January 04, 2004

12:28 p.m.

Dreambusters

Wooo baby, look out. We've hit the Motherlode now. I slept for almost 10-1/2 hours last night, and here are some highlights from the Theatre of Morpheus (get y'self a cup of tea and settle in):

* Mom sent me an attic room to compensate for the one I couldn't find last week. I was staying in her house and my room was going to be the one upstairs, so I went up for a look -- it was huge, went from front to back, and had alcoves and dormers and a private bath. And two fireplaces. And lovely wood floors, and those tall victorian windows that I love. Thanks, mom.

* Brief but extremely debauched sex dream, with predatory and dirty-talking me and consenting adult who was driving the car.

* As I was walking outside, a squirrel came up to me wearing a rodent-sized policeman's hat, and ran up my side onto my head looking for something to eat. There seemed to be two or three squirrel episodes in different places (same squirrel though), and each time I thought I didn't have anything and then somehow I found some nuts to feed him. His hat fell off though, and I remember wondering whether he put it on, or if someone had to do it for him. He was rather wild and I had to watch my fingers.

* I was dying my hair with a new color, but it seemed very thick coming out of the bottle. By the time I got to the left half of my hair it was all watery, and I realized I hadn't shaken it up at all, so only half my hair would be colored. I realized I needed to wash it out right away, but I wasn't near a shower. Hair disaster! Meanwhile,

* there were several birds in the room of parrot and parakeet varieties (whom I seemed to know by name) and one of them was trying to land on my head, and I was trying to catch it on my arm instead. So that it wouldn't get hair dye on its feet.

* My band had agreed to re-release our latest album on a new label (the name of which, in reality, is a booking agency in Canada that we were talking to recently). They had just reprinted all the artwork and released a boatload of CDs, and we'd signed a contract for a total of three albums to be released by them. It was only then that I looked at the CD booklet for the first time, and I realized they'd not only changed everything, but it was all horrible. The color scheme was wrong, kind of monotonous blue/green, the pictures had nothing to do with the band, and instead of lyrics, each page had a one-liner cartoon from that old comic, The Born Loser, where the couple is always at a party and he's drinking and she's complaining. The main photo turned out to be of a room full of black people partying, with two in the forefront looking very grimly at the camera. And the cover was the worst part. It was a kind of nebulous green/blue background, with the album name in faint, small type, and a quote under that saying, "'Come on,' so and so from (radio station) says, 'You've got to KEEP ON DANCING!'" This last in huge letters. I was horrified to realize that they'd just done a quick job of it because they wanted to get us off their backs. We were almost crying. I couldn't believe we hadn't even proofed it carefully. Meanwhile

* someone at the label had videotaped a party the night before, where we'd all been celebrating and being silly, and he decided to replay it for us. I had dressed up, as a joke (not knowing I was being taped), in this bizarre costume involving a wig, a very large, black velvet, Oliver-style cap, some sexy black sleeveless thing, a sort of fishnetty tunic, then these tight, thigh-high, fur-topped black velvet leggings that were held up with garters, and spike heels to finish it off. Imagine Nancy-the-tart-from-Oliver-meets-Cirque-du-Soleil. I was amazed at how skinny my legs looked, after all the holiday food I'd eaten.

* I went outside after these sad revelations, to find our rooms. We were being housed about half a block away, and I knew there were two hotel room doors next to each other but I wasn't sure which they were. A guy came down the sidewalk and I asked him if he knew where we were staying, and he was a pleasant fellow but he had shaved just the right half of his mustache off. I said, "Do you know that you've shaved half of your moustache off?" and he said, "Yes, we were having fun last night..." He didn't know about our lodging but then the dark haired chick from Girlyman came up smiling and said that my hair color made me look even more different from my sister. I thought she was pretty attractive and I wanted to talk to her more, but just then, having been brought up in a village in Africa where there were no toilets, she leaned backwards against a tree and hiked up her dress to urinate. I didn't know whether it was necessary to suspend the conversation and look away or if this was a casual thing for her, so I just started flying in nonchalant circles, a few inches off the sidewalk.

* Back inside, sitting at a table with my band and a few people from this bogus label. The guy next to me really didn't like us, and he was saying something really disparaging and humiliating to me. Stung and looking for a retort, I actually SANG an equally insulting reply which was not only acute, but musically brilliant AND it rhymed. I believe there was applause afterwards.

* Woke up at 11:50 and said, "I've got to get up before anything else happens!"

This night has topped all others in the dream department. I swear I didn't eat weird food last night. I did, however, have one glass of that wine I mentioned, and perhaps it was a bit more complex than I realized.