Score, Sixth Style

Perhaps surprisingly, I don't often dream of Doctor Who. In fact, as far as I know, it's only happened once before: a rather charming affair with me riding around in Bessie with the third Doctor.

But that's it, really. Just a drive. Nothing else.

Until the other night.

I had me a dream with the sixth Doctor* (so, uhhh, no doubt about me dreaming in colour, what?). I'm not sure exactly at what point it started, but by the time I'm cognizant of what's going on, the Doctor and I am on the crest of a hill. A hill, I think, either in Gloucester (which I favour) or in Yorkshire: the bottom of the hill is in a mere, the top is bright green and dry. In the distance, we can see one hell of a storm bewing; the clouds are a violent black and purple curdling against an evening sky. The Doctor says he needs to know more about it, so I take a running leap off the hill. The valleys are full of giant broccoli stalks**: I run off the edge and leap onto one, which bows down with my weight into the valley, where a storm is fearfully raging. I pop back as it catapults up.

Later (in the sort of Strindbergian connexion dreams have), I'm driving along with the Doctor in a Morris Minor. We pull into the parking lot of my parents' church, only to see a future version of the Doctor -- the one from Real Time and after that sports a blue plaid version of his coat -- along with two versions of Peri. One from The Two Doctors and one from The Mysterious Panet. I convince my Doctor to pop off, so as not meet the future Peris, but this is where my dreams runs out.

What does it mean? Beats me, except:

*Ever since I purchashed "Attack of the Cybermen", I've been going through and listening to the commentary on each episode. I'm up to Terror of the Vervoids, ep. 3, so you can see where the Sixth Doctor angle comes from. Although Col makes one hell of a commentary guide -- second only to the vegetable man.

**Oh, this is so totally from watching that episode of The Powerpuff Girls with the Broccoloids they aired this week!

Oh, and can I just praise the sort of fate that makes sure I listen to Big Finish's "Company of Friends" the same week I re-read Shelley's Frankenstein? It's totally a B+ for effort and a C- for concept! I mean, did anyone bother to do research on Percy? Clearly not! The exigencies of writing a drama clearly take it up the ass here! I'd be more praising if the play were just not crippled by lazy writers!

Somehow or other, I managed to read both the beginning of Shelley's Frankenstein and watch the episode of Wild Russia on the Arctic on the same day. (If you don't know, the frame story of Frankenstein takes place on a boat in the far north of Russia, past Arkhangelsk and the White Sea). I rather assumed any dreams I'd remember would have been about endless white landscapes and harsh colds.

They weren't. I had a rather odd one, really. To set it up, I should mention that while my academic writing is all done under my own name, most of the rest is done pseudonymously pseudonomically... under a pen name.

In my dream, I'm walking down a street in the town where I went to college. Except this street doesn't actually exist. It was a side street along the main drag which isn't really there; it was all white stucco and tall wooden doors and milk bottles and weeds, like something in Belsize Park.

Anyway, I'm walking down this street with my friend Jamie, who for reasons that remain unclear, is wearing a medium purple pants suit, rather like Hillary Clinton on an old TV set in need of knob-twiddling. We are on our way to a film opening.

Which is in a little cafe that's all brushed steel and glass-top tables. We settle in somewhere in the middle, just in front of a group of people I knew. I don't know who they are now, but they were all people I recognised then. I *think* they were all people I went to undergrad with, which would at least be appropriate to the setting.

And these people are sitting around reading and tearing into a script I wrote. Ruthlessly. I don't know where they got it, and it's clear they don't know I wrote it, but it makes me hugely uncomfortable, and I spend a good few minutes trying to figure out a) how to communicate my discomfort and b) and to tell them I think it's rather good.

The dream itself peters out about there. It's odd because I throw around a fair amount of scripts to people and -- often being harsh in reading others -- expect people to be just as harsh with mine. I'm thick skinned about it, because it's foolish not to take good advice. But apparently I'm not quite as thick skinned as I imagined, at least subconcsiously.

In any event, the next dream I had involved me losing control of a minivan on a slippery road and crashing into a tree. This was also in Chapel Hill -- I could show the exact spot, down to the tree, on Franklin Street going down onto 15-501 where it happend. Weird little book-end...

Seattle Serenade

A few weeks ago, I was in Seattle. I had to step over to a grocery store, and as I was waiting for the car service to pick me up, one of the employees was out front, playing a ukulele and singing.

I asked him if he knew "This Little Ukulele". He didn't so I offered to teach him, since it's only three chords and two verses. (I bet you didn't know I could play the ukulele...) As I was playing it through, someone stopped in the parking lot, pointed, and went "Ohmigod! It's Stephin Merritt!"

