Coach

I have been hired by an upscale gym to write weekly fitness tips for their newsletter. I know very little about fitness, so run out of ideas quickly. One of my ideas is to keep a football in your underwear at all times. A reader in Japan complains about my lack of qualifications. I am called into the office to discuss the complaint. The office is only accessible by way of a miles-long, undeveloped backcountry road. I am driving an Oldsmobile, and my mother and brother are in the car with me. It's getting dark. My brother and I are discussing how to properly contextualize 9/11 when SUDDENLY THERE IS A WOLF. Then the wolf is gone. I'm sad because I wanted to look at the wolf some more.

Man vs. Wild

I am trapped on a trail high up Mt. Everest. Luckily, I know the old survivalist trick of stuffing my pockets with beef jerky and having a shotgun.

Agent of Chaos

I am in a public bathroom, at the last urinal in a long row of empty urinals. A guy walks up to the urinal right next to me, dressed like the Joker. As he begins to pee he says, in a bad Heath Ledger growl, "Why...so...ser"

"PLEASE DO NOT DO A JOKER IMPRESSION WHILE STANDING NEXT TO ME AT A URINAL."

"Hey, whoa, uh..."

"PLEASE DO NOT PRETEND TO BE THE JOKER WHILE STANDING NEXT TO ME IN THE MEN'S ROOM."

"Jeez man, alright..."

He zips up and skulks away.

Troubadour

I am walking along a beach trail, and there is a guy, walking about ten feet behind me, playing an acoustic guitar song about how there are 500 galaxies which is sort of like love. I turn around, place my hand on the strings so that they are muted, and say, "Stop doing that." He is offended but says nothing, and sullenly walks away. A friend of his runs up to me and says "Hey man, that was really wrong, what you did." And I say, "Are you going to do something about it?" And he says no, and walks off. Then a second friend of the guitarist (whose tousled hair is sticking out of a canvas hat) walks up and says "Hey, I don't appreciate what you did. Do you play music?"

"No."

"Well..." And then he makes a combination handwave-and-nod, as if to say, "Get in here and let's fix this together."

"That's your threat?!"

"Nah man, forget about it," He says goodnaturedly as he trots away in the sand.

Poltergeist

Sleeping in a haunted movie theater. Ghosts are knocking things off the walls. In the middle of this dream I am seized by real sleep paralysis, but do not wake up. My brain narrates the feeling as what it is to be a ghost. Tethered by the feet to something ethereal, hanging, thrashing and screaming, a half-thing, screaming, a rage stronger than anything I've ever felt. I resent the living, knock things off the walls into their heads. I want to damage. I am pure pain.

Civil Service

There is a new cult for middle-aged people that combines the Tea Party with the Secret. The logo is a slightly distorted, inverted pentagram with a robed woman standing at the bottom vertex. They are marching into the city and we trick them all into entering a mausoleum, where we seal them in.

Contrarian

Three goats are playing soccer. Christopher Hitchens, driving an armored car with a huge, blunt lance attached to the front, chases them off the field while chuckling eruditely to himself.

Du Hast

A girl tells me that I "look too soft." I buy a Rammstein jacket and combat boots, give myself a mohawk and slide down paved hills on a garbage can lid.

The Happiest Place On Earth

I cry the entire way down the Palestine-themed water slide at Disneyland.

Play Him Off

An Armenian man who loads trucks is looking for someone to sing a duet with his cat. I volunteer, and find out that it is to be an improvised comedy song, and the cat and I will be judged on who is funniest. During the first rehearsal, I realize I cannot play piano and am not as funny as the cat. I graciously drop out of the competition.

Wu-Haul

I returned with a group of people from a trip to a rainforest. I had driven a U-Haul to the departure point, and when I walked out to check on the truck, I heard, to my embarrassment, that I had left my 8Ball & MJG CD had been playing the whole time. But then I realized that it was coming from a different U-Haul, full of bros. It was still my CD; they had switched the trucks attached to our trailers because they thought mine was nicer. I called The GZA to ask him what to do but he didn't pick up. When I went back outside to check again, both U-Hauls were gone.

Supercop

I'm asking Jackie Chan if he gets all the ladies. He tells me to stop making such a big deal out of his celebrity, since we're friends. I say, "Sorry, Jackie," and put my hand on his shoulder.

Rock the Mic Like a Vandal

I am Vanilla Ice. Not early, parachute pants Vanilla Ice. Late-career, county fair, sideburns and tattoos Vanilla Ice. I am sitting in a bathtub with the shower running, singing Ice Ice Baby. I know that I am no longer relevant, but that if I can sing the song to myself and enjoy it, that's the only success that matters.

The Shadow Out of Rhyme

I'm reading a pop-up Lovecraft book in my living room at night. Somehow, whether it came from inside the book or not, I grab a large snake behind its head. It's dark green, monochrome, and about 3 feet long. It is tremendously strong, and it takes all my strength and both hands to hang on to it. I remember that there's a herpetology convention in town. I look on the internet and there is no herpetology convention. But the snake is Anorexic, so to neutralize the danger of having it around I make fun of it for being fat.

After a while, it stops struggling, and I carry it around the house for a bit. I accidentally lose it when I dress up like Mike D from the Beastie Boys and dance in front of a mirror.

