Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Had a dream much like the Ambrose Bierce short story "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" where I was on holiday with the family in the English hills I believe. It all started innocent enough where the wife and I decided on simple things like where to stop and eat, or if we should go camping or stay in a hotel (Minami was absent from this dream which turns out to be a good thing later). So we got to this old English town that seemed to be known as a famous Medieval relic, famous for morbidly sending thousands of people back in the day to the gallows. Long story short, this tour group (which included other members of my family) decided to hold a mock hanging of everyone where we would line up, the hangsman would put the noose around each persons neck, and then hang them. Only it turns out they would hang the people for real AND everyone seemed to be ok with this. One after another each person in our group would die by hanging and I got closer and closer to it being my turn. At 1st I really didn't think much of it but as I got closer to hearing the choking and gasping for air as people's neck were pulled by rope, I go to thinking, "Is this how it ends? And I'm ok with this? I'm not even that old." So just before it was my turn the lady in front of me makes a fuss about how the rope should go around her neck and it took a long time as I nervously decided whether I was ok with dying. Then I realized I needed to go to the bathroom and I didn't want to pee all over myself as I hung so I decided to head for the bathroom. Of course everyone eyed me suspiciously but no one followed. In the bathroom I tried to draw out the process for as long as I possibly could and that was when I saw an open window and made a run for it. I run for the nearby hills and it doesn't take long before I hear the search party with dogs frantically sniffing out my scent. I sloshed through freezing rivers to try and escape but in the end I get caught and found myself with the noose around my neck. Everything kind of got sickening and then when I actually get hung I wake up. And that was when I realized that the only way out of the nightmare was to get hung by the neck - so everyone didn't die, they just woke up... I think.

Guerrilla Dreaming

So after the zombie dream I go back to sleep and have another short but interesting dream. This time I'm on a guerrilla film shoot with good'ol CSULB colleague Jeff Miz and a group of the usual cohorts. We all meet on this dirt road at night and Jeff explains that we don't have any permits to shoot but that he wanted to get as much as possible before we get kicked out. Sounded simple enough so we jump into our cars and follow Jeff but we have to travel 5mph so as not to kick up too much dust on this dirt road and gain the attention of the authorities. Suddenly the dirt road became a paved road and the paved road became this upper middle class neighborhood of expensive track-homes. We park our cars just outside the gates that lead into the actual neighborhood and gather our equipment. I guess I was the camera op because I had my Canon 5D Mark II camera with me, although I never specifically knew why I was there or what crew position I was in. So in gearing up we end up in this Quicky-Mart (that happened to be right outside the upper middle class neighborhood) and although the Quicky-Mart was closed, this female clerk in her pajamas came out to greet us. She's nice enough to ring up some items for us so I decide I want a pack of Swisher-Sweet cigars and a long beef jerky (maybe it was a Slim-Jim). Then just as she was going to retire I ask if she could ring up a bottle of water. So we're ready to roll and we jump the iron gate and sneak our way through the neighborhood. We decide to make base camp on a bushy slope in between a line of houses so that if we look down the hill there would be a row of backyards and if we look up the hill there would be another row of backyards to the track homes. So as we're hunkered there, cold and damp, Jeff walks down the line telling us to be quiet and get ready, as if he's the brigade commander of a military assault on an enemy position. I get my camera ready not knowing what to expect and then all of a sudden Jeff starts shooting fireworks into the sky like a mad man. As the bursts light up the sky in blues and reds the crew goes into chaos - there's a lot of "holy sh..." and "What the f..." Jeff on the other hand is laughing like a mad man and yelling at us to start shooting with the camera. But everyone is just in a panic and desert their positions, including me. I'm running like a bat out of hell down the street if this suburban neighborhood and stop. Out of breath and sweating like crazy, I take a moment to look back and realize that I can't leave Jeff behind. So I find an empty box tossed out with the garbage cans that were put outside on the curb. I hide my equipment in the box and run back to where the fireworks was still blazing. Unfortunately that's when I woke up so I have no idea if I rescue Jeff. I have no idea if the cops came and arrested us. I have no idea if my equipment in the box was thrown out with the garbage.

