Being Paul Giamatti

Due to being unemployed, I’ve been sleeping in and experiencing really strange dreams. They’re the type of dreams that, crusty-eyed and trying to stagger past the small diapered child who follows me around — I’m renting a room from a family that has 3 kids — its exactly what you imagine it to be — I silently pat myself on the back for being capable of such weird yet coherent dreams.

In my latest dream, Paul Giamatti is starring in a movie in which he’s cunning and quick enough to escape the clutches of two faceless cops. I say “movie” because I was somehow aware during the dream that I was inside of a movie, and after the last scene ended, my brain told me to wake up.

About halfway through the movie, I became Paul Giamatti. In one “scene” I shimmied on my stomach through a small, long wooden area. I looked down and saw, through the slats, that my two nemeses were also sliding on their stomachs below me, trying to catch up. There were meaningful glances and sweating.

We emerged all at the same time. I ran to a car and the next scene was all about driving around a parking lot trying to escape bullets and trying to not hit anyone in my way. I hit a lot of cars and knocked a lot of stuff over, but knew the audience would be all “Ohhhh, no he didn’t! Ahhh but I guess it’s okay, he needs to escape for the greater good.” I think I overestimate the emotions of my audience. Generally when I watch a high-intensity scene in an action movie, I end up thinking “ooh, who’s going to fix that bridge?” or “that was a lot of shrapnel, I hope that the resulting wounds of passerby do not cause someone to need to cross the bridge to get to the hospital, because they will likely bleed to death or drown trying to cross that river.”

But I got caught. The two cops took me to the top of a grassy hill, where my entire extended family sat on picnic tables underneath a patio tent, eating peanut butter sandwiches. The cop that was escorting me opened the flap of the tent, and then somehow I escaped. Then I became Director again, and watched as Paul Giamatti got into a car, waved, and drove away on the dusty road. Then I woke up.

Looking back, it looks like my dream involved:

• Paul Giamatti
• parking lot
• police
• peanut butter
• patio
• picnic table

I’m not quite sure what that signifies. Maybe I should just stop watching Lost before going to sleep.