Gotham Diary:
Three Dreams
17 March 2014

Last night, Kathleen was in a dismal mood, so finding just the right movie to watch was especially important. I chose wisely, but it took a while to be sure. Kathleen was still dubious fifteen or twenty minutes in: I was laughing, but she wasn’t. When I turned around, all I saw was cocked eyebrow. A little while later, though, I heard a giggle. Then there was squealing. At last, there was gasping. Kathleen was airborne, buoyed by hilarity.

The movie: Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending. Long a favorite of mine, not least because Téa Leoni is very nearly as commanding as Cate Blanchett, and she has to play opposite the filmmaker.

As we were laughing, however, I saw what I was in for: some very bad dreams. Not mine, but Kathleen’s. Dreams are a terrible drag, and I shouldn’t dream of sharing them, but Kathleen hasn’t had them yet, and that allows for a bit of streamlining. Here are three bad dreams that Hollywood Ending is going to give Kathleen. So say I.

1. Kathleen takes the train to Washington to answer questions about a Bitcoin no-action letter at the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the meeting, regulators grill her about her recent visit to Mount Gox (which she finds she cannot recall in detail, except to say that the skiing was upsetting), and inquire about the local jurisdiction of Zulu chieftains. The meeting takes a turn for the worse when it is insisted that comments to the letter be discussed in Putonghua. It is only be after she awakes that Kathleen realizes that “Putonghua” means “Mandarin.”

2. Kathleen is asked to officiate at a wedding. She is happy to learn that the bride is her best friend from fifth grade at Sacred Heart, and that the best men are Eric and Kyle Weyerhauser, former dancing-school partners. But the bridegroom is a platypus, and he insists that the service incorporate verses from the Gnostic gospel of Thekla, a detested nanny. Also, he needs Kathleen to be tattooed. Kathleen is rescued by the Emperor Constantine, who demands tax opinions from all parties. At the ensuing ecumenical counsel, all propositions are presented on beautiful tiles, in Turkish. In her dream, Kathleen can read them, but she realizes that their messages are seditious — even though she has no idea why. She suddenly remembers that she is supposed to be taking an entrance exam at Robert College.

3. Kathleen’s newest client demands that she direct a feature film involving the destruction of civilization as we know it, masterminded by scientists at the California Academy of the Sciences, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The villains have already managed to turn the world upside down, and not just the world of the movie. For the actors and the crew, this isn’t a problem, thanks to Velcro, but for the fish tanks — that is a problem. While Kathleen wrestles with this disaster, her grandson, a hostage of the villains but more or less free to run around at will, pesters Kathleen to talk to a hermit crab who wants to do an ETF based on an index of all the fish in the sea, priced at local markets. This sounds easy enough until the crab insists on being Jewish. “But my new shell,” the crab announces, “is Nicole Kidman. So I’m kosher.” Kathleen awakes in a cold sweat.