/yesod

Tag: driving

  • comedy and tragedy

    …when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back.

    A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear unprofessional.

    We arrive at the venue — an old theater in Charleston, West Virginia. A few people are already in the balcony seats, waiting for the show to begin.

    While the comedian gets ready to go onstage, I call my wife to apologize and break the news.

    “I should be back around midnight,” I tell her. Then I remember the driving time. “Actually, it’ll probably be later than that.”

    She is annoyed, rightfully so. But she doesn’t press the point.

    I feel terrible and offer to rent a car so I can return early.

    She hesitates before answering. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

    She tells me that there’s been an accident. The father of the two girls who lives across the way fell from their balcony and died.

    (Somehow I recall an earlier dream, while dreaming this one, in which the man’s mentally disabled brother also died. This family has seen nothing but tragedy, in my dreams.)

    I rent a car and, in time, arrive back home. A cloud of sadness hangs over the apartment complex, clinging to everything.

    Looking across the way, I can see into the windows of the neighboring apartment where the two little girls play on their bunk bed. I worry that they might fall.

    An elderly man comes into their room — their grandfather, I assume. He moves so slowly, weighed down with age and sorrow.

    I make a mental note to go over after dinner and offer to help.

  • a friend in need

    We’re all a little worried about Patton Oswalt.

    Having known him since we were kids, it’s obvious he isn’t himself lately. He’s depressed, lethargic, and we’re all little bit worried.

    But he’s a celebrity. It’s not like we can just check him into a hospital. So my wife and I and a few other friends go on Patton watch.

    I take the first shift, spending the evening with him driving around town.

    After hitting a few bars, we end up wandering aimlessly through the darkened streets. He’s got a very cool, fully restored 1970s van with wood paneling and shag carpet.

    I look over at him behind the wheel and ask “So… What do you want to do now?”

    He considers for a moment. Then he turns the wheel sharply, crashes the van through a small wooden fence, accelerates up over a hill and down into a small lake.

    As the engine misfires and dies, we sit there bobbing along.

    “I kinda knew you were going to do that,” I tell him. I figure it’s good he got it out of the system.

    “Holy shit,” he says. “Do you think we’re gonna sink?”

    I shrug. I figure were pretty buoyant for the time being.

    We drift closer to shore. Relieved, I gather up my cell phone and an old dream journals I’ve been carrying around lately.

    Then Patton rolls the windows down.

    The van tips in his direction and water starts to pour in. I scramble out my door and managed to step onto the shore without getting too wet.

    I look back as the van drifts away and sinks.

    Patton Oswalt goes down with the ship.

    I wait. After a few moments he surfaces, sputtering, covered in duckweed and laughter.

    Squishing all the way, streaming gray-green water, we walk back to his house.

    While he gets cleaned up, I make some calls. “The situation has gotten a little bit more complicated.”.

    When my wife arrives, she is particularly worried. She reveals to us that Patton has surgery schedule for tomorrow, which is the source of his depression.

    “Oh, right. Is this for his penis thing?” someone else asks.

    Apparently Patton was born with a very small… member. It’s haunted him for years and he’s finally famous enough (and rich enough) to afford a surgical procedure to enhance it.

    Still coming to terms with this news, I realize that we haven’t seen Patton in a while. After a quick search, it’s clear he’s snuck out the back.

    While a few people go off to see if they can find him, my wife and I and another comedian — I don’t remember who now — sit and talk as the sun comes up.

    At one point, the comedian gets out his marijuana and rolling papers. He offers the joint to me.

    I tell him I not only don’t do drugs, but have never done drugs.

    He gives me a look and I suddenly feel very old and conservative, like Don Draper hanging out with beatniks.

    He puts in a VHS tape from the doctor who is performing the procedure for our friend. I have to admit the before-and-after shots are impressive.

    Apparently the doctor Is particularly popular with rappers. Who knew?

    Sometime later, Patton returns… a changed man.

    He is glowing with pride and infused with glee. It’s a relief to see him, and see him so happy again.

    “It went great!” He proclaims, hands on his hips. “The doctor says I’m ready for action again.”

    “I’ll be the judge of that,” my wife says.

    Patton unveils his majesty and, I have to say, I’m impressed.

    Not only is it quite large, both in length and girth, but the doctor has also done some sculpting as well, giving it the appearance of a cartoon shark. Fiberglass teeth complete the hot rod look.

    “I’m not entirely sure that’s what ladies want…” I say carefully, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

    I’m awake before he can reply.

  • the fuzzy pink octopus spider monster

    This is the first dream I can remember — obviously, it’s not the first dream I ever had. That’s long gone now. But this is the earliest one I can remember…

    …we’re driving in the car, my two brothers and me. Out mother is behind the wheel. We’re on our way to the grocery store. My older brother Scott sits up front, talking to our mom. My brother Jim and I are in the back seat, holding our pet rabbits. They are white, a perpetual look of panic in their pink little eyes.

    I realize somehow that something is not quite right with the rabbits. I see a vision within the dream, a flashback of our side yard where the hutch is kept. I see a wispy apparition flowing through the air towards them. It is pale pink, long snakelike arms or tentacles trailing through the air, reaching out blindly to tap along the fence like a blind man seeking out an open path. It is covered in stringy hair, pale pink and white, a gaping black hole of mouth and wild, insane red eyes.

    Hate pours off of it, clouding the air with ribbons of red, like a drop of blood in water. The monster finds the hutch, bends back the cheap plywood lid, and drifts inside. The rabbits explode in a frenzy of stamps and squeals, then go silent.

    Somehow this spider, this octopus, this monster has split itself into two. It shifts form, taking the place of the two rabbits — are they dead? did it eat them? — it becomes them, impersonates them . . . only recognizable by its hateful red eyes staring out from the two imposters.

    These same eyes looking up at me in the backseat of our family station wagon, the lengthening ears becoming long snaking tendrils filling the car, reaching out in the golden afternoon light to wrap around my mother”s throat, my brother’ arms, our faces, muffling our screams…

    I don’t have an exact date for this one, but we had the rabbits when we lived at the house on Peppertree in Dublin, California. Which puts it sometime in the mid 1970’s.

    I was probably six or seven years old. And the horror of those tentacles waving in the car haunted me for weeks. I still feel a pang of it even now.

    As silly as it sounds, a shapeshifting fuzzy octopus spider monster is really pretty terrifying. Especially at that age.

    Years later, I saw it again: There’s scene in the movie Poltergeist where a malevolent spider-like creature prevents the mother from rescuing her children…

    20130106-112241.jpg

    That’s about right. Dye it pink and you’ve got the creature from my dream, more or less.

    (I’ll ignore the question as to why something from my dream in the mid 70’s would show up in an 80’s movie. Sometimes it’s better not to know. We’ll chalk it up to coincidence.)