Dream Log: Surprise Birthday Party

I dreamed that I was in a restaurant kitchen attempting to prepare a meal of many small dishes for about 20 people, some of whom I recognized, some not. I have never done anything remotely like this, and in the dream I was very worried that I would screw it up. In addition to a full kitchen and wait staff under my command, there was a woman in the kitchen helping me. She seemed to be a full-fledged gourmet chef, but she also seemed to have decided not to help me too much: her help amounted to a few words of encouragement or advice every now and then. It seemed to amount to what people call, for some reason, "moral" support.

After we had been in the kitchen for quite a while, after the guests had been seated for quite a while, we still had not served any food, and I felt completely confused, and I was sure that complete disaster was much more likely than not. Then the chef-like woman reminded me that I had put notes to myself all over the kitchen: all I needed to do was to find them. And sure enough: I found the notes, put them all in order, barked out commands to the staff, and very soon, the guests were being fed which apparently was passing for haute cuisine. 20 small plates later, some of them were on their feet and shouting, "Chef! Chef!" I stepped into the dining room, and all of the guests stood up and applauded, I was patted on the back and shoulders and complimented, everyone seemed very happy about the whole situation.

Then someone shouted "Happy Birthday!" and some others started shouting "Happy Birthday!" too, and eventually I realized that they were shouting it at me. I had forgotten it was my birthday. Some of the guests hustled me outside, and some more people were out there waiting on the sidewalk and shouting birthday wishes at me. We all piled into some waiting vehicles and drove off. Eventually I gathered that we were going to a Pearl Jam concert.

We pulled up in front of arena on a university campus, 10,000 seats or so by the looks of it. But it was closed. No sign of a concert. Someone, consulting GPS, called out, "It's behind this building!" We went around the arena and found a theatre which looked as if it might have around 2000 seats, but it was closed, too. After a moment of confusion, the person with the GPS device said, "It's behind this building!" We walked around the theatre and found a smaller theatre with its entrance lights on and signs announcing a Pearl Jam concert.

Inside, there were perhaps as many as 200 seats. Some people were on an unraised stage setting up the band's equipment. I assumed there were Pearl Jam and some roadies. One of them was Eddie Vedder, and he's the only member of Pearl Jam I would've recognized by sight. I thought it was impressively down-to-Earth of the band to be out there with the roadies and the crowd, and not making a big deal of it. It matched with what I'd heard about them being unpretentious.

One of my friends at the concert was Craig Robinson:

Irl I've never met Mr Robinson. He pointed to a coat-check area where a graduation gown and cap were hanging, and said that they were going to make me wear them. I said I didn't want to. He grinned and said, "We'll MAKE you." He seemed pretty determined about it, and gradually I began to think that the easiest thing to do might be to just put them on.

Another friend of mine pulled our tickets out of his pocket. I was surprised by this because I had gotten the tickets for our whole group, more than a dozen people. (When I'd gotten the tickets I hadn't noticed that the concert was on my birthday.) My friend just shrugged and said that I would've forgotten them.

The tickets had been at my home in a locked drawer to which I'd assumed no-one else had access. I didn't ask my friend how he'd gotten the tickets.

Eddie Vedder, tuning an acoustic guitar, called out, "Where's Steve Bollinger?" Several people pointed at me. Several people shouted to the effect that I preferred to be called Steven. "My bad, Steven," Mr Vedder said.

"No big deal, Mr Vedder," I replied.

"I prefer 'Eddie'."

"Okay, Eddie."

"You got a favorite Pearl Jam song?"

"I got a lot of them. Hard to think of just one. I like 'Alive,' and 'Wishlist'..." and around then I woke up.

Google Thought That ToDAY Was My BIRTHday!

So I fire up the ol laptop this morning, open up Firefox, and Google is spelled out of birthday cake and party favors. I'm thinking, What? is it Google's birthday? I mouse over the logo and it doesn't say "Happy Birthday, Google!" It says "Happy Birthday, Steven!"

What?

My first thought was that they had me mixed up with some other Steven Bollinger -- there's more of us than you might think -- so I clicked on the logo expecting to see the search results for Steven Bollinger, the prominent and wily Texas Democrat, or one of the several leading Steven Bollinger, MD's -- but no, I was taken to my very own Google+ page. I clicked on my profile and saw that my birthday had been given as May 4, 1986.

This was very confusing for a while -- then, slowly, very slowly, I remembered that some time ago, before allowing me to do something or other, Google insisted upon learning the date of my birth. I guess I was kind of grumpy at the time -- Hard to picture, right? Me, grumpy? -- and felt that they didn't need to know, but they wouldn't let me proceed without the info, and so finally I lost my temper and just filled in a random date.

So, now, my Google+ profile correctly gives my birthday as June 17. Google very politely left it up to me whether or not I would put the year of my birth on my Google+ profile, and I declined.

Almost a month and a half until June 17. Still time to plan for something extravagant. You know what I want -- that's right: a freakin Nobel Prize in Literature. And I know, I know, millions of you are now wailing at the screens of your computers and mobile devices and the screens of the computers and mobile devices of libraries and of your employers and friends, "But Steven! I can't give you a Nobel Prize! I'd do ANYthing for you, but THAT's not within my POWer!" And I say and I say again to you, it IS within your power to tell others how incredibly awesome this blog is, and how much finer this world will be once I've won that Nobel and am dating someone like Scarlett Johansson or Reese Witherspoon and am the unoffical 2nd sidekick to Conan O'Brien (Andy Richter's words, not mine!) and also guest quite frequently on Kimmel, I'm a big Kimmel fan, and am up to my neck in free platinum Omegas and Rolexes. It's within everybody's power to spread the Good News.

I apologize to my religious relatives if those last 2 words seemed blasphemous. I just meant them to be funny. I hope it goes without saying that none of this -- none of this post, none of this blog, none of most of what I say or do -- needs to be taken especially seriously. (Except for the part about me WANTing the Nobel. I really, really want it. Do I deSERVE it? Did Eyvind Johnson? Did Joyce and Freud and Doeblin and Borges deserve not to get it?) As the name of the blog implies, I'm just an eccentric monkey banging away on a keyboard and hoping that life doesn't squash me today so that I can bang away on a keyboard some more tomorrow. A monkey who -- okay, a 2nd thing is also meant quite seriously -- needs and will gratefully take all the freakin help he can get.

So, Google, or you NSA guys or whoever else is reading along here and is actually in charge of these things -- if the false birthday info was the reason my AdSense got cancelled and I can have it back now, that'd be swell.

Seriously, though, it's currently not millions of you wailing at screens, and that's kind of the problem. A Nobel Prize; Andrew Wylie acting as my agent; you, my readers, telling others about my blog -- any of those things would help a lot. PLEASE HELP ME!

So, to sum up: birthday June 17, silly monkey scribbling away, attempts to make you smile or laugh, want Nobel, need help!