I Can’t Stop Talking About Inception

I had a dream yesterday, which is a pretty rare occasion for me. This one in particular was weirdly detailed and I remember most of it. So I will post about it here because I can, and you will read it because you are bored.

I was in a movie. Not as an actor in a movie, but I was living the part in the movie, yet also simultaneously aware it was a movie. I’m sure that’s happened to everyone, right? But dreams feel real when you’re in them. It’s only when you wake up that you realize something was actually strange. But even when I woke, I was so convinced this was an actual movie that I was just remembering again (even though I was in the movie) that I had to look it up on IMDB this morning just to convince myself it wasn’t actually real. (It was not real.)

It was a baseball movie (SURPRISE!), with a romantic comedy angle in the same vein as Bull Durham. It was a story of two hotshot prospects in the Chicago Cubs system (my self-named pitcher in MLB: The Show was recently traded to the Cubs) struggling to make it to the big leagues…and also to make it…at love. One white, one black – and they originally hate each other as rivals until they gain a begrudging respect for each other throughout the movie and ultimately work together to accomplish more than they could individually. So there was some wacky buddy cop stuff in there too.

The black prospect was Wesley Snipes, straight out of Major League. The white prospect was Will Ferrell. Michael Clark Duncan played Frank Thomas, who had retired and taken up a job as a manager for Chicago’s minor league team. I don’t know why he would be working with the Cubs instead of the White Sox, but in the dream everything made sense. You can already play out most of this hypothetical movie in your mind – no wonder I was so convinced it was real when I woke up.

I played the role of the silent bench coach, Frank Thomas’ right hand man, the guy that shadowed him throughout the movie, and to whom he would constantly drop profound nuggets of Morgan Freemanisms to throughout the movie. Like “making love is just like a hitting a baseball…you just gotta relax and concentrate” or something, I don’t know.

The actual dream itself was just a highlight package of all the stereotypical scenes…really just a lot of bits where Will Ferrell screams at someone, Wesley Snipes drops some awesome sounding but ultimately nonsensical one liners (“some motherfucker always tryin to ice skate uphill”), overly dramatic games, hidden ball tricks, the classic team infighting scene followed by a slow teamwork building montage culminated with a big mass high five…you’ve seen this movie before, you just don’t know it.

Running With Baserunners. That was the title of the movie. It certainly sounds basebally, but I don’t think the term actually means anything. Most of it has blurred away now, but the only thing I really still vividly remember is how much it made me want to dissolve my father’s empire.

Now that we have filled the daily quota for Inception jokes, let us continue with the rest of the post.

– Did you hear about this story where a man punched infant baby to death for “acting like a girl?” So many questions. For one…what does that even mean? I didn’t even know you could punch someone so hard that they suffered a heart attack, that is crazy to me. I always wanted to punch someone so hard that their heart would explode – this man is living my dream, minus the killing-an-infant-and-going to jail thing. In his defense, the baby was kind of being a dick.

– Now that I’ve had my eyes zapped to improve my softball game, the next step in the evolution of my game through artificial means is getting one of these totally sweet Japanese mobile oxygen supplies. It is like an empty backpack with a tube in it so that you can suck air out of it. …actually, it IS an empty backpack with a tube in it so that you can suck air out of it. Those Japanese…GENIUSES, ALL OF THEM. Now I will be as fast as ever running with baserunners. And I will also be on a crazy oxygen high the whole way around as well. Win times win equals win squared.

– This is one of the meaner pranks you could play on a man…but the terrified, girlish screaming is just so delicious that I cannot resist posting it.

– First it was the Brontosaurus. Now…apparently the Torosaurus is not real, just a fully grown Triceratops. This shit is fucked up. It’s fucked up, okay? Get your shit together, scientists. Brontosaurus isn’t real. Pluto’s not a planet. Torosaurus and Triceratops are the same. It’s apparently illegal now to punch out and rob 63 year-old bus drivers, kick out police cruiser windows, threaten to murder/throw feces at officers, and vow to have an abortion. Blah blah blah blah. What kind of world is this? IS THIS REAL LIFE!?!

– Remember that Simpsons episode where Lisa becomes a vegetarian? Here is an…alternative interpretation of it. Also, apparently Lisa’s Wedding was this previous Sunday. That makes me feel so soul-crushingly old for some reason. Man, I am so super depressed by that.

– Also, I think I found this like six months ago, but just keep on forgetting to post it or mistakenly thinking I did and then forgetting about it…whatever, here it is (perhaps for the second time), The Fellowship of the Ring by Wes Anderson. The ears of wheat means this movie is good.

“Yon meat, ’tis sweet as summer’s wafting breeze.”
“Can I have some?”
“Mine ears are only open to the pleas of those who speak ye olde English.”
“Sweet maiden of the spit, grant now my boon, that I might sup on suckling pig this noon.”
“Whatever.”