Mega Death

Another disturbing nightmare about zombies. I think the concept really scares me, being surrounded, having nowhere to go. This time it starts out in my condo and my ISMP film students are there. A few zombies happen to be in the room and we manage to round them up and lock them up in the bedroom. The students then decide it is a good idea to lock our food supply in with the zombies we captured and I tell them that this is probably not a good idea because if and when we need the food we risk getting bit and that someone becoming a zombie as well. They tell me it's OK and not to worry as I am ready to leave on some errand (I'm not sure what). I tell them to be careful one last time and then I leave. Walking down the hall I hear a terrible crash and the next thing I know my students are zombies and chasing me. I run down the hallway and down the stairs, the zombie students just short of grabbing me. I manage to jump in my car and as I'm closing the door their hands reach in. I hold the door tight and with a quick open and close, I bang their arms and they retract. I take that chance and slam the door shut. Somehow I'm safe and I drive out of the parking structure but outside are a bunch of cars rolling back and forth, driven by zombies that intend to crash into unsuspecting drivers. I maneuver around them but ultimately get stuck not too far away. Apparently my choices are limited to where I came from (surrounded by a never ending barrage of cars driven by zombies) or this back road that was too treacherous to go by car, so I could travel on foot. But of coarse this opens me to attacks by zombies that might be roaming the forest. Somehow the scene transitions to me trying to figure out a way through the back road and for some reason my CSULB friend Hiram is there on his Apple laptop figuring a way to get out himself. I start testing this idea that if I tie a plastic hand to my own hand and let the zombies sniff this, they may be tricked into thinking I'm not human. Of coarse this only made absolute sense in my dream. So I tie a plastic hand to my hand and test it out on a nearby zombie (I think at one point I even slap the zombie to get its attention) and the theory seemed to work, the zombie just ignored me. There are a bunch of others that are stranded with me and they're kind of hanging around and I tell them of my discovery but they seem preoccupied with just having fun. I go out to the back road and test my little plastic hand trick and halfway down a small dirt road I see a cop zombie on a motorcycle. The motorcycle races towards me and I realize that the cop would not get a chance to sniff my plastic hand while riding on his motorcycle and therefore would not be effected by my zombie evading technique. So I run back to the camp where everyone is hanging out. I explain to everyone that my technique works to a certain extent but that there was this motorcycle cop that prevented me from advancing. Suddenly that motorcycle zombie cop was sitting behind us using Hiram's laptop. The group of others, including Hiram, band together and try to lure the zombie away to some lake that was nearby. Across this lake was a group of girls taking photos and when Hiram and company can't handle getting away from the zombie cop, the girls across yell to the zombie for him to pose for a picture. Meanwhile I'm just watching all of this from a distance. Of coarse the zombie for some reason decides to comply with what the girls ask of him and they trick him to stand at the edge of the lake where Hiram and the others manage to push the zombie into the water. Everyone cheers in their victory as the water splashes and bubbles but then the water turns this disgusting green and the zombie motorcycle cop emerges as this green half acid eaten creature. Everyone screams in terror as the zombie turns into this dense mist that swarms at people and seemingly eats the life out of everything it touches. Plants and people alike turn this sickly green as the sward engulfs them and then they decay into rotting corpses in a matter of second. People scatter every which way in chaos. A the center of this swarm is the enlarged ghostly face of the zombie motorcycle cop. I run into a nearby house as the swarm approaches. The green video-noise-like smoke seeps through window cracks eating away at everything organic. A few people run upstairs but the swarm follows and traps them. I panic and run out the from door. I have every where to run but then nowhere to hide. The green flesh eating swarm seems intent I on finding me no mater where I go. My breathing becomes labored as extreme anxiety sets in. I can feel myself unable to catch my breath and I clutch my throat - all seems lost. I wake up frightened in the dark and decide to write.

