First, some domestic scene-setting: Tony had plastic surgery to resemble キムタク and I was serving oranges that grew increasingly unlike ones I’d pick at the grocer, the last so much larger and hideous it had to be a saggy grapefruit. A cabbage in the fridge had a purple streak in the center that also indicated its past-best state. Then I was part of an outdoor procession returning home from a protest gathering and a young woman walking beside me looked dejected, so I took hold of her hand, which seemed to pick up her spirits. This platonic gesture caught the eye of my boyfriend, former co-worker Fred (to whom I apologize, my field isn’t what it used to be), whom I pointed out and neither of them was pleased. When we reached the tall carved double doors of the place I shared with him, I bid farewell to her and she turned my way with a Ruth Wilson smile under her hood, which all but sealed my fate with my current relationship. We retreated to our indoor pool with a third man, who joined us in a game where I threw a football at a target at the other end, but my partner remained distant. The living room hid the water under a retracting floor like the one at the host’s in The Party, and as well as we were doing, I knew it was time to divvy it all up.
Cursory keyword search tells me I may not have mentioned it yet, though dreams like this happen often enough that my recollections of them ought to convey the real emotional or intellectual impact from such self-inflicted scenarios. (I shall never forget one where I met 할머니 years after her passing and was overcome with sorrow that we didn’t have more time together, feeling it even after I woke.) But jealousy is for more passionate, primitive minds—I recall a recent opportunity to experience it when the wife took a younger lover, which left me nonplussed—and my simulation only produced resentment, a reminder of immature wardens.
Another common disability I face in dreams is finding myself bereft of even the most basic of driving skills, a simple turn requiring power-assisted Herculean strength, the car speeding or veering out of control on eerie traffic-free freeways, and spacious lanes closing in on hundreds of dollars in deductible cosmetic damage, as it was last night, where I struggled to pull the Xterra’s yellow mirrors away from the concrete walls of a parking garage incline.
After that momentary predicament, I was on my feet but they were frozen with the rest of my body as I was approached by two back-lit figures from whose outlines I could make out were from Planet X, but they reminded me more of the aliens who beset the boys in one of the Gamera movies, squeaky voices and all.
I lie on my side but unlike Akio above I wasn’t fortunate enough to escape the encounter with only a shaved head (which frankly I’d thank them for, as of late), but a sore rectum—there was a loud banging on the door, which woke me to check the app if the camera caught anything, but it was probably just the boy in his adjoining room—might the psychosomatic pain, too, have had a more immediate source, a test of my receptivity to a different kind of pleasure?
One of my favorite Korean words, with the more nuanced “what the fuck” meaning than is often translated. It’s what I look for, at least when really warranted in the dialogue, from creators whose ideas may not come from the same old places (like the Doom Patrol going outside the box instead of relying on Morrison—whose own early influence I miss), and for most K-content nowadays that’s the webtoon. Not that 지리산 was ever going to be Twin Peaks, and while Hellbound and Dr. Brain aren’t high art, either, they’ve got Netflix and Apple money to go crazy with. One of them just might veer off into The Wailing.
Meanwhile the WTF that Kara Wai‘s family went through in Tracey does seem to have had some effect, or I’m grasping for the kind of correlation that’ll lead me to nightcapping with hardcore gay porn, spurring a dream I was taking a sex ed class led by an Emma Stone-looking goddess who put me on the spot by getting in my face, revealing a bikini under her regalia and asking where I’d make my mounting deposit. Her left eye opened beyond its lid as if to invite the option. Below, I still told her. Fellow student Charlie Hunnam from Queer as Folk passed by afterward, removed his shirt and revealed that his went into a condom, tactic of choice by strip club goers of old. I wondered if our instructor had office hours.
It was time for a spin-off as Grady accepted a job at Rolls-Royce in England and was splitting up the gang or introducing new cast members who would join him. My blonde fiancée Laura and I were among them, but one of the remaining team, an otherwise awkward White fellow who looked like the bumbling police officer on Monk, took me to the side and professed his love, reaching his hand under my shirt and around my waist. I backed off and reminded him of my impending marital status, then began packing my things, which consisted only of two pairs of pants and a Black short-sleeved shirt. He didn’t give up, however, kneeling to my side and producing a ring. The episode ended with a joke about policemen being there for us, then a few of them sitting down to eat in a dining room that was completely empty; the audience applauded, I grabbed my things and hurried off the set to meet with the others at the airport.
