So now I'm going to confront one of my arch-foes, the Joker or Two-Face or Catwoman, but it's also someone I know in real life. I see the costume pricetag still attached to my face as I enter the villain's lair. I consider shouting out the line "yeah motherfucker, I just bought a new children's costume to kick your ass" to save face, but I think better of it..

2004.09.27 Walking around my block. I had just recently been housesitting for a neighbor, but they're back now. Curses. I had wanted to take something from their house. Walking past my own front yard, I see a cardboard box sitting in a juniper bush. Inside I find one of my old notebooks, someone's moldy porn, and a bronze-colored rubber dildo. I squeeze it to see it it's the kind that makes noise, but it's not. But it is bendable. Great. I make a mental note that I should throw this crap away, but later...I keep walking.

At the top of the hill, and old man (I think he was wearing work gloves) standing in a field yells to me, and invites me to bring some friends to a party he's hosting at his "green house over there," pointing to an avocado green, boxy little bungalow. It is overgrown with giant sunflowers, and running directly above it is a dark mass of power lines. Seems strangely familiar. Anyway, he says the party will be from eleven to one, because "we all need to sleep sometime." I ask him if he means AM or PM, and he looks confused for a second, then a self-assured smile comes to his face and he says "PM."

I bid him goodbye and continue walking down the other side of the hill. I've been to his parties before; they're usually fun, and there's a chance I might get to meet some girls. This makes me think of a cute, weird blonde girl who used to be in a dumb creative writing class in high school. I can't recall her name, but I wonder how hard it would be to track her down and hook up with her..

This section of the neighborhood reminds me of the place where I once ran into Bob Dylan in Germany.

I round a corner and come back to my own street. There are a couple of girls loading stuff into a van. I think they're gymnasts or something. The license plate on the van says "THE BOOK OF AMERICAN FEET." Huh.

2004.09.26 Mom finds a small children's book inside a box of Cheerios. She is surprised and confused. I explain to her that it's some sort of promotional giveaway.

2004.09.18 The old man thought someone was trying to write something...carve letter into ass...voice of Dexter Jettster from Attack of the Clones...something about terrorism...

People from my past seem to be returning. I'm at a shopping mall with a group of friends, and this guy I used to be friends with in middle school is there. I'm carrying my sketchbook with me, and the guy absentmindedly reaches out and rips a piece off one of the pages.

Later, I'm sitting on the floor in someone's den or lounge or living room. There's a group of people there, and I think we're about to watch a movie. One of the guys warns me, jokingly, not to touch his girlfriend, who is sitting near me. I say that she'd probably just punch me in the face anyway, and she smirks..

2004.09.15 Someone is building an effigy (or perhaps several effigies) out of common household parts. This one might be the President. Soundtrack: Ace of Base, "Happy Nation."

2004.09.12 Driving in the village of Corrales with friends. Being followed by a group of large guys in (about) their late 20s. They constitute a "gang," according to one of my friends. Somehow we got caught up in an altercation between these guys and another local Corrales gang. Now these guys are tailgating us menacingly. The driver in our car manages to evade them with a sudden u-turn, which seems very clever to me. Then we manage to flag down a police officer, who pulls up alongside our stopped car in his enormous police truck, which looks like a modified cement mixer. One the side of the tuck is a row of yellow lights, each one labelled to indicate a different situation or threat-level, depending on how much of your statement the officer chooses to believe. Right now I can see that our situation is tentatively set at "ABUSE," which is sort of a catch-all term. At the opposite end of the spectrum are RAPE and MURDER.

For some reason I'm up on the roof of a house that's almost-but-not-quite my own. I wonder if there was a dramatic scene with Catwoman. While I'm up here, I'll check the swamp cooler and see if it's still busted...Yup, it is.

2004.09.09 Coming soon: Forrest Gump 3: A Head in the Polls [actually the title of an episode of Futurama]. In the trailer Tom Hanks is seen playing football and running for president.

The University of New Mexico has its own brand of produce. I see peaches at the supermarket with little UNM stickers on them.

There's a bag of Chips Ahoy! waiting for me upstairs. Ooh yeah, gonna eat some cookies.

2004.09.08 I'm in this bizarre, shadow-universe call center. I've been here before. We're in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. I can hear it from inside the building. The lights flicker out for a second while we switch to auxiliary power. It's a seedier place than what I'm used to, although I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that.. I'm working a graveyard shift. I think I might be talking to a coworker who's planning to hack into something..

