Panic doesn't pay

Adam Schiller, Cary (guys from middle school) and I are among a large group of prisoners in an old castle. A Nazi commander is giving us orders, making us do calisthenics. At one point, we are doing toe touches – bending down then standing with arms waving in the air. It feels silly. Then a few men start shooting their arm into the Seig Hiel salute every time they go up. Next the commander has us all saluting while goosestepping in a circle in the courtyard. (I wake up and think I should write this down, but it is at least an hour before my alarm goes off, so I go back to sleep.)

I dream that I wake up but my alarm has not gone off. I realize it is missing. And I am laying in my bed, which is outside. It is the most gorgeous, sunny, green day. I start getting up and realize that my suitcase and keys are locked inside the blazer. I get out of bed and see that it is at the end of the driveway. I don’t think anything of the fact that I am naked, until two young girls come walking down the street. I grab a blanket off the bed and with some difficulty, wrap it around myself. At that moment, I see Dad walking into the garage carrying a box. I ran across the lawn yelling at him, the blanket a wild mess. It is not our real house.

I am flying to St. Louis to meet someone. But then I am in the city and it is bigger and more industrial, almost foreign. The place I am supposed to go to is gone. There is just an empty scar in the concrete. Was there an explosion or just construction? It is along a crazy highway with multiple on-ramps and signs that look European. Dad leads me (where did he come from?) to a subway station across the street. It is bright and modern and big. A little boy is trying to throw a bouncy ball through a light fixture as if it were a basketball hoop. Dad tells me to take the north train to the airport. But the tracks on our side of the platform are closed. The boy’s ball bounces down onto the tracks, he climbs down after it. I think he will be fried on the third rail. But he is ok. So Dad and I climb down and across to catch the train on the other side of the platform.
Now I am in an industrial area. Did I just get off the train? I am trying to reach the hospital to meet someone. I walk through parking lots thinking that the hospital is the complex I am approaching. But there are nothing but warehouses and factories in the way. I cut through a skate park. There are tons of alternative kids hanging out and doing cool skateboard tricks on ramps. In another area, an older guy in glasses looks weird like he doesn’t belong or stands out to me. But he leads the group around him in some kind of wrestling match. I think I see Paul (from Jersey) on top of an overpass embankment I am now walking under, but it is not him. Further down the path and on the opposite side, I see Mike, San and Fred walking through a field. I yell but they don’t hear me. So I climb the fence to go after them. As I cross the top, I look down and see Paul directly below me, looking up at me. Our faces are practically touching.

Time warp affair

I’m in a strip club with a group of guys, mostly from high school. But we’re sitting on the floor. The girls come out of a back room all at once and swarm over the guys. 2 girls start dancing all over Nick V. And I’m left sitting alone with my back to the wall. I look out the window of the front door and see Langston sitting outside glaring at me. He is with a group of people outside. I go out to talk to him and he walks off. I tell him let’s talk later tonight. Are we supposed to go camping? He just ignores me. I follow him to the street where school buses and his red blazer are parked in the middle of the road. I ask why he’s mad at me. Suddenly, Craig W. is there yelling at me. He screams, “Because you cheated on him with Allison.” But I have no idea what he’s talking about. He replies that I kissed her. They’re really upset. The muscles of Craig’s face are straining and he’s turning red. Now all three of us are yelling. I keep saying that I don’t remember anything about it. To myself, I think that the only Allison I know is the one at work, but we didn’t know her in college. Then I notice lights on in a house across the street and people looking out. I realize that we are on a residential street and waking people up. Then a housewife comes out complaining about the noise and says she’s going to call the cops. As soon as she turns around to leave, an officer appears.

Blob or Hulk?

Looking in a mirror, I put on a blue and white stripe shirt, it is too small, the buttons strain across my gut and chest.

Ceremonial

At my prompting or to support some cause I’m fighting for, an old actor (Tim Conway?) is going to quit some kind of union or group. He says that they never did anything for him anyway. Then at a ceremony, a bunch of actors (the cast of the Carol Burnet show?) present him with a ring set with a green stone as an award or honor. The ceremony took place in a church or now I am in a church. My grandfather is sitting in a pew. Then grandpa and I are walking out of the church and he says, “I bet Angel enjoyed the service.” He motions to the actor that plays Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is sitting in an old convertible (the one from his spin-off show) He mumbles a reply about vampires not being a fan of church.

I am driving to a ceremony (the same one at the same church?) but can’t find a place to park, so I circle around the block. It is a beautiful sunny day and flowers are everywhere along the street.

Getting dressed I decide to wear a sports coat with my button down shirt. (or a suit without a tie?) I act as if this is a whole new style because it looks good on me.

Heist

Brooke has me on a hunt for buried treasure or loot from a robbery. But the field where she buried it years earlier had since been developed. So Brooke shows up with 2 bulldozers and explains that a smash and grab is the best way to do the job. There are fierce guard dogs held back by chains. A small group of guys are helping us, like we’re a gang. The problem is that she doesn’t know exactly where the stuff is buried since everything looks different covered in concrete. It looks like a used car or parking lot. We’ll just have to dig up the whole thing, push cars out of the way with the scoop of the bulldozers. Then I’m following a small dog down a hallway and into an apartment. Inside are two guys playing video games. I don’t know them but start talking like me walking into this apartment is normal. I start pulling down the blinds because out the window is the lot the bulldozers are tearing up. But the guys look out and see. But instead of raising any kind of alarm, they talk about how cool it is, like a live video game. The guys sound like complete geeks as the go on and on. I look back out the window and there are now bunches of balloons everywhere, tied to lampposts and the fence around the lot. There are people from the neighborhood everywhere, watching the lot get torn up. It has become a festival.

25 cents don't buy what it used to

I receive state quarters that haven’t been released yet as change. But two of them are funny shapes. One has hard angles around it like a hexagon. The other is cut into a pufferfish shape. I can’t tell if they were minted this way, or if someone cut them after the fact.

You must keep going

I’m running a dinner theatre, everything has a very Little House on the Prairie feel. The performer is a daughter hired out by her family to sing. It’s a full house, but the crowd is all old people. A country family comes in with like 10 kids, and dad says, “a drink is all they’ve gotten to eat.”

Group in a forest and then a large house. We are being stalked by a murderer, but he ignores me. I am at a table doing some kind of project with a large sheet of paper and a girl limps into the room. She is panicked and hides in a closet. The killer comes in and I point to the stairs saying that she went up there. The killer leaves the room the opposite way.

I go into my bathroom and take off a fuzzy, blue pajama shirt and put it on top of the toilet as I start to take a piss. Then it falls into the bowl. I consider trying to grab it out of the now yellow water, but instead I keep pissing on top of it, completely soaking it as it sinks further into the toilet bowl.

Straighten up and fly right

I’m in Mom and Dad’s hot air balloon. Dub, BP and Blambo are with me. But I am telling someone else how to fly. We’re hitting treetops and the wind is fast. I’m yelling “Burn, Burn!” as we approach power lines. We end up flying underneath them like a helicopter under a bridge. Then we get caught behind some trees. I’m telling whoever is flying to keep burning to try to lift us clear, but there are branches everywhere. Suddenly, Dad is pulling on a drop line, trying to bring us in. My eyes follow the line up and it trails above me to the envelope with is flying so high into the sky that it looks like a kite. But how am I still in the basket in the trees? And how is Dad able to hold onto that rope? And there was never a feeling of being cramped with so many people or one of being confined in the basket. I was aware of these things being physically impossible, but it all seemed very natural as it is happening.