A Seriously Bad Dream

Last night, I had a very bad dream. Not a nightmare, just a dream that sucked, a total waste of my subconscious mind.

Sometimes I dream in movies or TV shows, which is likely a reflection of how much the media controls my day to day existence. But usually the dreams are playfully imaginative with decent twists and strange scene morphs that end up with really bizarro juxtapositions that involve things like Tom Selleck playing the saxophone while wearing snowshoes in my grandmother’s washroom.

But last night took the form of a TV show I never want to see put into production (but if it ever is, this blog will show that it was my idea first and I deserve a piece of the action). The show starred Tony Danza as a New York City Law and Order-style detective who solved crimes while hunting supernatural forces of evil a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer (without Sarah Michelle Geller’s perkiness, I’m afraid). Sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? Well, you only get to read about it - I had to suffer through it.

The only cool part about the imaginary show was that it incorporated an idea from Douglas Adams‘ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series: the idea that the human psyche will just ignore things it can’t comprehend. So the aberration of the mind that made it possible for a flying saucer to land right in the middle of a football/football match unnoticed in the Hitchhiker books also allowed for demons and dragons to walk the streets of NYC in broad daylight mostly undetected. Crazy people could see them, but nobody listened to them because they were crazy. In fact, one of the dream’s subplots involved a team of demons that tormented people who were sensitive enough to see the supernatural and made sure they went crazy.

Of course, some people were able to resist the tormentors and lead relatively normal if not deeply flawed lives. Among them were detective Danza and the guest star neighbourhood-watch-captain/NRA-enthusiast who went on covert demon-hunting expeditions but kept on hitting innocent bystanders with his silver bullets blessed with holy water (see what I mean - just bad all around).

Believing that Tony Danza has the wherewithal to sustain supernatural torment is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but I guess if people can believe that Ralph Macchio has the mental discipline to become a martial arts master they can believe anything.

Dreaming such a weak premise should be humiliating enough, but my mind seemed to realize that such a production would never attract a decent budget, so I also had the honour of dreaming punk-ass special effects, mental CGI that was poorly conceived, executed, and rendered. It’s like my subconscious has given up on entertaining me and just gone totally lame on me. What a bummer. Hopefully it has something to do with yesterday being totally physically exhausting, and that with some better quality rest my dream state will be able to subcontract the CGI out to a better special effects house next time.

By the way, if you’re one of the striking writers in Hollywood, and I’m picking up on something you’re actually thinking of to keep your mind occupied on the picket line, take my advice and think about something else. This is a bad idea. So bad, it might even make it into production. So stop now and never write it down. It’s a terrible, terrible, bad, bad, stinky bad idea, even worse than Charmed. So stop now, in the name of all that’s good in the universe (unless you’re going to cut me in, of course).