Now I'm watching this new sci-fi/horror movie...Johnny Depp is in it. It must have been in production for a very long time, because there's a CGI-enhanced shot of a fast zoom into Manhattan (bathed in eerie maroon light..the seas are roiling black, possibly because of some demonic disturbance) where you can still see the WTC towers....The focus of this shot turns out to be a building right next to them, one I'd never noticed before.. It's a huge stone-and-mortar building with faux (but really beautiful) Japanese style flourishes. In fact, it looks like an towering, ancient fortress dropped rght in the middle of New York City. The film draws attention to the top of the building, where it becomes a rooftop pleasure garden...The top ten floors or so look like an enormous Japanese/something-post-Victorian mansion, complete with trees and ivy and fountains and junk. It is one of the most coveted pieces of real estate in New York, the movie says, and they go on to talk about how it was built on top of a ley line of evil energy or something.

I start to become interested in the real-life version of this building, and I learn that it's actually not in Manhattan, it's on a forested hill overlooking Manhattan. (Ohhhh! Starting to make some sense now. Awesome geography skills.) This building was constructed around the beginning of the 20th Century, and was sold in 1904 for $8 million (or possibly in 1908 for $4 million...I forget) and then sold within the last ten years for $95 million. It's currently being used as a hotel for some of the world's wealthiest people (can't imagine what else it would be used for). Anyway, it turns out that there's another building right next door that is also a gigantic faux-Japanese fortress from the early 1900s (but made from a different type of brick and based on a different period of Japanese architecture), and its longtime owners are considering trying to resell their building for a similar price. (Oh...so it's like another set of Twin Towers were in the shadow of the real ones...I just got that.)

So now I'm walking around at the buildings themselves. It's a very secluded spot-- besides the towers, there's just a narrow, paved road, emerald green grass, and the forest that starts about a half-mile from the towers on each side. Looking back behind me, I can see Manhattan at the bottom of the hill, looking sort of blue and smoky. Then I just walk around the perimeter, wondering what sort of person lives in a place like this. George Lucas, perhaps. I'm surprised that no one has come out to ask me what I'm doing here...There's literally no one else around at all.

As it crane my head up to the top of the tower nearest me, I notice that I've been walking with my legs bowed and my back severely hunched. Wonder how long I've been doing that. I try to straighten out, but my knees are too weak. Must be this backpack I'm wearing, it's really heavy... I take it off, but no, still can't stand up straight. It's like my knees are locked; my legs just won't straighten. I start to feel so weak that I can't stand up anymore. I drop to the ground, my legs now completely bent and immobile.

2004.09.05 Elvis Costello and the Attractions are on their 1983 world tour, supporting the album Punch the Clock, and I'm riding along with them in the massive hovercraft/oversized trailer-thing that they are using to cross a stretch of remote northern tundra. The band is cranky and sarcastic but still overqualified, as always. Mr. Costello is sitting alone at a small desk, muttering to himself and rubbing his head as he composes his memoirs with fountain pen and unlined paper.

Then I'm walking to the dusty arroyo where the team is having softball practice in their red-and-white uniforms. It's the first time I've showed up in several months. She must be wondering where I've been. She can choke; I don't give a fuck about softball practice. Bet she looks cute in the hat and cleats, tho'...

It's really late, or early, depending on your perspective. I'm lying on a couch in someone's dark, unfamiliar apartment. There are a lot of plants hanging from the ceiling. I'm watching some old movie with the sound very low, and I'm not wearing pants. Then a girl comes in, someone I've never met before, walks right past me, sets her purse and keys down on the kitchen counter and turns to look at me. Slender, long nose, long dark hair. There's an incredulous, bemused look on her face. Then I realize that I've committed a faux pas, and I reach over to get my pants. She takes it in stride, though, and strikes up a conversation with me about how she saw this same movie once before when she was stranded somewhere in a snowstorm..

Suicide attempt? Who heard about it? [???]

Other guy (meth guy?) thinks the natural order of the universe is creepy. [???]

2004.09.03 Two of my teeth have fallen out. I'm surprised at how painless it was. I wonder how much it'll cost to get some kind of prosthesis put in. Looking at this one tooth, it's interesting to note how big it is...about the size of a wine cork...and it's much less corroded than I would have thought. Hm. I'll hang on to it. Now what was I doing?

