Ideal Band

I was watching a band play in the far end of the parking lot across the street from my house. They sort of seemed like a noise band which is weird because I'm definitely not into noise, and I was really into this band. They had posted a "rule" on a sign behind them: nobody is allowed to wear masks in the audience unless they were sick or were afraid of getting sick or they were going to an amusement park where they might get sick. I thought of those blue paper surgical masks.

This band was scheduled to play here from 7 pm - 8 pm, and then they were supposed to play at The Inferno from 8:30 - 9:30. I planned on going over there, but I must have taken too long because when I was finally leaving my house, it was already 9:30. I decided to go anyway to check out the second band.

Thank god I did. You know who it was? Effing Axl Rose and Slash, backed up by The Bitter Tears. Basically, this combination makes my favorite band ever. I watched them in a room with only about 20 other people, and got a great view right up front. During their last song, Slash and Axl stood in the center of the stage playing music while the four members (Alan, Mike, Tony, and a girl with glasses that I'd never seen before) did organized, choreographed dances in a square around them. The Bitter Tears rotated places every 4-8 bars of music and faced inward, towards Axl and Slash. They did a lot of grand movements with their hands, and they were able to play their instruments at the same time. Their eyes were all very focused on Axl and Slash.

At the end of their last song, Axl ran into the "back room" where apparently there was an audience of about 200, so I decided not to fight my way back there. Some guy announced the next band, which turned out to be the band of Toby from The Office. That was a sold out show, so I didn't even have a choice in whether or not I wanted to go. Good job, Toby.

Nerdy Shark Spits Up My Bones

I don't know if I was watching something or if I was actually in the situation because everything that happened didn't affect me. I was in the water, right next to a wooden dock. There was a shark swimming circles around me. It was saying "darn! darn! darn!" over and over again. I thought that was pretty nerdy so I laughed. The shark promptly swallowed me whole and laughed, but I was still alive and outside the shark somehow. It then spit up "my bones," which was a silver metal oven rack.

Lost My Car in a Dark Garage

I was at Anna's sister's wedding. Anna was the maid of honor, and as I watched her walk up the aisle before her sister, I grabbed my camera to take pictures. It was running out of batteries, so I kept turning it on and trying again, and I got a few mediocre shots out of it.

As I was taking the pictures, I remembered that I was supposed to play a song for the wedding and I didn't have my music with me. Since my music was at my parents' house and the wedding was just a few blocks away, I thought it would be fine for me to leave and run back to their house to get it. I assumed I'd get back to the wedding with no problem.

Then all of a sudden, I was in a giant high-rise parking garage. It was dirty and dingy and dark and scary with a million stairwells, several on each floor, so I couldn't keep track of where I was going. I held my keys tightly in my hand and kept pressing the lock button, which makes my car's horn honk. I could hear it very faintly in the distance. It was very high-pitched. As I climbed the stairs, the sound got harder and harder to hear, so I figured I should go back down. Whenever I got inside a stairwell where I'd be going down the stairs, I was able to jump down the whole thing with my fingers just lightly grazing the handrails. It was sort of like flying, but more so jump-falling in an organized fashion. Make sense?

I searched and searched everywhere, but I could not find my car. I did come across a man wearing a busted up tuxedo. He looked like some kind of cartoonish magician or the villain from an old movie. Crooked mustache, wilted flower in his boutonniere. He was digging through piles of junk, boxes of random things. He implied that he could help me find my car. I searched through the piles with him for a few minutes, turning up some of my own belongings. Then he led me to the base of a stairwell where three other people sat; two grown men and one little girl. "Stay here for 15 minutes," he told me. "Whatever you're looking for will show up."

I sat on the dirty floor and realized the two men and little girl were about to watch a movie. I thought it was probably be too scary for her. I also realized that the tuxedo guy was the owner of the fancy hotel that the parking garage was suddenly attached to, and I wondered how he had time to search through garbage when he had a fancy hotel to run.

Eventually I ended up in the lobby of the hotel, all dirty and standing out in the light of the giant chandeliers. I had not found my car or my music, and I was sure the wedding was long over, but Anna was there and still very nice to me. Hey, thanks for being a good friend, Anna!

Giant Dinosaur Mask

I was in a convention in a really nice hotel in Hawaii or someplace tropical, and I was surprised to see that a woman was walking out of the convention lobby with something that looked like a purse, but also like a large alien pod. It was clear with sharp wavy triangular tentacles, and it glowed red at intervals. It was beautiful, but I was scared because at first I thought it was a bomb. When her husband arrived, he was wearing a HUGE triceratops mask made of the same clear and glowing material. When I expressed my surprise at his mask, he said, "Well, if you're in danger, and it might be some time before any help comes, these come in handy." Then I was almost awake, but still dreaming. I decided to go back into the dream and see if I could fly. I was back in the dream, and I was flying, but it was hard to fly with my eyes open because if I opened my eyes I would really wake up. It was wonderful to fly with my eyes only slightly open.

Embarrassing Feet

I dreamed I was in my parents' neighbors' kitchen with a family I teach. The 7 year old boy had grown to be as tall as me, which was confusing. I looked down at our feet to see if I was wearing shoes that made me shorter or he was wearing shoes that made him taller. It turned out that I was wearing brown knock-off Birkenstocks with black socks. The mom in the family lifted up my foot to take a closer look. "These are really nice," she said. "Yes, they're knock-off Birkenstocks. I love them," I replied, but I was lying through my teeth. I was mortified to be wearing them. Especially with black socks.

