"So this character resembles one of your characters?" I ask.

"Well, really, any of these.." he says, waving his hand over the myriad bizarre creatures sribbled on the page. "On the advice of my attorney I am filing suit against you."

Then he asks me to get into his car, which is waiting in the street outside. Incidentally, it's a beautiful day, the sun trickling down through a canopy of autumn leaves that arches over my street. I agree to go with him.

As he drives -- at first, seemingly just circling the block, giving no indication as to what he's up to -- I try to get him to tell me what it will take for him to drop the suit. I start to get frustrated with him, and the anger starts to bleed into my voice.

"Look, what is it that you want from me? Either you're completely full of shit and you're just trying to string me along, or you're psychotic and you've brought me into your car so you can blow my brains out."

He just chuckles to himself at this, which makes me doubt myself. I stay quiet for the rest of the drive, and when we stop, we are in a massive indoor arboretum. It looks like an airport hangar filled with trees. We get out of the car, and I follow closely behind him as he walks to the concave wall in front of us. Golf balls fall on us from above. Then we notice the targets on the ground around us. We have wandered onto a driving range.

From somewhere above and behind us, an old man shouts, "Sorry about that!" I think to myself that it's kind of the man to be concerned, since it was really our fault.

"It's okay!" the pudgy guy shouts back.

We hear the man whisper "He says it's okay" to someone else. Another voice, an elderly woman, whispers back to him, and we hear both of them speak to each other in perfect clarity. Something about the curved wall has created an acoustic effect where we can hear every sound from the balcony above as if it were six inches away. It sounds like radio signals bouncing off the inside of my head. I think to myself that they must be able to hear everything we say as well.

The pudgy guy turns to me. "You wanna rent a movie?"

"I have Goonies on DVD," I say. He chuckles again.

2005.03.14 The theme song from Mysterious Cities of Gold is echoing through my brain, the only remnant of some epic quest I just came back from.

2005.03.13 I hear a They Might Be Giants song about the Soviet Union, sung by John Flansburgh. I hear another song sung by John Linnell. I am so excited by hearing these songs that I gain the power of third-eye vision, and I see a happy little Mario-style house in the middle of a field of sunflowers. At first I think that the Johns going to make a full-length album of this kind of music, but it turns out to just be a short EP.

* * * *

I'm on a road trip through the northeastern United States with Sean (my boss at my call center job), some girl whom I'm supposed to know, and some other miscellaneous people. We're somewhere in New York or New Jersey when we get lost, and the girl, who is driving, pulls off into a small town to ask for directions. Only Sean and I know that this is a fake town that the two of us built as a practical joke.

While the girl is gone, Sean asks me to draw a map of where we are, because he likes my drawings. I pull out a large sheet of paper and set to work. Then the girl comes back, beaming and confident, and says, "Okay, I know where we're going now."

* * * *

I see that our next door neighbors are digging a swimming pool in their back yard. I think this is really neat, because I'll get to watch scantily-clad ladies lounging by the pool from my window. But then I read on some entertainment news site that Michael Jackson is sending expensive koi fish as a gift to the neighbor boys, and that they're actually building a koi pond.

* * * *

On a trip to New York again, this time with a different group of friends. We're walking through a shopping center when a girl from our group jumps on me and rides piggyback on top of me, with her legs gripping my torso. I assume it's one person, but then I hear Joe say that it's Paris Hilton. This is not a huge surprise, because Paris has hung out with us before, but I had assumed it was another girl that I actually find attractive, and now I'm annoyed that this crazy skank has invaded my personal space.

It's late afternoon, and we have come to a grittier part of town. We go into a store that has its shutter closed almost all the way down to the ground, so I finally get to put Paris down as we squeeze through the two-foot opening. Inside, I find that it's actually not a store at all. It's a community center where some kids are putting on some kind of hip-hop show. All the seats are taken, so I stand in the aisle, wandering back and forth, feeling uncomfortable. There is a man with a beard and spectacles who I think is speaking to me, and I say, "What?" But he actually hadn't said anything to me, and he just shakes his head. This happens a couple of times, and then I start to get embarrassed. It's muggy inside the building, and I'm tired of standing in there, so I decide to go back out to the street.

