Celebrity Bowling

One more trip on Greg's Dreamland Express™...


I'm at the Oregon History Museum in, uh, Vancouver WA. On one wall of the museum is a big display about a musical about Oregon history that Danny Kaye was working on before he died. He only finished five songs, and the song titles are listed on the wall in big letters. One of the them is called "Oregon Song."

The musical was planned to be called Muddy Water or Muddy River (I can't recall which), and the wall has a big screen which is showing a video made by the museum of what appears to be a muddy river, with Kaye's demo of the song "Muddy Water/River" in the background. There are also blowup prints of lyric sheets that Kaye was working on for the musical.

Most of the time in the dream, it's understood that Kaye has passed away. However, at some earlier point, I understand him to be an "Artist in Residence" at the museum, and even see him (or his ghost?) walking on one of the staircases in the museum building.

***

After leaving the set of Iron Chef, having helped cook fish and hot dogs, I go to buy several books, including two biographies of Bob Hope.

Then I become a WWE bad guy, who has just left the arena after being banished for "punishment." This is happening at a mall (where I purchased the books, perhaps), and one of my fellow WWE wrestlers says I'm going to get roughed up a bit. Maybe this was all being filmed for the show.

The wrestler grabs my arm and puts a needle through my hand. I ask if it's morphine or heroin, and he says quietly, "It's just something to get rid of the pain."

The wrestlers there start beating up on me, but the drugs make me so happy that I'm pleasant to be around, so pleasant that no one wants to beat me up anymore. The wrestlers let me walk happily around the mall...and then my son, when he was one or two and still had some baby fat, looks at me like he doesn't recognize me and turns away. I'm reminded of this.

But I'm still happy, dammit! Happy enough to blend in with a yuppie couple who are joking with each other as they walk out the mall door. And happy enough to lift myself off the ground and do one of my favorite things, dream flying. Sadly, this time, I find it hard to keep the gravity from pulling me down.

No flying over Portland this time. Any kind of dream flying, actually, is getting rarer as I age.

Still, once grounded in this dream, I remain happy enough to roll down a hilly road like a roller coaster.

***

It's 1962 Day here in Holodeck Land.

I see Perry Mason's apartment, where he lived in 1962, in the Park Blocks near Portland State University.

Portland's KPTV Channel 12 (now Fox 12) has shown Perry Mason episodes at noon ever since 1969, and the channel has sent a film crew to the Park Blocks to film a new black-and-white ending credits sequence for the B&W episodes of the 1957-66 series. The letters forming the names of the cast and crew are placed on different sides of Perry's apartment building.

I go into a meeting room at the apartment complex, and I see Phyllis Diller appearing at an autograph show. I tell her I saw her cameo in the film The Aristocrats. It seems like maybe she hardly remembers it.

Near the large meeting room is a holodeck ride that my brother Mike and I decide to go on. We ride a motorcycle/skateboard ramp down into a narrow crevice where the holodeck signal is centered.

After the ride, back in the meeting room, I sing a karaoke version of Joey Dee and the Starliters' "Peppermint Twist." As I'm singing, I hear the Joey Dee version in my head, and it creates the illusion that I'm singing just like him. As I look around at the diminishing enthusiasm of the audience, I remember that I am not Joey Dee.

One young blonde turned middle-aged redhead becomes like my groupie. We go to a nearby room, get sopping wet, and then we kiss and embrace. A big red spot on her ribs is pulling my ribs in against her like a magnet. I'm enjoying the kissing, but thinking to myself, "If this is the new kink, then I'm not crazy about it."

The redhead says that this is a new kind of sex, and "people today are having more sex than ever." I reply, "I think people had the same amount of sex as today, over the last 20 years. They just had to be careful about AIDS." I notice that the more I talk, the drier and less engaged she seems.

The dream ends with a production number in the meeting room, and Phyllis Diller gets the last line, followed by her trademark laugh.

I wake up and start laughing myself.


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