7/15/00:

    I lived with my family back in my grandparent's house. My dad was an important man like a governor or something. I was this jet-setting movie star or actor or something and I was a "problem child" according to my dad's press secretaries and spin doctors. They told me to be careful while visiting the house. I went in my father's bedroom in the middle of the night (where was my mom or brother?) and he looked VERY young, he looked like a very young and handsome Henry Rollins. I couldn't stop telling him how "good you look lately" and then he had this new girlfriend and press people were taking pictures of him. He was hard at work and seemed distracted. Then while at the house I was teaching some class about Harry Stephen Keeler I think to people and it consisted of this workshop inside this house. I remember the first one was total chaos and I had no idea what was happening. I was videotaping the whole thing and I think Harry Keeler was THERE(!) at some point. I was watching the video of the chaotic workshop inside my grandparent's kitchen and that's when I stumbled on my young-looking dad in the middle of the night. I kept wanting to have wild parties at the house to piss off my father's press secretaries who annoyed me, but I always decided against it. At one point I was outside the house and it was this frozen field or something and I was a woman(?!) and I had a fur coat on and I was with two friends and I kept thinking "how can I use these two losers to cause trouble?". The dream had a very depressing aura about it.
    Then in a much sunnier dream, I lived in this gigantic metal house with my family. My whole family consisted of young Swiss teenagers in trendy clothes. The dream journal typewriter was outside the house on one of the many aluminum stairways and catwalks that surrounded the house. There was a narrator's voice in my head saying that it was too much trouble to reach the dream journal typewriter everyday to record my dreams and it was exposed to the elements but the narrator used words like "wo", "hoo", "et", woo" and "er" to express this thought and I could understand her somehow. I also saw the words written on paper. I think the house was by the seashore.
    Then I dreamed someone handed me a record album by a rock band that didn't exist who's name was: It Was American In The House. The picture on the cover had a man and a woman on it and the woman looked like a cross between my mom and Valerie Solanas.

7/16/00:

    I was on the run from the law for some reason and was running around outside at nighttime around all these roads and open areas. There were car headlights everywhere. It was suddenly daylight and I was at this outdoor party in some gigantic backyard. They were serving Tex-Mex food. I was trying to blend in with the crowd because someone was after me. I saw this guy on the other side of this stucco wall fence thing and it was Chevy Chase. He was talking about how he just wanted to lead a normal life now and didn't want any trouble. Suddenly all his movies started to play in my head and I realized he had been acting for a really long time. I started thinking about his interaction with Goldie Hawn and how he must have started really young to be in all those movies with her back then. He was driving a golf cart I think. I looked around at the terrain and architecture at the party and I realized I was in Arizona.
    I went inside this building and saw this magazine cover and Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty from Royal Trux were on the cover. Neil's image had been cut out and just this op-art design thing was in it's place, but the eyes (sunglasses) were left. Inside the magazine they talked about how Neil had died and I realized it was a joke Royal Trux had played on the magazine because he hadn't really died. There were also weird pranks by Spike Jonze in the mag. You could open the magazine and hear the last gig Royal Trux had played and look at the photographs and they would move like video and you could watch the gig. I realized the gig had happened in the same room I was in right now. Jennifer had been wearing this Deborah Harry-ish dress and came out from behind a little wall like a strip-tease show. And I wondered how she could convince the mag that he was dead when he was obviously singing and laying at the gig. I put the magazine down and looked around the room, it was a nightclub/venue and I went downstairs.
    Downstairs was a club "art" opening and the art was really bad, typical sloppy figurative paintings and such. The artists were this husband and wife Hells Angels-types who were just throwing stupid paintings together to get money for putting them up at the club. I saw them get money from the owner and leave immediately. I suggested to the drag queens working and other guys there that the art should at least be conversation provoking. The owner of the club was this old man and he offered me a job there. In order to get the job I had to get on his shoulders chicken fight style and he had to walk me outside the club and into the building next door and into his giant apartment. He said there was this project he wanted everyone to help him with. Suddenly me and a bunch of guys from the club were in the basement. There were all kinds of hammers and pipes in there and there was a giant concrete floor. He said we all had to get in a circle and pound on the floor at once to get to the other side underneath. Everyone started pounding and I ended up with this little ball peen hammer and so I just started making a little "fault line" around the circle of everyone. We started to get through and noticed that directly underneath the concrete were boxes and boxes of saved family items, like you would see in a family attic. The man said these were from his long lost family and he hadn't seen them in many years. We started looking through them all.

7/17/00:

    I was staying in some camp - in a cabin. There was a weird river that ran between the cabins and you could get from cabin to cabin on little gondolas like in Venice. But there was enough land where you could walk too. The terrain was really "woodsy" with rocks and ferns and stuff. At one point my dad was in the cabin with me and we were sitting in these chairs and I was asking his advice about something. I remember I had to wrap this vine around this wire that connected my cabin to another because it was a communication wire and the vine helped it somehow. I kept having to get up and adjust this as I was talking to my dad. My cabin kept getting bigger and bigger and at one point it was a high school in New Zealand and I was a student there. Everything was muted 70's film color. A lot of stuff was happening - there was a lot more but I just can't remember it now. Maybe later today I will remember. There was something about some kind of contest with me and other people in the school and some old man was the judge, but I can't remember it exactly. Oh, one thing: at one point I had to put a "song" I had written on cassette inside this little triangle/pyramid thing made out of slices of white bread and corn husks and cinnamon. There was string rapped around it and the cassette was on the bottom of it with a slice of bread under it. It looked like one of those sandwiches you get in Japan. Anyway the point was for me to place the bread/cassette thing behind a door or in a cubby hole for a long time so it would get moldy over time. This would be "good" for the song.

