Bryan Adams: Bounty Hunter

Had one of my patented "watching a movie" dreams.

In this movie dream, Bryan Adams played a married father of three. When his youngest son died, he decided to leave his wife and two remaining children and become a bounty hunter.

"Not to worry, honeybunny. Though I leave you in a great and terrible grief to support two growing children who desperately need their father, I'll be sure to send you 25% of every bounty I collect (The remaining 75% will go towards food, clothing, supplies, hotels, and bordellos for those cold, lonely winter nights.)."

"#$%^ you, too."

Donning gray pants and a gray ranger hat with some strange head sleeve attached under the brim,

(Wear the latter under the former and you get a close approximation of what I'm trying to describe.)

he took to wandering a perpetually stormy wilderness in search of criminals to bring to justice.

"Bryan? This is God. I'd just like you to know that this all could have been avoided if you'd just retired after releasing Into the Fire."

From the Dream Archives: Plan 9½ from Outer Space

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 30 NOVEMBER 2014)

This dream played out like a movie.

The plot was about a race of aliens

who, fed up with the way humanity had despoiled the planet, altered the sun into a dim green star.

The green sun started emitting mutagenic radiation which began turning everyone on the planet into homicidal lunatics. Once everyone had slaughtered each other in a great orgy of blood, the radiation of the green sun would then act as an evolutionary accelerant to help produce a new sapient species to act as humanity's successors.

George C. Scott was in a starring role with Brad Dourif supporting.

(Make it so again, multiverse.)

I'm a Doctor, Not a Moonshiner!

This is a first for me: a Star Trek dream.

Judging by the uniforms and state of technology, I'd say this dream took place in the time frame of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

(Place me in the minority, but I actually prefer them to the TOS uniforms.)

I wanna say it took place some time after TMP — McCoy was an established member of the crew, and it felt like the V'Ger incident was in the recent past — but only now was Spock returning to the Enterprise after leaving his Kohlinahr studies on Vulcan.

"I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! There's no way they can prove anything!"

Lest I forget, Kirk also had a steady girlfriend — a lady who was totally into purple. Her clothes were purple; her makeup was purple; even her hair (and hairpieces) were purple.

(Eh, close enough.)

Here's the most memorable part of the dream. It was Halloween and most everybody was wearing a costume.

(Spock, of course, went as himself.)

McCoy, dressed as a moonshiner,

had brewed his own hooch in a radiator to celebrate the occasion. When he and Kirk went to sample it, though, the horrid taste caused them both to violently spit it out.

(Stick to mint juleps, Doctor.)

Kirk then suggested they enjoy a snifter of brandy instead.

Filling his brandy glass, Kirk started pouring McCoy's botched batch down the sink when Spock wondered in. When Spock asked him why he was starting on the brandy without finishing the moonshine, McCoy told him it was an Earth tradition. Spock took his word for it.

(And that was the teaser for "Spock's Brain 2: Positronic Boogaloo".)

From the Dream Archives: Cracked Rear Window

(ORIGINAL ENTRY DATE: 5 AUGUST 2014)

I dreamt I was watching a movie with red-and-cyan colour grading

(Y'know, like those two-colour Technicolor films from the '20s & '30s.)

about a man who stabbed his wife to death with a purple plastic pie cutter

(It's not purple, but you get the picture.)

after she found out he was having an affair with her identical twin sister. The twins — played by Canadian actress Lauren Lee Smith

— wore the exact same hairstyles Julie Christie sported in the film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451.

Oh, and after the husband did the deed, he did a piss-poor job covering up his tracks.

Having thought about it, I wish that was a real movie, blatant similarities to Rear Window notwithstanding (It'd probably be better than most of Ms. Smith's films, too.).

Tales from the Gimpy Hospital

This strange set of dreams began with me in a hospital. I don't recall my reasons for being there.

(Though I do have a hypothesis or two.)

John Lithgow was also there.

My mind draws a blank when it comes to whether he was part of the staff or a fellow patient, nor can I recall him saying or actually doing anything. He was just there.

Then matters got truly odd. I suddenly found myself in a supermarket. Donning a Superman-esque costume with an inverted colour scheme

I began flying around the supermarket. Orderlies from the hospital were there trying to capture me, but I flew too fast for them to catch me. Then I was suddenly back in the hospital, where I got into a philosophical argument with the Smallville Superman.

(If you can even call this self-loathing, whiny pretty boy with questionable taste in women Superman.)

I criticized him for turning Clark Kent into a simpering disguise and lectured him on what it meant to be Clark Kent.

(Long story short, my Superman/Clark Kent is essentially a composite of the three above, not the Earth-One Superdick Bill waxes philosophic over.)

I then found myself back home. I was no longer wearing the costume, but I could still fly. I can often fly in my dreams; it's my dream power. I can't usually fly very high; it's often closer to levitation than true flight. But this time, I was flying higher than I had ever flown before. It was a mild, sunny day, and I could fly right up into the treetops. It was exhilarating.

(As free as the wind blows. As free as the grass grows.)

As I'd always wanted to know what the rooftop of my house looked like from above, I wanted to fly up there, but I still couldn't quite reach that far. Luckily for me, Laurie Metcalf was there to lend a hand. With her boosting me up, I was able to fly high enough to purchase a grip on the roof's edge. As luck would have it, the entire roof turned out to be rotten. Unable to support my weight, that entire side of the roof gave way; I fell to the ground along with pieces of rotten, waterlogged siding.