John Cusack and the Inventor of the Jeep

Had a dream where I was John Cusack the actor in a movie where I was from the future or something - not the distant future but enough to know how and what is going to happen. So I end up buying this resort property because I know it's supposed to become valuable in the future. The reason it wasn't currently valuable was because of this thorny weed that was growing all around the courtyard of the place. And I know that in the future, what made the property valuable was because the courtyard in the future was flooded to form this beautiful pool where people can swim and have a good time. So I go ahead and decide to flood the place with the help of my wife who was also in my dream but I think she was playing herself (remember I'm John Cusack). Well, while flooding the place I encounter this young African-American guy who offers to lend me a vehicle he invented that can go on land and in the water and it turns out his invention would become what we know today as the Jeep Grand Cherokee - only the famous Jeep vehicle in my dream can go on land and in the water. I remember driving around in the water, with the water surface just coming up to where the windows were, and being amazed that this car will someday become so popular but the inventor ends up dying in a tragic accident that I couldn't quite remember. So I take it upon myself to protect the inventor of the Jeep by inviting him to stay at my resort, only I remember that those thorns deep below the water are a hazard. And then I remember that in those thorns lives a poisonous red snake. All these things present a life threatening hazard to this guy I'm trying to protect. But then I remember the inventor of the Jeep dies in a tragic regata boating accident so when the event came around, I entered the competition to keep an eye on the Jeep guy. I couldn't remember exactly what was going to happen or how I was going to save this guy but I knew I had to be there for the race... And then woke up so I have no idea how things turned out. There were a lot of other details that I'm sure I skipped (hunting around the resort for thorns and snakes was a long drawn out scene).

Condo of the Dead

So I went back to sleep and my zombie dream continued but not as a continuation, but as a sequel of sorts in a different time and place. This time I had a living space in a high-rise condo (different from the place I actually live in) where the parking garage had two gates, one that closed off from the outside and one that closed off my parking space. And there was also a working elevator that went up to my floor. The outside world was in chaos, zombies rampant as the few survivors run around to find safe haven. Meanwhile I'm pretty comfortable with my arrangement riding the elevator up to my floor. A couple of other people in the elevator are frantic on finding a place to stay. When I reach my floor, a lone zombie tries to approach the elevator doors but I shoot him dead bang in the head. I leave the others in the elevator in shock and go to my door. When I enter I quickly lock the door and engage a complex series of locks. As I settle in I realize someone else is in my place and I'm surprised to see my mom (not my real mom but some Caucasian woman playing my mom as if this were a movie). I ask her what she's doing here and why she isn't at her place but I didn't want to give her the impression that she wasn't welcome. So I think she leaves the next day and a bunch of things happen that I don't remember.

Next thing I know I'm heading back to my condo, the usual chaos of zombies chasing people with no place to stay. I'm on a motorcycle and see my wife (I can't remember if it was my actual wife or someone playing my wife). We're in the garage where there are two gates between us and the outside world of zombies - we were positioned between the outside gate and the gate that protects my personal parking space. Suddenly I hear this crash and see this red, classic mustang full of crazy gun wielding guys smack their car into the outside gate. I'm thinking, "you stupid idiots, if you break the gates the zombies will start flooding into the building." The car breaks through the outside gate and their car through my personal parking space. then they use their car as a barricade to block where the gate was and start shooting like mad men at the zombies that run in. With those maniacs barricaded in my parking space, I can't reach my condo so I tell my wife to jump on the motorcycle and we head up to the upper floors to find a new unit. Going up and up we pass all kinds of people trying to get away from the zombies. And then we reach the penthouse level - don't ask me how we reached the penthouse by riding a motorcycle. We ask a guy if the penthouse was open and he tells me yes but that we'd have to share the place the music band, Depeche Mode. We were about to enter the place along side this other woman that was debating if it was worth putting up with 80s music while living in the penthouse. Ultimately we decided it wasn't worth it and headed out of the building all together.

Once outside we found ourselves riding in circle as I didn't know what to do. We had no place to go and just avoided the occasional zombie we encountered. Eventually I decided that we should find another high rise condo building to live in and I struggled to remember where there were high rises nearby. That's when this nurse zombie starts running after us like a relay racer or something. I'm freaking out because I can't seem to get enough speed on the motorcycle - my wife is curiously silent or at least I can't remember if she said anything. So we're kicking away this crazy zombie nurse while riding the motorcycle when we come ac cross this condo that resembled a building here in downtown Long Beach called West Ocean. After trying to find the garage entrance we realized that the building was still operational and that there were signs directing us to a sales office ac cross the street. We reach the sales office (after finally ditching the zombie nurse) and I park my motorcycle in a hallway adjacent to the small sales floor room. There are a few couples looking nervous and desperate to buy one of the condos as sales staff group the people into tour parties that must run across the street in order to tour the building. the occasional zombie would try and enter sales office but and sales associate would politely push them out. I kept wondering if they were actually financing these condos or whether these people were buying the condos with cash.