7/18/00:

    I'm staying in this weird 4 story house with lots of people. The house is rickety with lots of dirty bright colors and we all wear ragamuffin clothes but they look like 80's ESPRIT clothes - nice colors. We all have chores and are controlled by a loudmouth woman with stringy brown hair who's overweight and smokes. She is the "mom" and we are the "kids" - plus she always wears those cheap T-shirts with stupid slogans on them like you would buy at Coney Island.
    Suddenly I'm in a nice, smaller house with two nice people who remind me of my uncle and aunt William and Joanne. They live in a beautiful part of the country - but it's pretty urban. I look around and am like "wow look how nice and neat the rest of the USA looks - I had forgotten!". It's night time. They are videotaping me running around the bushes outside their house, screaming like an animal. They like to do this for some reason. We go inside the house and watch the tape - we end up watching another tape of some of another guy doing the same thing. He is some gay guy with a handlebar mustache and leather coat. He is in the room watching the tape with us and he says something like "I don't like the way my screaming voice sounds on tape". I look around and we are in some sepia-toned little cathedral but I know it is a local gay and lesbian center for some reason.
    I am now back at the rickety ragamuffin ESPRIT house. I am looking at the living room and see everyone gathered around the TV, the "mother" is playing that video that the other couple taped of me. Except this time on the tape I am singing a lot. I look at the tape and in it I am painted green and dressed like the statue of liberty with fake fireworks behind me and a bicentennial theme. I am singing horribly on purpose. I am really embarrassed that all these people are seeing this and people are commenting. This girl I used to work for, Claire, is in the crowd. It's awkward. I look closely at the crowd in the living room and suddenly it's day time. the crowd has changed into a circle of actors and they are meeting for a reading of a new show they are doing for TV. I can make out Madonna, Enrique Iglesias, Bette Midler and that guy who married Martha Raye for her money. I can also make out some really old-time female silent movie star who looks like she's about to keel over and is looking nervously at the other participants. They all have sunglasses on and each one of them has their own drink to sip on. I think "wow they all had to stop on the way here and buy their own drinks like normal people". Madonna has Diet Coke and Bette has a giant Big Gulp. I start to think how Bette can have the time to do this when she has a new show on TV. My "dream camera eye" is moving close on her as she is sharing an idea with the group.
    I am back in the rickety house again with the family and mother. It comes to be night time and I have to sleep in the living room on a futon. I keep seeing mice everywhere. I think my grandmother is around at this point. I see colonies of mice and they seem to be working on a mouse project. I talk to some guy who lives there and we bond. We decide to sneak out.
    We go outside and it's night. We start video taping things, bushes and shrubbery and stuff. I can see the other members of the house in the lit windows doing things. Suddenly a man who is an "attacker" runs past us and up to one of the windows. We can tell he is an inept attacker. He goes in one of the windows and opens the "door" of the window - which is a frosted glass shower door and it opens to the outside (one story up) - weird. I see that inside my high school friend Katy is taking a shower. The man makes a half-hearted attempt to attack her. She is wearing a towel. We video taping and I say "Katy watch out!" and she tells me it's fine because she likes guys like this. I can hear them laughing.
    Suddenly, it's sunny daytime and I'm walking around this strange city that I don't know. I'm suddenly back in the gay and lesbian center but now it's all modern with balconies and escalators and glass rails. There is a colorful birthday cake there and a little gathering. On the wall of the center is a design made from photographs of gay and lesbian people that have been colored red blue and white. When you step back the design of the photos forms the American flag. I think this is clever. A creepy feminist PC lesbian is complaining about the design.
    I walk into the next room. It is this weird modern subway terminal. I step onto one of the trains just meaning to look at it, not ride it. I think I can step through to the other side but I realize I can't and the doors shut and I am suddenly riding it. We are riding through the center. I look at people on the train and try to remember what city I'm in. I look at this woman on the train and think of Courtney Love, I think "She made her whole career in a non-New York city!". I imagine life in a non-New York city. So nice. The subway pulls out of the gay and lesbian center and it is an above-ground train. We are really high above the ground and the sun is shining really bright making fluttering patterns inside the train. I'm looking at all the interesting suburban buildings below and I feel very warm and centered. For some reason I think I'm in Dallas. I realize that the subway probably goes to Big Lake Park in Plano, where my house used to be. I get really excited about being able to visit it again. Suddenly I realize I only have 50 cents and won't be able to get back on the train to get "home" again. I'm really disappointed but think "...maybe next time." I contemplate trying to walk back from Plano and getting lost forever. It might be worth it.
    I look across the subway car, which now has little booths and tables like a train dining car. I spot my old college friend Gene who's with some girl. I'm like "Gene! No way! Hi!!!" and he's like "Wow! Oh my god what are you doing here!? How are you!? I'm freaking out!!". I tell him i'm dancing at a club here in town for a few nights and him and his friend should come by. Suddenly I'm talking to him and realize the subway is NOT in Dallas like I thought, so there is no way I can take it to Big Lake Park in Plano. I begin to wonder if the subway system goes cross country. Then my friend Gene turns into my Dallas friend Douglas and then back. Douglas, Gene, Douglas, Gene, Douglas, Gene over and over.
    Suddenly the subway train turns into a 747 jetliner. I am somehow the pilot or related to him - the co-pilot or something. We are flying over the southwest USA. There is trouble and the plane is having a problem keeping in the air but we're not supposed to tell the passengers. It's getting worse. We are on radio to control towers and they are freaking out making us try all these things to prevent the plane from crashing into the ground. We try all these things and nothing works. I look at the altitude, it's like 5,000 feet or something. We can tell control central are really freaking like it's gonna be a major catastrophe. They realize there's nothing they can do and I start to get the impression that they are just humoring us so our last minutes on earth are pleasant.
    I'm in the middle of trying this "new thing" to keep the plane from crashing - which is to type this sequence of letters and numbers on a computer keyboard in the control room. After I type it in they are screaming over the radio "Did it work!?!?" and I say "No" and they go "Ahhhhgggggggg!!!!!!", then I look at the sequence I typed and realized I made a typo. I don't even tell them because I realize they  really knew it wouldn't work either anyway they were just humoring me. Then I change my mind and correct the typo and try it - it doesn't work. I don't tell them I screwed up the first time. They are freaking out over the radio and going like "Oh the humanity!!! Oh my God!!!" and stuff. I look out the front of the plane and see the Monument Valley-esque landscape coming closer and closer. I look at the altitude - it's 1,600 feet. Suddenly the landscape turns into a computer grid pattern like in that movie Tron. I look at the altitude and it's 1,000 feet. I know it's just a matter of time before we crash into a computer animated Tron-ish cliff. I'm really calm like I know everything's gonna be OK or like I'm just watching a movie or something.
    Suddenly over the radio I hear an older airline pilot, who has a lot of experience or something, grab the microphone and "take control" to save the day. He says "Mark, you must release the something-something valve on the left of some panel!!! Do you see it!?!? DO YOU SEE IT?!?!!!" I only have seconds to act he says. He says this will release something on the plane that will give everyone on it a parachute and they all have to jump off and float to the ground. I release the lever and am like "Wow! I didn't know planes had that!" I go into the passenger area (from the side - weird) and I think "Oh this is gonna be hell - the passengers don't even know we're crashing yet and now I have to tell them to all put on their parachutes and jump...geeeez!" As I'm walking out I see the isle between the seats is opening up and you can see the ground below. It is totally dark inside the passenger area and it has little lights on the isle like a dark movie theater. I DON'T SEE OR HEAR ONE SINGLE PASSENGER because it is so dark - but I know they are all there, just the little lights and the open rectangular shape on the open isle of the plane - the night time ground far below. Wild wind is whipping through everything, and it's still dark. A pre-recorded female voice comes over the speaker explaining to the passengers what to do with their parachutes. I'm like "Ugh! The logistics of this are so much trouble!" and I wonder how all these different types of people, old, young, handicapped, don't speak English, whatever - are gonna understand how to get their chutes on and be convinced to actually jump - and we only have seconds before the plane hits the ground. I'm really calm - odd.
    We are suddenly on the ground. There are clusters of people everywhere and open parachutes all over the ground. At first I think everyone miraculously made it to the ground alive but then I learn that a few didn't. The open parachutes are milky, pearly white. I see them covering some of the bodies. I imagine myself crying, freaking-out and running around shouting someone's name like to see if they are still alive, like in a movie - just to be a drama queen and entertain everyone (even though I know no one there) - but I don't out of respect to the dead. I wonder to myself if people who are really fat have a higher chance of survival after falling out of a plane than skinny people. Does the fat cushion you or make it easier for your body to rupture when you hit the ground? Hmmmm...
    I'm now at the hospital where all the injured and few fatalities are being held. I see a dog in a dog carrier that survived the crash. It's daytime and I'm walking through all the hallways and plazas. I come to a room where the group of people I was living with in the rickety ESPRIT house all are. The "mother" is there. She had been on the plane. She is in a hospital gown, pacing around the room ranting and crying and chain smoking and freaking. Everyone is staring at her. Outside the big window is a beautiful sunny green lawn. I think "What a healing thing for a hospital to have!"
    The "mother" seems fine but she keeps crying and saying that "The airline spokespeople said that the fat people on the plane all died when they hit the ground because of the impact!!! And all the skinny people survived!!!! Whaaaaa!!!! Poor meeeee!!!!" and everyone is telling her "...but you SURVIVED!!!" and this kind of calms her a little but the funny thing is she is really fat. No one tells her but she knows they are all thinking it.
 

