Strangely, on top of the usual "this shouldn't be happening, that's dream-discontinuity" semi-lucid awareness, I was also apparently stuck in a bad studio production of a sit-com, last night.
(Actually, three nights ago, I think. It's taken a while to remember to post this.)It got set up with a long, convoluted plot whereby I (in whatever character I was at the time) suggestesd to a fledgling (Victorian-era) newspaper proprieter that he could get more and more news/information by plagiarising other sources. Namely the internet. But that this should be done with explicit quoting, so that it was actual references and thus not scandalously plagiaristic. "According to '
mb3546732@yahoo.com', the way to deal with red wine carpet stains is...", in the advice column, and that sort of thing.
It quickly turns out to be done to excess, making the (no longer Victorian-looking) publication looking like Yahoo Answers on steroids, crossed with a Twitter feed. And now the Authorities are interested, and the dream setting gets all the impression of a sit-com.
The proprieter has an entire mis-fit family and set of hanger-onerers. Various silly things happen like the maid (a sari-clad indian (sub-continent) lady) finds her bunk-bed filled with food, due to a mix-up with the the dolt of a son... And everyone's
supposed to be on House Arrest, I think...
However, the daughter gets out to the supermarket. Coming out, the sirens of a passing police-car cause her to flinch, but she's accompanied by a whole set of Amish/brotherhood-ish bretheren, who apparently consider her important. They're also not supposed to be seen by the police (for some reason), but by stringing out and acting en-mass they run interference so that the daughter can avoid the unwanted attentions.
This doesn't stop a passing vagabond from knocking into her and stealing her groceries, though. One of the bretheren, a hot-headed young lad with a numeric name (I think they
all have numeric names, all three digits, and his is surprising close to the number they give the daughter herself) chases after the miscreant.
Then 'we' (most of the characters apparently not involved in action elsewhere) adjourn to the curbside opposite where the action had just taken, and we wait... and wait... Pinteresque to the extreme. I explicitly dream the waiting expectations and experience extreme tedium. We eventually start discussing amongs ourselves (me and those standing with me) what would be the way that the Amish lad with the recovered groceries will return by. Common consensus is that gallopping back on a horse would be dramatic (and poetic) enough. (Thus, to meta-analyse, it's obvious that I've not run out of dream-progression ideas... I'm
deliberately pausing.)
Then a car comes screaming round the corner and crashes up against the curb-stone. There's an angry man in it. I leap on the bonnet(/hood) in an intimidatory way and then the... car dissappears. There's bits of debris left, and I'm back on the curb. Someone next to me opines that it's a necessary 'cut' to make the show (that, by common consenses, we are playing in) fit into the time constraints. I can't understand why they didn't edit out some of the waiting bit, instead of remove a whole plot-point with a large visible discontinuity.
Other vehicles arrive and do things, I think, with (previously non-present) members of the cast on them. But the next memorable one is the Hippy-couple's green-fuelled car-cum-narrowboat vehicle, which emerges from the junction and then heads up the road. But while we're still stood stationary, the stretch of road the Hippy-mobile drives along is
always just fifty yards away, even as the road twists and turns. Bad screen editing. Also, I note, that the rear indicators of the trailer (a bit of the vehicle that was originally
part of the vehicle, I also note) are obviously not wired up to the front ones. Which annoys me. Someone (either myself, dreaming, or the production crew that set up the shoot) obviously didn't think to wire up the connections. I get a bit OCD over that fact. And I don't even know who it is I should be blaming.
I think I woke up after that. All remaining questions and issues unresolved, of course.