Dawn of the Dumb

3:30AM. Just had a bad dream - a type I've had before. We're talking zombies here, and not the slow moving ones but the run for your life crazy-psycho jump on you biting type of zombie from "Dawn of the Dead" or "28 Days Later." So it started out with me in some kind of highland compound with a group of people I didn't know. We were in some room... oh, the 1st part of the dream was me shooting a TV segment with a jib arm and my Canon 5D2 camera. We were at a grocery store and the producer was not happy with me taking too much time to level the jib head and taking focus marks. I tried to speed things up with the help of my AC but we couldn't get things right. Rick, a camera man I've worked with before, was advising us in the background while eating ice cream. Anyway, somehow that dream transitioned to me in some compound (and oddly enough just before that dream, I just remembered, that I was at the grocery store initially to meet my dad for some reason).

So at this compound somebody opens a door and all of a sudden these bloodied eyed zombies came running out biting chunks off people and turning them into zombies. In all the chaos I run out, kicking a few zombies out of my way, and find this white van where an middle aged, robust woman and a young blond (I think she was Polly-Anne fromt eh "Dawn of the Dead" movie) were already trying to get the van out of the gated parking lot. I end up in the driver's seat with the middle aged woman next to me while Polly-Anne guided us through a small maze of cars blocking our way out. We managed to get out of the parking lot and I wait for Polly-Anne to catch up with us to jump in the van while the middle aged woman is screaming at me, asking why I stopped. Even when Polly-Anne gets to the passenger side door, the middle aged woman was too dumb to open the door and even when I reached over to unlock the door, the middle aged woman didn't think to move over so that Polly-Anne could fit in. So we tear down the street and blocking our way is a group of children dressed up for Halloween (masks covering their face, orange plastic pumpkin baskets in hand) and we decide to just run them over. After a bump and a thump I realized that we might have made a mistake and that those were real kids and not zombies. And that middle aged woman goes and makes a stupid comment about how those kids should not have been out that night. I just remembered that infuriating me.

So somehow, Polly-Anne disappeared from the picture and I was stuck with the middle aged woman driving some back country road. On top of that, some Nissan Altima was following us in a very suspicious manner. Now I know the zombies couldn't drive but we couldn't help but percieve this car as being the same kind of threat - or even worse since it wasn't like the zombies could hop in a car a chase after you. At a dirt road intersection we had to decide where we were going to go - the highlands where we came from, an unkown road that went into wilderness, and probably a few other choices that amounted to just a bunch of question marks. We decided to drive towards the highlands but then a quarter of the way up we s[pun around to try and get a look at the Altima that was following us. The Altima ended up playing chicken with our van and it seemed in our best interest to try and lose the Altima by heading back to the wilderness road. Once on the wilderness road we passed by a small camp and stop. The Altima behind us stopped at the camp and this tall lanky guy steps out and pulls a bucket from the trunk. At the camp there are two other guys preparing supplies and what not. At this point I stepped out of the van to walk over and talk to the survivors of this camp. The tall lanky guy took the bucket and poured a bunch of skinned rattle snakes out on a table as the oterh two guys sorted through the catch. After a moment, the lanky guy rubbed his eyes and increasingly looked like he was in pain. Next thing I knew the lanky guy bit one of the other guys in the neck. I didn't even bother seeing what happened next and started running for the van. But this lanky guy was a frickin fast runner. I tried to jump in the Altima to get away but the door was locked and this tall zombie was closing in on me fast and furiously. Near the van, I had to duck as teh lanky guy lunged at me. With a kick I managed to buy myself a little time and got to the van door. All I could think of was that this guy was going to pop out at any moment from behind me and tear out a lage chunk of meat from my neck. I frantically got the door open and jumped in. It think I managed to peel out in the van and get away but there was the thought that the lanky zombie had jumped on the van and was lurking somewhere on top or below - I didn't know. I'm not sure what happened to the middle aged woman at this point. She just wasn't there anymore. That's when I woke up - not totally sweaty and paranoid like I had in the past a few times but not feeling all that happy about having this kind of nightmare.

