I have a dream

July 18, 2002

A dream!
In which Jacques, having fallen asleep, most honourably dreams of things other than the dreaded Pasta Wars of 1734.

I had a dream a few nights ago in which I was working for the television show Saturday Night Live. I didn’t remember applying to work there, nor did I recall getting the job, but I seemed to be there nonetheless. From the start, the whole scenario revolved around me pretending to know and understand why I was there and what I was doing.

The interesting thing about the show is that it wasn’t actually stationed in New York, but rather in some ratty building in post apocalyptic Boston. I often dashed into my office to hide from people so they wouldn’t realize I couldn’t figure out what I was doing there. I had my own large office for some reason, and nobody realized that I wasn’t really doing anything because nobody really seemed to be doing anything. I remember a large water cooler in my office and a big window. It was clearly the best office in the entire building. It was quite obvious that I was there to do something incredibly important, but what?

Perhaps the reason nothing seemed to be going on has something to do with the fact that I’m not quite certain what’s actually supposed to go on at such a place. Also, I have a very low opinion of comedy writers in general. If they really knew anything about comedy writing, they’d all be pharmaceutical copywriters and cosmonauts. Idiots, the bunch of them.

In any case, what I found truly inventive was that the show itself was actually staged more like The Muppet Show. And most of the cast members were Muppets. Or related to Muppets, by blood or lint content. And the show was far more surreal and inventive than I’d ever recalled it being. Perhaps I had something to do with it. Or were they just trying to impress me?

I didn’t seem to be coming up with any ideas or creative content, so I continually avoided large gatherings and rushed into my office. For some reason, I couldn’t formulate anything at all amusing. Then, I began to work out a skit having to do with home heating solutions. It had to do with natural gas and somebody pulled a chain to release more gas, and there was a farting noise when the fuel representative pulled the chain. He had a clipboard and was talking to someone about natural gas and farts. And, every so often, he would fart for no reason. I was working out some idea and, although it incorporated farting and home heating, I was really striving to add some artistry and erudition to the show itself.

And then there was Tina Fey. I was heading into work with Tina Fey, but the building’s external elevator was broken, so she climbed up the side of the building and started to run along the awnings in order to get to the office. I warned her not to run along the awnings, but she wouldn’t listen, instructing me to follow her and playfully taunting me in a foolhardy manner. I deftly chased her along the awnings, cautioning her, calling out in an attempt to quench her debilitating madness.

Rapidly, I hovered to the ground. I couldn’t quite catch her as she gently drifted down, like a manic snowflake in slow-motion, so I tried to break her fall and then stayed with her until the ambulance came. We had a touching made-for-TV moment.

I can’t remember what happened from there, but if you ask Tina Fey if she’d think twice about running on awnings from now on, she’d probably laugh it off, call you a fool, and be up there, running on awnings, in a Mexican heartbeat. And she’d do it all with a pixie-like twinkle in her eyes.

But I do remember a dream I had last night in which talkshow host Phil Donahue was sitting on a toilet arguing loudly to himself. I left the small, rectangular room with wooden walls and then heard a porcelain clanking sound. When I rushed back in, Phil was gone. All I could see was a phone just banging around in the toilet... it was either a phone or a megaphone. Or perhaps a brown shoe.