I was flattered for a minute, till I remembered the last picture I saw of Stephin.

Another Question.

Since it's Wednesday night, I thought I'd mention Animal Planet's new show, Monsters Inside Me, a show about parasites. It's oddly compelling and pointlessly over-dramatic at the same time, and it gives a distinctly contradictory message: both "go see the doctor when you get weird pains and unexplained symptoms" -- a point I probably should give a great deal more heed to, since my first reaction to any given medical emergency, up to an including basset hounds ripping my lip off, is "I'll be all right in a minute" -- and "your doctors will never, ever recognize these parasite infections and will only make you worse off!".

And the host is kind of hott. At least some of it is my weird little masochistic streak; more than I should, I enjoy the attractive but slightly snotty biologist talking down to me about how rat lung worm got its name (as the name implies, they're worms that live in rats' lungs) as if I couldn't quite get there on my own. But another part is that he looks vaguely familiar. It's taken me a few weeks to figure it out, but here goes -- I think he looks an awful lot like a guy who did a stroke vid a few years ago for YouLoveJack.com. A really, really good one. Followed up with an equally good two-hander (as it were).

You decide.

Here is "Charlie Duke":

























And here is host Dan Riskin:

Okay, so the screen capture yanked from Youtube isn't the best shot to demonstrate the similarity, but frankly I think the inability to find pictures of Dan is a sure sign I'm on to something.

Update!

All right, so it's been a while. I've been travelling: Baltimore to Rapid City to El Paso, and soon to be in Savannah and Seattle. I'll post a link to pictures soon.

But my update:

Several months ago, I posted about Tanya Lee and Joshua from eHarmony. I postulated they were probably far-right Jesus-freak whackos, and Joshua's flaunted assets in the trousers department notwithstanding, they waited till marriage to get it aaawwhhhn.

And I was right.

One of them -- presumably the male -- writes thus:

Marriage is a biblical union under God that happens to be recognized by our government. It is not subject to amendments. I believe that it would be right of our government to offer some sort of union benefit to those who wish to join their lives in a same-sex union. However, this does not mean that the government has any right to step into the church and redefine "marriage". The separation between church and state is not to keep the beliefs of the church out of our governing systems. Instead is to keep the governing systems out of the church. ...

This is not about rights as a citizen of the United States of America. This is about whether we as a country have the audacity to ammend the Bible. "Marriage" is not the term to be used in homosexual unions. This is not ever been defined in the Bible as such. Thus it is not the place or right of my government to change that. In order to keep separate as so many have suggested the church and the state, we must fundamentally re-examine the suggestions being purposed. (Reported via this site.)

Great stuff, huh? "It's not about rights"? "The separation between church and state is not to keep the beliefs of the church out of our governing systems"? I personally like the idea that American law is somehow subject to the law of god, yet nobody who crafted it, practiced it or commented on it at the time ever mentioned that.

I guess Alexander Hamilton was quite right when he said "We forgot."

People's Court Super-Fan

Now here's something I bet you don't know. There's a People's Court Super-Frea... Fan. Super-Fan.

I don't know his name; I don't know anything about him, but I first ran across him a few years ago when I actually attended a taping of The People's Court.

See, I myself am a fan of the show. I adore it. And, living in the City and all, I decided to go see it made. And it was worth it.

He was there, you see. And clearly the production staff had dealt with him before. You could tell by the tone of their voice. This time, apparently, he had shown up with a People's Court logo t-shirt. Which they couldn't (or wouldn't, maybe --it was pretty hideous) let on the air. He obligingly turned it inside out. They seated him.

As we were waiting for the taping to begin, someone (a audience relations person or some such) prepared us. She gave us the rules -- don't talk, turn off your mobiles, etc -- and then took a few questions. Which SuperFan proceeded to answer for her.

Anyway, since then, I've always noticed him in the little studio audience. He's there a good 40 or 50% of the time. Look for him: he's a little Asian guy, bald, with glasses. And he seems to almost have an assigned seat, the aisle seat on the second row behind the plaintiff.

Now you Know!

It's Not Just Me, Right?

Now I'll admit I'd never heard of celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito before tonight's episode of The Biggest Loser.

But man, let me tell you, when I saw him a did a double take that verged on a spit-take. Why?

This is Chef Rocco:



...and this is one of the stars of Eurocreme, Philippe Delvaux:


They do resemble each other, right? I'm not crazy.

Anyway, I don't know where exactly you can see the Chef (I think he may be the eponym behind the Rocco's on 22nd Street), but thankfully, you can find Phillipe in PartyBoy*. And -- so I'm told and will certainly be going to check out -- Indie Boyz 5.

*For god's sake, stop what you're doing and go watch the first scene with him and Alex Stevens and somebody else...