7/19/00:

I didn't have time to write this yesterday so here's a brief synopsis written a day later:

    In the dream I was working for this very rich couple in this fantastic house in upstate New York, real forest-y. Their house had all kinds of levels and weird furniture and stuff jutting out of the walls made of natural polished wood. The house was immense and was filled with fantastic and expensive antiques. Like stuff you would find at the Met or the MOMA. They were zillionare art collectors and were very old-school upscale. They had a very cliché "well-to-do" air about them and they were always treating me in a subtly condescending way. They had a son and daughter who were much younger than me but who were both important and wealthy lawyers or Hollywood agents. They were all upper class, super educated, world-wise and Kennedy-esque and I was the social equivalent of a subway station bathroom attendant. I was like a servant or something and they were always trying to include me in their conversations but it was in a really curt, parental way. I kept making really stupid mistakes in their house and ruining their fine antiques and works of art. One time I accidentally splattered paint thinner on this wood table and the stains revealed some secret painting or design beneath the table's wood finish. Another time I "accidentally" wore spike golf shoes on this blue carpet and it tore it up and underneath it looked like when you crack open a golf ball - all rubberband-y. I was really nervous about the woman I worked for finding out about the damage I had done. That was until I had to deal with their wacky neighbor whom I dubbed "Modernism's Dirty Little Secret" because he was the alcoholic, drug addicted, black sheep son of a famous minimalist artist. He had a miserable personality but was kind of fun if you were in the mood for obnoxiousness. I only dealt with him in the lower part of the house that connected with the garage and he only seemed to be around when the family was out. After I met him I didn't feel bad about slowly destroying their nice things and eventually bringing their whole house down. I felt it was inevitable and that he would help me. The dream had me feeling depressed and bleak after I awoke. I was like "I'm a terrorist", and then I was like "No I'm not! Get over yourself!".

7/20/00:

