September 3, 1999
I dream I am involved with three boys in a plot to blow up a resort area. I want to back out, but one boy is dragging us with him in the wake of his evilness. I find I have to take a leak, so I remove my pants and underpants and rush for the men’s room. Then, I run to the pool area, swim across the crowded pool, speed through the parking lot, and leap, pantsless, behind some rocks. I’m thinking the bomb should have detonated by now, but I’m glad it hasn’t. [Read more →]
October 11, 2008
I dream I am performing my magic show, and my nemesis has been whipping the audience into a frenzy exclaiming he is going to expose my new levitation trick. I explain to him that he would disappoint the audience because they want to be mystified more than they want to understand how the trick is done. Furthermore, the levitation apparatus I have is recommended for use with someone who weighs less than 140 pounds, and clearly he weighs more than that. As I explain about the weight, my nemesis transforms into an early 20th century middle-aged woman with a long dress, a comically large hat and a parasol. In his woman configuration, my nemesis will not expose a trick if it means the audience would know he weighs more than 140 pounds.
July 15, 2000
I dream I am at a Weight Watchers meeting and Mary Carpenter is showing the murals of me that she has painted. They are well done, and I thank her. Then I realize that the meeting is about to begin and I haven’t weighed in, nor have I weighed in for weeks. I have a conflict because you’re supposed to pay for weeks that you missed, so I sneak out and plan to rejoin later. I duck into the bathroom and use the enormous orthopedic toilet because I’m curious to see how it will flush.
June 3, 1998
I dream I am at a clothing store for overweight Jewish men. The salesperson is growing impatient with me. I tell her I’m just looking but she wants me to buy something. Mike Young, the artistic director of Comedysportz, also tries to hurry me along. I put them off because I am embarrassed to admit the truth. The largest size in the store is one size too small for me.
October 27, 2008
I dream an alien from another planet calls and offers to give me eternal life and make me “one of him.” I am repelled but fascinated. I don’t think I’m going to say yes. I am in my home and a normal looking man I presume to be the alien is hanging around outside and he wants to come in. I want to call 911, but I can’t find the phone.
May 15, 2008
I dream I am on a small planet decorated with plant life donated by an alien race. The plants are rectangular and sparkly and beautiful, but I have a bad feeling about them. Suddenly, through a psychic flash, I see the home planet on which squads of aliens are in charge of maintaining the plants. It is labor intensive, and requires a lot of running. People are punished harshly if they neglect the plants. I see that these supposed “gifts” are part of an elaborate plot to keep us in line.
April 25, 1999
I dream I am in California with Gail, who is preoccupied with a paranormal event. There is a huge, raised pedestal with obscure signs on it indicating that either aliens or gods were meddling in human affairs. A human woman’s necklace has disappeared from a mall and Gail feels she has unraveled the mystery. I go with her to verify the story. Gail is convinced, but I am not.
January 7, 2009
I dream I am hanging out near the indoor swimming pool at a Jewish Community Center. Actor David McCallum is at the pool chatting amiably with anyone who approaches him. He explains that he often comes to the JCC on the weekends. Meanwhile, I have to leave to attend a final rehearsal for a musical that opens at the JCC that night. I don’t know the lines or the songs, but the first number choreography involves tipping your top hat and dragging yourself around the floor in a circle.
July 12, 2008
I dream I audition for Play it again, Sam at the Jewish Y. I put my name on the list, see there are five people ahead of me, and figure I have time to go to the bathroom. The people recommend I don’t, but I say “the bathroom is right there; I can take care of this thing.” I am followed in by a teenage boy and a teenage girl. I say to the teenage girl, “You know, this is a men’s bathroom, don’t you?” She doesn’t care, so I tell her to get the fuck out of there. She says I should be ashamed of myself for saying “fuck” to a teenage girl. I say “I’m not ashamed of saying ‘fuck’ to a teenage girl who hangs out in men’s rooms.”
