In which I pepper a dream I had about Jenna Fischer with lyrics to probably the worst—but also somehow loved—song of our generation

 The other night I dreamed that I was in Disney World, which is good enough for a run-of-the-mill pleasant dream, right? I would have been very satisfied by that alone, thank you very much.

But it got better.

I shall tell you about it. And Anna Nalick will help, because I feel as though her insights shown through metaphors speak deeply to this story.

[You can sense sarcasm even though it’s typed, right? What I meant to say is that Anna Nalick’s Just Breathe (2am) song sucks giant ocelot balls and should only be sung by 11-year-old girls at their school’s talent show.]

Anway. So I was in Disney world, and it was just my dad and I. The moment we walked through the gates and into the park, my Dad grabbed a Mickey Mouse balloon and ran off giggling.

That didn’t really faze me. Plus, I don’t need a chaperone for Disney World; what am I, five? So I went off on my own to go Disney World the crap out of myself.  

At that point, my brain fast-forwarded and brought me to the end of the day, when I was sitting on a bench and eating a Premium Bar. 

Just then Jenna Fischer (yes, Pam Beesly Jenna Fischer, on whom I’ve been crushing since season one of The Office, and who has been in my dreams before) walked up to me. I remember what she was wearing like it was yesterday: a mint-green polo and knee-length safari shorts. Sexy. 

And she came over to me, yes ME! Wow, guys. I feel like I’m naked in front of a crowd, ‘cause these words are my diary screaming out loud.

 

JENNA: Hey there, how’s it going?

ME: Oh, uh, hi, Jenna Fischer! It’s going well!

JENNA: “It’s going well.” You know what, it’s so nice to hear someone use correct grammar when I ask them that. The people I work with here are just all, “I’m doing good,” “I feel good.” …Ugh it’s so annoying!

ME: Wait, do you work at Disney World?

JENNA: Yeah! When I’m not working on The Office, I’m here leading the Safari tours. A bunch of us do it. John Krasinski runs the digital simulation rides, and the lady who plays Phyllis works in one of the Scandinavian food restaurants in Epcot. It's great! I don’t know about other people, but I like to say that Disney World is the happiest place on earth.

ME: I SAY THAT EXACT SAME THING, JENNA FISCHER.

[It's a little difficult to show how hot she was while trying to draw a mint polo and safari shorts, okay? My drawing skills aren't necessarily honed enough that I can draw those kinds of subtleties with a Sharpie.]

Jenna Fischer and I ended up talking for a long time. And readers, don’t tell anyone, but we totally hit it off. We laughed together, we had the same interests, we talked about our childhoods…IT WAS SO AWESOME.

(Christie was somehow nonexistent in this dream, which is weird, but she can’t be mad because she also had a dream recently where I was nonexistent. So…tit for tat.)

After awhile, I thought to myself, “Wanna hold [her], maybe I’ll just sing about it.” But then I thought, “Why only sing about it? This is MY dream, I can do what I want!”  So I made to go hold her hand, which was kindly rejected. I wasn’t totally crushed, because our eyes had this conversation:

JENNA’S EYES: Hey, don’t worry, I’ll be totally fine with this on maybe our first date or something. You can’t jump the track; we’re like cars on a cable.

MY EYES: But life’s like an hourglass glued to the table!

JENNA’S EYES: Just be patient, Brian. I’m into you. 

So I felt all right about it. In the end, we had to say goodbye, but she gave me her digits (that means phone number, Mom). I made sure to put that in the most protected pocket on my backpack. "I guess I'll go find my dad. I hope he still has his balloon," I said.

And then I woke up. Without Jenna Fischer's digits. 

As someone once said,

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout, but you're just as far in as you'll ever be out

[Spoiler alert: this means that you’re in the middle of the tunnel.]

Steve Carell: Secrets from His Butler (me)

I was visiting home for the weekend, which is quite a convenient place to get the flu. The night went badly; I was achy and I had horrible chills. This kept me from ever fully sleeping, so I stayed stuck in a kind of half-awake half-asleep limbo for most of the night. What made it more interesting, though, is that I was dreaming.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve dreamed about Steve Carell. He was actually Steve Carell in this one, not Michael Scott from The Office. And with quite a different economic status, too. In this dream, he needed help taking care of his humongous, gaudy, centuries-old mansion adorned with dusty paintings and bear rugs, and I was lucky enough to be hired as live-in butler. 

 

[I would do this constantly.]

Now here’s something that not a lot of people know, but I do because I was his personal butler: Steve Carell, when he comes home, actually becomes three very large, very old rich women in satin bathrobes with golden fringe. 