My habit of reaching for the phone upon waking and checking my latest messages, even with nothing more to them than the daily spam that’s swiped to the trash, seems to be affecting my recall of any richer narrative from the streaming service of my subconscious, but because there must be something to the lingering remnants, please indulge me tracking them here:
I was from the future, and as in that Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder”, time travelers like me and former co-worker Karina had to keep to a path of shiny stones on the grounds of a party held at a fancy home in the country
A small white mouse presented itself as a pest, and as all I had was a plastic knife, I tried futilely stabbing it, then pressing it down with the blade, which only resulted in its body stretching unnaturally as it escaped, though each time it successfully did so, the poor thing appeared to be growing weaker
A previously unknown actor at a nearby table in the restaurant had just landed the role of Batman and we were congratulating him, recommending he prepare to be mobbed outside. Our group had to make do with Mr. Robot Rami Malek who himself had been cast in a smaller production as Nightwing
You would certainly hope it was the voice actor (who gives off a strong King vibe) or Pérez’s almost-as-old version revisited in the recent con episode, because I had the glorious girth from a more virile age underneath
Squid Game! The Among Us part of it, however, not the Fall Guys—I was dressed in the green track suit but wandering the “back end” and avoiding detection by the guards with some slick moves like waiting before stepping out of the elevator; in my arms was a child, and though I was able to get the family back together, the game masters blew up our house but I would survive by having been standing in the door frame and keep up the fight
The wife and son were in an SUV but it was a stick and she kept sliding back
A Flex Mentallo-looking villain with electrical superpowers was beset by a more than a dozen regular people with lesser ones, including Rick Moranis, and the sheer number of little shocks had him on the run; even his last-resort Zangief spinning fists held them at bay only because the low-budget special effect required everyone else to stay still while he was sped up
Fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, which became a newer monitor mounted higher up and repeating a short speech by a topless redhead, but after so many plays 老婆 asked me to turn it off without noticing her, and stopping that one switched to another video with her cosplaying as Red Sonja
Woke up to news about someone dressed as the Joker stabbing passengers on a Tokyo subway, then dreamt about Rashida Jones as a female version of the character, with plenty of charisma, and a first-person perspective from a squad of armed law-enforcement agents descending upon her from the air
We were on our way out of a parking garage and the wife goes first, sliding down a passage to the lower levels, but lands on the concrete noticeably uncomfortably before getting up and continuing, while I was held up above by columns of sinewy shapes and a growing crowd of men, one of them a former co-worker I lost contact with and didn’t have time to catch up, though another fellow was causing trouble and prompted a gay slur
My father was driving us in the car and insisted we could make the tight corner down the stairs, but I doubted it and worried about getting stuck
Triggering my fear of heights as it did, I was fortunate enough to find myself already at the top of series of comically tall escalators and told Angie that we were at the highest point inside the vast marble-lined artificial cavern, though I could see others to the side taking people even further upward
Juan, who helped clean up the office and did odd jobs in the warehouse, retrieved my spiral notebook, which had at least one page of handwritten passwords, and couldn’t tell me specifically where he found it, despite my attempt to explain the security risk (and maybe offload some of it on him); meanwhile, Amit, who led IT at a later employer, asked me to assist him with a login issue unbecoming of his position, though jeopardizing all our company data with the janitor likewise reflected poorly on my worthiness
I was seated at the bar of an open food court-like restaurant, pre- or post-pandemic, and still very drowsy, rested my head on the counter. and overheard the Korean proprietress telling her co-worker about my indiscretion. Imagining it from her perspective, I couldn’t help but agree that a dirty mop head like mine against the plexiglass was hardly a sight conducive to a smart dining establishment like theirs. She brought a bowl of what appeared to be 짜장 sauce with meatballs to a lady patron and a separate one with 라면, and I knew what to order. It was then I realized that I had left my wallet on the table where I lied, but to my back; it came as quite a surprise, therefore, that no one had taken it or the crumpled-up bills strewn about while I was asleep. My mother appeared with a young lady and told me she had to make it to a movie at 11pm, so we got into her large white BMW and raced through the parking garage. The speed at which we deftly spun down the circular single lane without worry made me assume that some clever German engineering was at work. We navigated the unmarked stairwells and reached a lobby, where I grabbed an elevator and motioned them inside, but it seems that was where we were parting ways: Mom was off to the theater alone, and her attractive short-haired companion was leaving, bags packed for a long trip. I looked away as they noisily kissed as friends might.