It's sunset. I pace up and down the street in what looks like a very weird neighborhood. I have my shirt pulled up over the top of my head, which I had done earlier to protect me from light rainfall and keep the humid heat off my body. Now, as the sky grows dark, I put my shirt back on. A huge, fat, bald white guy approaches me and says "Got a dollar?" I say no, and he says, "How 'bout a switchblade!?," lurching toward me with one in his hand. On reflex I reach out to grab it, and I see that it's not a real switchblade, but a cheap souvenir trinket. I'm not sure if he's trying to sell it to me or threaten me. I think he's just crazy. I struggle with him, trying to push him away from me or pull the blade out of his hands, but he's too strong, and he's not letting me escape. He eventually puts the fake blade away, but keeps following me as I try to evade him, shoving and poking me from behind.

2005.03.07 I'm in an eerily under-lit grotto, with walls covered in green, blue and purple tiles. An underground stream runs through it, casting reflections on the low ceiling. A short, fat, naked blue imp with horns and bat-wings is trying to talk me into signing a movie deal with him. Several stuffed-shirt executive types are hovering nearby, wanting to be partners in the deal we strike.

As the negotiations go on, their tactics become more and more aggressive. The imp urinates on me and laughs maniacally. One of the executives, a middle-aged woman with brown hair, jumps on my lap and starts humping me. Her face twitches and bends, as if the bones are moving under her flesh. Stubble and hair grows out of her pores, and then recedes again. She vomits on me over and over again. I try to push her away, but she's too strong. When I look into her flashing eyes, she telepathically implants an image in my brain of a man "halving his calves"-- literally slicing his own muscle tissue apart with a knife.

2005.03.06 My entire nuclear family is at a movie theater in a pristine, slightly futuristic city that reminds me of Santa Barbara and Grand Theft Auto. We're here to see the premiere of this week's episode of Lost.

In the show, a few castaways have discovered an abandoned cabin in the middle of a small cornfield deep in the jungle. The characters seem to be parallel universe analogues of the ones I remember. There are a couple of unfamiliar young adult caucasian men, an older caucasian man, a young adult black woman, a small Asian girl, etc. Inside the cabin, they find a TV with a VCR and DVD player. A couple of the guys poke at the derelict equipment, opening the hatches on the VCR and DVD player to make sure they aren't booby trapped. One of them gets shot with a couple of tiny poison darts, but he just brushes them off.

The party goes back outside, where, among the cornstalks, they find the exact type of reeds one would use to construct poison dart booby traps. Then, from somewhere out in the jungle, monsters are heard approaching.

At this point, the show abruptly cuts to a trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, in which the eponymous heroes are seen battling bizarre mutant creatures in a jungle not unlike the one we just saw. Is J. J. Abrams trying to give us some kind of hint? I close my eyes and use my data-implant to log onto an Internet message board, where dozens of fans are already discussing the possible implications of the TMNT trailer. One poster explains that in TMNT3, the mutants that the turtles fought were actually the crudely bioengineered remnants of a Nazi supersoldier program.

I open my eyes and I'm in the movie theater parking lot, where my family is getting into the car to go home. It is night, and the lights of the future-city glide in through the windows as we drive. In the back seat, Nina and I talk about whether the new plot twist is going to alienate casual viewers and people who aren't into ludicrous science-fictiony stuff.

2005.03.05 It's Christmas morning. Nina and I are opening presents in the living room as Mom watches. I open mine first. It's a strange action board game where you construct an N-scale model train set out of components included in the box, and then use cards and dice to decide whether of not to smash things with the locomotive. Sort of on the juvenile side, but still a fun gift, and I like model trains.

Then Nina opens her present, and it's basically the same game, only with different terrain and accessories. Huh. That's a bit strange. I want to ask Mom if she gave that to Nina by mistake, but I also don't want to hurt her feelings.

2005.02.26 I'm with my mom, my sister, and my sister's dog, Penny. We're driving to a restaurant. I think we're supposed to be dropping Penny off at the vet along the way or something.

Mom pulls into a parking lot, and hands me a random houseware item in a vinyl bag to carry with me. Penny has fallen unconscious, and so we put her in the grass next to the car to recuperate. Suddenly, Mom and Nina are gone.

I have no idea where they went, but I need to use a restroom, so I walk into a scuzzy, poorly-lit bar nearby. A minute later, as I'm coming out of the men's room, my Dad grabs my arm and introduces me to his date. Then Dad gives me something of his to carry, and we all walk outside together.