Hard to believe, I know.

He—well, they, feminine—is/are less funny, too. They just lie in their lavish beds adorned with overstuffed down comforters with floral patterns and numerous pillows with tassels on them, and moan while stroking their a**hole Pomeranians, at least twelve to a bed.

My job was to run from room to room to room taking care of the massive moaning triplets.

But remember what I said before: I was half awake the entire time, but still dreaming. As the butler, they way I would tend to these three dames was to lie on my left side, my back, or my right side. And at the moment of successfully repositioning, I would become one of them, lie uncomfortably in my extravagant bed and moan in influenzalic agony. After tending to one for a while, I would switch positions to become another, and then another. 

 

=

 

 

=

 

[All Pomeranians are a**holes.  They're the only kind of dog I would be willing to strangle. Just looking at my drawing makes me all, "Pffft. A**hole.]

 

 =

So in a way I was those three whale-like women. And in some bizarre, fluish way…I was Steve Carell.

Note to Mom and Dad: Listen, can we get some NyQuil up in here so I don’t have to become morbidly obese triplets when I’m sick at home? They’re really a bare to take care of. And bitchy.

Dream Distractions (Alliteration is only for cool people...so what does my title tell you?)

In the past week, each morning I’ve woken up remembering the dreams I've had the night before, but have then become distracted by the fact that I have a New Pornographers song stuck in my head. Yes, upon waking, I’m already mentally singing songs. (What is wrong with me?!) This is what the last couple mornings have been like:

Wednesday: Dream? NO! The Bleeding Heart Show. (Their--and maybe THE--best song ever. If you need to know why RIGHT NOW, bring the video to about 3:00.)

Thursday: Dream? HECK NO! The Crash Years.

Today: DREAM? Maybe...dee dee dootoodoo...SIKE!! Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk.

(And for my aunt Julie who I know reads this all the time, and who was forced to hear me hum this song for the entirety of my trip to her place in Milwaukee: If You Can’t See My Mirrors.) 

That being said, I don’t remember any of my dreams because the songs are too good. (If you're wondering why my a.m. mind is so enthralled with The New Pornographers, I saw them last Wednesday with Christie in Madison and I'll never be the same.) However, one special morning, as I felt the dream being pushed out of my mind by another one of their songs, I drowsily grabbed my phone and wrote what I remembered. And I quote:

“Dream…dwight and pam were in love, i played super mario, and cuba gooding junior was the president or something and eating swiss chees bites made him say something secret.”

How the hell am I supposed to blog this? When I had a cryptic dream like this before, I embellished and made a story from it, but this one is so straight-forward and strange. How can I connect all of these stories?! That being said, I feel as though only way to express it is to make a SUPER COLLAGE of this zany (5 points!) dream.  I believe that this is what was going on in my head...

[And don't think this is some swanky (5 points!) Photoshopped, done-in-thirty-seconds kind of things; these are grass roots, non-electronic, hand-cut pictures held together by masking tape, people! It took me A LOT longer than thirty seconds.]

One Very Busy Night in My Head...

I don't know how this all happened in one night. This is what I typed into my phone when I woke up. Get ready.

While I was climbing up flights and flights of stairs with groceries, I dropped a bag of chips, a loaf of bread, and some peanut butter, and sincerely hoped they didn’t land on anyone below me.

My sisters pets—two cats, which she has in real life, and her dreampet, a giant white dog—had fleas the size of couscous grains. After cuddling with them, I had like eight of those stupid fleas in my mouth. I found out later that when flicked, the fleas grow much larger and work well as something to attach to a zip line.

Hanging out at my former art teacher’s house, I found out that he used to be a Jew, and that he currently has a super cool dishwasher whose racks roll out and sideways.

The former principal of my high school tried out a rap he was going to share with the kids.

I had to help with an elementary school’s gym class and give them ideas of things to do, and I thought that throwing a bunch of manhole-sized slices of pepperoni for the kids to play with (which the instructors were doing) gave the kids too much pressure to join organized sports.

My parents were making out in my room.  Not cool, Mom and Dad.

I ran into a kid from my school who looked like Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter with curly hair, who had quit school and lived on the side of a river in Wisconsin because he fell in love with the taste of the monkeys he found there. The jerk made fun of me reading a book with a portable book light, saying that it was part of my lame religion, and somehow we got into a fistfight. 

Because of the fight, I got kicked out of school, and sent to a ranch where Michael Scott from The Office lived alone.  He bragged about having a big truck with a bunch of funny action figures and stuff on the dashboard. I later found out that the truck had no engine and that it is so like his character to do something like that.

And then I woke up.