simon's dreams
LADYTRAP, INC.
march 10-16, 2003
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new brazil and funky haircuts
In the desert. Rain. Tent.
Cubic office reallocation... once we were in cubicles, now we're all in a big chamber with stools and drafting tables etc. I think I like this new setup; but I seem to remember some negative feelings about it too. Then I'm waiting for a show to begin and suddenly escaping on a skateboard. This is Brazil. A young kid (8?) catches up to me from the left side and I know that he will be trying to hit me up for money (I have $183 in my pocket) or otherwise try to con me so I skate much faster and lose him. But he goes around a block and heads me off and falls off his bicycle in front of me. This is supposed to surprise me into falling off the skateboard but I am ready for it. Unfortunately, in all my staring at him I fail to notice some rough ground, which I hit and scrub. But I don't fall to the ground.... the skateboard flips over but since I had so much momentum I remain standing on the board as it skids and scrapes across the pavement very very fast. Of course it's harder to keep balance this time. Eventually I fall or grind to a halt and, sure enough, the poor little kid catches up to me and tugs me on the sleeve and befriends me. He takes me back to his mom's house (his siblings have now joined us and we arrive as one big group) and being the poor but decent mother she is, she pulls out a $20 bill for each of us to go buy one cigarette. I don't even smoke but can't refuse the kind gesture. We never go to buy cigarettes (I think we head off to a candy store instead) but I am shocked at the state of the Brazilian economy that a) a single smoke costs $20 and b) someone who is supposedly dirt poor can still hand out $100 without a flinch. Reminds me of the situation I believe Japan might be in... plenty of unemployment and troubled economy, yet a cup of coffee is still eight bucks.
I then go with the Heart-N-Soul guys to find directions to our gig or whatever destination it was. We go into a hair salon to ask directions and Jason figures what the heck, he'll get a haircut. The first stylist looks appallingly bizarre. Imagine a mohawk running from ear to ear instead of from front to back. The mohawk area is about 5 inches thick and the dark hair sticks out about three. Behind the sideways mohawk is a lavish mullet. In front of the mohawk to the forehead is shaved. Jason ends up with bleach bright blond hair (except for the roots) and a vast bob, which extends horizontally several inches on either size of the head and bobs all the way back into his jaw, so his head look oddly oblong. Imagine this on a tan Filipino face! While this stylist works on Jason's hair another comes out, who looks even more appalling. At first this person looks like a very ugly man (turns out to be a woman). Grotesque and long nose (wide, too). She has a silence-of-the-lambs-style mask (covers chin and mouth and cheeks only), except it is clear plastic and has chrome-colored tubing around the edges. sloppy red lipstick is applied to the INSIDE of the mask over the lips region. FUNKY glasses, the shape of which I can't describe in words (I need a scanner, and they are like the sunglasses Erica Spiegel bought in Italy) and the haircut is some combination of spikes and odd colors and definitely some sideburns (like those of my favorite mod-looking waiter at Sushi Deli One). This stylist knows we are new in town and we have just walked into her tourist trap. She tries to sell us a package tour of some local sights or resorts or some shit like that. We are appalled at her appearance, let alone her sales pitch, but as she is talking she slowly removes parts of this frightening costume and by the end of the schpiel she has transformed into an attractive young woman. And somehow this tour doesn't seem so bad anymore. ALMOST duped... I drag us out of there before we sell our souls (Jason and his new 'do in tow...) Juan never gets his shot at a haircut.
beware the ides of march
I bewared the Ides of March. And I think there was another lizard dream, or is that just becoming my default "can't remember" image?
special effects and the neglected artist
after a concert or something at a UCSD theatre that is supposed to be near scripps or something like that i want to go to jinx's house to copy some music software (soundforge) and pick up some of my things. but he is being a butt and bascially tells me i can't come over. even though i have my car, for some reason i think i need to bust ass to catch the shuttle back home, which leaves at 11.
i decide to just drive home, but then end up at jinx's anyway.
we make a movie. i think it's star wars but we are reenacting a sort of shuttle-reentry deal with really cool special effects. i am holding onto a model of a space shuttle and there is a sort of forcefield in front of me. i can't really see what's going on behind the sheet of light into which my hands holding the model are protruding until i stick my head in there and it is an incredible experience. all light and color and forces, as if i stuck my head into a computer-animated world of fire and action. things happen that are not like what really happened in whatever movie we are reenacting... for instance, the dixie cup with which i am regulating shuttle pressure by holding it over an o-ring pressure bleed valve fills with some sort of alien. when jinx points that out to me i squeeze the cup with my hand and get blood and guts all over my hand and some squirts on my face. ew. something similar happens, and i end up crushing the cuffs of the sleeves that protrude off of the darth vader-style hat i am wearing.