    I was gonna buy "Flairs" shoes like Jerri Blank wanted in that episode of Strangers With Candy. When I got them, Bruce McCulloch from The Kids In the Hall put them on me and I stood in front of this black Tron-like grid pattern thing. My shape suddenly turned black so I was invisible against the background and you could only see the bright white shoes.
    Then I was living in this futuristic city - I think it was NYC but it was all spread out and different. I noticed all the interiors of the buildings had large open-air areas and all the windows had no glass. Nothing was sealed and there was no difference between outside and inside. Like there was no weather or crime - maybe the whole city was sealed in a giant dome. At one point I went to this "club" and there were two guys who were gonna sit on a couch and debate the pros and cons of homosexuality. The owners decided to both give them microphones so this could be the "show". The host of the show was Jackie Beat. The owners of the club wanted this to be real sensation but it was not very interesting. The argument was really lame and Jackie kept trying to build it up by going like "Whoa! I can't believe he just said that! This is out of control!!!" even though nothing had happened really. When one guy would say something really innocuous to the other Jackie would chime is saying "Whoa!!! What's your response to that obvious slam!? Are you gonna let him get away with that?!" and they would both just stare at her like "Huh?". The show ended up being a bomb - oh and there was no audience. Behind the stage area were all these nerdy guys working with TV screens and computers and wires and air traffic controller-looking stuff. It looked super high-tech. Also, the "stage" was on the same level as the floor, and the stage really was just the background area where the nerdy guys were controlling everything and Jackie was trying to plug in all the microphone extension cords. The couch the guys arguing on was in the audience even though they were the show.
    I was then outside and it was day and I was on a phone talking to a doctor that prescribed me medicine. I was telling him there was no reason for me to come to his office because I was not out of medicine. He was like "Well how close are you to my office?" I was right next door but was like "Really far." He said "Well, there's no real reason for you to come by - I mean what am I gonna say that will make any difference for your twenty year problem?" and he chuckled, but in a friendly, jovial way. I was thinking "What?". While I was talking to him all these "futuristic" cars were whizzing by on the street making Jetsons-like noises like "w-h-h-h-b-b-b-r-b-r-b-r-b-r-r-r-t!!!"
    I was then "baby sitting" this group of young boys and we were outside in the Summer in the grass (where did the dome go?). They were coming inside and they were gathering together videos that they had rented and all just watched somewhere. One of the movies was "Harold and Maude". It was time for them to go to bed and I slept in the same room with them. There was a building next to the bedroom, you could see it right outside the window. The boys told me a "monster" lived next door there and they got scared by him every night and sometimes he would come terrorize them. I looked over there and saw a fat 20-something nerdy guy with a computer and all this stuff in his room. He had a video camera pointed at the room and was filming the boys at night sleeping. I got an evil vibe from him. I saw him move to where the camera was, which was cloaked in darkness and you could only see the little lights of the camera flashing - like James Stewart sees Raymond Burr's cigarette burning in the dark window after he killed the dog in the courtyard in "Rear Window". Suddenly the whole thing turned into a horror movie and they guy video taping was cloaked in darkness and I saw the "record" button go on the camera but couldn't see him in the darkness. He let out this ominous laugh and he suddenly had a supernatural presence. I knew he was coming over to the house to do harm. Then I woke up.

7/21/00:

    This guy who I have a crush on who always is at the Phoenix was staying in a "dormitory" or something. Me and my friends all stayed there. Soon I realized that the dorm was actually the layout of a house I lived in for a few years when we moved briefly to Pennsylvania. I lived in my old room and the guy who I have a crush on lived in my brother's room (yikes! - paging Dr. Freud please...). He lived alone. I was trying to get the guy's attention all the time and everyone was always making fun of me about it. So finally I did get his attention - I can't exactly remember how, it had something to do with him overhearing something I had recorded onto a tape that was in another language. Or I overheard something he had recorded on a tape or whatever. Maybe it was something in a foreign language. Or it was some kind of reference to an odd book or film or something. Anyway we both figured out about the overheard thing and started doing it on purpose to each other and acting like we had no idea it was going on - like each going to great lengths to make the next thing on the tape "perfect" so the other one would overhear just the right thing or whatever - but then act oblivious when we were around each other. It was hilarious. It went back and forth for a while. Then we were at the dinner hall and there was some weird thing with all my friends trying to to get us to sit together but somehow couldn't. I think we ended up getting together and we were sitting in a boat on a calm, beautiful lake or something and there was a beautiful sunset around us - and at some point we both realized the sunset was a cardboard backdrop and the water was fake and we were actually in an itty bitty room that was a set and it made us laugh really hard.
    I, once again, was in NYC in the Summertime - but NYC was very different and we were in the "future" NYC. I was walking around the city - going somewhere and I was drinking from this water/juice container that was glass or plastic. The top of the container had really big holes in it like a parmesan cheese shaker at a pizza place. This was some "miraculous" invention that allowed you to drink from the container "endlessly" and the liquid would never run out forever. I kept thinking "What about planned obsolescence?". The drink was clear and cool and tasted like orange. I remember it being really refreshing and delicious and I thought "This is my new favorite drink."
    Then I was invited to the filming - or maybe premiere of some new comedy film and I decided to take my mother. It was in the "futuristic" NYC again and we had to drive there - it was Wintertime and snowy, like post-snow. We got to the premiere and it was in this large old-fashioned hall. It was really ornate and rococo looking. Little brass dabbles and red tassels everywhere. There was a concierge. The "premiere" consisted of everyone sitting on the floor and watching the film on a TV set. I put my arm around my mom and we were both laughing at my mom and I thought "This is a good way to relate to my mom, by watching comedy films together. Look how we are both enjoying ourselves!". I felt really warm and centered. At some point I think I realized they were actually filming the movie as we were watching it and this was a "live video feed" and I was like "Wow!" but I didn't explain it to my mom.

7/22/00:

    Wow...so many events happening in the dream, really rich and colorful. Almost too much to mention. I'm just gonna mention them in little "snippets". So here ya go:
    I was with two other guys on a road trip. My "dream camera eye" is watching our car approach a huge English-style manor that's in the middle of a Wintertime field. All English and Edward Gorey-ish. But the sun is out and there is no snow. There are three women outside the front door talking, my "camera" is near them. They all are variations of Dawn French. They are dressed in old fashioned clothes, lots of layers. They see our car coming and one says "Thank God! Customers! Let's go inside then shall we...it's Summer and I'll just die if I don't get a bit of lettuce today." I get the impression the place puts up a front of being a successful hotel, restaurant, whatever but is really destitute.
    I am in this really modern house that is this long shape. Like the whole house is one long hallway or something - with glass rooms jutting off the side of it. But the glass is frosted and each room a different color. One of the two guys I'm traveling with is tall, a little fat and has red hair and a beard. He's looking in the refrigerator of the house and pulls out a hairdryer filled with Coca Cola. You're supposed to drink it out of the hair dryer and can only drink it when it's plugged in and running - weird. He says something like "Here's a killer", referring to the Coke. The other guy says something like "That's for Mark, he drinks the stuff". And the fat guy goes on to explain how sodas and coffee and stuff are really bad for you and I think I just stare at him like "Duh".
    I'm working at a nightclub and my friend Sharon, who I used to work at the door of the Roxy with, is there working with me. I don't recognize the club - but it looks like one of the ones in "Queer As Folk". I don't know what we are doing but I'm thinking "Wow a whole year has passed and it's Summer again already." and then I think I should be traveling somewhere.
    There was tons more but I just can't remember it now. I wonder why I can't remember it now?

7/23/00:

    Can't remember my dreams at all this morning.

