Sitting in a Caribou Coffee at the Lunds in Uptown. The statement would not have worked at all when I lived in this neighborhood, because A) there weren’t any Caribou Coffees anywhere, and B) you didn’t sit at Lunds. It’s a grocery store. You walk. No one sits. For coffee in those days I think we had McDonald’s, or a restaurant. You’d be that dreaded customer who just had coffee. For a waiter that meant frequent trips and a skinny tip.

Daughter is shopping for a costume at the vintage store. The cast-off / overflow / crap no one could sell store. I went there last year to buy a hat for the Halloween costume no one understood: I wore a trench coat, a hat, and had the letter M chalked on my back. Don’t know what I’ll go as this year; I could wear the same costume, put putty on my face and go as Melty Nazi from the first Indy movie, but eh, I don’t know. I feel silly in costume and I feel silly talking with other adults who are dressed as silly things.

It’s a Tuesday night, and Uptown isn’t hopping. It’s cool, not cold, and the shops and bars are mostly empty. BECAUSE IT’S TUESDAY, the worst day of the week. I can’t quite imagine what would compel someone to go out drinking on Tuesday night.

Perhaps because it’s Tuesday night.

Driving past a venerable old building, I had a sudden pang of doubt - what is the name of this place?

Study the five clues, and tell me if you have any idea what this place might possibly be called. It's just a mystery to me.

I was supposed to sing along with a pro-Minnesota ensemble at a Vietnamese Cultural Center, but it caught fire. This happened while I still in the parking lot discussing the performance with the director, talking about which key it was in. Then I got on the air and narrated the evacuation, which was odd. They put everyone in the building in small boats, which they lowered to the ground, and also shot small plastic escape pods into the distance.

This didn’t bother me so much as the horse race I had to do later in the day. It was some sort of celebrity fun thing; I would be racing a local TV anchor at Canterbury Downs. What worried me about this was the end of the race: I had to jump off the horse and go hand over hand up a pole, and that determined the winner. I really didn’t want to do this.

I never got around to doing that, because I had to take the hamster to the vet, and it weighed 20 pounds and was leashed.

——

I stole a television set. I didn’t need it; I had enough money. But I stole it nevertheless, and this weighed on my conscience. You could say the store was going broke anyway, and indeed it was; the condition of the aisles and facilities suggested I was in a Sears, but it had too many levels, and too much faded, dinged-up mid-century modern decor. I don’t know how I got the television up those narrow stairs, but I did.

It was only a matter of time before the police came ‘round, so I waited. Eventually I got an Arrest Progress Report, which contained something I hadn’t expected. There was a note of a conversation with Det. Best (oh great, I literally have the Best Detective on my case), who opined that pursuing the case wouldn’t be worth it, because the suspect is a well-known writer on the internet.

“I can just see him getting up there on his blog and saying Case . . . .Dismissed when we lose,” Det. Best said.

This pleased me greatly, because it meant I could return the TV without fear of consequences. Shortly thereafter I noticed that the TV had developed a crack in the middle, and I was annoyed: the quality of things these days. It’s just appalling.

—

I was led into a room that had been used a means of hiding stolen art, back in the Victorian times. It required brief passage through a somewhat claustrophobic area, and since I’d been through it before - I knew that I had, quite recently - I declined the rest of the tour, and went downstairs where there was a village festival. A large beam of wood laid across two high sawhorses, and it was there that Ringo Starr asked me what I’d been doing up in that place, since he lived there.

“Ah,” I said, wanting to have some fun with Ringo. “We’re from the magazine company. You’re well-known for your collection of newsmagazines, so they sent us ‘round to bring them up to date. All the ones that said ‘Obama’ when referring to the President now say ‘Trump,’ since that would be accurate, today.”

He nodded and seemed to go along with the gag, and later at the restaurant - a busy place with 50s furnishings and overflowing ashtrays - I regaled everyone with the tale, and told them what a good sport Ringo Starr was. My pal Ringo.

—-

I had to perform at the Super Bowl. Went there, and realized this probably was’t a shorts - and T-shirt gig. It was winter, too, and rater cold. Went to find the KTCA people.; they were in a room, setting up board games to pass the time. Asked if I was slated to go on; they said “What’s your name?” I told them, and they said yes I was scheduled. I thought I had better get some more appropriate dress, so I left the building to get an UBER to take me home.

There were surprisingly many for a SuperBowl weekend, and the prices were good I chose one, and his bio came back as a big Mel Blanc fan. My phone rang, and the driver’s prerecorded message consisted of a lengthy description of how big a Mel Blanc fan he really was, without any attempts to imitate his famous voices. At this point I realized that A) it had become very heavy to walk, as often happens in dreams when you need to be somewhere, and B) I had come to a street where it seemed likely the Uber would pick me up, and C) There was a lion on the sidewalk up the block. Big main, implacable face, just sitting on the sidewalk.

