Because my dream last night unfolded like a Bizarro-world episode of an upcoming TV show. It's the show Grimm, about a cop learning that the fairy tale monsters of the Grimm folk tales indeed existed and still exist. The show's both set and shot in Portland, Oregon. At least one acquaintance of mine has done extra work on the show; another acquaintance lives in an apartment building that the production has used as a shooting location. I'm hearing a fair amount about the show, and that percolated in my head until last night, when my mind tried to create a whole pilot episode -- with A-plot and B-plot, even, which is more plot than my dreams usually have -- that probably bears no relation to what's actually getting shot.
The dream included me going to a park location that Grimm, both the in-Portland production of Grimm and the created reality to be shown on the show, and seeing the drama of the episode take place all around me -- even with special effects, so that folk tale monsters were doing their thing in Sellwood Park. (With the editing making it seem that a Max light-rail line reaches the park. It doesn't.) And the show was taking place in the midst of an actual event that was attended by at least one cousin of mine, who came up to me and asked, very intently -- and very obviously reading me wrong -- if I was there with a safe word. I'm not sure what about the event would require me to have a safe word, an understood code so those close to me would know that I was uncomfortable with something and wanted that something to stop. But that was very clear: a cousin asking me "Are you here with a safe word?" I'll leave that as a puzzle. And I'll wonder what I'll think of the show once I watch it. Which I was already planning to do, as I've been hearing good things about the pilot and an executive producer, David Greenwalt, also co-created and produced the show I liked called Angel.
Whoa: I just imagined advertisers being able to implant ads in dreams. Talk about your ultimate captive audience.
Another, almost certainly unrelated dream last night was some end-of-the-world stuff, as seen from a part of the world that hadn't been hit by that end-of-the-world stuff. Imagine the events of Independence Day as seen from Fargo, North Dakota. Yes, I've always had high-budget dreams. Dream-money can pay for anything.