June 12, 1998
I dream I am working at a combination university/Jewish Community Center. My nemesis finds two beautiful Jewish women, convinces us all to get naked, fill up a steam shovel with cold cream, and take turns giving each other rides. After awhile, my nemesis slips away and brings the staff of the university/JCC to watch me frolic with the women. Once again, my nemesis makes me look bad.
January 30, 2009
I dream I am in a cooking show/cooking school and the challenge today is “mouse cooking.” With a certain naughtiness, the chef pulls a little white mouse from his costume, covers it with flour and sugar and puts it into the center of a metal ball that screws together. Later, it comes out in a deep fried state. I am disgusted and I refuse to eat it, but on the way home I am with other people and a bird swoops toward me. I accidentally injure it. One of my companions, the former head of the Department of Performance Studies at NYU, insists that I must now take care of the bird because I have altered its life. I find a box in my garage in which the bird can heal.
January 18, 2009
I dream I am on a bus trip to an unfamiliar city with mazelike streets. I explore the magic shop, which seems to be well-stocked, but nothing interests me. On the way back to the room, I hear that a present is waiting for me. In the bathtub, there is a small puddle of scum, a fish head, and a half mouse that is still alive. Nearby I find a bucket and a pair of mouse tongs. Using the mouse tongs, I place the half mouse into the bucket and fill it up with water. I hold the half mouse under until it is dead.
January 5, 2009
I dream I live in a cross between my father’s house and a hostel for wayward youth. I need to go to the bathroom, so I steal a padlock from outside the bedroom of Curly from the Three Stooges. I use Curly’s lock to keep the bathroom secure. The bathroom is squalid, so I try to do my business quickly. There is wind coming in and it makes some toiletries move to the edge of the sink and then fall off. This creates kind of a shadow play. One of the bottles is shaped like Mickey Mouse, and Mickey’s silhouette appears to commit suicide by jumping off the sink.
January 19, 2009
I dream I finally discover why my father hasn’t been himself for a few years. He admits to having died several years earlier and to be keeping himself alive through a kind of voodoo. He has been concealing his own dead body and now feels guilty about it. To set things straight, he agrees to take me to the amusement park to celebrate. I am happy to go to the amusement park and I tell myself that I’ll go easy on him and take him to the animal show instead of making him go on the roller coaster.
July 5, 1998
I dream my computer is going nuts with images of Snoopy and since I am to pick my father up from the hospital I am anxious. Suddenly, my father and a social worker appear at the door. My father is crying and disoriented. I ask the social worker why they are here, since I am supposed to pick him up at the hospital in a couple of hours. The social worker snidely tells me that, if I want, he can take my father back to the hospital and I can pick him up in a couple of hours. I tell the social worker I don’t need sarcasm and if he likes sarcasm I’ll give him some. Then, I start jumping around the room telling the social worker how magnificent he is.
December 19, 1995
I dream I am in an apartment with my father and some Comedysportz people. My father wants to put some ice cream on the fire escape. He jumps out the window and onto the fire escape, but there is no floor to it and he falls several stories to his death. He reappears months later in a large, white car.
January 15, 2009
I dream I am at my parents’ house and Mr. Giraffe comes to visit. Mr. Giraffe has a human appearance, but he is clearly part giraffe — extremely tall with light brown coloring. Mr. Giraffe speaks for the environment and calls recent infractions to our attention. He wants to take me by the hand and show me the places on the lawn where we have misbehaved. Even though his hands are enormous, and I am conscious of the possibility that he could easily crush me, I take his hand. I am not sure what we did, but a visit from Mr. Giraffe is serious and we will have to correct our environmental mistakes.
December 30, 2008
I dream I am having a party at my parents’ home on Clark Street. Obama has just been elected president and there is much rejoicing. Every guest is a significant buxom woman from some period in my life. I have not dressed for this party; I am wearing nothing but a bathrobe. The women think it’s cute, but I am straining to conceal my tumescence. At the end of the party I have to get dressed because I am to give a couple of the women rides home.
