade. "Now that's a good trick," I thought. The illusion passed as the performer bowed and then righted himself to reveal a white-haired man of otherwise indeterminate age. He was, despite the white hair and red velvet coat, exactly unlike Santa Clause.
       He proceded to go on about being able to defy death. I leaned over to the woman next to me, "If they try to bite you, poke them in the chest with this." I pressed a long sliver of wood into her hand. "T-Rex, we need more, please."
       T-Rex slipped out from under my seat with a pair of bags attached to his harness. He crawled under the seat in front of me and vanished. I watched the performer on stage. He was sitting at a chair surrounded by Tesla Coils and book cases. He touched both metal pads on the arm of his chair. I tipped one of the coils so it was behind him, and a lightning bolt tore through him.
       It didn't kill him, of course, as he was already dead, but it did create a nice burned hole through him. A hole that was already healing. There were gasps from the audience and he covered up the hole in his chest with his coat.
       "An illusion, quite, shocking, no? I will have to have a little talk with my, wife, about setting up the furniture properly." He looked at me and I could hear him in my mind.
       "You are in our world now, there is no help from yours coming."
       I smiled my huge smile again. "I'm glad we're in your world, because in mine I could never have done this." I decided not to mention that T-Rex had opened up a nice large conduit to my world and I was fully aware that I was in the dreamlands.
       A hole opened up in the floor beneath my kilt, and T-Rex jumped out, dragging a gun case behind and with two bags full of old fashioned stakes.
       "Oh, My!" the fop next to me stood and made his way out into the aisle. T-Rex raced under the theater seats, slapping a stake into the hands of every ordinary person in the row as he went. (Talented cat, it must be those extra claws.)
       "I told you there was something different about this one!" came a shout from the top of the aisle behind me. The technician in the booth slipped around the projector and turned on the hypnosis lights again.
       I tossed a spray of holy water into the beam and there were gasps from the ordinary folks in the room who could now see their companions for what they were. There were also jets of gas from many where holy water had contacted undead flesh.
       "That can't work, you don't believe."
       "Ah, but you do." I stated flatly back, locking the barrel of my .306 in place with a click. I hastily dug a handful of hollow points into a stick of wood to fill their points with slivers.
       "You deserve to be one of us!"
       "Perhaps, but none of these deserve to be dinner."
       "You know you can't shoot me with that."
       "Yep, that's why I'm handing it to her." And I passed the rifle to the woman on my left, who'd already dusted a couple of vampires around her. I took her stake in exchange.
       "Blood and fire!" The vampire on stage started to turn back into me, then began to shift into a winged form.
       "Shoot him first." I whistled for T-Rex, I wanted to get him out from under foot before the real melee started. "Welcome to the 21st century."
       A shot rang out. Then I realized that the woman didn't know anything but look through scope, pull the trigger, and I had to show her how to operate the bolt. I used some form of telekinesis to keep the vampires away while I showed her what to do. It only holds four rounds and one in the chamber, she'd have to reload. I knew there was a larger clip for it, but T-Rex hadn't brought it.
       "Aim for the flying ones. We'll handle the ones on the ground." I told her. She was still partly mesmerized, but was responding to my commands. I knew that T-Rex had gotten stakes to nearly everyone, but I also knew that the undead were still likely to take a few of us with them. T-Rex vanished and then returned moments later with more vials of holy water. I sent him to put one in the lens slot of the projector.
       The hypnotic cone spraying across the middle of the room seemed to sap the strength of any human that entered it. I was using my phantom arms to keep the vampires away from my rifle shooting companion. I found that I was not even able to jab the stakes into the vampires, though I could hold them at bay, and fling them around. Others had to make the fatal jabs.
       The hypnotic cone suddenly changed to a bright cone like a shaft of sunlight. I shouted out for everyone to make their way into the cone of light.
       Violent and scary dream from that point on, lots of injuries, limbs ripped off. T-Rex could teleport small (stake and vial sized) objects about a meter or so. He got really good a popping up a vial of holy water directly into the path of a charging vampire. I really don't think they were prepared for such a talented familiar. (Or perhaps they'd never fought against a foot high creature who could pad silently a full speed under rows of theater seats and show up nearly anywhere.)
       The cone of now 'Holy' light weakened any vampire or undead who stepped into it. Interestingly, my own telekinetic abilities were also damped by it. I had to step out of the cone to make use of my ability to grasp and move things. It was like having a second set of arms and hands that could stretch to anywhere I could see.
       Being outside of the cone made me a target. Having an extra set of arms gave me a bit of an advantage, and seeing the vampiric 'What just grabbed me?' expression was priceless.
       Once we had the upper hand T-Rex and I opened up a portal home, and, though it wasn't home for everyone, it was safer than being here, where I could tell there would never be a sunrise, and we would always be hunted. We moved the injured across first, my magic hands lifting them under the shoulders and lowering them through the hole. I could only evacuate the injured between shoving vampires back into the aisles and down into the orchestra pit. Or, my favorite. T-Rex would flip a vial into the air and I would shatter it, then I push a vampire through the resulting cloud of vapor. Steam and screams and vampires running away or turning into gas and fleeing. I wished we had some lighters, but perhaps it was best that we didn't, burning the place down around our ears might not have been a winning strategy.
       The battle continued, and I knew it would continue a long time. I didn't think that I could jump through my own portal, so I was going to be stuck there it seemed. T-Rex arrived with more ammunition and I filled the hollow points with wood slivers as my rifle woman kept shooting. The theater was empty, at last, but I could hear large numbers gathering outside. I used my abilities to pick up as many stakes as I could, moving them into a pile close by once my cargo pockets were filled. T-Rex made another trip and brought back a couple of bags of more stakes, and he pulled through a long steel shaft with wooden points on both ends.
       "Where in the world did you get this?" Then I recognized the steel shaft as a length of pipe that had been stored in our garage for many years. I wondered why I'd kept hold of that.
       I still don't know who made the wooden points for it, but was glad to have it, seeing as how I didn't seem to be able to use a firearm. I wasn't sure the dream logic would allow me to stab a vampire either though. I also woke up wondering where T-Rex was getting vials of holy water, I mean, who would give holy water to a witch's familiar? If you steal holy water, is it still holy? Who broke up all the scrap lumber into pointy stakes? Who makes panniers for a cat? Why can't I hit things with a firearm in my dreams?

