I'll never ride Star Tours again

Walking along a lake in Disney World after a show. I wander backstage and into a warehouse. Inside, I see row upon row of animatronic storm troopers lined up like a military battalion. They are missing their helmets. And seeing gears and wires where faces should be makes them look evil and menacing.

Break apart

A museum is supposed to destroy an artist’s work after his death. The pieces are wooden igloos shaped like wavy jellybeans sitting on the museum’s lush green lawn. Instead of honoring their word, the museum puts them up for sale.

My Dad is helping Aunt Linda move and asks for my help with her bed. We step into an empty second floor bedroom and the bed is already disassembled on the floor. There are words beautifully hand painted on the wood in 60s style lettering.

A housewife is smoking from a one hitter in her front lawn. I’m sitting on the grass between the house and where she is standing. I ask her for a hit. She hands it to me; I inhale deeply and then walk off through the subdivision.

More than meets the eye

Elton John is selling Polaroids two for a dollar. He sits at a folding card table set up on a city sidewalk and keeps holding up a Polaroid of a black and white dog – in the background of the photo is a kid sitting on a tricycle with only the wheels and boy’s feet in the frame of the shot. Several construction workers watch Elton John as he calls out to people passing by what a great deal he is offering. He seems genuinely excited about taking people’s pictures for such a low price, but no one is interested.

Holding a beer can in my hand, reading the label. It has a German name printed above an eagle logo done in an art deco design. Below the logo, it says “Bad can of beer - bitter beer.” I think that the can isn’t ugly at all, but that it should read, “The bad can full of bitter beer.”

Walking through a school, I realize that I’m not wearing any deodorant. A stick materializes in my hand. I pull up my shirt to put it on, but the green deodorant in the plastic case crumbles off in big chunks. Todd comes up, he wants to hang out or spend the night at my place. I joke with him in front of a few other guys. Then Todd sticks a flash drive into a computer and hurriedly downloads something. Todd’s file opens and a video begins. It plays on a screen sitting on a school table. The screen is big and looks too nice for a school. The video is cartoon of two boys at a dumpster. They find a giant laser gun and point the barrel out of the dumpster into the sky. But when they fire it, a porn DVD pops out of both sides of the base of the barrel. They scream “Porn Gun, Porn Gun” while pulling the trigger again and again. The gun starts to grow larger and twist at odd angles until it comes to life like a transformer.

All in

There is a poker table set up on a grassy hilltop in a large park. I am playing with a group of guys I know. We are using chips with real money on the line. An old woman comes up to talk to me. She palms a few of my chips and walks off. I get up and chase after her. I catch up to her a few steps away and gently tell her that I need those back. I take her hand and open her closed fist. She is holding five or six blue, plastic poker chips. I take them back but leave her one or two of them. I feel bad for her and realize that she is my grandmother (my Dad’s Mom, who passed away when I was in college.) I walk with her through the park.
A man joins us as we walk. It is the actor Andy Griffith. He looks old, but a bit younger than he did on Matlock. I ask him about my Grandma, how she is doing day to day. It seems they are dating. As we walk her home, I tell him that she is having a bit of dementia. We reach the sidewalk in front of a suburban ranch house. I don’t recognize it, but it is where she is living.

Bunker down

Hiding underground in a post-apocalyptic world, I look up at a manhole cover or grate. I’m ducking inside a manmade cave with rough walls of dry, light brown dirt. I use the barrel of a gun to poke up the grate just a crack. The gun I hold is some kind of rifle and machine gun hybrid. Through the crack of sunlight above, I see the barrels of several other guns and the side of a black boot.
A little robot on three wheels rolls up behind me. I assume it has a mounted camera, even though I don’t see it. At first, I pick it up like a remote control car, but then smash it with the butt of my gun.

Someone has left the keys in the ignition of a nascar racecar. I climb in and give a girl a ride to her house. We park at the top of her steep driveway, then the car slide forward down the lawn through several flowers. I try to steer back onto the driveway, but the engine is not running. I get out of the car and step into the middle of the cul-de-sac. A mob of real estate agents in black suits fill the street. Some have clipboards and all are shouting out offers on the house. My parents walk out of a house on the other side of the cul-de-sac and announce that they are putting their house up for sale also. The entire group of agents swarms towards them.

Riding a ten speed bike down a black top country road. I’m holding an open umbrella above my head and as a car in the other lane comes towards me, the umbrella flies out of my hand. I start to pull over onto the side of the road to pick it up, but see behind me that the umbrella has snapped off of its pole. The umbrella sits in the middle of the road like a small, black tent as the handle bounces across the asphalt. I pedal hard to keep riding since it is not raining.
I ride onto a dirt road in a park or field shaded by large trees. I take the handlebars off the bike to fix something. A teenage kid comes up and starts giving me advice on how to fix them. I am the same age as him and we are friends, even though I don’t recognize him. He starts banging on the post that the handlebars attach to with a pair of vice grips. He is denting the metal pipe and I know it won’t fix anything, but feel powerless to stop him. I say something, but he replies that before they could only go on one way. It’s as if the handlebars used to fit into a groove on the stem and he is trying to make it fit on any direction.

