In my dream, i'm some independent live-action film director who's finally had a breakthru movie that's gotten me enough praise to fund a semi-big-budget film about a small midwestern town that gets flooded.

I'm sitting atop a large camera crane ready to direct a climactic tear-jerking scene where the endearing old man, who said he'd stay with his house til the bitter end, is lying on his back on the roof of his house delivering his final lines as the muddy floodwaters rise up over his quivering lips.

It's an expensive and dangerous shot so i want to get it right the first time. I've already rehearsed the scene extensively with the actor playing the old man. The actor is kind of a cross between M. Emmet Walsh and Sydney Greenstreet. There are divers and safety personnel in the water as we prepare to shoot the scene.

I call "ACTION" and the scene begins. The actor delivers a heart-wrenching performance that has the whole crew in tears as his face is submerged in the flood water, which is carefully controlled by the special effects team.

Just as I yell "CUT", there's a violent and enormous spray of bloody water where the actor's face had been blowing bubbles only moments before. This is not in the script. Some crew member yells "ALLIGATOR!!!" and my otherwise pleasant dream suddenly turns into a nightmare.

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If television has ever taught me anything, it's that the naked dream seems pretty universal. Last nite i had a dream where i wasn't entire naked, but i was definitely exposed enough to elicit embarrassment all 'round. Actually, my dream was kind of a combination of the typical naked dream and the real-life embarrassment of discovering that your zipper has been down for a really long time but nobody told you.

Remember: this is only a dream...anging out with my friends in a very public place when i look down and discover that i'm hanging out in more ways than one.

My friends all laugh as i spend the rest of the dream running around trying to find everyone that i'd interacted with earlier so that i can apologize to them and explain that i'm not some freak who like exposing himself. The typical response is something like "how the hell didn't you noticed that your fly was down and things were hanging out?!?"

The harder i try to explain, the more i am digging myself a deeper hole of embarrassment.

I really had to pee when i woke up.

I had a dream last nite that i can't really explain in detail cuz of what happens in the dream. It wasn't X-rated or anything (probably PG at most), but it was the kind of dream that anyone familiar with the name "Freud" would be able to read between the lines of the dream (and anyone with an actual understanding of psychoanalysis would probably find reasons for concern about my mental health).

Since i can't really give details, i'll just list the key ingredients of my dream (in no particular order so as to avoid any suggestion of a causal relationship between things):

Setting: My apartment

Participants: 2 male friends, 1 female friend, Me

Props: couch, TV, stove, bed, fire, oven, door peephole, fire extinguisher, beverages, some sort of applesuace-like substance

Actions: waking from a nap, losing motor skills, panicking, cooking, laughing, forgetting

In my dream, all that adds up to a recipe for disaster/embarrassment/acrimony/death

My dog Chico died over a year ago, but he still pops up in my dreams sometimes. Last nite i had a dream where Chico keeps falling apart, literally. Each time i turn around, part of his body has broken off. And it's not like he breaking into little pieces. He breaks in the same two spots: at the hip & at the shoulders. So when Chico falls apart completely, he's in three pieces: his head, his torso and his hind legs. The breaks are clean and almost surgical. It's as if his spine just detaches at the neck and above his pelvis. And each part is still alive and kicking even after being spontaneously dismembered. Sometimes only his hind legs falls off so his head would bark as his front legs drag his torso around. Other times just his head comes off so his body runs around haphazardly. The really weird thing is when his front legs and torso fall off, but somehow his head attaches to his hind legs so he runs around like an ostrich with a very short neck. He never seems to be in pain or even inconvenienced when he falls apart. He just goes about doing his thing (running around basically) until i manage to find all his pieces and put him back together, which i do repeatedly and nonchalantly throughout my dream.

During most nites that I dream, I have very vivid, often lucid dreams, so it's usually easy to remember them for quite so time after I wake up (thus making this little blog possible).

This morning, however, I woke suddenly with an overwhelming sense of panic, and the feeling was so strong that i couldn't remember what I was dreaming about or why I was panicking. I felt very relaxed when I went to sleep last nite (a rare thing for me), and I'm pretty sure I had been dreaming before I woke up, but the shock of waking up totally panicked was so jarring and abrupt that it jettisoned all other thoughts and emotions from my brain.

I started to calm down for a bit when I realized that I didn't even know why I was panicking, but then I began to panic about the very same realization that was calming me down. Questions flooded my brain, each one focused on the unknown source of my panic: "What were you dreaming about?", "Did something happen to you in the dream?", "Did you do something to someone else in the dream?", "Did you do something to someone else in waking life that you'd forgotten/ignored/didn't realize until you were dreaming?", "Did you NOT do something that you should have done?", "Did you forgot to do something in your waking life until you remembered it your dream?", "What if you were panicked cuz you remembered something that you'd forgotten, and now you've forgotten it again?", "Will I ever remember why I was panicking?", "Will I panic again if I remember?", "Who, what, when, where, why, how?!?"

Getting these thoughts out of my head and onto this page is relieving some of the panic, but the nagging question remains, "Why am panicked?" I still don't know.

just had a dream about the party from hell...

I'm at a house party thrown by a friend from my waking life, but the host isn't there cuz they had a family emergency but they insisted everyone to stay at the party and have a good time. Try as i may, i am not having a good time. In addition to beer, all the guests are served a can of pork and beans, but it seems that i am the only one who, out of politeness, tries to eat the beans and it appears that everyone else notices this. The beans don't actually have the flatulent effect on me that everyone else is worried about, but everyone assumes the worst of me cuz the apartment already smelled wicked before i got there.

