Dream Journal

I’d seen a couple commercials for “The Funny Show”, but wasn’t entirely convinced. The commercial had Big Bird from Sesame Street in it. I finally decided to give it a try:

There was a part where I had to pass through a ballet studio in a mall. As I did, a gigantic bird foot in a ballet shoe punched down through the ceiling in front of me. Then the other foot crashed through in a different spot. This was the big bird part. I thought that was rather good — blowing the Big Bird expectation out of proportion.

In the next sketch, I was one of a crew of three. I was following along with the other two, who had surreptitiously entered an empty office in a building. I didn’t know what their plan was, and I went to the fridge to check for food. At first I only found butter, and said “only butter?” But then I began to see more and more food as I looked. I noticed a back door nearby. I hoped nobody was coming, and so of course this lady walks up to the door and comes in. I walk back towards the main entrance, casually but quickly, hoping to not be seen. As I did, I saw one of the other guys disappear down this big metallic pipe in the wall. I wondered what they were up to. She caught up to me in the reception area. I made something up. “Hello. Is Dan in?” I asked. She said “No, not currently.” I had guessed the name of someone who actually worked here! I made up some lie about why I was there. The lies then piled on top of each other, and got ridiculous. At some point I was singing this duet with a girl that we were making up on the spot. It turned out really good and as the liar I promised to record my part of it. But after a short consultation with my waking self, I realized that I wouldn’t actually do that. The scene was over, and I felt bad lying about the song, so I went back to tell her, in case she went through the effort of recording her side.

This is how I ended up meeting the guys behind the show. They were all young, around 20. I felt totally at ease with them. The goal was humor and I was all in. We were talking, laughing, every line we said was funny. After this near-thing of writing a song together, I wanted to be part of this crew. I told them that if they ever needed an old guy for one of their sketches, if putting all that sticky beard glue on their faces was just too much, to call on me. I was going to say that I could be their Chevy Chase (a reference to his old guy character in Community) but the conversation didn’t have an opening, then went elsewhere. Anyways, hanging out with the Funny Show guys was a riot of creativity and humor.

The last part was that we were watching the Superbowl. The field was dirty, sort of an amateur quality. There was a running play, and when the runner was tackled, he fumbled the ball. Players scrambled for it, but it went out of bounds. Who had touched it last? The scene scrolled back to see. It sort of focused on a player that melded almost perfectly with the colors and paint of the field. He got up. I was fascinated by what I saw. The painted colors of the field had all stuck to him, I reasoned. His hair was this enormous flat top shaped like a wedge. He went up to a orange-red patch in the field and pressed the top of his flat top into it. When he lifted up his head, his flat top had picked up that color. A bunch of other copies of himself went up to the orange-red patch and did the same. They all started slamming the top of their heads into the ground . . . as a celebration? This was so amazing and unexpected that we all started doing our own version of it to the beat. Not head-slamming, but high-fives or banging something to the beat. It was called “niffling”.

References: Sesame Street is a kids' TV show.