There isn’t anything new to report on the writing front. No upcoming appearances due to COVID cancellations. I’m still working on my YA novel for my graduate degree. My family’s is doing fine. Nothing to really blog about—except the weird dream I had last night…
Erika and I were in high-end VCR sales. Like high end for the 1990s—nothing less than $250, and the pièce de résistance costing a cool $999. The shop was an artisanal boutique—think PKD’s The Man in the High Castle character Robert Childan, as played by Brennan Brown. Anyway, Erika and I wined and dined clients interested in purchasing a VCR at high-end eating establishments. The actual store itself was virtually identical to a franchise RadioShack I worked at in the late 90s and early 00s. (That RadioShack even had an expensive eatery a few doors down.) I told you: dreams are weird.
Anyway, Erika and I were the regional sales leaders. Unlike the RadioShack I worked at in rural Arizona, this shop was more like Robert Childan’s Americana. As I recall the dream, I think it was a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (one of the places I lived at as a child). Erika and I won a regional sales contest, and the prize was a trip to a certain California amusement park. You know, the one that’s only a 6.5-hour drive from my house. The one owned by the company that is the singular cause and benefactor of the shambles that is US copyright law.
The amusement park wasn’t the mecca to capitalism that I’ve been forced to endure for the last twenty years (Erika is a superfan, and I have three children), it was a cross between that and a 1990s version of Kennywood or Cedar Point, but like the VCR shop, the amusement park was in a suburb of Pittsburgh or Chicago (there was a Harold’s Chicken Shack and an Eat’n Park outside the gates). The dream fades as dreams do, but for some reason, Erika and I were separated. We were supposed to meet back at our hotel—which was the doppelgänger of the Hilton Garden Grove (CA), but more like the Royal Sonesta Portland (OR) with the urban façade, bird motif and casual music events. My favorite manager from the Hilton Garden Grove was managing this dream hotel.
Somehow, I’m not sure how, I lost my smart watch at the park, and ended up taking the subway back to the hotel—a reminder of a hotel I stayed at when doing Phoenix Comicon years ago. I don’t know the disposition of my watch, or if I ever reconnected with Erika because I woke up. (Or if I got any amazing cookies like from the Hilton Garden Grove.) That’s it—that’s the end of my dream narration. Did I say that dreams are weird?
I told Erika about my dream in response to her telling me that she had a weird dream. I started out, “So, we were high-end VCR salesmen.” She replied, “What’s a VCR?” I won’t bang a drum to “kids these days” not knowing technology like a landline or a VCR or a cassette tape. My oldest is a Millennial, and he knows what each of these technologies is, but there is definitely a disconnect there. But Erika was born in [REDACTED], and her first gaming system was a Nintendo. In fact, her Super Nintendo is in a box in the garage with my Super Nintendo. Plus, when she was a child in the 80s or 90s, her parents owned a video rental store.
I just kind of looked at her incredulously and replied, “You know, tapes, Blockbuster…”
“Oh,” she responded, “I thought you meant some sort of virtual reality thing. High-end VCRs, huh?”
I nodded.
She returned my nod. “Yeah, dreams are weird.”