2004.08.31 The note asked for a response. I hadn't even noticed that before, I was so preoccupied with my own pessimistic thoughts.

2004.08.27 I've just bought the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD, and I'm watching it by myself in my friend Joe's bedroom. Matt is there also, but he has fallen asleep on Joe's bed. I'm sitting on the couch, with a bag of cookies and another bag of chips, and a sketchbook or notebook or something. Joe, Rachel, and probably James are watching some other movie in the living room.

The movie is weird. Like, really weird. I must have missed the theatrical run, because all of this is new to me. At one point (as the Republic Star Destroyers are closing in on Kashyyyk), Obi-Wan is talking to himself about needing to "recover the magic stones." Unable follow the plot any longer, I start drawing in my sketchbook as I leave the movie running. Not long after this, Joe comes into the room for something, which startles Matt into consciousness. "How's the movie?" Joe asks. "I dunno, I haven't really been paying attention."

Matt says he needs a ride home, which I offer to provide. As he groggily makes his way out of Joe's room, he sees the snacks lying around the floor, some of which he had brought in for himself. He makes some kind of idiomatic comment about excess that references the Jews in a vaguely derogatory way. [NOTE: Sorry Matt, I've outed you as the happy-go-lucky anti-Semite you are. Jk.]

In the living room, I get to see what movie everyone else has been watching. Must be Star Wars night-- it looks like an old movie from the 1960s with huge, red subtitles...in Huttese. And there's also Huttese dubbing. Something Joe bought on the Internet, apparently. I listen for a few seconds, and I notice that the dubbing is actually just one person, a kid, narrating the film in Huttese, and after about a minute another kid takes over where the first one left off. I make some comment about how they're "passing the mic."

The following day, I'm at home in my room when the phone rings. It's a stranger, some husky-voiced gentleman who sounds like he's in his late 50s. He says he wants to talk to me about comics, and about being frustrated with the quality of some of the books he's read. I suggest that he should read Watchmen. Then, without telling my why, he starts to give me his address, which turns out to be a very long binary number that I have trouble getting right over the phone. At this moment, I hear a knock on the door. I ask the stranger to hold on the line for a second, and set the phone down on my bed. It's my mom, and she's ticked about something. "I need you to move every object out of this room, one at a time."

Having been in situations like this before (especially in dreams), I decide to use the Tracey Gold patented "righteous indignation" method (no, not bulemia) to make her go away, telling her, in that half-mouthed sort of way, I'M ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW. Eventually she mentions something about my pillow. Trying to figure out what this could be about, I remember that I had got some blood on it a few weeks ago (see previous dream, 2004.08.02). "Fine, I will throw my pillow in the garbage this very moment.." But she's not satisfied. Then my sister walks by, and I grab her and make her tell me what's going on.

"She's feeling some despair," Nina says vaguely. I direct my attention to the both of them together. "Why is it that she always gets the Oprah Winfrey version and I get the mysterious shakedown?" This apparently is very funny to them, because both of them are now laughing uncontrollably. I step back into my room to finish my phone conversation (which I think might lead to something profitable), closing the door behind me. I hear Nina say, "I think he's slamming the door in the face of despair."

SOUNDTRACK: Oingo Boingo - Best o'Boingo

CIRCA 2004.08 Just bought an 8th of marijuana. Experiencing constant short-term memory loss. Went to work, forgot to leave, stayed three hours longer than I was supposed to. On a prescription for... It's late at night. Walking somewhere in Albuquerque, somewhere near the University. The cops have sealed off a perimeter and and starting to round people up. I get stopped at a checkpoint, and a cop scans me with a device that is supposedly to check my brainwaves for cell phone damage, but I know it's really to check for drugs. I know that there are controlled substances in my system or in my bag, so I'm very nervous..

2004.08.23 I'm at the home of a family...two-story home, yellow wallpaper from the early '80s...African-American family, one grandmother and her two teenage grandsons. Just yesterday was my last day at some elite high school...one of my teachers was Barbara, my old team lead at the call center. I think it's the end of my junior year. I'm already dreading going back in the fall. I didn't get the best grades because I loathe work. Barbara was my cartooning teacher, and she was not terribly impressed with my skills, even though we seemed to get along okay with each other. Story of my life. Anyway, now I'm at this house with a friend of mine..the two of us, along with several others, are members of an informal clique of cartooning students who, for various reasons, are dissatisfied with the comix opportunities school provides. I am the slacker of this group. We're here at the house because one of the grandsons is a member of the group, and his bedridden (but still highly active) grandmother is somehow financing or organizing an anthology publication which the grandson will draw a comix for. It's going to be based on something I drew on a restroom wall or a napkin months ago. The grandmother, peering through enormous glasses, proposes that I take "creator" credit and my friend take "writer" credit of the ongoing series. I am stung and annoyed by not being asked to write scripts for my own creation, but after the last semester I'm used to these kinds of disappontments. I ask to make sure that I'm still going to get paid to do nothing, and I give my consent for the project.