this makes a terrible mess and it turns out to be jinx's roommate's stuff but jinx assures us that since his roommate respects the arts he wouldn't mind that we made this mess in his house and ruined his things for the sake of making a move. he'll understand.
meanwhile, back in the real world of clock radio snoozing, our Noble Leader is giving some sort of speech. that always makes me feel ill. in my dream there is discussion of all the good catholic women who support war and then we realise that all these good catholic women are mini-van driving evil soccer moms who backstab and know fuckall about the world.
i'm about to get on a plane to denmark and the guy in line behind me is complaining that this plane is going to be delayed and we are going to be sitting on it forever. i don't care about the delay but am concerned that i'll have to sit next to this guy for the whole trip. he has a bag full of rifles. i wonder how they let him bring those on board and i hope that he doesn't have bullets in there too. not that he'd really do anything if he had bullets...
we are sitting either on the plane or in a waiting lounge in the same order we'd be sitting on the plane (i.e. at tables with the people in our row). there is someone playing piano in the back of the L-shaped lounge but more people are sitting up close to the bar and the food etc. i think to myself that it's a shame places are set up like this, that the entertainer doesn't get any attention. they should rearrange the bar. but maybe that was the only place they could fit a piano.
how jeff saved my work
fantastic dreams, really.
i was in granada (the island nation, not the city). what did i do there?
lizard dream.
crumbs. it's all gone.
driving around in the nova to picnics and such. with three other guys. jeff is there and puts my photo projects upside down in the trunk so they don't get scratched. thanks, jeff. you're good and keeping photos safe amongst heaps of Stuff. we are driving around camarillo and it is a beautiful fertile valley with farmland in the bottom and town climbing up the sides. we cross a junction i remember from childhood and ask mike crowe about it. he says this is the way we used to go for sledding in the wintertime. we make it to the picnic grounds and it's all light breeze, shady trees, green grass. wonderful. forgot the frisbee, darn it.
my neighbor finally comes by to pick up the power tools he left at my house months ago and is surprised that i haven't tried to steal them. they are still sitting in a neat pile by the door of the den.
in preparation for a party i dress in all red. t shirt, vest, glasses, pants.
derivatives of dutch in the swimming pool of time
balloon ride over city. fire? disaster? parade? can't remember. over a ruined city at night? cool dream though
another pam play. this one is a musical. pat and i are in it but just end up watching from the audience. you lock each chair, but house manager doesn't give us key since i think we lost the first one. the script is on long strips all together
can't remember plot. oh yes, travels. part play, part new dream. lots of rain. so much that there is massive flooding. i set up my tripod (or a bamboo stick?) and camera to take photos but become concerned about it getting too wet since it is raining like mad
go to wine tasting cafe with mom and erica(?) pat? karen? is it in france? various types of wines and pastries. never quite clear if we were free to take whatever we want or wait to be served. takes forever to be served. damn, the pastries look good though. chocolates. cakes. al labeled with prices but no problem just take one
pat and i see a sign over this store or another that says something like "lek njuit noop". we are disappointed that someone took a sign that is clearly south african (in afrikaans) and posted it somewhere else. i realise later and tell him to our relief that we are actually in belgium where it is flemish and everything in that bilingual country is labeled in flemish (closer to dutch than afrikaans) and belgian french.
ben is in the play, and so is andy, but at the last minute. didn't even go to rehearsals, just showed up. pat and i watch from front row. i'm worried i'll forget when to go onstage for my part so i read along with the scirpt and it's very loud because it's on long strips of papaer i have to flip through. am i disturbing the others? i never end up having to go on; they cut all the tobias scenes.
the scenes are all very different. i don't even think they are all tied together in the end. Just like a dream, no?
when i woke up at 6:45 in the real world i lay in bed trying to recap the dream in order to commit it to memory but slowly fell asleep again. i never know if that actually recalls the details of the original dream or creates new parts of the same dream. i suppose it doesn't matter, what with the non-linear nature of time in dreams. they are only assembled in a rigid order after the fact, and are just a series of events homogenously dissolved in the swimming pool of time.
flashback to driving around the countryside on windy smooth roads to half-underground longhouses (like the native americans had) look like small versions of the giant blimp hangars at mather field.
for your safety
[sorry, this one's been edited by the office of homeland security]
what harold and maude do to you
driving around hilly streets at night . shawn's house full of activity. see heather haas in the rain. she has until september 9 before she goes back to ??
lots of driving. harold and maude influence
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