7/24/00:

    Wow...I can't remember my dreams again. I have noticed that when I load up my Dream Journal page onto my desktop at night before I go to bed, and have and have it waiting for me there in the morning ready to write right into, that I always remember. This ritual seems to tell my conscious mind to remember something of my dreams the next morning. I haven't done this the last two nights - I'll do it tonight and see if it changes things. Maybe somebody else can channel my dreams from last night. Put it on the message board.

7/25/00:

    I am in a suburban shopping center parking lot and it is daytime. I am in my own reality and also in an English TV show about a crafty James Bond-like female spy. Maybe like Monica Vitti in "Modesty Blaise". I am working with her to catch crooks. I keep running in and out and in and out of the automatic doors of a giant grocery store because I want to "bump into" the villain that we are trying to nab. I eventually run into the female spy instead of the villain, and she says "Come on...let's hurry" and this wacky music plays. Then I realize the female spy looks just like Jerri Blank's mother from "Strangers With Candy" but speaks with an English accent. Odd. I turn around to follow her and she disappears and suddenly - everything turns to nighttime - with the bright overhead lights in the parking lot and everything. Where did everyone go?
    Suddenly the villain's car pulls up from out of nowhere, it's a wacky old-time car you have to crank in the front and looks like something The Munsters would drive, or one of those 1970's monster CAR-toons Magazine cars (who was that artist?). In the front seat (which looks like a skinny phone booth) there is a pane of glass separating the driver from the front seat passenger. I see that the female spy's assistant (who is an older English butler-looking fellow with handlebar mustache and top hat and monocle and all - whom I'm seeing for the first time) has placed a black piece of construction paper on that pane of glass so the driver, the villain, can't see the English butler sitting next to him. The villain is talking to the English butler as if he were someone else, probably his coconspirator in crime. "It's a clever set up" I think to myself, "This will allow the English butler to learn all kinds of info from the villain, as he poses as the villain's assistant behind the black paper, AND he will be able apprehend the villain once they get to where they are going and he reveals that he is not the villain's coconspirator but working for 'the good side'. I hope he brought his tape recorder!"
    The villain's car is about to turn out of the parking lot and the English butler looks out of his window at me and telepathically tells me "You must get into the back seat of this car Mark. The villain is probably driving to his secret underground lair and when we get there and I reveal myself I need someone there to held defend me when he tries to ambush me. It will be two against one." I receive the ESP message and secretly climb under the car as it is speeding away. I secretly work my way into the back seat of the car. The "back seat" is so cramped - kind of like the back of a cops car that is so slim that you can't move at all when you're in handcuffs - that I can't move. It is so cramped that I begin to feel like I won't have enough oxygen for the whole trip or something and I'm really claustrophobic and I start to feel trapped. I start to freak out a little bit. We are driving down this country side road really fast that has tall shrubbery on one side and a brick/wood fence on the other (which are back yards of houses). The road just keeps curving to the left, like we are going in a circle. The whole nighttime scene is lit really weird from overhead - like the stadium lighting at a football game - and the whole thing has an air of "fake-ness" about it. I can hear the villain in the front seat telling the English butler, who he thinks is his villain side-kick; "OK, we outsmarted the female spy, good work whatever-your-name-is! Now we need to get to our underground hide-out and get the plutonium to blow up the United Nations building and then the blue poison milk to kill all the school children and hold the Queen for a billion pounds ransom, etc..." and the English butler is imitating the voice of the villain's sidekick and going "Uh-huh! OK! Mmmm-hmmmm..." and stringing the villain along and writing everything down.
    I start to REALLY freak out because the "walls" of the back seat are closing in - for some reason - and I feel like I'm gonna get crushed. I can't tell the English butler because I will blow our cover. I jump out of the back seat unseen just as the back seat "collapses" in on itself. I am alone on the road as the car speeds along away from me. I think "Wow I hope English butler is OK without me - I hope somehow he realizes I had to jump out - hope he gets by OK!". I start to go the opposite direction on the road, so it's curving to the right as I run along. I eventually jump the wall/fence and start running through all the nighttime backyards of people's houses along the road.
    I eventually come to my destination, which is Pickadilly Circus in London, except it's now immense and bigger that it used to be - very Osaka, Japan-like - lots of flashing lights and signs and buildings that reach up to the sky. The female spy is there, along with the English butler. The English butler killed the villain at his underground lair and they saved the world. They don't even seem concerned that I jumped out of the car midpoint. We all hug and are like "Another case solved - until next week!" and silly music starts to play. Suddenly colorful foil confetti starts to rain all over the immense Pickadilly Circus and I think it's because we saved the world but we all soon realize that the confetti is a celebration of something else having nothing to do with us. Suddenly I realize that the female British spy thing was not a TV show at all and it was just a small part of our own delusional realities that was one of many autonomous realities within London. But female spy, English butler and me are all still there, we are just not characters in a TV show, we are real people. I look up at one of the giant billboards in the Square and see cartoon renderings of Candis Cayne and Varla Jean Merman - it's an add for some show they are doing in London.
    Then from out of nowhere...confetti that was a lot thicker and heavier than the other confetti started raining down on our little group only - like the way that rain cloud followed The Adams Family around. It was starting to hurt! It was like bullets falling down from the sky! We were trying to run away from the deadly confetti but the "cloud" followed us around, just like that rain followed Jim Carey around in "The Truman Show". But the normal confetti was falling everywhere else. I remember looking up at the sky and immense buildings and thinking "What a celebration? Why is someone trying to kill us!?"
    Then I was in some conference room and someone was showing me a video tape of a special from some TV news show about how conflict gets started in the workplace. On the tape, they were filming some people that worked on another TV news program, and the voice-over was the same woman that was in the conference room showing me the video. I realized that one of the people on the tape was someone I knew. He was acting really gay on the tape. The video showed him starting to get in an altercation with one of his co-workers at his desk. The voice over was whispering something like "Watch the conflict as it progresses..." and the woman in the conference room (who was the woman's voice on the tape) was pointing at the TV screen telling me "Watch this part Mark."
    Then suddenly we were at that guy's apartment, the guy I knew on the tape. His apartment was in the East Village and it was on the ground floor and also doubled as a coffee house/cafe. There were lots of people around and we were watching a videotape of my friend Steven Stathakis. On the video he was in his apartment. Suddenly I realized the tape was a live video feed and that Steven's apartment was right upstairs and we were watching him live!
    Then suddenly I was back on that curved road from before in the dream. I was just running away from the old-time-y car with the villain and English butler inside because the back seat was collapsing. I ran through the shrubs and found myself in an immense dirt field. I was night and dark and I could see car headlights way in the distance where I think there was a freeway. Suddenly I was beside the freeway with all these girls, who were some of the girls I saw in the guy's apartment/coffee house, but I didn't know any of them. The cars were whizzing by and we were all gathered around the side of the road and the girls were arguing because something had happened and now they were all stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Everyone was passing the blame around and there was a lot of finger pointing. Suddenly one of the girls, who had little feathers in her hair, was saying something. Another girl interrupted her and was yelling at her like "Shut up! You don't know what your saying! I'm sick of all this..." or something. As I look at this girl who's yelling, I realize it is my high school friend Sondra. She said (yelled) what she had to say and stormed off into the dirt field, leaving a trail of dust behind her. I remember thinking to myself: "Sondra always likes to pretend she's in control."
    Then suddenly I was back in that weird car from the beginning of the dream, and it was taking me to Steven's apartment. The villain and English butler were not in it. The car had a mind of it's own and drove me to my destination and then drove away after I got out. I went into Steve's apartment. He was watching videos of Broadway songs. He shared the space with Ross, who is Gregory's wild upstairs neighbor. It was a bad living situation because the space was divided down the middle by a flimsy wall and that made it "two apartments" and they had no privacy. They had to share a bathroom. Ross didn't know I was there and Steve says to me "Let's play a joke on Ross! I'll go into the bathroom and then yell for Ross to come into my apartment. You hide under these quilts and when he comes in - jump out and scare him!!!" and I'm like "Hahaha! OK cool!"
    So Steve goes into the bathroom and we hear Ross go into his apartment and I get under these embroidered quilts. Steve isn't yelling for Ross to come into his apartment and I'm wondering why and then I think he's doing it just to make it seem real. I can hear Ross next door moving around and Steve is still in the bathroom doing nothing and I'm like "What the fuck?!" and so to entertain myself I peer out of the blanket and look at the TV screen, which has the sound turned off. I look and see that Ross can probably see my legs between this seem in the flimsy wall where it doesn't quite connect. I move my feet under the quilt and am like "I hope he didn't see that."
    I'm still wondering why Steve hasn't said anything and I can hear Ross moving around and I'm like "This is stupid!" So I just come out of the blanket like the joke is over and Ross is standing right in front of the quilt. He jumps away like "ahhh!" like he's really scared and says "Oh my dear God I thought you were a burglar in Steve's apartment! Oh my God you scared the living daylights out of me!!" Steve comes out of the bathroom and the toilet is flushing and he's like "What's happening?"
    Ross says he thought I was a burglar who had snuck into Steve's apartment without him knowing. He had seen my legs in that space in the wall and he was slowly creeping up on me and was going to shoot into the blanket without even saying anything. I look down in his hands and he has one of those weird home-made guns that's just like a pipe and a handle. I realized I just escaped getting shot.

