When A Dream Becomes Reality

Or, how about when reality becomes a dream? I’m pretty sure that one of those 2 scenarios is better known as déjà vu, but I don’t speak French. Oh wait, is Monte Cristo French? I know that beignet is. Well there ya go, perhaps I do speak a little French. Well, I don’t speak it when my mouth is full of beignets, because that would be rude, but I do speak it when I order them, with extra powdered sugar, of course. I also think I just won an award for excessive over-use of the comma in a completely unimportant sentence. I think I’ve won that award two years straight now, by the way.

Do you remember your dreams? Do you have dreams? My answer to both of those is: rarely. However, I had a dream the other night that I do remember and was vividly enjoying until it ended. No, stop that, it was totally ‘G’rated. It wasn’t too-Disney-ish, but definitely ‘G’ rated. While some aspects of the dream are a bit hazy, the overall tone and theme was important enough to make it blogable, or blogworthy or maybe even blogutmost, or (and make sure you are sitting down right now) tantaperfalicious. Yes, to me, the dream was that good. And what’s so surprising about that is that neither Tina Fey or cheese made in appearance in what I shall forever refer to as the ‘Perfect Storm of Dreams.’

Well, I’m two paragraphs in and haven’t even done you the courtesy of telling you what my dream was about. Of course now I’ve built the dream up so much that there is no way it will meet whatever expectations you have been forming in your far-superior-to-mine brains. So to combat that, I’ll just say that in this dream, not only was the secret of life revealed to me by Gonzo from the Muppets dressed like Yoda, but I was also given the key to solving our reliance on fossil fuels. And if that wasn’t enough, (now this is where you picture me doing that Don Knotts/Barney Fife thing where he runs is finger under his nose, scrunches his face and plays off the fact that he is a hero) some previously unknown facts about what was going on at the Grassy Knoll and well, let’s just say Elvis is still a major chart topping performer in a certain Southeast Asian country. Did that live up to the expectations I set in the first two paragraphs? Good. I hate to disappoint.

Now here’s what really happened. I was in some central meeting place for people like a plaza or park or maybe a Starbucks where a film crew was filming people talking about their ideas for TV shows on the Discovery Channel. Realizing that my time to amount to something had finally come, I waited patiently in line and then revealed 3 of my top TV show ideas. I remember that one was about me trying out other people’s jobs (which I did a post about), one was food related and I cannot remember the third one.

As soon as I was done revealing my TV show ideas, a nondescript female TV executive and the Discovery Channel’s very own Mike Rowe introduced themselves and asked me to meet with them for a little while. Now, before you start wondering why I had a dream about Mike Rowe, let me diffuse the situation and state that this dream happened after watching 2 episodes of Dirty Jobs AND Deadliest Catch (which he narrates). Also, I believe that I was placed on this earth to be Mike Rowe’s successor, although after recently watching him shove his hand up a cow’s rectum (which I think is a delicacy in most of the world), I’m no longer so sure.

In the meeting, they both seem very interested in my ideas and offered to set up an appointment for me to meet with some more TV executives, which I accepted. I show up at the meeting, resplendent in denim shorts, sandals and my coveted ‘More Cowbell’ SNL t-shirt dressed to impress. Remember, this was my dream, where I often wear shorts in very inappropriate circumstances. Much to my delight, they attentively listen to me describe alternate terms for a man’s crotch area, my favorite ways to eat cheese and my self-written dramatic monologue retailing the sad story of love, lust, murder and intrigue that is Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana.’ Feeling that they are now at ease with me, I go into pixel by pixel detail of my show ideas.

45 seconds later, I finish explaining all three show ideas to them and they offer me a full season contract to go ahead with one of my show ideas. And this is where things get hazy. I CANNOT REMEMBER THE IDEA OF THE SHOW THAT THEY WANTED TO PRODUCE!!!!! It has haunted me every day since I woke up from the dream. I’m given a show based on ideas of mine that TV execs love and I can’t remember the dang thing. I haven’t been teased in such a way since I was at Sam’s Club and they were giving out little samples of lobster meat and as I reached out for it some punk kid shows up out of nowhere and takes the sample that the hair netted worker lady was going to give me and then they close for the night.

I know you are thinking how awful and frustrating a circumstance I now find myself in. Seriously though, it gets worse. I woke up just as I was at lunch with my coworkers getting ready to tell them about my new show and laughing at them for their thinking that I’d never amount to anything. And what actually made me wake up, you ask. The sound of Ethel calling me from the bathroom in the middle of the night with the words that still ring in my ears: ‘Daddy, I didn’t get to the toilet in time.’

If you guessed that I am not that pleasant a person to be around lately, you guessed right…