The same kid and I are in a carpeted basement listening to music. He holds up a CD made of cardboard. The word “panthers” is written on it in black marker. I’m trying to tell him that a band is good because a guy named Paul recommended them and said that millions of people like their song, so don't you think you might be wrong? The kid still thinks that they suck.

Searching

Leaning over the edge of a cliff or rooftop trying to watch where my golf shot is going. Almost straight below is a swampy area, and then the ground gets solid further away. I see my orange golf ball bounce right at the edge of the water and land on the back of a crocodile. It rolls down his body towards his tail and then back up till it comes to rest next to his eye. Suddenly, a blue golf ball lands in the muck near it. I assume it was hit by someone I am with and that we are in a contest to see who can get their ball closest to the hole.

Sleeping on the top bunk of bunk beds and a woman that looks like Julie crawls in with me to fool around.

I see Bob walking through Disney World and run to catch up to him. He’s surprised that I’m wearing slacks and a long sleeve, button down shirt.

My guys from Jersey are staying in a hotel to go to a college football game. We’ve already been to one game the day before and are getting ready for another. I can’t find my phone anywhere. Paul and Fred are talking about making dinner reservations and realize that by the time we get a table anywhere for 20 people, we’ll miss the game.

Flying carpet

A rug shop is having a Going Out Of Business Sale. It’s a shabby basement store with welcome mats and kitchen rugs leaning against white metal shelves. I see a hot air balloon rug and wonder if Mom and Dad already have it. But before I can take a closer look, two women beat me to it. I see another one just like it two piles over. I pull it out and lay it on the floor to take a picture to send them. But instead of using my phone an emailing the pic right away, I try to take it with a digital camera. But I can barely see anything on the screen. So I try holding the camera up to my eye, but can’t see through the lens. I decide to just hold the camera out and guess to line up the shot. As I am angling the camera, an old woman comes up and starts vacuuming the rug with a small vacuum cleaner. I say, “Excuse me, I’m trying to take a picture of that.” And she says OK, but keeps on vacuuming. The suction is pulling up bunches of long fibers from the rug and ruining the pattern. When she is done, she puts the rug away despite my protests. And then I can’t find it again.

Rock on

On stage in a nightclub playing with The Beatles. But Dave is on drums, so it must just be Lennon and McCartney playing with us. They are both younger versions of themselves. Suddenly John storms off the stage. The others stop playing and after a pause follow him. I lean into the mike stand and apologize to the audience. I think John is upset that Dave’s playing was bad. I go backstage and find them in a big room with autographed band pictures on the wall. There are beat up tables, chairs and a couch at one end and an empty bar at the other. The guys are leaning against it looking dejected. John still looks upset and says to me, “It really hurt my feelings when you criticized my fashion before the show.”

Dave and I are at a Jimmy Buffett concert, hanging out with a group of senior citizens. Someone is taking pictures of us. When I turn around to find Dave, he sitting on top of a picnic table with the waist of his khaki pants pulled up past his navel.

More reward points

I walk into a kitchen I don’t recognize and on the counter I see a wide bowl full of plastic bottle caps from cokes and other containers. On the kitchen island, there is a wicker bowl also full of plastic bottle caps and lids. Brooke’s aunt has saved them for me.

Displacement

My Jersey buddies make plans to play poker the next day. We’re staying in a hotel and before the sun is completely up, Paul busts into my room to wake me up. I’m in bed with Brooke and try to get oriented to the lack of light as Paul tells me to get moving. She doesn’t wake up and I’m even more confused because the guys aren’t going to play cards, they’re ready to leave for someplace else.

I’m moving to a new desk in a strange office and it is covered in a mess of old papers and cables. A small boom box on a pile of binders is playing bad music. I sit down and see another radio sitting on the shelf above the desk. I try to turn off the boom box right as Clarkin sits down at the desk next to me. We start to talk, but Sue, the HR person at my job comes up and says to Clarkin, “what are you doing here?” and then to me, “he doesn’t even work here!”
Next, I’m walking into a dull apartment. Clarkin and I have just moved into it for the new job. I realize that I don’t even know what city it is in and wonder why I even took a job away from Brooke and wonder how she is. My thoughts stop when I see a black metal shelf next to the front door. It holds bottles of laundry detergent and other random household stuff. Most of the rest of the apartment is bare and I think that we have to decorate better because we don’t live in a frat anymore.