Tomatoes Spanish Boring

In my dream, I had just purchased a can of diced tomatoes. As soon as I got home, I realized there were already three cans in the garage. But it was the garage of my parents' house. I didn't really care.

Also, I could speak Spanish fluently!

Oh wait! I just remembered (I'm adding this a few hours later) that Gwen and I were driving around looking for the tanning salon we had to go to, and when we found out it was in the Princeton Club West, we were both like "gross" and didn't end up going.

Guns, Granola and Guest Stars

I have been dreaming so much lately and having a hard time keeping track. It's like every night there is a really long intense dream.

In this one I was at a supermarket and there was a raffle going on. There were three large carts full of healthy things you could win. In one of the carts was a bunch of yogurt and 'beneful' which is dog food in real life, but I think in the dream it was kinda like granola. I really wanted to win that cart of stuff, but I was upset that it was vegan yogurt. I walked around the grocery store trying to find someone to talk to to see if I could switch it out if I won. Somehow I got lost and ended up in the managers office. It had a big table in the center and a large white couch on the side of the room. On top of the table was one of those fake tubular fish tanks things, this this:
Except in the dream there were real fish in it. A man with chin length hair was standing by the table and knocked the fish tank over. It shattered and water was everywhere. Somehow I knew he was in the office trying to rig the raffle so he would win. I was terrified now, because I had seen him knock over the fish tank. He looked up and saw me and pointed a gun at me. I screamed and ran behind the couch. He came over to the couch and leaned over it so he could see me. I kept crawling back and forth behind the couch because I was trying to be a moving target. I was trying to get in a position so that if he shot me it would go through me and not kill me. It didn't work because he shot me in my neck. I was holding my neck as it bled when I woke up. After I woke up I realized it was Darrell Hammond from SNL who was trying to rig the raffle and who shot me. But in the dream he looked like that creepy hit man in Grosse Point Blank- the guy John Cusack kills with a pen- in the neck!!!! Weird.

Celebrities and More Underwears

In the first part of my dream, I was at a conference in a hotel with my parents and siblings. I don't know what the conference was about, but there were a lot of people dressed in ball gowns. Very glittery and sequin-y and tons of colors, mostly bright pinks and blues and greens. The material of the dresses was usually shiny. So basically, it sort of looked like an Arabic wedding. We argued about wear to park so that we wouldn't have to walk far in the rain.

We were in the lobby of the hotel, gathered around a table full of papers that we were supposed to fill out. The papers were messy and unorganized. I sat at the table with glasses on, trying to find the right form. Just then, somebody walked up to the table and placed a book, standing up, right in the middle. The book was Fatherhood. Which means that the man who put it there was...

BILL COSBY.

For real. He was bigger in person than he is on television. Not taller or fatter, but his proportions were bigger. He was a bigger kind of human than we all were. He smiled as he put the book down, and we somehow knew he was promoting it. Due to my quick wit (duh), I said "Oh, self-promotion, eh?" and Bill and the whole crowd burst into laughter. In all the craziness of laughing, the book fell over on its side, and I grabbed another opportunity at hilarity and yelled "Booooooo!" Bill Cosby laughed and laughed, and I remember thinking "Yes! I got two laughs out of Bill Cosby, and he's a comedian!" Really though, I think I'm much funnier than this in real life.

In the second part of my dream, I was talking to a professor of mine who ended up being Robert Downey Jr (who I've totally had a dream about before). As we were talking, I realized he was getting flirty and that there might be some Sexy Results. He asked me to come back later that night for a "meeting" (yeah right, Downey Jr) so I went to find my friend so we could go home and change. My friend had to keep score at a cheerleading competition, though, so we got held up and I kept looking impatiently at the time, not wanting to miss Sexy Results. The friend keeping score perched on the scoreboard above the gymnasium floor, manually hanging numbers on hooks when points were scored. At some point, she also hung a ten-year-old boy by his shirt from one of the hooks, as a prank. Everybody laughed.

I was sort of horrified until I realized there was a trampoline underneath him, and it was there as a safety precaution because this was all part of a movie we were making. I immediately panicked, wondering if Robert Downey Jr was only in the movie, or if I was going to see him again in real life. I couldn't tell.

Last thing: there was a pair of underwears in the back pocket of my jeans this entire time.

Underwears!

I dreamed that I was shopping with my sister and my mother. We were in my mother's bedroom, which was also a department store. Probably Carson's. My mother kept showing us dresses and they were all shiny and glittery. We had to help her pick out two, but each one kept changing colors and moving, so I couldn't pick one.

My sister sent her into the dressing room, and at the last minute, I realized she'd sent my mother in with a few pair of swimming trunks to try on as well. It made me feel weird. I looked at all the underwear and wanted to buy all of it. In this dream, I kept feeling a lot of love for underwear. All the underwears of all the world.

My boyfriend Bret Michaels saves me from the Bull Woman

Dudes, dudes, I have no choice but to confess that I have had yet another dream about Bret Michaels. This marks the third in a series, prompted no doubt by his recent brain hemorrhage, win of Celebrity Apprentice and appearance on American Idol- but who's keeping track?

I dreamed that Bret was my boyfriend and we were going to a sweat lodge in Kentucky. On the way there we passed a carpenter's work room and we stopped so he could show me what a great craftsman he is by making me a snow board. When we got to the site of the sweat lodge, we saw that it had been taken over by the evil bull-woman-with-claws from the second season of True Blood. I was really scared but my boyfriend Bret said "I'll protect you" and then I woke up and laughed my ass off.