I go back to the car and toss the thing Mom gave me into the trunk, because I'm not really sure what she wanted me to do with it. Penny is still lyring in the grass, motionless, but she has changed from a small shar-pei puppy to an enormous golden retriever. Her upside-down chin comes up to my head. There is a large, ugly growth coming out of the left side of her chest. I wonder if she's dead.

Turning back to where Dad and his date are standing, I notice a restaurant just a few yards behind them. Oh. That must be where Mom and Nina went. Just as I'm about to walk in the door, however, I reappraise my situation. Mom probably wouldn't be happy if I brought Dad and his date to dinner. And what happened to that thing I was holding for Dad? It seems to have vanished. But I look over my shoulder, and Dad and his date are already walking away, without having said a word. So I guess my problem solved itself.

Seconds later, my mother and my sister burst out of the restaurant, walking directly back to the car, so I follow them silently. Together, we find Penny's lifeless form still sprawled in the grass, now grown to the size of a large SUV. The swelling thing in her chest is now recognizable as a huge white toadstool, about as long as my arm. Mom and Nina are discussing whether Penny's diet may have caused this. Nina holds up a can of cat food with a blue label on it that says "WITH BUTTER."

"Nina!" Mom scolds, "I told you to give her the food without butter!"

2005.02.25 With the family from Roseanne. The Connors. We're in a penthouse apartment, with a spectacular view of Paris.

2005.02.21 I am awakened by the feeling of my mattress lifting up beneath me. One side keeps rising, falling, and rising again, as though someone is repeatedly lifting it up and dropping it. My first thought is that this is my mother's doing. She has let herself into the room and this is her way of getting me out of bed. I mumble something in acknowledgement and try to crane my head around to look at her, but I barely have the strength to open my eyes.

The mattress lifts up again, so high that I almost fall out of bed. I brace myself for the jolt of falling back down, but instead the mattress sinks slowly, creating a cloud of dust that irritates my eyes and throat. Then the movement stops, and after a few moments I manage to sit up, even though my body feels like so much dead meat. Struggling to bring my eyes into focus, I glance around the room, expecting to see Mom standing over me or rilfing through my garbage. But she's not there. The bed was moving by itself, or possibly under the influence of a poltergeist.

I walk out into the hallway and look downstairs. Everything that I normally see in the living room, including the furniture, is now gone, replaced with only an orange-brown carpet held down at the edges with masking tape. Nina walks out of the kitchen, and we have a brief exchange that offers no explanation as to what happened to the furniture.

2005.02.19 I have accidentally spilled egg yolks on my hardcover Oz books. This causes me to fly into a rage of yelling and cursing.

In the wastebasket next to my bed, I see what appear to be three or four giant (about two-inch long), brown pillbugs crawling around. Thoroughly grossed out, I try to take the entire wastebasket outside to get rid of them, but as I lift it up and try to carry it, the bugs keep crawling over the sides and falling out, and each time I have to set the thing down and let them crawl back in before I can continue.

Then I'm in a large basketball arena, near midnight on a Sunday night, where a three-day sci-fi convention of some kind is drawing to a close. Old radio shows are being played over the PA, with occasional announcements from the emcees seated at a table in the middle of the arena, one of whom is comedian David Cross, who is wearing bifocals and has his hair artificially whitened to make him look older.

The radio program that's on right now is some kind of Laura Ingalls Wilder-style show about a young girl's adventures living on the prairie. Apparently this series was very popular and continued for many decades after the original author's death, which resulted in some strange and anachronistic stories. I am talking to a woman in her late 20s, with wavy red-brown hair and thick-rimmed rectangular glasses, who is telling me with nerdly relish about how she once read a story about the young girl working for the Iranian Nation Agency during the Cold War.

At midnight a loud buzzer sounds, and some slow, old song ("Auld Lang Syne" or "Happy Trails" or something) starts playing over the PA. David Cross comes on to tell everyone that the convention is now officially over, and the two-dozen or so people who are still there begin folding up their tables and packing up their merchandise.

2005.02.16 I am playing Sonic Mega Collection Plus, a compilation of all of the classic Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games for PS2. I've played it so many times that now I'm starting to unlock obscure variant editions that I didn't previously know existed. The one I'm playing right now is Sonic the Hedgehog [1] and Knuckles. It's almost a completely different game, with totally different levels, new sprites, and a new animated map screen that shows your progress between levels. It's designed to be much harder than the 1991 original, with the number of onscreen enemies and various spiky obstacles increased tenfold. The PS2 port wasn't programmed very well, however, so it's very buggy, and the extra sprites cause the animation to slow down to a crawl.

