January Dreams

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 25, 2016

There’s a strange myth that one doesn’t dream when they go to bed high, and there’s a bad hacky joke about it too, that goes something like, “when you get stoned you don’t have dreams, and your real life dreams die too.”  This has never been true.  At least not for me.  Actually, going to bed high increases my likely hood of lucid dreaming.  But then again, I’m a freak of nature, with a brain that might be releasing too much DMT while I’m asleep.

But there is something to be said about the dreams one has when you quit smoking weed (I’m told this is also true of cigarettes, and probably anything you may do habitually).  I am on a drug hiatus at the moment.  This is not to say I’ve quit forever.  I’m just right now working on something that requires much focus, and I need my head clear.  I’ve said enough.  You already know too much.

Anyway, I can right now pass a drug test, and my dreams have been vivid as fuck.  It might actually be worth it to smoke a lot of weed and then quit for these vivid dreams alone.

Below are just some of the more interesting and strange dreams I’ve had.  Won’t you come into my head?

The One With Gary Oldman & Julia-Louis Dreyfus

So this one starts off, I’m in the Amazon, or some sort of jungle like place, and I get on a raft like boat with a small crew that is captained by a 40 something year old Gary Oldman.   We start heading down these rapids, and this is some real stage five white water rafting, dangerous shit.  Guys are flying over board left and right, I’m hanging on for dear life while the boat is just getting pummeled by waves.  We hit calm waters, and it’s just me and Gary Oldman left.  So, naturally, we have sex.  I’ve always loved Gary Oldman, so it was a dream come true for me.  But then I stabbed Gary Oldman to death, which seems odd, but for some reason, I thought/knew he was going to try to kill me.  It was violent.  It was some real praying mantis shit.  Hey, at least Gary Oldman got to have sex with me before he died a violet death when I stabbed him in the stomach over and over.

Now it’s just me on this raft boat, and I’m about to hit some serious rough waters.  I can’t control the boat, and the river is just white caps.  I’m thrown from the boat, and like a water slide at an amusement park, I ride it down, dodging rocks along the way.  At the end of the river, I’m now in some sort of Los Angeles studios.  Luckily, the river washed all of Gary’s blood off me. Maybe that was supposed to be a scene for a movie?  I’m not sure.  I felt mighty guilty about offing Gary like that, especially since I’m such a fan.

Then, I’m in a hospital sitcom with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, where she’s a doctor and I’m a new nurse (think, Scrubs).  Julia keeps making me laugh, and I keep fucking up the takes.  It was a great dream.

The One With The Fat Kid

I’m on the subway, the very familiar N/Q on the way home to Astoria.  I’m reading a book, which is usual in real life, unusual in dreams.  I’m not sure what the book was, but it was a hard cover, and the cover was lavender.  It may have been “Alice in Wonderland,” which is sort of ironic, and maybe not so ironic, because it’s the only book I’ve ever read more than twice, so I know it pretty well.  Anyway, I’m standing there, and there’s this little fat girl mouthing off to me.  Just being really rude and annoying.  I’m ready to slap the little brat, and I look around for her mother to yell at her, but I realize the kid is alone.  I ask her how old she is and she says “three.”  This kid is far too big and advanced to be three, but consider the fact that I have OCD and I’m obsessed with the number 3.

Now I feel bad for the little shit head.  I look around the subway, but I trust no one but myself, so I tell her I’ll take her home.  We get off at the next stop, and I’m carrying her fat ass around a part of Queens I’ve never seen before, as she gives me awful directions.  And the whole time she’s making fun of me.  I want to drown this kid in a bathtub, but I still feel it’s my responsibility to get her home safely to her most likely neglectful alcoholic mother.  My arms grow tired of carrying this poster child for diabetes, so I put her down, and tell her not to move as I’m going to get the cops.

I go around the corner and start talking to a female cop about this kid I found.  We go to where I left her, and of course, she’s gone.  The cop calls it in, and now we’re walking around looking for her.

“She’s fat, blond, and won’t shut her mouth.  She’s really annoying, you can’t miss her.  Anyone seen this little girl?”

The search goes on, and then I realize, I’m lost.  I have no idea what part of Queens I’m in.  There’s a bakery, with goodies in the window, and I stole a chocolate doughnut (I’ve cut back on sugar in real life, so it’s not surprising I’m craving sugary treats).  I’m still looking for this fucking brat, when I realize, I don’t even know her name.  So I go into a bodega, and I have sex with a man in there.  Apparently, I’m sexually frustrated.

The One With The Shark

This was a good one.
My brother and I were on a boat on the Great South Bay, which I know well, since I frequented those waters throughout my youth.  I’m not sure who’s boat it was, but it was an 18 foot Grady White.  My guess is that it was my brother Mitchell’s.  Mitch is water skiing, and I’m driving the boat.  Then, this prehistoric shark thing comes up right next to the boat.  It’s bigger than the boat.  It’s shape was more like a catfish, I would say.  And it’s skin was white, and almost clear.  You could see it’s skeleton.  The thing was a damn monster.  I yelled, “shark” to my brother.  Apparently, in dreams, boat engines don’t make any noise, because as I’m towing my brother, we’re just having a conversation.