Theater Sound and Missing Gear, Cat Dumbwaiter

       I dreamed again of being in the new theater at MCHS. It didn't have all of its rows of seats installed yet, but the crews were working on them while we were attempting to run a technical rehearsal. I kept getting music and sound from a previous show every time we tried to hook up channel C on the 4 channel mixer board. I kept asking what had happened to our 24 channel mixer, and the drama teacher indicated that the architect felt we didn't need one so didn't make room for it.
       "It's portable, let's bring it down here."
       I started back to work on figuring out what had happened to make channel C connect to some sort of old show files. The computer didn't indicate what the trouble was by the file names, but someone had to have copied over the current shows files with files from the previous show. I went to go get my laptop to update the files on the theater computer.
       Sadly, the place where I'd left my bags was empty, everything we'd had stored there was moved somewhere else to make room for stacks of theater seats. I spent the rest of the dream running around looking for missing computers and backpacks (mine wasn't the only stuff missing.)

       I then had a dream where I built a kitty dumbwaiter. It was gravity powered. A cat would get in the dumbwaiter and it would lower to the ground from the ceiling walkway. There were airbrakes that allowed for the elevator to move softly to the ground. Once the cat stepped out of the lifting platform, the airbrakes would fold in, and the platform would ride back up to the walkway on its counter balance.
       I don't think this would be very safe in real life.

Rapter Run, Theater at the Mount

       The first dream was something convoluted with a large hungry raptor involved in the plot. I think it was chasing us through the halls of an ancient underground ruin in the someplace very cold. Tierra Del Fuego, or Argentina, or even Antarctica perhaps.

       This was followed by the dream of going to work at the last minute on a show at the new MCHS theater. There was one of the AP's making a presentation to a group of four classes, all the while our tech crew were trying to assemble and paint sets behind him. The AP kept leaping about the stage, then over the orchestra pit then again back onto the stage with a drop and roll thrown in. The kids were hooting and hollering. Then one of our large set pieces got wheeled across the stage in front of him.
       Lots of booing and hissing from the crowd. I decided to head back and ask the crew to avoid moving things across the apron while there was a show going on, even if it wasn't ours.
       The Stage Manager was a "tough" who didn't want to listen to me, because I wasn't there every day. I explained that I'd paid my dues and understood his feelings, but that we should be supportive of anything that makes our venue look good, and especially if it involves people who have the power to make improvements in our situation, or to make things difficult for us. I suggested we just move upstage for the rest of the performance, not a big issue for us, we would have to do so during our own show.
       For some reason this triggered a completely unexpected and violent reaction. The Stage Manager grabbed my arms behind my back and started pushing me toward the wall. Obviously meaning to ram me into it. I started running towards the wall, we flashed by a couple of crew. I jumped up just as I reached the wall and ran up it enough to flip myself over the top of him, his speed carried him into the wall face first, and since he still had my arms in his hands he had no protection. I managed to land behind him without stumbling too much. I helped him up. "I think we'd better get you to the nurses office for some ice." I was pretty sure the tough's nose was broken. I was also sure I'd pulled both shoulders out of the sockets, but refused to show any of the pain I felt until this particular lesson was over.
       The director asked "What happened?" and she acted like she knew it was something she didn't want to have to deal with.
       I decided to help her out, "Just a little horseplay upstage. Your stage manager ran into the wall. We're just going to get some ice while the crew puts the base coat on the rest of the set pieces."
       "I ding I boke my node..."
       "Yeah, we may have to call the paramedics just to be on the safe side. I'll take care of the accident report, since I was right there when it happened."
       I figured I'd go right to the doctor myself after I got him shipped off.