Later, a bunch of my friends and I are driving around at 10pm or so, looking for a place to eat. For some reason we're having a really hard time of it. David, who is chauffeuring us in his old van, moans angrily "I just want to go in, get some food, and LEAVE!" We're all starting to get pretty upset about this.

A strip mall comes up on our right. Crystal suggests Applebee's or a place called Home on the Range. She says she has family who work at the latter, so we'd be able to get a discount. But as we drive by we can see that both places are closed. In addition, Home on the Range is in fact not a restaurant but a low-income used clothing store. At first Crystal seems surprised by this, but then she starts to dimly recall. "I think they have a fridge in the back.."

As we continue driving across the huge parking lot, I briefly mention the Sonic game to Aaron, and I tell him about the progress map.

"After you finish the Green Hill Zone, the map shows a path being cut through it where the hills are just gone, as if they were bulldozed."

"Whoa."

Finally we have stopped in a remote corner at the far end of the parking lot, next to an abandoned discount store. By now the sky has brightened to a dingy twilight gray, and somehow, perhaps because we simply wished so hard, or maybe because I blacked out and someone found a 24 hour supermarket, we now have food. We even have plastic forks and plates, and we all sit down at a picnic table in the parking lot.

So we're contentedly eating our meal, when out of nowhere a stranger strolls up and sits at the table next to me. And begins to help himself to our food. He's a kid, maybe 16 or 17, with a stupid looking blonde afro. He's wearing a vest with a button on it, a picture of a cartoon skull-and-crossbones. Everyone is tired and grumpy, so no one bothers to ask him who he is or what he's doing there. Finally, as David finishes eating and clears his plate, he says to the stranger (in a not-quite-friendly voice), "I'm David."

"Ooo-kay," says the little Backstreet twerp, sarcastically, not taking his eyes off his plate of stolen food. The rudeness of this is more than I can bear, and I shove the kid to the ground and step on his throat as I get up from the table. I continue walking away from the group without looking back, into the parking lot, not really sure where I'm headed.

Then, at about 200 meters, I find myself surrounded by a posse of kids in their teens or early 20s, all with a look of obvious bloodlust in their eyes. They're all wearing different kinds of uniforms-- ugly shirts and vests with nametags and various kinds of "flare," buttons and badges and lanyards. One of them I recognize as Katie, a crazy bitch who punched me for no reason in sixth grade. The leader of the group is a guy with brown hair, about eight inches taller than me, wearing a white shirt with flipped-up collar and rolled-back sleeves, Miami Vice style. Everyone is wearing that same skull-and-crossbones button. I can't recall what they say to me, but you get the gist.

Knowing my options are limited, I make a desperate lunge at the lead guy (I'll call him "Lucas"), which is easily repelled. Then, having fucked around long enough, I start to run, and despite the fact that I'm very outnumbered and Lucas keeps stepping on feet and trying to trip me, I manage to get back to David's van, which is already poised for getaway. I jump into the back and we immediately speed off. A few of the Strip Mall Yakuza are still clinging to the outside of the van, including a guy I recognize from the local indie rock scene who has somehow wedged his leg into the window. I decide to try to pull him inside, so as to have a live prisoner for interrogation, but as I reach up to grab his foot I wake up.

2005.02.14 Some friends and I are sitting in a video editing room, reviewing footage of a band playing at a wedding party that I attended just a few hours before. The band is a retro-'50s group, five or six guys in white suits with red or black carnations on their lapels, à la the Beatles in Magical Mystery Tour. In this part of the video they're playing a Chipmunks song. The lead singer is doing the high-pitched chipmunk voice without any sort of mechanical assistance. The people in the editing room with me are arguing about whether some kind of unseen ghost or spirit was acting upon the band.

2005.02.12 Something about building something out of $2 bills. This is a clever way to display patriotism? I might have stolen something and then replaced it with a duplicate made from $2 bills. Reminds me of a scene in The Marvelous Land of Oz where the Scarecrow loses his straw and is re-stuffed with money found in a jackdaws' nest.

Someone asks me to explain and justify the "Interview with Viktor Yushchenko" MP3 that I made last month.

