IN DREAMS

No real poker news to report. I've been playing sporadically this week and almost exclusively NL ring games. Each day I'm having a profitable session but only playing a couple of hours. I've decided to try to earn my Sunday money during the week so that the big losses don't sting so much as I await the big payday. I've been sticking to the $2-4, $3-6, and $4-4 games even though my bankroll would allow me to play higher. I guess I'm too conservative to risk too much at this stage in my career since I invariably take money out of my poker economy to put towards long-term debt. I figure my $150k score last year pays me two or three years forward and I don't have to go out and try to duplicate last year's earnings. Slow and steady wins the race.

I'm still kicking around a half dozen screenplay ideas in my head and one in particular is rattling around in there lately. I've been stuck in research mode for the past three years but I have recently concluded that there is nothing more to learn about the subject and it's time to come up with some plot points. I've got much of the story worked out in my head so I just need to formalize the plot and figure out how to move from one scene to the next. The story, which I am tentatively titling HUMINT, concerns itself with the fascinating twin topics of alien abduction and CIA mind control experiments. Think CLOSE ENCOUNTERS meets THE THREE FACES OF EVE meets THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Would you pay to see it? Would you option the script for $400k?

I haven't written it yet but I did write to Tom about my dream last night after he did the same. I liked his so much I'm reprinting it here without express written permission from Major League Baseball or Tom's subconscious:

TOM:

I had this dream last night that some young MLB shortstop was telling us that he owes his whole career to Ozzie Smith meeting him and teaching him a few things when he was a kid. Suddenly I'm a kid and I'm walking through some busy crosswalk and there is Ozzie Smith walking the other way and he starts making excuses to me as to why he can't get together and show me a few things. Only it doesn't quite look like Ozzie. The dream me thinks he doesn't look like his baseball cards. Next you, me and Scott Johnson are standing around in his basement and you out with a bottle of Bullit Bourbon offering to pour everyone a glass. Scott, the noted teetotaller, asks that you pour it into his shirt pocket which you do without question. Instead of leaking through the pocket, the bourbon makes his pocket expand until he says that the amount should be enough for now. Then I'm an adult and I see Ozzie again and he says that he's sorry that he couldn't meet with me earlier but now he's ready to teach me to be a MLB shortstop. I don't have the heart to tell him that I am more of a thirdbaseman.

DUDE:

Your dream cracked me up. I like how I've got the bourbon in the dream. The best part is how I pour it in Scott's pocket until he says when, as if that is how non-drinkers join in. I rarely remember my dreams anymore but reading yours made me recall snippets of mine:

Brother Steve was driving his Yukon with me in the passenger's seat. We came to an onramp that was at about a 75-degree angle, almost straight up, a true test of driving skill. He positioned himself at the far left side and told me to hold on. I agreed that it is exactly how I handle this onramp (as I have lived here for years). I always punch the accelerator to the floor and cut the ramp at an angle to make sure I don't flip over. The challenge is compounded by the fact that you can't really see the traffic until you are already making the merge at the top of the ramp.

So Steve gunned the accelerator and made it up the ramp amidst the smell of burning rubber but he didn't cut enough of an angle so we wound up perpendicular to the traffic flow and he was forced to make a three-point turn on the freeway to get himself straightened out. While he expertly maneuvered his Yukon, narrowly missing the rush of oncoming traffic, he is engaging me in idle banter about how he's getting used to the town and all its idiosyncrasies.

So we finally got to where we were going and we stepped inside a tight stone-walled room with a guy sitting at a table handling some machinery while a stream of individuals kept going into and coming out of a small closet, always a little dizzy on their exit. Steve took his turn and when he came out I asked him if he felt better and he replied that he just felt different and couldn't really remember why he wanted to do this in the first place. I went next. I stepped into the closet and closed the door behind me. I couldn't for the life of me recall why I wanted to do this. Suddenly the light dimmed and I felt a queasy feeling and nearly fell down. I surmised that I had just been irradiated but for reasons unknown to me.

As soon as the queasy feeling subsided, I noticed a nook in the corner of the small room that hadn't seemed to be there upon my initial inspection. I squeezed into it and discovered an open suitcase, empty, but perfectly sized to fit the piece of machinery that the guy at the table was using. I exited the closet and the guy at the table smiled at me and said "that ought to bring some of the subtleties back for you, Dude." I was a bit delirious and couldn't think straight but said to him: "yeah, that's how I found that crazy device in the first place."

So as I met up with Steve, I pieced together in my mind what must have happened. Since I am uniquely attuned to noticing the easily overlooked, I must have somehow stumbled into an overlooked recess of a small closet in an abandoned structure in the middle of nowhere and found a device which, once unveiled, affected everyone in the world in such a way as to remove all nuance from the minutiae of everyday life. It seemed so outlandish but it was the only logical solution that fit the known facts. Now I was "cured" and when I met up with Steve, he handed me his keys and said "I'm not totally clear on what's going on but I'm pretty sure I would like you to drive home."