The dream then went creepy.

[CLICK HERE FOR CREEPY MUSIC]

I was suddenly in my old bedroom (Suffice to say, before moving into the basement this summer, I spent my worthless days festering in a crappy upstairs bedroom with a ceiling that leaked almost every time it rained/snowed.). As ominous ambient music played in the background, I watched as the ceiling slowly disintegrated, crumbling under the weight of the waterlogged insulation situated above.

(Oh, won't someone other than Tom Welling save me?)

Then I was transported to a video store.

(Saved by A-grade pablum and Z-grade schlock! I'll never criticize Hollywood ever again!)

There were two different BD sets of Jeffrey Combs horror movies available, on sale for literally a couple bucks each. Unfortunately, I didn't have even $2 on me, so I couldn't buy either one.

With no seamless transition, I found myself watching a Rod Stewart music video.

(If Stewart looked like Bowie and sounded like Jagger.)

Rod was with a blonde in a black convertible, driving around the outskirts of a suburb at night. As they drove about, night turned to day, the black convertible to a white minivan, and the blonde to a group of male bodyguards.

(I don't know about you, but I'd demand the blonde back.)

Suddenly I found myself transported into the video. The minivan pulled up beside me, the bodyguards hopped out, and one of them — a cop with mud caked on his face

— pushed me to the ground and arrested me.

I was taken to an insane asylum, and who should happen to be one of the attending psychologists but Patrick Bateman himself! Dr. Bateman was too busy treating other patients with chainsaws and blowtorches to see me right away.

"I'd refer you to Dr. Lector, but he's visiting relatives in Texas."

Luckily for all concerned, John Saxon was there to save the day.

"Hallelujah!"

Dressed in a pink tracksuit,

he confronted Bateman. Pulling two flare guns out from his waistband, 

Saxon's ultimatum to Bateman basically went like this:

"We can do this the easy way or we can do this the fun way. Whichever way this goes down, your ass has a date with the backseat of my cruiser at 8:00 sharp!"

Bateman's reaction:

In spite of all his narcissistic bravado and homicidal talent, Bateman turned out to be a pansy at heart. He surrendered almost immediately to Saxon without resistance.

(You can't repel machismo of this magnitude!)

The Mistitled Children's Book/The Unmarried Couple w. Kid vs. The Gaudy Pimp/The Visit to the Liquor Store\Comic Shop

A girl I knew and had feelings for in high school agreed to help me write a children's book titled The Youngest Hippopotamus.

(The girl — lets call her "D" — is one of the four girls in this artful photo manipulation created by yours truly.)

D had met me on the front porch of my house to discuss the book. When she asked me what the book was about, I told her it was about a superhero who fights two Green Goblin-esque supervillains.

('Cause when you think The Youngest Hippopotamus, the first thing that comes to mind is some guy in spandex fighting two clowns dressed like this.)

When she essentially asked me if I had pulled that plot out of my ass, I admitted that that was the case and we both had a chuckle over it.

Growing serious, she then made it clear in no uncertain terms to me that our collaboration was strictly platonic, that nothing romantic was going to come out of this. I told her I already knew and understood this, that I was content just having her in my life as a friend.

While this was going on, my sister was watching us through a window, making stupid kissy faces and such. She then came out of the house and began skulking about, disturbing us. I told D that she always pulls this kind of garbage, that I can never relax when she's around. This turn of events upset D, and the camaraderie we had been enjoying was broken.

Before the dream could unfold further, I woke up.

(I blame the goddamn cat who was trying to smother me in my sleep.)

* * *

I often have recurring dreams about going back to high school; either it's to suffer being the only twenty-something student there and/or it's to go in search of someone or something I desperately want to find (but usually won't).

(Oh, bane of my dreams, how I hex you,)

This time, however, I was just visiting the place. There, I met some woman — a plump, plain-looking woman with short blond hair.

(Picture the fat lady on the left wearing the glasses of the fat lady on the right, and you're got yourself a decent enough picture of what she looked like, sir-or-madam.)

She was a charity worker, and for some unrevealed (or forgotten) reason I joined up with her operation. This led me into various crime-ridden neighbourhoods to help out the unfortunates living there.

This dream then came to focus upon an unmarried black couple with a young son.

(Will Smith was the boyfriend/father.)

Destitute, they were forced to live in a crappy apartment without any heating. This caused them nearly to freeze to death every cold winter night. On one of these winter nights, one of their neighbours — a gaudy pimp — was having a party, playing loud, atonal rap music which could be heard throughout the entire block.

Suffering from the cold, this noise only added to the couple's frustration. Getting up to the window, they yelled out to the pimp to turn the noise down. The pimp, unremarkably a prick, refused to comply.

* * *

A friend wanted to buy a rare issue of a comic magazine

(I think it was Heavy Metal.)

that came inside a cardboard slipcase. Going to a liquor store/comic shop,

(His favourite place to be.)

this friend found an exact copy of that particular issue but didn't have the money to buy it. Deciding to pitch in, I went to the liquor store/comic shop and offered to buy the magazine myself as a present for my friend. As I was giving the seedy shopkeeper the cash, though, I found the last few bills needed to complete the transaction torn in half.

(Cheap plastic Canadian cash.)

With me unable to pay him all the money, the shopkeeper gave me this offer: He'd give me the magazine if I'd cook meth for him. It didn't have to be high-quality blue stuff like the kind on Breaking Bad; he'd settle for the cheapest garbage I could cook up. I agreed to the deal.