7/26/00:

    Only one thing I can remember from last night's dream:
    A can of coffee grounds that is split down the middle with a little "wall", dividing the grounds into two sections. When I try to make coffee with it - the can somehow fits onto the coffee maker with this wall "fitting" into part of it. Like a puzzle piece fits onto a puzzle. Parts of the can and coffee maker seemed to be passing through each other like both were transparent, or holograms or something.

7/27/00:

    I'm at the "new" MOMA. It's new in my dream reality only. It is totally redesigned with lots of new rooms and hallways and stuff and reminds me of a children's museum. There are colorful lights everywhere. I am being "chased" by someone behind me - but it's not threatening, it's like a game or something. I never take a look to see who is pursuing me, but they cause me to whip through room after room at great speed - almost like I'm flying. It's like a super sonic tour of the whole museum. I'm like "Neato!"
    Later that night I'm back at the museum. I'm attending a "class" in one of the rooms. The class is called: "Using the Oval Shape In Planning Weddings". The room the class is in is immense. Like a high school gymnasium, but it's all white. The chairs facing the stage/instructor are arranged in weird patterns like you see the rows of pews arranged in a modern church, with isles between each grouping. There are those little garden tunnels made of lattice-work everywhere, and everything is under-lit with blue lights. I see that almost every seat in the place is taken - the class has already begun. There are people standing around and talking and moving during the class. It's like a low-key mob scene. I work my way to the front of the class and see there are a lot of seats available. I wonder why no one in the back moved up. I'm really interested in what the instructor is saying.
    Suddenly the class turns into Fire Island, outdoors. I am in that boat-docking area where lots of houses and patios and shops face the docks and water. It's sunny, crowded and there seems to be a celebration going on. I have a yacht and am in the back of it working on it or something. I'm talking to a woman sitting on her porch near me - she's in a rocking chair. Suddenly an old friend of mine from my night club days walk up to my boat and says hello. I recognize his face but don't know exactly who he is - but start talking to him anyway. He asks if he can "work" on the boat and I'm like "Sure!"
    Then while we are working he starts acting funny then has trouble breathing, starts coughing and then collapses on the ground. I'm like "Oh my God!". Some of his friends walk over and see me and are like "Hi Mark!" and I'm like "Oh my God look at your friend he's dying!" and they are all "Oh please, that drama queen! So...how are you?". I'm really shocked that they don't seem to care and I'm checking on the guy's shallow breath and I think he's gonna kiss the big one. His friends say he just wants attention but I can tell it's real. The friends start to act concerned, but I can tell it's just because I am. The woman on the porch is like "Take him to Fire Island Hospital! It's right there!". She point behind me, and I turn around and there is Fire Island Hospital right on the other side of my boat.
    I rush into the hospital, freaking out like this guys gonna die. I run through out the whole hospital and NO ONE IS THERE!!! All the equipment is on and "bloop-blooping" and all the lights are on and everything working - but there are no patients or staff!!! I'm running around trying to find anybody and I suddenly look in my arms and realize I have the HEAD ONLY of the guy who collapsed on my boat. ONLY THE HEAD! I'm thinking "How long can a human go without oxygen before they die - like three minutes or something?" and I'm thinking there's no way I'm gonna get help for this guy in three minutes. I don't seemed concerned at all that he's just a head. I can feel the cheeks of his face moving against my arm (I'm carrying the head) as the guy tried to struggle to breath.
    I finally find a nurse and am like "Oh my God you gotta help me!" and she tells me that Fire Island has a really lame hospital with no staff and it has all kinds of management problems and the island really needs a good health care system and that she's really sorry there's nothing she can do. I look down at the guys head - is he dead yet? - and his head is wrapped in thin yellow ribbon, like a birthday present. His eyes and mouth are turned away from me, like he doesn't wanna look at me. I'm thinking "This guy is probably going to die." I take his head back out to the boat and there are a bunch of those queens on my boat drinking cocktails and having a party and I look at them with contempt.