He tells me to slow the boat down but not too much.  If I slow down too much, he’ll fall.  Instead, he’ll pull himself in on the rope, and then jump on the boat.  He starts doing this.  I keep my eyes peeled for the beast, but I can’t see it.  Just when Mitch is about to hop on the boat, he falls in.  Since the boat is in gear, I drive away from him.  I immediately turn the boat around, and pick him up.  We see the “shark” again, and this time, we chase it.  We chase the thing down a canal, to try to corner it, but it hits into our boat, and breaks the engine (preposterous, I know, but it’s a dream).  So now, the boat is idle, and this creature is after us.  We’re not far from people’s backyards in the canal, but we don’t plan on jumping in the water.  We figure we’ll drift over, when the shark hits the boat again, capsizing it (this is the second capsized boat… gotta be meaning here, c’mon people this is where I need you).  Frantically, we both swim to another boat that’s docked on the canal.

An old man comes out of his house, and starts yelling at us, because our boat scratched his.  We tell him about the shark monster, but he doesn’t believe it.

The One Where I Have A Niece

(My actual, super adorable nephew)

This one I feel like is the most clear about stresses in my life.  I was filming a movie I wrote and the real life director of my last two pilots, John Trueson, was directing it.  Other comics were there including Matt Burke (who stars in my upcoming project), John Ziegler (which is weird because John Ziegler is the single worst actor I’ve ever seen… I guess I really blew it when I killed Gary Oldman), Uncle Mike (not my actual Uncle Mike, but rather Uncle Mike from our former podcast, Full Frontal Radio), and Samantha Bee, who I don’t know at all, but she is really awesome so I was glad to have an actual famous person in my film.

Whatever we were filming (a dark comedy, if I know me), we were filming in the backyard of my former childhood home.  Apparently we were filming for a long time because every one was getting kind of pissed at me (not unusual, I can be a prick when filming my projects), so I called it a day.  Then, I heard a little boy’s voice calling my name.  It was my nephew, Anthony.  He was calling from the window where my brother’s bedroom used to be, above the backdoor to the living room.  He was older.  Four or five years old (he’s one and a half in real life).  And I got so sad, because I realized I hadn’t seen him in so long.  He was with a little girl, maybe two years old.  My niece.

They came into the backyard, and I picked up my niece (I don’t have a niece… yet).  She had green eyes, like myself and my sister and brother, and brown curly hair.  She was just so cute.  A gorgeous child.  I hugged her, and she hugged me, and I was so sad that I was missing this.  Then, Anthony is tugging at my pants, saying, “Aunt Lori, are you gonna play with us?”

“Of course,” I said, “of course, I’m gonna play with you.”

The One With Surfing & Movies

This one starts off at the beach.  I’m with my Dad, who’s holding my nephew Anthony, and we’re watching surfers surf some really big swell on a pier.  Every so often we get splashed by a wave, which startles Anthony, but we just laugh and kiss him, and he smiles knowing he’s okay with us.

I don’t have a surf board, but I decide to swim out and body surf these massive waves.  I swim out, but I’m unable to catch any waves.

Then I’m in the movies.  How I got there, I don’t know, but I’m with friends.  The movie is about to start, when a Velociraptor enters the movie theater.  The other people in the theater start freaking out and screaming, but for some reason me and my friends think it’s hilarious, and we start laughing.

The movie screen turns into a forest.  Suddenly, I realize I’m dreaming.  Maybe it was the dinosaur.  I get out of my seat, and walk right through the screen into the forest.  It looks kind of like the forest in E.T.  I’m walking around, and kind of surprised about how vivid the dream is and how much control I have of it.  The forest turns into a backyard.  A familiar backyard, belonging to one of my childhood best friends, Meagan Lucie.  I walk into her back door, where her parents are at the kitchen table.  They ask what I’m doing there, and I tell them not to worry about it.  I haven’t been in that house in years.  I leave through the front door, but the dream starts deteriorating.  It’s falling apart around me.  I try to keep it together, but I wake up.

The One Where I’m Freaking Out About Getting Home

This one happened while I was in Ohio.  Just this past weekend, I was doing a gig in Ohio while New York was getting buried in snow.  The airline kept calling me and cancelling my flights, and they said all airports would be closed Sunday and the earliest I could fly out was Monday morning.  I was freaking the fuck out, because I had an audition on Monday which I have been preparing for for weeks and I did not want to miss it.  I ended up taking a ride to New Jersey with another comic on the show, and it all worked out fine, but I was riddled with anxiety.  So, naturally, I got drunk.

When I passed out drunk, I had this anxiety dream:  I was trying to get back to New York for my audition, and me and the other comics took a train.  Now, this train was huge.  It had multiple levels, and we had a room on the train which fit three Queen size beds across (like some Harry Potter shit).  On the third floor, there was a club, which we attended, and I was drinking and was properly drunk (probably because I was in real life).  My sister and nephew were also there, which doesn’t make any sense, except for the fact that I really miss my nephew.

I’m really drunk, and we’re doing drugs, and there’s a lot of dancing, but it’s all really blurry to me, I can hardly stand. I kept falling down.  Some of the other people on the train are telling me it’s going to be fine, I’m going to get back to New York, and pressure me to drink/do more drugs.  It’s a real Great Gatsby like scene.  This is all bugging me out, so  I return to our room in the train.  I look out the window, and the train is going really fast.  I can’t make out what’s on the outside.  The other comics are in the room too, and also really drunk.  They’re laughing, telling stories, and falling over.  I lay on the bed, and I’m thirsty as hell.  All I want is water.  I go to the sink but no water is coming out.  I then woke up with terrible dry mouth and drank four glasses of water.