2004.08.04 I'm in the men's room at a cheap family restaurant. As I rose from the table I had heard a friend of mine talking to someone else about a cartoon I had drawn. If that wasn't flattering enough, now I see several of my drawings have been enlarged and tacked onto the restroom wall. How nice. Some of these are really old, too, like from high school. I guess I must have left one of my notebooks at the table a couple of years back and forgotten about it. I start to pee, but then suddently I wake up and stop myself.

2004.08.03 I am conducting massive preparations/drills for a very large spy operation (or possibly a heist) with over a dozen members of the New Mickey Mouse Club. We are in a city that is unfamiliar to me. Currently I am riding along with a serious-minded young man (about 17 or 18) who is my partner in managing this perparatory process. He has dark brown skin, and curly, charcoal-gray hair. If I had to guess, I'd say that he's of east Indian descent.

I am a freelancer who was secretly hired by the Disney Corporation on the recommendation of one of Hollywood's premiere former child-actors, and kid who played such diverse roles as young Bruce Wayne, young Dick Grayson, and young Anakin Skywalker. When I first met the lad, he was shooting a scene for the latest Batman movie. As part of the scene, he for some reason had to crush fake blood capsules in his hands. It was a scene for which they were going to loop in the audio in post, so there was a lot of yelling on the set from both cast and crew. The young actor was talking to his agent, standing just off the set, about his new contract, which would commit him to being Robin in two more Batman movies in exchange for a guarantee that he'd then be able to make his own Nightwing spinoff.

So anyway, I'm riding shotgun with the Indian guy, and we're on the freeway in the middle of this city of the not-too-distant future. A sign indicates that, due to road construction, we'll have to take a detour. The detour takes us completely off the highway, through several abandoned buildings that look like they've been through the Blitz. Entire walls and roofs are missing, and there's rubble strewn everywhere. We have to drive up an exposed staircase, and over sudden dropoffs that violently crunch the shocks. I complainabout it to the Indian guy, but he remains stoic and focused on the job at hand, getting to the McDonald's where we're supposed to meet the Mouseketeers for the morning briefing.

Once we get there, and everyone's off practicing their maneuvers with headsets and grappling hooks and such, the Indian guy and I walk around, me with a steaming styrofoam cup of McDonald's coffee, checking everyone's progress and occasionally sabotaging the Mouseketeers to keep them on their toes. A poppy, cheerful song from about 6 years ago starts playing on the muzak, some kid who used to know someone related to someone who was on the MMC, and I comment to the Indian guy that it's a fun song that I hadn't heard in a long time. The Indian guys acknowledges sneeringly, something to the effect of "I guess, if you're into that sort of thing."

2004.08.02 I'm talking to someone when suddenly I start to feel congested. Blood is dripping from my nose.

2004.07.30 Walt Disney came from a small coal-mining town nestled in the mountains. One of the stipulations in his will was that, in order for the town to get a grant to build his personal museum, the coal mine would need to be moved to the side of the mountain opposite the house where Disney was born, the hand-built wooden shack where the Disney family had lived for generations after coming to America from Ireland. Young Walter had always been bothered by the fumes from the coal mine. As I drive along the winding dirt road leading to the house, I see that many rustic mansions have been erected in the area since the time Disney lived there, at the turn of the century.

2004.07.22 Three or four of my back teeth are on the verge of falling out. They actually move in their sockets when I touch them. But I don't have insurance, so I'd better just not pull on them.

2004.07.14 It was gross.

2004.07.09 I'm at my friend Joe's house and I find a gift box containing several dozen crayons in a variety of shades of green, with some purple ones scattered throughout. Each of them has a custom-selected name with some kind of poetic image or romantic connotation-- "----'s eyes," "kissing ----," "mint tsunami," "go-go green," "----squeeze," etc. I ask Joe what they're for and he says that they were special ordered from Crayola by some couple he knows.