These Colors Don't Run

The Joker has kidnapped me and two other guys, and is forcing me to drive all of us to a cliff where we will be held hostage. He is talking calmly about how deserters in the Vietnam War joined the military deliberately to "disgrace the flag." After a tense silence of disagreement, we start listening to John Denver. The Joker says, "I remember when I didn't need these stupid hearing aids to listen to this." He has a wistful little chuckle, remembering his youth. I ask everyone how old they are. Two people, including Joker, say they're 38; I couldn't hear the third's answer, who says, "Looks like you're the youngest!" Self-deprecatingly, I yell, "Hey, who loves Justin Bieber?! Isn't Pokemon cool?!" We all laugh, and then, remembering that he is a supervillain, The Joker sings a 'menacing' song with a 'villainous' lisp.

Cornucopia of Wrong

I have been keeping an irregular dream journal for a couple of weeks, and these are the best passages, unaltered from their original, half-awake composition.


For some reason, I end up wrestling with an old man to remove his socks. In the course of wrestling, he steals $10 from my wallet. We laugh about this, I tell him I "respect the hell out of him" and he gives me three wet cheek-kisses with his old mouth.

•

I am at somebody's house, staying as a guest. In the night, I wake up to find Binkley [the cat I had while growing up] nestling into my arms (I'm sitting up). Binkley presses himself hard against my chest and nuzzles his face right under my chin. I'm looking down at his face, all black with the little white chin, and I realize that it's actually the face of a Juggalo who has snuck into my room. We fly apart and both begin freestyle rapping.

•

Superman, parking lot at night. Get into car, man in car. Get out, fight man + 2 others. Hit 1st man w/ piece of wood in face, nail in wood gouges eye, blood everywhere. They do not relent for a while. Long standoff, few punches. They leave, people walking by watching.

Earlier, some manatees.

•

I'm playing SNES with an 8th grader, the game is a Mortal Kombat-style fighter, and all of the characters are racist Mexican stereotypes. I'm playing as a Mexican mother with too many children.

•

Watching a movie about a guy who joins an S&M "cult" who meet at the beach, where they all wear bondage gear and robes and hoods/masks, and are each given a snake to care for. But they're too preoccupied with S&M to pay attention to the snakes, which get into the water and precipitate shark attacks.

•

In Scripps Ranch, I became aware that there was a potential terrorist attack looming. It was late afternoon and raining lightly. I was on Red Cedar, by Miramar Ranch, scooting along in my "neighborhood watch" wooden rolling desk chair, making sure the gates to the soccer field were all locked.

Paper, Tigers

Myself and a group of people are camping on the outer steppes of Hell; the sky is the same black as the slate ground, with a band of red along the horizon. Nothing moves but the air.

On a walk I find a tunnel, leading down into the ground at a steep angle. I emerge at the other end into a space even more barren than the steppes. We are all in a book of paintings of Hell, and I have arrived at the last pages, which are a solid maroon, blank except for tiny white credits typed along the pages' bottoms. I return to the campsite to fetch the others, but they refuse to follow me because they are too afraid of monsters.

•

I am in a jungle, training a group of children how to be brave. We are surrounded by tigers, all of whom are named Sasha Baron Cohen.

Hitch

Christopher Hitchens and I are crying because magic is real and everything is beautiful after all.

Wolves, Trolls

I have left the home of my high school media teacher with a stern warning to beware the ghost wolf. I came to his house, hidden in enchanted forest, to play poker. It is late; I did not bring a flashlight.

The wolf is luminous. It approaches me on the path, aglow. Then I wake up.

•

I am reading a book titled "In the Valley of the Trolls." It is beautiful and I make a note to myself to write down the very clever first line upon awaking. Illustrations of trolls, heavy brown ink on parchment, move on the page. I touch a world of mystery. I do not remember the line.

Strange Breezes

A storm at night. I walk into my back yard to feel the wind. It is enormous; clouds speed by overhead, morphing rapidly. There is a large screen erected around the yard and overhead, protecting me from debris.

I muse about the symbolic meaning of the storm, the wind representing the paternal energy fundamental to every family. A father's fierce egotism that must be appeased.

A large poster with pictures of young girls and old women stapled to it hovers by. Somebody has fashioned it with the intention of setting it on the wind. It catches in a trellis and I am excited to retrieve it. Kanye West, who has a ladder, claims it before I can. As I am complaining, he turns into M.I.A.

I am recounting the story to my brother, but I embellish it by claiming the poster was sent from "Sao Paolo, Venezuela."

•

I am in an apartment, alone, about sixty stories above Central Park. There is nobody anywhere and everything glows with sickly, ochre light. I write letters to distant friends while watching birds of prey hunt outside. I look down and see a crowd below a nearby building, catching objects someone is throwing down to them. I learn by reading a mysteriously obtained invitation card that an orchestral musician is committing suicide after tossing his belongings out of his window. I am filled with melancholy, and question the legality of printing invitations to a suicide.

•

I am treading water in a deep swimming pool, one I know to be popular for punk rock concerts. Attendants would dive to the bottom and have subaquatic mosh pits while bands also played underwater.

•

I am an assassin. Nathan Statham has just been injected with a hundred doses of the Chinese poison. He is taken to a doctor's house, where they are preparing to conduct brain surgery in the living room. They are preparing to saw the top of his skull off when I rush out of the house. On the driveway I fall to my knees, weeping, lamenting in Spanish at the top of my lungs the frailties of mortality.