June 14, 1999
I dream my life is a movie and I live with my father, Jack Nicholson, in a luxury condominium. I am playing with a novelty grasshopper hatchery in a paper bag and I see that they’re about to hatch. I leave the condo and run down the hall. I’m careful to hold the bag tightly, but I trip in front of the elevator and lose my grip. A few grasshoppers escape and crawl up my arm and under my shirt. By the time the elevator door opens, the walls, floor, and ceiling are coated with a thick layer of grasshoppers. I run for the stairs, covered with grasshoppers, and I try to get as many of them out of the building as I can. I fear the condo board will find out and get me.
January 5, 2009
I dream I am with my sister-in-law, Deborah, on an elevated train in one of the outer boroughs of New York. I am wearing a yellow sun dress. Since there are hardly any people in the car with us, I try to discretely moon Deborah. I get no reaction. Since I have to go to work in the city, I get off the train to buy some normal clothing. I wind up in a shore community that is filled with mud pits, go karts, and a mall devoted to novelty items. I find plastic flamingos, arte deco highball glasses, and cocktail napkins with jokes on them, but no clothing.
July 29, 2008
I dream I am sitting in a train station inside an employees-only area when a younger version of my dissertation advisor appears. He enthusiastically praises my doctoral dissertation on vaudeville magic acts and assures me that it’s going to be published because it is both scholarly and accessible. And then, he tells me that I inspired him to finally finish his dissertation. “Yes,” he tells me. “I have been letting it drag on, but I’m finally going to finish it.” I am shocked, because he is one of the most distinguished scholars in the field. He wishes me well.
December 5, 1993
I dream that a man with a mustache is threatening me and Gail in an Amtrak dining car. He goads us and assures us that we won’t live very long after we get off the train. Seeing I have no alternative, I stab the shit out of the guy repeatedly with my knife and fork. The wounds aren’t very deep, but the guy sure is surprised. Later on, Gail and I find ourselves at the side of the train tracks, safe but surrounded by white paper bags filled with the tiny, bloody pieces of the man with the mustache.
December 22, 2008
I dream I am not myself and I work at an office at which very little is accomplished. There are constant parties and hours during which people watch television and yet everyone thinks they are overworked. I purchase a greeting card with the idea of giving it to a young woman but I don’t know which young woman. It is a treacherous situation, because all the women talk to each other about who gives them greeting cards. After a company picnic lunch, I get involved in a plot parallel to the last scenes in a Hannibal Lechter movie. I chase Lechter through a series of bathroom tableaus and I foil him. Throughout this process I am also watching it on a wide screen TV.
September 12, 2008
I dream my department at work is being honored with a party and I am a central figure. Everybody is there from our department but nobody from any other department has shown up. Finally, people start showing up and they all have the capability of producing wads of caramel candy, supposedly in our honor. Thing is, the candy looks like turds and they are dropping them all over the place. On behalf of my department, I thank them.
November 25, 2001
I dream I am at a combination of a university and a publishing company. One of my younger colleagues corners me in a cubicle-filled area and he praises my sideshow article and adds that my grammar is impeccable. I thank him, and then try to find my cubicle and start work on my column. When I get there, I am not wearing any clothes and I do not have a computer.
November 18, 2008
I dream Dan and I are visiting Norway. I am impressed with the terrain, because you enter every town by going down a hill into an underground hole. You don’t feel like you’re underground because the fog above you feels like the sky. Each little underground town is different. We are about to get a shuttle bus back to our hotel, but Dan makes us miss it because he wants to purchase a Norwegian jacket. I see no jackets for sale. All is see is smoked meat and smoked fish.
October 16, 2008
I dream Gail and I are coming home from Russia on a super airplane. The cabins are nice, but because of the atmospheric pressure things behave strangely. A spray bottle in our room goes nuts and empties itself out, and when I go to the bathroom my poo spews all around the room. The highlight of the trip is when I discover that it is possible to climb up on top of the plane. It is narrow and scary and slippery up there. As I hold onto the plane in a prone position, I marvel at the snowy Russian wonderland below.
