Batch

01-28-2014 -- [As usual, first part is not as detailed as it should be.] First thing I can remember, I am out somewhere, discussing potential mystery shops down in the Palm Beach or Lauderdale area. I am talking to a male scheduler, but the type of shop has a strong feel of the recent Circle K shops, stuff where the pay has gone down or they have limited the number of shops or something like that. Something has gone on that has caused me to quit, and say I won't be working for that company any more, and this has ticked off the male scheduler a bit. But then it turns out one of the shops is right next to where we are having our discussion, and the closeness balances out whatever has me ticked off, so I try to un-quit, and say I won't mind doing that particular shop.

The guy says that particular shop is only doing a shop-by-mail shop, that month, but it turns out all I have to do is mail something to them, and remark on any response I get, and that is even simpler than the usual shop, and pays the same, so I am quite happy with it, and am trying to get to necessary envelope together. Problem is, as I am trying to get things together, I actually start to drop stuff, and as I do, Joe S. and his little sister show up, and start pranking me. I am carrying a bunch of sheet music for choir, and as I am picking up other stuff, Joe's sister has grabbed my sheet music and dropped it into a file, while Joe has grabbed some of my other stuff, and started moving it. I have already had the hassles I have been mentioning with the mystery shopping company, and I just don't have the patience for their games, so I make as if to stomp off.

Joe's sister gives up on teasing me, and starts pulling back out sheet music and handing it to me, but now I find myself with two or three copies of various songs, rather than just the one I need, and as I try to separate out the extras, I just start dropping more and more, and scrambling for it. Meanwhile, I also have four toothpicks I have to keep track of, and keep safe (possibly in connection to the by-mail shop) and they are scattering on the floor as well. As I keep trying to pick things up, the scene shifts a bit, and I am standing next to my car at a toll booth, right before where you pay the toll, the door open, still trying to pick up sheet music and toothpicks.

The problem is, there is another car approaching the toll booth coming the other way (doesn't make sense, but there it is), and he may plow right into me. So I pick the entire car up, and set it just off the road on the other side of the toll booth, and then hurry out of the way, myself, so I don't get run over by the car, then finally manage to finish picking up all my toothpicks and music. Problem is now that I don't want to get in trouble for not paying the required tolls, so I again pick up my car (which has an e-pass in it) and kind of swing it over the toll booth on a sort of swinging platform (like the ones in Sonic the Hedgehog that sometimes swing you over spikes or fire pits) so that it registers. Problem is, I don't stop quickly enough, so it swings over a second time, and registers again. I just hope that the toll organization will be smart enough to realize they should only charge me one of them ... meanwhile the car keeps swinging back and forth, so now I have to hope they will disregard two of the three tolls, and I get the car out of there as quickly as I can.

Then things shift again, and I find myself in Manhattan (or a cityscape that looks fairly like it) surrounded by skyscrapers. I find myself watching a movie being filmed by real superheroes. The Incredible Hulk and the Green Goblin are in the middle of a big fight, and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man comes swinging into the middle of it, and I can hear the Hulk muttering and complaining about how it is a mistake to let Spider-Man get involved in all this, because he is so wild, and improvises so much. And sure enough, Spidey swings into the middle of things, coming around on a web at high velocity, and nails the Hulk with an incredible drop kick that sends him flying about a half a mile, outside the city, where he lands on his back, sliding through a field on the edge of a lake. He's the Hulk, so he's not really injured, but he now has a slightly painful case of something like road rash on his back, which he is muttering about as he climbs back to his feet and starts to leap back toward the fight scene.

But the scene is now changing again, and Tobey has been turning into Harry Potter (or perhaps Daniel Radcliffe) who is standing on what almost seems to be a float, along with Hermione/Emma Watson, who is feeling rather down. For some reason, I am standing there trying to tell her how very beautiful her character is, being as sincere about it as possible, to give her morale a boost. But they have to get back to filming. (Like the superheroes before, they are making a movie, but they actually have the powers of their characters, so it isn't technical movie magic being used to make the scenes.)

I am in a sort of an alleyway, out of the way of things, and some sort of late-teen black princess (dressed in a fairly fancy purple gown) is approaching the alleyway I am standing in to get out of the way herself, until her scene is ready to begin, and she sort of glares at me, so I back up further to give her more room to sit down. Harry Potter goes flying by on a broom mounted to the front of a magic carpet where all the camera equipment is mounted, filming over his shoulder as he flies, and he passes the mouth of the alley, then flies a sort of arc before heading past the alleyway again, heading the other direction. By this time the black princess has moved on to do whatever her part is, but there is a little black girl (probably ten or eleven) riding up on a bike, looking forward to watching her sister film her scene.

And somehow the little girl and I in our alleyway, get sort of sucked on to the flying carpet in Potter's wake, so now we're flying through the air behind him while the film company films these fabulously expensive scenes. They must be adding the sound separately, because the whole time Daniel is muttering and complaining about how there is a fabulous peanut-shaped blimp flying high up in the sky, but they didn't know it was going to be there, so they couldn't plan to include it in the filming, which bothers him, because he thinks it is neat. The problem is, all the sheet music that I had been trying to carry has now turned into large, flat (unassembled) cardboard boxes, and the wind rushing by as we fly along has pulled them out of my hands, and they have been sucked in front of the cameras and have ruined the scene. Daniel goes ballistic, and starts screaming at me for ruining the scene, and mentions now they will have to refilm it tomorrow, but I am not available tomorrow, and you know what? He's glad I'm not available tomorrow, because after ruining the scene, I don't deserve to be in it, so hah! I don't remember what I actually have to do tomorrow anyway, but I say I can reschedule if they want me to, and be there, but he tells me that I am not wanted. Rather depressing.

[Just interesting information ... though I have not read it in some fifteen or twenty years, there was a very early Spider-Man comic book that had Spider-Man and the Green Goblin filming a movie in a desert somewhere (Spider-Man thinking the Green Goblin was only an actor, and not realizing it was the real Goblin) when the Hulk stumbled into the middle of things for a huge fight.]