To make things more embarrassing for me, the party is almost entirely populated by cute girls that i have been acquainted with (rather than friends with) in my waking life (from high school mostly) but I had been too shy or out of league back then to ever attempt to become friends with them. To compensate for my prior shyness, I make an effort to talk to every girl at the party. I say "hi", shake their hand (apologizing each time that my hand is cold and wet from holding a beer) and ask them how they've been since the last time I'd seen them (usually 5 or 6 years or more). Each time, however, the girl is a bit shocked that I know who they are because they can't remember me at all.

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I haven't been dreaming much recently, and when I do, it usually involves people I'm not comfortable posting about. I did however, have a dream last nite that didn't feature anyone I know in my waking life so I'm finally gonna post a new dreamblog. It was another dream involving planes.

I am on a large passenger plane, sitting at a window seat so i could watch as we are flying over the ocean. Suddenly the plane drops altitude and large hole rips open in the side of the cabin opposite mine. Several passengers sitting near the hole are sucked out of the plane.

Panic ensues among the passengers, including me, and the dream immediately becomes a cycle of events, like so very many of my dreams.

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Another nite of episodic dreams, but they were all borderline nitemares and just kinda ended when they got too weird:

Remember: this is only a dream...

1) A friend of mine i've known since middle school is visiting my parents house, and as i give him a tour of the house, i'm asking him questions about married life (he recently married in real life). When we reach my parents' room, my friend jumps up on the bed and there's a crunching sound of breaking glass. My friend screams in pain. I look and he's landed on a pile of lightbulbs that were lying on the bed. My dad rushes in and is pissed that my friend broke his lightbulbs, which range from softball size to teeny tiny little bulbs the size of BBs. I start yelling at my dad and demand to know "What kind of idiot keeps lightbulbs on a bed?" Neither of us pay any attention to my friend, who keeps screaming and rolling around as he bleeds.

2) I'm in bed and i wake up (in my dream, not from my dream). The pillow by my face is wet. I sit up and see that water is seeping from the pillow. The water is brown and smells bad. I pull the sheets to my face, but the sheets start seeping water too. I throw off the sheets and try to get off the bed, but the mattress is so sopping wet that it sloshes me around like a water bed. My clothes start seeping the brown, stank water. I scream.

3) I gather my family around and show them a projected animated film that i've made. The characters are all obviously based on my family members, and though i think the animation is funny, my family is insulted and they all start yelling at me. The film catches fire and my family keeps yelling at me.

4) I'm at the dorms in UCLA and the local radio station has staged a competition between the dorms. The game is a deathmatch in helicopters. Each dorm gets to pick a pilot and a gunner, and while everyone else gathers in a quad (which doesn't really exist like it did in my dream), the helicopters shoot each other down in teh sky above us. When i realize what's going on, i run around trying to warn everyone how crazy and dangerous this whole thing is, but before anyone listens to me, helicopters start exploding in the sky and crashing down on the audience below. Basically, it's just panic as shrapnel and bodies fly. The radio station that's organized the event is broadcasting thru speakers that can be heard over the explosions and screaming, and the DJ's are just laughing at how "funny college life is".

Last nite's dreams were a series of many unrelated vignettes. Most of the dreams happened very quickly, with events passing so fast that i rarely had time to figure out what was going on. Here are some of the episodes from my dream that i remember:

1) I'm driving my mom's minivan and I'm stopped at a light when the driver of the old school VW bug in front of me gets distracted by something and he accidentally rolls back into my van with a loud CRASH. An argument, a fist fight, and an exploding gas station ensue.

2) My roommate, Kurt, grows a crazy beard that makes him look like a bum. The beard itself is very well kept, but since it's so long, and his clothes aren't the nicest, people on the street are constantly mistaking him for a bum. Fed up, he keeps the beard, but tries dressing differently. When he buys himself a snazzy blue suit, he is mistaken for some crazy artist celebrity and somehow marries into the British Royal Family, all cuz of his beard.

3) I return home to discover that my landlord has repainted my apartment without warning me ahead of time. The color is a horrible vomit hue, and the paint job itself is laughable. The painters didn't even bother to move or cover anything in my apt. They just painted around the furniture, posters, etc, so there are huge spots left unpainted on the walls, and paint splattered all over my stuff. (I was so mad i actually woke up from this dream and fumed for a bit before going back to sleep).

4) I am on a hiking trip with a beautiful women (who's not my girlfriend... sorry babe, it happens). We want to hike to the top of a volcano, but the park ranger at the bottom of the mountain won't let us on the trail cuz he says it's too dangerous. While i try to convince the ranger that we're both experienced hikers, my lady friend performs a hypnotic striptease that lulls the park ranger into a stupor. The girl suggests that we bring the ranger with us on our hike to the top of the volcano and use him as a human sacrifice. I agree and so we head up the mountain trail, her, half-naked, and me, carrying a park ranger. (Too bad this dream shifted into something else before we made it to the top of the volcano... i really liked where it was going)

Remember: this is only a dream...

In my dream, i hear the sound of jets roaring overheard, and when i look up, the sky of Los Angeles is full of hundreds full-scale red, white & blue paper airplanes. They fly around with the maneuverability of F-14s, and they look like tomcats fighters, only they're giant folded paper airplane versions of the F14. The sky is so full of the paper jets that the planes can't help but crash into each other, into bulidings and into the ground. Each one of the hundreds of big paper airplanes crashes into something, it explodes into thousands of smaller paper airplanes, about half the size of the original plane. These smaller planes fly around faster and more frenzied, but since there are exponentially more of them, they crash more frequently than the larger planes. When the smaller planes crash, they explode into even smaller planes. This cycle of crashing and spawning smaller paper airplanes continues until the sky is red, white, and blue, with tiny paper jets about and inch long.

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