7/28/00:

    I had too much stuff to take care of early this morning and waited too long to enter my dream, so I totally forgot it. So to make up for that I will enter a dream I remember from way back in my college days. I don't know WHY I never forgot it, maybe it's trying to tell me something important! You decide:
    I'm standing on one side of a massive, man-made river that has concrete ledges on both sides. It is dusk. On the other side of the river is a massive city, and I can see the lit windows of all the buildings slowly becoming brighter as the sky becomes darker around them. A few of the buildings are glass and their reflections are shimmering really brilliantly. Suddenly I notice this bright pink, orange and yellow object slowly hovering about 15 feet above the water's surface. It is hovering in a straight line right in my direction. It has a weird shape, kind of like a pork chop that has been warped slightly into a hook shape, with the top and bottom sides pink and orange, and the edge bright yellow. The colors make it really stand out against the darkened city behind it. The object appears to be as big as I am, and it makes no sound as it slowly approaches me. Soon the object is right in front of me and I realize that it is actually very small - about 3 or 4 inches in length. I reach out into the air and grab it. It weighs about one pound. I pitch my hand way back and throw it across the water to watch it "skip" like you skip small, flat round stones on the surface of a lake. As it is skipping along, It suddenly occurs to me what the object actually was. It was that giant brontosaurus "ribs" that the waitress serves to The Flintstones in the opening credits of the old animated series. You know where Wilma and Fred pull up at the prehistoric drive in and the waitress takes their order and when she comes back and puts it on the tray on the side of their car the car topples over? It's one of those scenes that repeats every time the opening theme and credits are running. As I watch the object skip across the river I see that it isn't sinking at all and appears to be going right to the other side - to go to the city.

7/29/00:

    I was visiting another state - on a road trip of sorts. I was with one other person. Who this person was always someone from my past (how come I never dream about my current friends?), but who this person would be would keep morphing depending on what we were doing. Sometimes it was my friend Shane, other times it was Dave, or sometimes other acquaintances from my past who's names I can't remember, like friends boyfriends or roommates - very weird. At one point we were in, like... Ohio or maybe Atlanta, Georgia or something? We were at some new museum that had just opened and it was all nice and new architecture and stuff. It was the opening reception and they guy who designed it was there. The designer looked like the millionaire cartoon character from the Monopoly board game box (whom I happened to see on an episode of The Simpsons recently). Me and my friend went out to this balcony, it was daytime, and we crawled down it and onto the grass and into this large sewer tunnel and out the other side. Suddenly it was nighttime and we were beside the road and we were in Tennessee, somewhere outside Louisiana. The road looked like the Tollway in Dallas, Texas that collects Dallas to Plano, all lit up with high walls and stuff. We walked along the road and came upon this really loud nightspot. It looked like The Museum Club in Flagstaff, Arizona that Michael Wakefield and I went to on our millennium trip to nowhere. Outside were parked all of these fantastic looking vehicles that looked like little old-fashioned houses attached to trucks. They were like mobile homes but all the homes looked like scaled down versions of the old house the Bates lived in from the movie "Psycho" (just scaled down slightly - which the real house from the movie is - did you know that?). Anyway all these vehicles with the scaled down houses attached to them were in this fenced-in section of the dirt parking lot outside. In the club we could hear the people screaming and laughing and carrying on, it sounded like a pretty ruckus-y place.
    We opened the fence gate to get into the vehicles area. There was a weeping willow tree hanging over the fenced-in area that kind of protected the whole thing. There were large stadium lights that lit up the parking lot so we had lots of light. We went into one of the vehicle houses, through the side door. The insides were a lot bigger than it looked like they might be from the outside, just like the Tardis from Dr. Who. The design of the living space had that weird look that mobile homes have, you know where the free space is taken advantage of in funny way. Like a kitchen table doubles as a a bed and all the tables are close together and everything is used to maximize the space, etc. There was shag white carpet everywhere. All the walls were made of dark orange rattan and wicker. There were macramé things hanging around too - it was very 70's. We were looking around and were amazed how the place maximized the open space to cram as much opulence into the place as possible. As we were looking around, we could still hear the patrons in the bar outside laughing and party-ing. Inside the vehicle, there was a staircase that snaked around the "living room" (which had a Japanese style low black table table with a large crystal orb in the center of it - I think there were also paintings of tigers on the walls) and up to the second floor. We went up the stairs and there was a landing with a wood floor and three doors. We wanted to open one door but we suddenly had the feeling that this was one of those weird funhouse rides from a cheesy carnival - like something would jump out of one of the doors to "scare" us - like a skeleton on a string or something. Suddenly there was lightning and thunder outside like in a horror movie. One of the doors opened up and out ran Teresa Wright from the Alfred Hitchcock film "Shadow of a Doubt" in the same dress and hair she wore through most of the film (and was the same age). I realized the landing we were on was the same landing in that house in the film - and she was running out of what was her bedroom (next to her "uncles") in the movie. The weird thing was that she had no face. It was kind of scarred-but-smooth. Like a burn victim. No features just smoothed-over bumps. She ran out of the door with arms flailing like she was trying to scare us but it wasn't scary. I think I saw Shane inside the room as she was running out.
    There was a whole other part of the dream where we were hanging out in this Bourbon Street-style area that was actually a transformed version of the Plano Senior High School campus and we accidentally got involved selling drugs somehow (real slapstick, Woody Allen-esque style). We eventually got hauled off to some super high tech prison (which looked like the new museum from the beginning of the dream) and we found out one of the guys we sold drugs with was pretending to be poor and stupid but was really wealthy and riding around in limos and stuff. And when we found this out we were watching ourselves in a movie being hauled away to a chain gang - and when they guy got into his limo there was a laugh track. I just don't feel like typing all the little details of that part of the dream so I just gave you that little synopsis.