March 9, 1994
I dream I am in a restaurant and a woman I don’t know sits down to watch me eat. I feel uncomfortable but I try to appear nonchalant. Then, I order two cups of Devil Dog tea. From the monuments outside, we appear to be in a combination of Penn Station and Red Square.
December 19, 2008
I dream there is a sparse crowd in a theater watching movies of old magicians. In the audience is Chanin, my magic mentor from my teen years. I am amazed that he’s still alive, as he must be in his hundreds by now. I try to talk to him about his salt trick, but he is more interested in his nursemaid. When we leave the theater we use vampires as a mode of transportation. We climb onto them and ride them to Borgo Pass, where we have to make a transfer.
July 6, 1999
I dream Gail and I show up after having missed a day at our editing jobs. Oddly enough, we find a very relaxed place with no stress and nobody seems to care that Gail was absent. To satisfy the authorities, my boss asks Gail to write on a piece of paper that she had mono. We wind up in an entertainment environment in which a production of Dracula is playing. Dracula is about to terrorize a group of hand puppets who are in bed together. I recognize this, of course, as the original Bela Lugosi version of Dracula. Then they run an old Three Stooges short made with replacement stooges after the originals all died.
June 13, 1999
I dream I am a modern-day Van Helsing working in the last minutes before sunrise to destroy Dracula, who is played by Kelsey Grammer. Grammer has to get back to his coffin and my associates and I have to kill him. Through my palm sized computer-communicator I see that Grammer is trying to con one of them into transforming him back into a human instead of destroying him with stake and garlic. I tell my associate that Grammer is lying; he’s trying to fool you and what you should do is load Grammer’s head with bullets.
December 21, 2008
I dream I am attending some kind of professional conference that is held in a public park. The keynote address is about to be given from the top of a pyramid shaped tower/building. The building is very crowded, but they have speakers set up so you can hear from anywhere on the grounds. Suddenly, just as the speech is about to begin, the pyramid transforms into a huge amusement park ride that looks like a windmill. The people on the pyramid are thrown upside-down and spun in various directions. People are amazed at this new innovation, and I am delighted because a) it is magical-looking and b) I am not on it.
June 11, 2000
I dream I work as an attendant on a tower of death ride. My one job is to look for problems and push a panic button. At the end of the day, I am dropped off at a mall/arcade near my house and I run into my brother, Dan, who is trying to impress a young lady. The young lady instantly takes a shine to me. I charm her by using my foot as a puppet.
October 21, 1998
I dream I awaken on the floor of a garage on the edge of a seashore amusement park. My brother and I look for an attraction called “The Murder House,” a dark ride that you can only find by going through laundry rooms and maintenance areas until you come across a creaky old service elevator made of dark, rotting wooden slats. Other people seem to know of the ride, too, and we all go onto this elevator and press “down.” The elevator descends to a frightening, awful level filled with wailing demons that reach through the wooden slats and fondle us. The demons are genuine, and I am so scared that my brother promises to sue the amusement park for me.
August 25, 2008
I dream my brother and I get off a bus prematurely on the way to our home in Northeast Philadelphia. We see that we can get home faster if we cut through a combination slaughterhouse and industrial complex. We go through the well-landscaped and grassy front and are pleased to find no barriers to walking through the place. No one seems to notice us. There are various chutes and people doing their jobs, but Dan is confused about why the cows are staggering. I explain to him that they had been hit on the head with a sledge hammer prior to their being slaughtered. We wind up inside what appears to be the slaughterhouse boardinghouse, which features old time signs and a rack of post cards from days gone by.
July 18, 2000
I dream I am in my parents’ basement and magicians are doing a birthday party in the neighborhood. Some doves have gotten into the house and when I open the door to get rid of them several gigantic chickens escape as well. Also, Dave Jadico spots a white bear and calls 911. The cops come over to join Dave’s Bear Watch. The magicians try to get publicity by claiming they produced the bear by magic.
