i am at the coins-to-cash money-mesh machine at Safeway emptying my wares when i sense a heavy breathing coming from a van Dyke beard. Alan Watts is centimeters away from my face smiling at me.
me: oh my god. is it really you, sir?
Alan Watts: i am keeping myself company. you're gonna have the same lifepath as me. i've never leaned before. you know? i've never leaned on a physical structure before.
me: what are the chances. the magical doesn't touch me like this. i'm obsessed with celebrity because i've never met one. can you teach me how to lucid dream?
Alan: of course, kid, that's why i'm here. now.
me: no but like the way YOU lucid-dream.
Alan: right right, the whole nine, i got you. throw away that box of tea, kid, it's a useless husk. lavender tea? come on.
Patrick Lavender: ...
Alan: the only tea you need only i can prepare: Ayahuasca iced tea. served at my mushroom room. tonight only. be there or be square. be there and be aware.
me: you are a cool man. a man of coolness. you know, like Belmondo. or Alain.
Alan: the French philosopher? this Car Week nonsense is bunk, it's all shit. the rude rumbling of the engine meant to to scare birds. the death rattle of these stupid funny cars racing mountain curves on a Monday, YOU MISSED IT. YOU MISSED THE WEEK, BUDDY, NO MORE!!! WRONG DAY!!!
Gary Kildall: hi, i'm an Alan Watts disciple. don't i look it?
me: i am so sorry we're shaking palms and mine are sweaty, sir. i don't have the hair you do.
Gary: cars are the worst machines man has ever created. computers were invented to combat cars.
Alan: Gary and i were virgins until that fateful trip to the strip. the racing strip.
Alan: i know what you were doing. your dad leaves you lucky pennies on the ground every so often to remind you that he's still around and you can still hug him in your dreams.
me: how'd you know?
Alan: i'm not a prophet, i'm a man who thinks. dreams are the closest approximation to Heaven. you figured the most sacred way to honor your father is to get the lucky pennies cashed in the Safeway contraption, it somehow preserves the legacy of the magic, the luck drained from the pennies. and then you use the ticket to buy some cupcakes or something. in order for you not to lose your dad, you eat your dad.
me: i've never seen a movie in IMAX.
Jen R: you've never had an IMAX woman.
Phil Donahue: i was one of the first people to showcase Alan Watts's teachings on my show Donahue. Alan Watts did his first English-language interview on my show.
Alan Watts: your show made me cry.
Phil: thank you. let's face it, i was the only person you ever met who was a true liberal. what can i say, i had a huckleberry for street photography. street photography got me hot. street photographers make the best nannies.
Marlo Thomas: Phil, why didn't we have children?
Phil: you weren't that girl.
Phil Donahue: i was the only person who did Catholicism right. Catholicism was always meant to combine with Roman orgies to be at its best.
The Pope: that's what i've been saying but the cardinals aren't down with my flow. Catholicism needs to get back to its roots...
Phil: Oprah understood this.
Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder are in Seattle.
Eddie Vedder: the Day 1 building? sounds ominous. like some invisible plan is happening.
Kurt Cobain: it's okay, Eddie, i'm here. i'll protect you. just to be on the safe side tho let's meet at your house from now on.
Eddie Vedder: my house is the general seating of a Starbucks.
boulangerie: eating French bread in your lingerie...
viennoiserie: bread with wine. filled, both meanings...
Stephen King: writers are very passive-aggressive people...
Stephen King: life really is a grim place.
Capp: lonely people are everywhere.
Jen R: and none of these lonely people meet each other.
Alan Watts: your luck can change simply by getting in the right checkout lane at the grocery store. here's to butter days. Ms. Frizzle ALWAYS has her back turned to me at the Bagel Bakery!!!
Banksy: what's the point of art if no one cares? that's where street art comes in...
Capp: you're still here? i thought you moved on.
Jen R: i was only gone 2 days. the nature of time is such that you don't know when a month begins or ends...
Capp: you're still around? all the plans we make all the time to meet, they're all pipe dreams, right?
Jen R: yeah, they're just a way to try to keep us connected somehow...
solace: it's not soulless...
Melbourne: cars are a nightmare.
Melbourne: no just because the Tesla DeLorean is all black doesn't make it better.
Pati Jinich: i got Mission flour tortillas on my dashboard.
Richard Belzer: the weird thing is i kinda liked that it was ending for me...
Sartre: Hell is when you desperately want to talk to other people but nobody says anything.
Camus: Hell is not being able to be with the people you want to be with.
Samuel Beckett: your people. no other people. no other random people...
Boc: walking is good but hiking is better. imagine a house with a giant triangular roof as a library in the snow...
