Blue_Opossum

Morning of May 16, 2015. Saturday.



My wife and family and I are on some sort of tour where we visit different movie studios as well as at least one television studio. Mostly, modern ghost stories are being filmed. We do go to one set that seems to be a soap opera about doctors having affairs with their patients. Every now and then, a “key” scene is being filmed where an unidentified person runs in front of the camera and later something horrifying supposedly happens (though no horror is ever actually seen).

At one point, the “person running past the camera” becomes annoying and the set mood fairly boring (even though most of the sets are somewhat dark and mysterious). At the soap opera set (which is well-lit), as a male doctor is professing to a female patient about how much he loves her, a shadow darts past the camera and the director screams “Cut!” and throws the script to the floor and tells whoever it is that they are at the wrong studio set. The shadow seems to cower and is seen (on a featureless wall) walking on tiptoes for a time.

Many more scenes are filmed in various so-called horror films where a shadowy figure runs in front of the camera (just as in reality where almost every movie I have seen over the past several years has at least one scene where someone runs in front of the camera, which has become more and more hilarious over the past year, causing my wife and I to laugh out loud every time it happens).

Eventually, I absentmindedly shout “Hey, who are you?” (though there is no discernible lucidity behind my potentially bold imposing query) and Charlie Chaplin steps out from behind a wall. Very oddly (in the highest awareness and “energized” rendering), I get an impression, as he approaches, of a quivering chihuahua (as if the dog was afraid of being punished for making a mess on a rug). He also appears to be dropping crumpled-up bits of paper as if trying to find what note is relevant to his present role of running past a particular camera. He never speaks.

Someone says something about the “scariest movie ever” and I start swearing, asking how a movie could be scary as it is just a moving image on a screen a fair distance from the viewer. Charlie starts holding his index finger vertically to his lips, as a librarian does to “shush” the patrons. This seems to be because I am using too many swearwords as well as being too loud.

Charlie puts on a pair of fake bunny ears and runs past the camera once again. There is a loud scream and the sound of something metallic falling, possibly a spotlight. I start slapping my knees and laughing.

Morning of November 9, 1974. Saturday.



Two small creatures are arguing, but it seems more like I am hearing or reading a script at times. They are in my father’s old room (south end of the house) in the dark under a bed that is aligned along the west windows. One is like a small lobster or crawdad (a play on “father” and his comedic routines or “crawl dad”?), the other like a small crab. I am mostly only aware of their odd shadowy forms at one point. One is a “gig”, the other a “wag” (not sure which is which - probably the lobster is the “wag”, as a lobster has a tail).

They argue about which one of them is better at various things, including standup comedy and what seems like an old Vaudeville (“Vaude” rhymes with “Claude”, both my father’s first name and mine) routine with each blaming the other about the end of Vaudeville. Not much happens. There is a point where they mostly end up only saying “…but I’m a gig” and “…but I’m a wag”. (“Gig” is the first part of “giggle” which relates to comedy and laughing, and “wag” is also short for “waggle” with the same last four letters as “giggle”.)

I try to think of what the term “Gigs and Wags” means, and think “wigs and gags” after waking. I Googled the term “Gigs and Wags” but only got one match - a typo in a 1925 newspaper ad that reads “Gigs and Wags gons renovated” when it was supposed to be “Gigs and Wagons”, I think.

I think this relates to plays on “Vaude”, “giggle” (again, for “gig”), “crawDAD”, and “crab” (in that my mother sometimes called herself a “crab” and was also a Cancer by the so-called zodiac sign). It may be a comedic or “downplayed” dream restaging of a lesser argument between my parents (which was in the back of my mind later on) as well as relate to my father’s celebrity status, though he was not primarily a comedian but a musician/singer (also in reference to “craw” for throat as he actually used that word to mean throat at times). It also relates, outside of the actual conversation (where the sex of the voices was not quite ascertained) the difference between male (lobster or crawdad in this case - and with a “tail” - which in Latin becomes the term for the male reproductive organ) and female (crab - some of which have a somewhat oval body and no “tail”).