April 13, 1999
I dream Carter from ER creates an intelligent goat made out of fudge. The goat is lifelike despite its chocolaty brown color. At the party for its unveiling, everybody is impressed. Some people are spooked, but the rabbits at the party are beloved.
December 5, 2008
I dream I am in the car with my mother after a trip to the Vietnamese supermarket. As I ponder whether or not I will be able to make a right before the traffic light changes, I realize that I am looking down at the traffic light from approximately 30 yards up. Impossibly, my car is hovering in the air. I don’t know how it got there, and I don’t know how to operate it in hover mode. Then, in a Sean Connery voice, I say to my mother a line from The Untouchables: “If he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”
November 28, 2008
I dream I am in my large, newly remodeled bathroom contemplating how wonderful it is. Suddenly, my nemesis crawls out from behind a cabinet. He claims to have an official reason for having meetings in my bathroom, but I know he is there to harass me. I chase him, but he has a head start. As soon as I appear to be catching up, I find myself in a grassy field, and huge fences start to appear around the perimeter to restrain me. There is a gate guarded by a goat and a policewoman. In order to be allowed out, I have to promise the policewoman that I will sing a song for my mother at an upcoming holiday.
July 2, 1998
I dream I am in an office space, and I get a call from someone who doesn’t identify himself. He annoys me, but I don’t hang up because he is amusing and I think I must know him from somewhere. We discuss local theater. Then my mother comes in, and I ditch the caller to spend time with her. She pretends her visit is normal, but I realize that she’s visiting from beyond the grave. I tell her how much I appreciate her visit. When I leave, I thank an office worker and ask if she’s dead too, or if she’s simply an extra.
September 29, 2008
I dream I am in a hilly yet urban snowy area with a grid of trails and steps and tunnels and fences. In this community, everyone is playing a war game. We all have guns and we are all attempting to shoot each other as we come around corners. I am shot, blithely, by a young man laying in wait for me so the game appears to be over for me. I get up and start walking towards the fence. I can’t get out, but I chip away at the fence so I can get a look at the other side where there seems to be a thriving, happy city. I’d like to break through the fence, but gendarmes are there to prevent me from coming in.
March 8, 2000
I dream I live in a cross between my parents’ house and a college dorm. I have a relationship with a sexy but elderly woman who likes helping me with my teaching. After a long day of her mentorship, I get an inkling that she wants to go to bed with me. I set the alarm and she comes into my bedroom to give me a gift. It’s a gun. I don’t want a gun, but I don’t want to seem ungracious. The landlord comes in and pressures me to accept the gun. I never have sex with the mentor.
February 3, 1994
I dream my life is the plot of a new action movie and I have an auto body repair business right in front of my high rise apartment building. I have a disgruntled employee who threatens to kill me with a rivet gun. He stalks me through the building and I hide in crawl spaces between staircases. He is never far behind me, but he doesn’t catch up.
July 6, 2008
I dream I am a guest at a rich kid’s high school party. There are many rooms and I am awkward in all of them. I don’t know what to do, so I do card tricks for my own amusement. No one is paying attention. There are various activities including a costume competition but I get involved in the snake run. There are very specific protocols. You have to have an offering for the snake and you must never give the snake anything by hand so as to avoid being bitten. I know all the rules but still I am not prepared. I try to give the snake money and I manage to not be bitten.
July 26, 2000
I dream I am at a party and retire to the auxiliary kitchen in the library. I prepare some whitefish, but I don’t want to be caught because whitefish is an embarrassing food. I wrap it in several layers of white paper and put it into a small box in the refrigerator. When I return to it the next day, I see that it has been tampered with.