2005.02.04 I'm with some friends at the movie theater for a premiere screening of Revenge of the Dead, which by the title I'm guessing is some kind of gore-fest with zombies in it. Normally that would be a hoot, but I've been feeling sick lately and I'm just not in the mood tonight. I'm wishing I hadn't come.

This special showing is sponsored by OZMA, a local children's bookstore, and they have a table set up at the front of the theater where a balding man with glasses is raffling off some crappy prizes-- a few "educational" toys like a chemistry set, a jacob's ladder, a chintzy-looking toy Ferris wheel, etc.

I'm sitting sideways in my seat, about halfway back in the theater, reading the flyer that they handed out in the lobby. I feel a headache coming on. My friend James is sitting next to me, quietly watching the raffle. Piped-in music is being played over the PA. A song comes on that I recognize as a cover of "King Horse" by Elvis Costello. I can't tell who the performer is. INXS, maybe? Oh, but wait, Elvis Costello himself comes in on the second chorus. Huh. Neat. After that they play a brand new They Might Be Giants song, with an accompanying video projected on the screen. The video is just Flansburgh and Linnell jumping around and making weird faces. I didn't know they had new album coming out already..

Then I fall asleep. When I wake up, I'm still in my seat in the theater, but everyone is bustling around and talking, and the screen is dark. I guess I slept through the movie.

I get up and head for the men's room. In the hallway I am stopped by a petite girl in a blue-green windbreaker, with platium blond hair in a ponytail, pale white-pink skin with a smattering of brown freckles. She has black eyebrows and very pale blue eyes. She stares at me intently for a moment, then says, "What do you think now?"

"What?" I blink.

"What," she repeats, "do you think now?"

I'm still at a loss, so I just sigh a little as I lean forward, and we fall into a deep kiss. I put my hands on her shoulders, and for about a solid minute we just stand there in the hallway with our lips locked together. It takes a few seconds before I even realize that it's happening, so at first I let her provide all the movement. Then I start to feel self-conscious, so I try to contribute more.

It's a good kiss, with a strange, gentle vacuum-effect holding us together. I run my hands down her sides, and then I break contact with her mouth and start to kiss the rest of her face. She moves her head against my chest and I lean around her to kiss the back of her neck. Then, remembering a bit of advice I got from a girl in 10th grade, I move to kiss her lips again while running my hands through her hair. But as I do, a very tall guy of about our age walks up behind her and starts to mockingly paw at her back. I pull myslef away, tentatively, keeping my hands on her hips. Finally, she turns to look at the guy over her shoulder and tells him to quit it. Something about the goofy look on the guy's face tells me he doesn't mean any harm.

Apparently these two are friends, and they start talking to each other about something. I'm not interested enough to hear them, so I zone out until she turns back to me. I reach into her jacket to feel her lower torso, and I lean forward to kiss her again, but this time she tenses up and resists.

"Going back for a second time, eh?" she says.

This question makes as little sense as the first one she asked me, but this time she really seems irate. Does she not want me touching her stomach for some reason?

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a bent copy of the flyer from the theater lobby.

"In the talent competition against those other two girls, when I stood up I heard you say, 'She doesn't stand a chance.'"

"Uhh, that wasn't me."

"It wasn't?"

"No."

Her expression changes from indignation to confusiuon. I wonder if this means she won't let me make out with her anymore. She turns back to her tall friend, and they start discussing this case of mistaken identity. Meanwhile, I excuse myself to go use the restroom.

The restoom is filthy, and I'm wishing that I hadn't walked out here in just my socks.

2005.02.03 I'm housesitting my grandfather's bungalow in Los Angeles. It's like a tiny palace. Shiny, red-brown waxed ceramic tile floor. Potted palms scattered everywhere. Decorated in a low-key 1930s deco style with impeccable taste. Very clean and orderly, but with a faint tinge of madness. There are just a few too many books stacked neatly on the tables and shelves, and the window shades are in what seems like a suspiciously calculated disarray, with some open, some closed, and some precisely half-open. And the front door is actually a series of five or six doors on top of each other, each with its own lock and deadbolt, like that scene in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.

As I step into the house I am gripped with anxiety. I feel exposed, vulnerable to some vague threat from outside. I start to panic, but I pull myself together. If I can just come up with something constructive to do, the very act of putting my mind to it will help calm my nerves, I reason. I methodically shut, lock and bolt each of the several doors, and close all of the window shades.