Saying goodbye to my old car - in my dream

Another weird dream. It started out with this sleazy restaurant owner that bought a an old run down place that had a specific name and logo that I couldn't remember. From there it somehow transitioned to me in some kind of contest where a bunch of medical practitioners (doctors and nurses) gathered in some kind of parking structure where I parked my old Infiniti G20 car (which I recently sold in reality). After everyone parked we all filed into some big cave like building where we were being locked into for a period of time - a month or so. It was kind of a social experiment like survivor where we were all supposed to live with each other and either help or compete for food, clothing, etc. So the 1st thing they throw at us is this huge cement truck full of ice cream and they put some hill-billy in distributing amongst the people. While everyone got just a small cup full, this hill-billy and his friends got cup after cup of this ice cream and so everyone was just got raving made to have this ice cream. That's when I noticed the logo on the side of the cement tuck was the same as the logo on the old restaurant, only the bottom was scratched out to say "Ice Cream." so as if it was some kind of flashback sequence, I went back to the beginning of the dream and over-heard this sleazy restaurant owner confess that he made up this survival game to create demand for his newly branded ice cream.

Then, I kind of flash out of that story and into me and my sister watching the ice cream restaurant story unfold on TV. After a few minutes I get bored and leave my sister to watch the show alone. I head for the parking garage to visit my Infiniti car and for some reason decide it would be a good idea to cut through the concrete floor of the parking structure around my car. After a few minutes I had this imperfect circle around my car and the next thing I knew there's a rumble and the Infiniti falls down to the level below smashing a Nissan 300Z car below it. Now in my dream, this was an unexpected result and I messed up my car along with someone else's. The guy who bought the car was supposed to pick up the car next Tuesday (in reality that's when he supposed to really pick up my car) and now he's not going to want to pay the full price with all this damage. So I'm freaking out and then this French guy starts complaining to me at the other end of the parking lot about how I've cut holes in the parking garage floor before and because of me they building owner had to re-route the water pipes because of the damages I caused. and then i realized in my dream that this was only a dream, so I reassured the French guy that none of this actually happened and woke up.

The Play and the Prius

So I had another weird dream that I'm quickly forgetting so here it goes. It started out in the large warehouse-like place that was used for theater plays. An old friend from back in my Junior College days, Scott F. Greene (from who I recently received a holiday card from) and planned to have a talent show of sorts and Scott was going to play the trombone along with two other band members of his. He mentioned how he had to pull some strings to get the other guys to show up so he wanted the performance to be perfect if not memorable. So I was in charge of operating the lighting switchboard which was in a small control room on the opposite end of the stage. None of the levers on the control board was labeled so when showtime began I had to randomly pull the levers to figure out what they did. So while Scott and his Jazz trio are belting out tunes, some lights go on and others go off - at one point a projection screen behind them went up and down noisily as I pulled the lever not knowing what it would do. So Scott's music segment was a disaster but then I kind of got the hang of controlling this one spotlight above. Now this light could pretty much turn and move anywhere so when the next act came up, a ballet ensemble of sorts, I was moving that light all over the place to keep the lead performer in the light. So the performances went on and all kinds of crazy things happened like at one point a massive flock of pigeons (apparently nesting high up in the rafters) took flight in the inside the warehouse-theater flying around like a mass of bees. And then at some point Scott opened up a huge roll-up door to let more light in and I remember seeing a shipping dock with cargo ships outside the door.

Then the next thing I know I'm holding a large production video camera and filming a very narrow cargo boat with a bunch of Toyota Prius cars haphazardly stacked up with a bunch of bean-bags stuffed between them. So I'm thinking to myself, this is dangerous and I better fix this. So I jump on the cargo boat and drive one of the Prius cars, that was stacked on top of another car, off so that it wasn't looking like it was going to fall over into the water (driving it off doesn't sound physically possible but somehow I managed in my dream). So then I decide to go to the control room of the cargo boat and pull some levers and to my surprise (although I'm not sure why I was surprised) the boat started to move. I desperately tried to stop the boat as it slowly moved away from the dock. Then, just my luck, a cop pulls up and yells on his horn for me to stop but for the life of me I can't figure out how to stop the stupid boat loaded with Priuses. In the end I managed to stop the boat but then the boat owner accused me of loosing a bunch of the bean bags that were stuffed between the Priuses - he wasn't concerned about the Priuses but rather the bean bags! So then I argued back demanding that I show the cops the video I shot of the cargo boat... and then I woke up.