February 26, 1999
I dream I am attending a party at Siegfried and Roy’s house. I am surprised at how grim and dingy it is; under lit, multi-leveled, and with wrapped candy and dried pasta strewn around the floors. I see no animals, but I am led to understand that they are wandering around someplace. A grungy guy who looks sort of like Roy tells me there was a night when some of the animals escaped to Knott’s Berry Farm and when he finally found them they were performing an acrobatic act. The dolphins were on the flying trapeze along with some of the tigers.
October 31, 2008
I dream Gail and I go to what looks on the outside like a suburban multiplex. Once we go inside we see that it’s a very old building with quaint architecture and we can’t find the box office. We follow flights of stairs going down, down, down, and we wind up in a quaint, modular movie theater in which you can’t see the screen. There are vending machines with caramel dipped marshmallows wrapped in wax paper for 49 cents. I go into the men’s room, but the urinals are too high for me. There are low tables where people play cards. I perform card tricks in the men’s room, but a man from the theater board of directors eyes me suspiciously.
August 30, 2008
I dream I go to a hard-boiled crime movie with my dad, but the plot turns in a way I’m afraid might upset him. The protagonist is gay and getting progressively more womanly and strange throughout the movie. At one point he is making out with a man who has metal studs on his face and a large segment of the audience gets up to leave. One guy is so appalled that he faints, and his friends pick him up and lay him across the chairs. I am a little annoyed with this movie, too, and I can tell my dad would like to get the hell out of there.
August 3, 1998
I dream the coming attractions of a new fantasy film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. An enchanted gorilla captures Edward Asner and puts him into a mammoth glass of water. The gorilla clamps his hand over the top of the glass so Asner can’t come up for air. Asner struggles until he realizes that he can breathe under water, and he is filled with insight.
August 1, 2008
I dream a charming villian drives my family’s bus. He makes quick u-turns, and each time my seat wobbles precariously. At first I don’t think he has anything to do with it, but then I realize I’m being naïve. Later on, the villian encourages people to say negative things about me and then he embellishes these negatives and uses them to attack my credibility in agit-prop street performances. A young man in our community, maybe about 15, foils the plan by making improper advances towards the villian. The young man makes agit-prop street performances in which the villian is made to look like a child molester.
August 8, 1995
I dream I am with my father and brother Danny, and we have to go somewhere in Danny’s car — an Alpha Romeo with only two seats. I ask Danny where I am supposed to sit, and he pulls out a little kid’s seat in the back. We travel to a cross between a university and a mall, where Gail’s family is having a party. At the party, Danny is clever and spellbinding and interesting, as usual, and I am a dud by comparison. Partygoers send me up to the fourteenth floor to pick up Danny’s cleaning.
January 1, 1994
I dream I am driving on a pillow in a combination of Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The man in the lane next to me is sympathetic, but an Asian man tries to run him into my lane. The sympathetic man pulls the Asian man over and yells at him for driving recklessly and for being unkind to those who can’t afford cars and must ride on their pillows.
August 14, 2008
I dream I am in a combination library/university center. Some guy who has been talking to a lot of people has a yellow pad filled with questions about me. Apparently, he has read some of my evaluations and he doesn’t understand why students and supervisors have said positive things. I don’t seem to him to be entertaining or energetic or interesting or engaged. So not too far from earshot from him, I sit down with my brother, Dan. I tell him something is troubling me. I have noticed that somebody has written on a yellow pad, and on this yellow pad I am being evaluated. The guy overhears this, and explains to me that I seem to be pretty much a dud — an unimpressive person. I know that I could suddenly become energetic and impressive, but I decide I am not interested in performing for this guy.
August 16, 2006
I dream I am in a Jewish Community Center with a group of people preparing for a dance performance. We are in a well-appointed room with couches and tables as well as shower nozzles. It seems that the thing to do is shower before rehearsal. I have no compunctions about getting naked and showering in this room when I realize that’s what you’re supposed to do. As soon as I take off my pants, however, Michael Jeffery Cohen notices that I have a mole on my buttock. He grabs my mole with his thumb and forefinger and holds onto it. I find this awkward.