So I moved away to the right, only to find a Lioness on my right. I moved towards the brownstones as nonchalantly as possible; the lioness followed, and seemed to be examining my suitability for a meal. A guy came out of the adjacent apartment and jogged towards his car; I asked if this was common and he said no, not really.

A text message woke me up.

——

I had to give a speech about a book - actually, a reading. I had been hired to read the book aloud. It was a biography of sorts, and I think it may have been about Larry King.. I thought I would open with an anecdote about the time I called the Larry King show, got through, and was accosted by a stranger just as I was about to go on the air. Seems I was calling from a bus depot, and someone wanted me to exchange a blue Zippo for a different one, and the difficulty of making the trade while being on the radio was a source of particular amusement for Mr. King. When I called again, years later, he started the call with the words “get you get the Zippo?”, which I thought was quite remarkable.

Anyway, there didn’t seem to be any good point to start the book. It was thick and laudatory, and lacked anecdotes. The author was backstage, and I asked him if there was any particular part he wanted to emphasize; no, it was all good. Okay. I excused myself to use the restroom, since I would be on stage for at least an hour, reading this stupid book. The urinal malfunctioned and drenched the front of my shirt, tie, and pants, but I wasn’t particularly concerned; I’d be behind a podium.

As it turned out, the reading was part of a concert series that included choirs and bands, it ran over and my services were not needed. This was a relief, but the mood changed immediately once everyone in the hall realized there had been a terrible traffic accident outside, with great loss of life. People began weeping in advance without knowing details, and I wondered if I should do the same in case someone I knew had been injured. It was certainly be less of a shock, and if no one had been injured, I would feel great relief.

In conclusion: I have no idea why I'm having these dreams, but I'm enjoying them and hope Netflix picks them up for a second season.

This is really taking it to a new level.

Frosted Flakes: sugar. But wait, there's more! Frosted Flakes (sugar) with Chocolate! (sugar.) But what if I told you it had hard dry shellaced little sugar nodules passed off as "marshmallows"? Ta-da!

BUT WAIT

They are vaguely bone-shaped

Assemble the bodies of the dead

Or let them bob in the milk, damned and bereft

We're currently enjoying . . .

When we last saw the Green Hornet, he was on a train, fighting a bad guy - and the train was headed right into another train coming the other direction!

Oh. So the trains going in different directions were on different tracks. Never thought of that. They take the bad guy to “the police hospital,” and the action switches to a downtown office building:

We meet the Second-in-command of the crime situation - the guy who’s taking out insurance policies on all the workers killed in the shoddy construction projects.

Color him unimpressed.

He concludes his scene by telling his hench to “head out to the flying school and check with Bartlett on those aviation policies.”

That’s a new one. So now he's taking out insurance policies on student pilots.Well: The action switches to a flying school, where we watch a hot shot new pilot put his plane through paces.

Perhaps he spoke a bit too quickly:

The pilot’s okay! We have no idea what this has to do with anything. But then a reporter explains to the Green Hornet - er, Reed, the Crusading Editor. He says he was out at the Bartlett field, and they ought to be investigated. They’ve had four fatal crack-ups in a month. They’re sending up pilots without enough instruction.

Reed says hey, you know, maybe as the editor of the paper, I should go take a look. As he drives up:

Holy crow. Well, now we meet the dead pilot’s secret fiancee, who is angry that someone else has been named as the dead pilot’s fiancee, and hence eligible for his insurance. Reed goes to the school, meets the guy who runs the place, drops the news about the Secret Fiancee in the most casual way possible, and leaves. Then it’s time to put on his mask and brace the false fiancee.

Once again, the perils of starting out in the Masked Avenger trade:

She admits her role, sort of, begs for protection; the Hornet hands her off to Kato, but they overwhelm him and take the false fiancee. Chase time. Some inadvertent documentary of old downtown LA:

The bad guys go over the side of the road - and it’s a hallmark of the amount of mayhem in this ep that I’m bothering to show you that - and everyone’s killed. Death toll so far: Four.

Well, to make a long story short, the Hornet suspects one of the planes is tampered, so he ties up Barlett, the owner of the school, and takes the plane up in the air. Barlett, understandably, wets himself and says the plane doesn’t have enough gas and it’s rigged to explode. He’s forced to!

And so: crappy fight, but still: three crashes in one ep!

So he's DEAD! Or maybe not.

That'll do; see you around.