Last Night I had the Strangest Dream...

Ok. You know I'm a high school teacher in real life. Or you would know that if you looked at my profile. As you can no doubt imagine, the last week or two of the school year can be pretty stressful, what with kids and parents whining/pestering/threatening over grades and how they represent the effort (or lack thereof) that the student has put in over the course of the semester. I guess I've been more stressed out than i thought, because I had the weirdest dream last night. Maybe not as weird as the "Me and Ice Cube hanging out at the Burger King" dream, but certainly weirder than the Hulk dream. To wit:

I'm in my classroom during one of my debate classes, and my friend Ralph (owner of Alternate Reality Comics in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada) walks in with a parent of one of my students. The parent? Alan Moore. Yeah, I don't know where that one came from, either. And what was even weirder? He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Now, if you know who Alan Moore is, you've probably seen one of a number of pictures of him. Does he look like the Hawaiian shirt wearing-type?

Anyway, class ends, and I'm trying really hard not to geek out here. I'd like to ask him for an autograph, but the only thing I have in my room written by him is my copy of Watchmen (that's true; I'm not sure why, but I do have a copy of Watchmen in my room at school), so you can see my quandary: can I possibly expect him to be willing to sign the work that, while a true masterpiece of the artform, is also the crux of his disagreements with DC? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I ask him if he'd be willing to sign it, and he very patiently explains to me, as if he's talking to a five year-old, why he won't sign my book. He says instead that he's going out to lunch with Ralph, and if I have something different I'd like him to sign when he returns, he'd be happy to oblige me.

Well, I run home, running out to the parking garage (the high school I teach at doesn't have a parking garage), tearing down the highways and byways (I actually live less than 5 minutes from my school), and tearing up the stairs to my room to paw through my bookshelf. Of course, somehow, I don't live in my house, but in my parents' house. And my folks come home while I'm up in the room tearing apart my bookshelf, and they lecture me about why am I not at work, being a productive member of society instead of wasting my time "on all that comic book crap?" Narf. Thanks, Pop.

I finally decide on both volumes of Top 10, one of his ABC titles from Wildstorm and tear back to school. While I'm taking the elevator back to my school, I see Tina, a woman my friend Joel introduced me to (or maybe he didn't; maybe I made her up from whole cloth, and that's just part of her fictitious backstory), who hands me a flyer advertising the big Alan Moore signing at Meltdown Comics that night. Ok, here's the thing: A. I dont' live in the same town as Meltdown Comics. And B, Alan Moore doesn't do signings! Anyway, of course, I miss Alan at school, so I head down to Meltdown after school and I'm at the end of the line, behind my friend Joel. We slowly work our way to the front of the line, by the front door, and the man working the door says there are too many people inside, so we have to wait. I think, 'Man, this is like trying to get into a club!' while inside, we can hear all the loud music and what sounds like a killer party going on. While we're waiting, I ask Joel what he brought to have signed. "V. What about you?" "I brought Top 10." At that point the dude working the door hands me a clipboard with a laminated list of all the things Alan's not signing (no doubt because of his dispute with DC), and sure as shit, Top 10 is on it, along with all the other ABC titles, Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. On the next laminated page is a much shorter list of the things he will sign, including (of course) V for Vendetta, Lost Girls, which isn't even out yet, and a few other things I can't recall right now. And, also of course, there are no more copies of V or anything else available to purchase. I'm bemoaning my fate and cursing my luck, when the dude working the door looks at me, opens his mouth and beeps. "What?" He beeps again. Then I realize my alarm is going off and I wake up.

Mrs. Z. thinks I'm having some anxiety about SDCC. I don't know about that, but it is a pretty weird dream. I mean, come on, Alan Moore in a Hawaiian shirt? That's crazy.