My Sister's Dream

What is interesting about a dream is the situation it represents and the logic that it follows.

This is why, to my mind, Waking Life is among the most wretched movies of all time. If Richard Linklater had spent a little more time reading about the fundamental tenets of drama ("show, don't tell") and a little less time pilfering Baudrillard in some inane quest to lecture his apparently illiterate demographic, he might have been able to avoid laying completely to waste some of the most ground breaking-animation ever rendered on film.

Ah, fury.

I think this type of thing would have done the animation justice:

Beaner's Dream

She's on an airplane going to New Brunswick. She notices some secret service men boarding the plane. They escort The President of the United States to her row, and he proceeds to sit down directly beside her. Nausea. How to cope with an hour and a half of this "up-close-and-interactive" freak-face? She can't begin to fathom talking to him but eventually, inevitably, he decides to try out some of his asinine Texas charm. While this is going on, she is wondering: Why is he going to New Brunswick of all places? What does he want with New Brunswick? Whether he is asked, or whether it just becomes apparent to him - I do not know - but it comes out that he wants nothing to do with New Brunswick. He loathes the very idea of the place. He wants to go to his ranch in Crawford and like the spoiled little baby he is, he starts throwing a temper-tantrum. "I'm not going to no New Brunswick - I don't have time for New Brunswick - I want to go Texas! I want my ranch in Texas!"

She remains calm. She tells him the plane is destined for New Brunswick and he will just have to find what they call a "connecting flight" after they land. But George has had it. He tells her he will hi-jack the plane himself if he has to. He's turning it around! My sister can't believe her ears. He can't possibly mean what he is saying, but next thing she knows he is sauntering up the aisle, Texas style, and taking matters into his own hands. My sister is paralyzed with fear. "He's going to get us all killed - he's going to get us all killed!" She starts pushing all the buttons over her head, trying to find the one that will bring up a stewardess. What can she do though, aside from watch on in horror, as he breaks into the cockpit and starts single-handedly choking the pilots?

Mercifully, the flight attendants intervene and force him into submission. Perhaps they take out the secret sevice men in the process, or perhaps the secret service men were never there to begin with. Either way - Air Canada triumphs over the leader of the free-world. He is subdued, hand-cuffed, humiliated; escorted off the plane into a media blitz.

Beaners suddenly finds herself in the eye of the storm. Reporters are calling out questions to her: At what point did it become apparent he was out of control? Did he seem drunk to you? Did you actually have the courage to try and talk him out of doing it? Do you realize pushing that button was the heroic deed that has completely transformed the world? She feels the way they are looking at her. They love her. She has become a hero to the masses, and it has happened over-night.

I call her first thing in the morning and she tells me about this, groggily. I tell her she has all of Canada in her head.

Posted by ÿ at January 14, 2003 03:56 PM