Then I start to imagine myself as a private detective, like Philip Marlowe. I stare at the covered windows and imagine the infinite depths of depravity and evil going on outside. It's thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Then the night becomes a blur, and I see snatches of myself stumbling through the house in a haze, possibly with invited guests lounging around, but I'm not really paying attention. Now I'm smoking a huge blunt and there's some rap song on the stereo. The guy is talking about how he doesn't want to smoke weed anymore because it makes him paranoid.

* * * *

While out walking one night, I chance across a small art boutique, with wooden sculptures in a yard behind a low chain link fence. Impulsively, I jump the fence, and in the yard I find a handsome totem pole, unpainted, about seven feet tall. I pick it up (it's light enough that I can carry it easily) and take it back with me to my house. [This is the same neighborhood I saw in another dream where I got lost in a stranger's house that was across the street from a secret military base.]

As I reach my front door, I can see the red-and-blue glint of a police beacon from inside. It's the official law enforcement alarm on my answering machine. Sure enough, when I go inside and check my messages, one of them is from an officer informing me that a warrant has been issued for my arrest-- not for stealing the totem pole just now, but for burglarizing the house where my friends Aaron and Kim live, sometime last week. I had driven Joe, another friend of mine, downtown to pay a fine or a parking ticket or something, and after dropping him off at the courthouse I got bored and went to Aaron and Kim's place, while they were out, to steal a 1960s horror movie magazine that I knew they had. I thought they wouldn't miss it, and might not even have known that it was there in the first place, but I greatly wanted it becuase I knew that there was a rare, highly collectible vinyl 3" mini-record inside.

The magazine is in a pile of papers on the desk right next to my answering machine. I open it up and look at the mini-record as I wait for the police to arrive.

2005.02.01 A girl is asking me to salivate on her knuckles. She makes a fist and holds it out to me, and I sort of suck and kiss each of her knuckles in succession as she sits there smiling placidly. She has a boyfriend, and he's sitting at a table not twenty feet away, reading a book or talking or something, but supposedly this is okay because the girl just wants to have wet knuckles, and I'm the only one who understands how to do this correctly.

Later, I have bought a DVD sampler of vintage 1960s Marvel Comics cartoons -- Captain America, Hulk, Ghost Rider, etc. -- but I can't watch it, because I can't find a DVD player anywhere that isn't being used by someone else.

Then I'm riding shotgun in a powder blue van being driven by my 80 or 90-something grandfather. He's quite senile, and can't form a single coherent sentence. I wonder if it's safe for him to be driving.

2005.01.27 I'm in a bookstore, browsing. A cute blonde in shorts and a t-shirt appears in my peripheral vision, at the other end of the aisle. I see her glance at me. I walk past her to check her out, trying to play inconspicuous, and then I round a corner out of her line of sight. Then I turn around and realize that I may have made a mistake by walking away from her like that, because now if I try to walk back where I was, I'll look deranged. I decide to try and sneak back around through another section of the store and find a safe place from where I can tail her. But just then, in my peripheral vision again, I see a intriguing pack of gaming miniatures on the shelf beside me. I want to take it to a UPC scanner to check the price, but that's in the direction opposite the girl...

2005.01.24 My car is being overhauled. The chassis has been completely rebuilt, and now it looks like a red Corvette. In the garage, a couple of guys (dwarves?) in jumpsuits peel back the beige upholstery and reveal black leather underneath. And somewhere in the corner, behind some shelves of junk, I find an eight-foot paper-maché-and-cardboard totem pole that I had partially built in high school, and then abandoned. I like it, and I think I will finish it.

Later (or maybe earlier), I'm watching a movie on TV, an adaptation of an L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi novel. Not Battlefield Earth. Some other one. During the opening credits, the camera pans over shelves in a house, loaded with VHS tapes that have been hand-labeled. After a minute or so I realize that the tapes are the same tapes that are in my house, and that the house I'm looking at is in fact my house. I tell my mom about it, but she doesn't seem interested. That's when I start to dimly recall that my father had invited a film crew to our house one weekend back in the mid-'90s...

Then I'm scanning a map of the USA, looking for a place to live. I briefly consider an inviting-looking lake in eastern Washington state, but then decide that I really should hold out for something on the ocean.