Streets of Rage has been our thing, the two games (never did get the third; maybe Street Fighter II had by then relegated 2P co-op to lower priority than new controllers) being loud and violent yet playable enough for a toddler to conquer—if only I had Twitched the time he started break-dancing, trying to stand on his head and everything, to the 古代 祐三 boss theme.
I Steamed (look at me incorporating all the modern lingo in a post about a twenty-year-old game) Streets of Rage III and found it far too difficult for us, but did some reading up on it to learn that wasn’t the case with the Japanese version, which also had additional content deemed unsuitable for the US, namely, Ash:
Twenty-plus years of amassing “exclusive” collectibles worth little more than the momentary reminiscence when coming across them in a silverfish-infested box, and I still felt the calling, caving to untimely inflation on eBay, only to learn Sega instituted hardware region locking after my interest in MegaDrive imports waned.
The boy underestimated the solution: either buy the latest monstrosity (from, coincidentally, one of our prospective clients, though their recent sticker-shock at our services makes any discount unreliable), or resort to Game Genie codes.
Of the two I do remember from my recent week off in Boston, or rather, wrote to my ever-shrinking or corrupted RAM, the first was likely fueled by my paranoia about us all leaving the house and the usual kind where I’d stare out the window into the night to spot intruders. These I’d almost always debunk as dreams, and this time because my view of the backyard shifted to overhead and my assailants converged into a huge old school shooting videogame boss. Gun still in hand, I saw a younger version of my son appear at the top of a wide flight of stairs in white robes, mouth agape but silent, and certain it was only a ghost (last year it was The Raid, and now Chris kept insisting we watch The Conjuring), I pulled the trigger, but that, too, was a fake.
The other involved Ben’s father Evan, who apparently had a duplicate of himself or the ability to create one, and I wondered how both could hold separate conversations. Would his perspective switch back and forth like changing TV channels? We had to somehow defeat this genius, and my plan was to let him know that we knew, but be subtle about it, by inserting the message only in the background of one of his fields of view, like on a small sign in a crowd.
The other night I watched a child interview Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—truly the worst possible title for a film due on the 75th anniversary of the first issue of World’s Finest—director Zack Snyder and he was surprisingly generous with the information he revealed: a look at a new character who at first resembled Green Arrow, but a bug was visible on the side of his mask, and the narrator screamed, “The Zipper!” embarrassing me for not making the connection.
Then some looks at the designs for Aquaman, more merman than human with a sea creature’s legs or fin and a torso resembling a vagina. Slung over his shoulder was a suit he wore to hide all that, including legs and a good-sized penis.
Night before this long-awaited reveal I dreamed I saw the 2016 movie, was underwhelmed by the moment, and life went on as usual afterward. Batman and Superman were lovers, and had just gotten out of bed together and left it unmade. In behind-the-scenes footage, a stuntman dressed as Spider-man did a backflip off a second-story platform, but he was much taller than it looked.
It’s not the gut-buster that alas, only Parks & Rec still is, but even Community (with or without Harmon) could learn a thing or two about craft from the design (and delivery) of this special season. Some jokes, like “bread from Olive Garden” work, and the rest earn a smirk, from, at least to me, the sheer ambition behind its conceit. And with each passing meh-mory I’m convinced, if there’s anything lacking these days keeping us from lasting epics, it’s the ambition to make them.
Night before this long-awaited reveal I dreamed I saw the 2016 movie, was underwhelmed by the moment, and life went on as usual afterward. Batman and Superman were lovers, and had just gotten out of bed together and left it unmade. In behind-the-scenes footage, a stuntman dressed as Spider-man did a backflip off a second-story platform, but he was much taller than it looked.