Hot Sauce Queen: Doryce on Thursdays.
Doryce: they did something to Frank...
Aeon Flux: i met my girlfriend Bjork on an Iceland train, perfect hidden place...
Bjork: i sing about my paramour Aeon Flux in my song "All Is Full of Love..."
Spalding Gray holding a can of paint from Ace Hardware: Payne's gray, my pain, mysterious monochrome, charcoal calmness, a soft painting like me...
Stu at Cord's funeral is delivering the eulogy.
Stu: social anxiety be damned!!! sorry, i'm a little nervous in this place. friends are worth pain. if you don't have the right roommates, you're a goner. luckily i had Cord for a roommate which is why you're hearing my voice now. i'm standing here with you all now because Obama won that election.
Greykid: Cord's cat Meowser is confused but i'm comforting her with some Super Mario games.
Stu: as for Cord's plants, they haven't said a word.........only i could pull of a funeral joke like that...
Cord: it's not lost on me that i was named after the Red Cord of Fate...
Kurt Cobain: you thought it was scentless apprentice before, try to smell all the perfume cards in the 400-page September Issue of VOGUE Magazine!!!
Archer: Car Week gave me tinnitus.
Wilma and Betty at Car Week.
Wilma Flintstone: i can't take another va-va-va-VROOM car engine.
Dino: sportscar shit.
Betty Rubble: i never thought i'd miss my Barney's goblin feet.
Wilma: Fred wants me to suck his toes after bowling to wipe away the lane grease.
Howard Hesseman: Car Week noise is like bad DJ dub over record scratches that sound infected...
Rod Serling: why can't life be a Twilight Zone episode? you know, one of the sweet episodes where it's a love story between a very lonely man and a very lonely woman...
Jerry Cantrell: a green swamp is a marsh...
Robin Williams: '90s shirt, a red heart with a sword through it, its one eye shedding one tear.
Kurt Cobain: i'm working the flowers. i'm in the floral department now at Safeway, making curled ribbons with the edge of my knife...
Annie: when you're as poor as me, the only thing you can splurge on is soup. you get the fancy can of 1929 hamburger soup. the fancy can of enchilada soup.
Daddy Warbucks: no Spanish Flu in that soup...
Luke Russert: i make sure to hide my groceries in my suede bag here with the zipper and the handle, once the bums get a good whiff, it's a streetfight.
Melbourne: Car Week ends on Saturday not Sunday, because of course all these guys need to get to church...
Maruchan instant wonton noodles in a paper bowl: come on, man!!! why add boring regular noodles? have a bowl filled with JUST wonton noodles!!!
Martin Yan: dry garnish my Yan Can Cook butthole. i have the same ass as Leslie Sbrocco.
Leslie Sbrocco: i will eat any food. except broccoli.
Gilligan and The Skipper are in Maine.
the Skipper: remember when i tried to teach you how to steer a speedboat, Little Buddy?
Gilligan: yes dad i mean Skipper, i was 12 but i guess i looked older. i had no idea what i was doing. i almost steered us into a buoy.
Skipper: i had such an UTTER look of disappointment on my face. i really thought you'd turn out to be a boat guy. we'd have something to talk about at cocktail parties.
Gilligan: but i'm just not. that steered me AWAY from driving anything the rest of my life.
dad: i could have been Tim Powers doing plastic swordfights with fans at science-fiction conventions...
Tooth Fairy: if you're unwilling to wash your body at least wash your teeth. no blood is a good indication.
Easter Bunny: get a haircut. get a job.
Louise Belcher: i have both.
Robin Williams: I'm the pride of San Francisco...
i manage to get to the mushroom room. in two pieces.
Alan Watts: one piece and your third eye.
me: i was aimlessly wandering the hills more than hiking them. barefoot. is that your recommendation? to hike in the hills barefoot?
Alan: oh yes, you did that marvelously. splendid show, old chap.
me: who has the better voice, you or Mary Elizabeth McGlynn as Motoko Kusanagi?
Alan: me.
me: any bona fides?
Alan Watts: well you know Shino, right? Shino from Naruto, he was my client. that whole thing with Shino saying if you're living in the past are you really living? that was all me. i need you to do something for me, hold this.
Alan hands me a green notebook filled with brownish-red pages.
me: this is a cool notebook. it's familiar somehow.
Alan: that's all of life, kid. when i launch into my lucid dream, i want you to write down in this notebook anything that spills out of my mouth, no matter if it sounds like gibberish. especially if it sounds like gibberish.
me: gotcha, spirit sir. how will i know when you're inside your own lucid dream?
Alan Watts: my left eye will start to twitch.
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