7/30/00:

    ANOTHER dream where I unexpectedly find myself in Dallas/Plano, Texas and go on a huge, weird journey all over the city. As usual, I'm running all over Plano visiting old spots and friends while keeping in mind Big Lake Park, which is the park across the street from one of the houses I grew up in and. But I never make it to Big Lake Park. I always am in Texas moving around different parts of Plano and looking forward to going to this place but get so preoccupied with everything and everyone else that I never make it, or wake up before I do. I guess you could call this a reoccurring dream. Here's the dream:
    I'm picking two old friends up at the airport, they are visiting New York. I pick one up and place him somewhere in the airport. Then I go pick up the other one and we walk around the airport (which looks like Collin Creek Mall in Plano) and talk. I notice he has a huge pot-belly now. I totally forget about the first friend.
    I'm then on some weird amusement park-like ride where me and a bunch of people I don't know are on this giant car thing and are going slowly through all these large tunnels with mirrors and old fashioned guilded frames. All brass and sepia tone. As the car clunks along I realize I'm in Dallas and art one point see outside the tunnel. I see the nighttime headlights of Central Expressway where it splits up and spreads out into downtown. I think "Wow! I'm in Dallas!" and immediately thing about going to Big Lake Park.
    I am staying with a group of people in a home in Plano, but at times I don't know who the people are, and at other times I think it might be my family. I somehow have a car and decide to drive to see the first house I grew up in, when I was really young, on Monticello street. It's Wintertime and it's cold, but sunny - and all the leaves are off the trees. I pull the car up to the spot on Monticello and see where the house was. The landscape in the neighborhood, and the house itself, have completely changed. It doesn't even look like the same locale at all. I walk into the yard of where the house used to be (which was totally flat with NO trees. It has become a wooded area with a big slope leading down to the yard. The dead leaves are all over the ground. I see the new inhabitants of the house, or one of them. It's a man (although he sometimes turns into a woman while I'm talking to him). I approach him and am like "You don't know who I am, but..."
    He takes me on a tour of the grounds where the house is. The grounds look nothing like our old yard and are now huge. It looks like an old apple orchard. He's pointing to different building (there are more than one on the property) and saying "This is this building, this is that one, blah, blah..." and I'm looking on like "What happened?". I can see tour groups of people "touring" the property, I see one group swinging around on branches of a weeping willow tree. I notice that there is no house at all on the property so I ask him where they live. He says they live in this special space-age house that you can't see at all but is totally "...air and temperature controlled." He also tells me they get from different points in the house from an intricate system of clear plastic "habitrail-like" tunnels that snake around the outside of the house. I see some patches of dead grass where he says the house is.
    Suddenly it is the next night and I am bringing a bunch of people back to this house to show them. We arrive at Monticello street and get out of the car and the entire scene has changed drastically once again, but it still looks nothing like our old house. The "new" house is an immense mansion, gigantic as a matter of fact. With many buildings on the property and a lavish English garden in the back. It's almost like a castle. The new owners are nowhere to be seen - I think this new one is deserted. I tell everyone "OK, this is the house I grew up in, come on in and I'll give you a tour!" I'm acting really cocky and running around like I own the place. It's nighttime and we have flashlights and beer - it's a little party.
    We are in the house and I turn on the lights in one of the rooms. It's an old fashioned theater with a bright red curtain on the stage and white walls, with lots of balconies. I'm saying "This is the room where...um, uh..." because I can't imagine why our family would have such an immense, non-sensical room in their house and I don't know what to say. Also I've never seen this room before so I'm a little confused. Everyone is speechless and stunned by the grandiosity of the whole place and are like "Wow!". So I try to act like I know what I'm doing by going "OK come here to the back of the stage and I'll show you a REALLY cool room!".
    I take them to another set of rooms. These are "twin rooms" meaning they are two rooms that are exactly alike and are right next door to each other. They both are very long and have white walls and high ceilings and have all these red Persian rugs stapled together to form wall-to-wall carpeting for the giant floors. I have a deck of cards and am like "Watch me do this cool card trick I used to do in this room as a kid!" but I really have no idea what I'm doing. I go into the twin room next door and it's identical but it has one difference - the floor is sloped way down from one end of the room to the other, like a giant fun slide at a carnival. There is the Persian run stapled thing on the floor so you can't "slide" per se, but you can ROLL!!! Which I do, from one end of the room to the other - which is a long distance since the room is now the size of a soccer field. I run back up to the top and tell the guys "I used to live in this room and roll down this hill night and day!!!" but I'm making that up - I've never seen this room, or house, before. I notice the floors under the carpet are all creaky. The group seems genuinely impressed but confused. I notice there is an old man in our group now wearing this weird diaper thing made of white cloth.
    I go into the hall outside the room into the back hall - who's window's face the back yard. I look down and see some of our group gathered around this round fountain. The sprawling English garden is behind them (although most everything's dead) and the sun is shining down on - everything despite the cold. I think it's really beautiful.
    I'm back outside the front of the house and the new owner has re-appeared. We both have our arms wrapped around different trees and are talking. The sun is shining really brightly and it's Wintertime. I can now make out across the street - which now looks like it's supposed to, the right houses that used to be there and the sidewalk and streetlight and all. As I'm talking I remember we used to have three seedling trees planted in a triangle in the front yard - they were in the form of a triangle. I think "Wow they must be big by now, I wonder if one of these trees is one of them?". Before I ask the new owner (now a woman in a baby blue jogging suit) I realize that they are not those original trees, which had obviously been cut down and replaced with these older gigantic ones. The seedlings could not have grown this big that quickly. The new owner seems to really love her new trees. I don't even bother asking her about the old ones because I know what her answer will be.

7/31/00:

    Had a very restless night last night. When I film myself sleeping I get really self conscious of the cam - I'm not entirley used to that yet. Hence, I had a bad sleep and can remember no dream...until tomorrow.