Journal #86

03/21: The Price Is Right is back in dreams again, this time in animated form, in to the style of PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)-style shows for kids such as Arthur (R.I.P.) and WordGirl, and like the dream on December 4th, it's Showcase time again, but in a classroom-like setting. This time, there is a "category" that tells the four remaining students things about a Showcase they're trying to bid on.

The dream, like one of the Wayne's World films, shows all the possible endings, and one of them it decides to show is when one of the students overbids on their Showcase, gets booed, and has these red "down" marker like objects thrown at them. There was also another possible ending where all the students overbid on their Showcase, gets booed, and has the same thing that happened to one student, happen to all of them.

However, there was one student who feared this monster that would be out to get him if he lost, kind of like me when I was younger -- well, my elementary and middle school days, but I never really explained it to anyone. I forget his/her/its name, but it resembled like a typical villain from an anime, as they're usually blond-haired, and this one was no different. I'm guessing this one was male, dressed like a "scene" kid (possibly skater/emo mix) revealed in dark shadows.

Watching the events play out on TV in my room, I ask in disbelief, "What is Weston Gardner doing on a kids' show?", and the dream ends at 6-ish in the morning before any of the students on the show in the dream reacted to it. (also, that wasn't the "monster" the student feared.) (Personally, I think the mysterious character the dream showed looked like a mix between him and professional wrestler Jeff Hardy -- minus the hair dye.)

(Fun Fact: Weston was actually a contestant on The Price Is Right 12 years ago in Season 39 (2010-11), show #5263K -- aired out of order on October 13th, 2010, actually airing on September 22, 2010 in an afternoon showing, in the place of the long-running soap opera As The World Turns, which ended after the 2009-10 season in the U.S. on CBS. He won two prizes in the Drew Carey-created pricing game Rat Race (a late-Season 38 debutante) totaling $3,614, and later went on to win his Showcase, accumulating $28,638 in cash and prizes, including an extra $1,000 in his Showcase Showdown -- that's where they spin the big Wheel to see who qualifies for the final round of the show, simply named "The Showcase", and the three contestants that got up on stage to play a pricing game try to get as close as they can to $1.00 -- without going over. He passed the first Showcase, which included a boat, to his opponent, and she overbid. Oh, and the show re-aired two days after Christmas 2010 on December 27th.)

I had a heck of a bad day yesterday (mentally having to play the protagonist and antagonist at the same time in the morning), and it was stressful. I just have to learn not to take game shows and their results way too seriously, which I had been doing since my teenage years, and quite frankly, I think it was anxiety and depression-inducing. I just have to find a better way to manage mental health and anxiety. -WM86

12/1: It's the Showcase round on The Price Is Right, however, like the latest edition of the video game, Decades, the top winner and runner-up podiums are switched, TW on the left, RU on the right. Drew Carey reads the actual retail price of the Showcase of the player on the left, revealing that he had overbid. He reads the ARP of the player on the right's Showcase, an attractive brown-haired girl, and she ends up winning about $45,000+ in cash and prizes; apparently both of them had a good day in the episode. The scene after the Showcase reveal made no sense, but I do remember George Gray (the announcer on my country's version since Season 39; got the job permanently in April 2011) announcing a line similar to Jeopardy! long-time announcer Johnny Gilbert (a legendary game show announcer now in his 90s) since mid-Season 38 (currently) of that show, "From the famous Bob Barker Studio in Hollywood, this is George Gray speaking for The Price Is Right, a Fremantle production!"

A scene later, I find myself in the passenger side of what appears to be my dad's car, parked in front of a shopping center with what appears to be other cars with numbers in the upper-left corner of their windshields, likely tuners, but nobody was inside. Skies were overcast as well. This scene reminded me of dreams I had in 2012 where I was sitting in the passenger side of a car and random things happened.

12/3: Students, likely middle to high school-age, were walking with their backpacks in the street that looked eerily similar to the road that leads to my apartment. In reality, there's a community center and a multipurpose center nearby. L.L. Bean was the manufacturer of some of the backpacks, as those were the ones with the wearer's initials on the top, as I saw a lot of students in middle school with these. I didn't see any of these in high school, however. The dream then focuses on a student's backpack with the initials "LEK", a female. I didn't get to see the rest of the dream play out as my alarm clock buzzed and my phone vibrated.

(That kinda explains why I have a Google Images tab up in Firefox searching for the L.L. Bean backpacks with the students' initials on them since this morning.)

-WM86/DFW