MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

I am attending a media event hosted by Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses. It’s an annual thing that I have attended before, and she remembers me. She says that this year she is starting an online cookie business, featuring different kinds of cookies that she baked herself from family recipes, as well as some she invented herself. She brings out a sample platter for us to try. I get one with an oatmeal base topped with pineapple, crème and candied maraschino cherries. It’s pretty tasty.

Later Kristin meets me in a hotel room for an interview. I’m trying to get my MP3 recorder ready, but it’s full because I left it running during a Sparks documentary. I’m trying to figure out how to delete the file so I can record Kristin’s interview. In the meantime we make small talk about past events and how things are going generally.

At some point we are interrupted by a Nazi Gestapo officer, who shows up unannounced for a surprise inspection of the room, which is when I become aware of the dream’s overall context: we are in either Nazi Germany or some Nazi-occupied country. The officer is all mock politeness, and we go along with it. This is his regular beat, so we’ve dealt with him before, and we know his routine – he’ll do a Columbo, pretending he’s done then coming back almost immediately for one or two additional questions.

After he’s gone, we wrap up the interview and prepare to leave the hotel. This requires changing into traveling clothes, which we do. As I pack, I come across a Kindle wrapped in a nice red leather case – Kristin gave it to me at last year’s event. She’s pleased I still have it because it means I found it useful.

Outside the hotel, we wait for our ride, which turns out to be Kristin’s husband. He is well dressed with a luxuriant black beard. He shows us two kinds of local sausages, and tries to explain the difference between them. This is not easy because both have thick red casings, and the insides look very similar when you cut them in half.

We get in his car and go. We are immediately pursued by SS ninjas riding black motorcycles and dressed in black uniforms and helmets. They chase us moto-cross style, hopping around on either side of the road. Luckily, they are caught by traffic cops and arrested for dangerous driving. So it turns out we’re not in Nazi Germany after all – we’re just being hounded by Nazis who don’t know the war is over.

We arrive at another hotel and go to a large outer deck in the rear that overlooks the mountains. The view is spoiled by Mike Huckabee, who is there giving a lecture on Obama. Kristin gets really irritated by him, but I advise her to keep calm – he’s not worth the emotional energy and he’ll never be president, so don’t worry about him.

Apparently Huckabee overhears my comment, because he directs his attention to me. He comes over to me and says, “I’ve noticed the way you’ve been rubbing yr neck.”

“I slept on it wrong,” I reply.

“I’m a doctor, you know,” he says. “I can fix that with a Heimlich maneuver.”

“Forget it,” I say. I’m not sure about his doctor credentials, but I don’t trust him to put me in a headlock, or whatever he has in mind.

And then I woke up.

Hands off,

This is dF

I am signing up to work for the CIA. Again.

I say "again" because as I go through the hiring procedure (which involves epic amounts of paperwork), I feel that I’ve done this before – a lot of it seems familiar and no real surprises. This may be because I had some kind of pre-briefing beforehand, but my feeling is I worked for them before under a freelance contract, and I’m doing so again, though it’s been awhile since the last gig.

My recruiter – who later turns out to be my supervisor – is John Goodman (or is played by him).

I meet him in the parking garage of some hotel resort complex somewhere in Southeast Asia to sign the various contracts involved. They include things like T&Cs, list of duties, an inventory of the equipment I'll be using, and – strangely – music publishing rights, under which if I record any music as part of my undercover duties with the CIA, they’ll handle the publishing to ensure I get paid royalties for any sales (though of course the CIA will take a percentage).

All of this makes sense to me – I read over everything and sign everywhere Goodman tells me to sign.

Goodman welcomes me to the team. He hands me a small square radio that clips onto my belt. It looks like an old MP3 player, with a toggle switch on the side to search the various menus – you move the switch to the center and push it once to select an item. One feature is that you can tune in to the radio comms of any other agent that yr authorized to listen to – either live chatter or MP3 archives of conversations. The idea is that the transparency will keep everyone honest, though I’m pretty sure at least some agents are cagey enough to develop code words or routines to work around that – or even delete or edit recordings.

We walk over to a flatbed truck and climb on the flatbed part. As the truck pulls out of the garage, I ask when I start.

“Soon as the truck leaves the resort premises, yr on the clock,” he says. “Literally. We track everything by GPS, so the satellite will log your hours in the system automatically.

I consider this. “So I’m being paid by the hour?”

His answer is non-comital, and I start wondering if this means I’m going to be making less money per month than I planned on. I also wonder if the radio is also the tracking device, and what would happen if I should lose it or leave it at home.

I’m not entirely sure yet exactly what I’ll be doing – Goodman is talking about how they’re embedding agents into China as a way to somehow exert influence on North Korea, but that doesn't seem to be what they have in mind for me.

Shift: I am in a vast and busy library, where I am wheeling around a kid in a wheelchair. I’m looking after him until his parents arrive. He’s also my cover to arrange a meeting in the library with Goodman.

I bring the kid to the computer section, which is mobbed by other kids who are all playing eSports games. He wants to watch, so I park him and leave him to it, send a message to his parents telling them where he is, and I take a lift upstairs to meet Goodman.

He asks me if I’ve familiarized myself with the radio’s functions.

“I’ve been playing with it, but I haven’t gone through all the functions yet,” I admit.

“How about the equipment catalog?”

"Not yet, no.”

“Yeah, well, you won't find much there – it’s more like a placeholder for now.”

“Placeholder for what?” I ask.

He explains that our particular department doesn't have the authorization or the funding to develop our own specialized field gear. It’s a chicken/egg situation – we can’t get authorization without funding, and vice versa.

Goodman is obsessed with the idea that we should be able to develop our own technology solutions and then sell them to other govt departments. For example, he has ideas for comms components that could be used in military tanks to make their radios more efficient and their guns more accurate.

“I tell ya, we’d make enough money from the patents alone to justify the funding for it,” he says. “Check out the catalog – I’ve put some of my ideas in there. Let me know what you think – I could use the feedback.”

“Sure,” I say, although I’m starting to understand why the CIA won’t give him the funding for this.

And then I woke up.

Working for the man,

This is dF

I am an agent employed by a covert US organization so secret I'm not even sure what it's called.

My assignment involves monitoring a North Korean national who is traveling around Asia trying to locate and infiltrate an R&D facility which is designing an advanced virtual reality pod – sort of a cross between a hibernation chamber and a holodeck. My mission is to assist him in order to find out what North Korea intends to use this technology for.

We learn that the R&D facility is inside the Cyberjaya tech park in Malaysia outside of Kuala Lumpur. We get inside by posing as tech journalists and joining a media tour. At an opportune time we break away from the tour to find the VR pod. Which we do.

The North Korean climbs inside, inserts a thumb drive preloaded with malware to hack into the system, and starts fiddling with the controls. I can see what he’s doing via an external monitor display next to the pod.

Once I see what he's up to, I make my exit while he’s still in the pod and book a GrabTaxi to the airport. While I wait, I call the contact number I was given to make my report and arrange my flight out.

To my surprise, Hillary Clinton answers.

So there is a Deep State, I think to myself. Cool.

“What’s the scoop?” she asks.

“He plans to use the pods to create a chain of virtual strip clubs in ASEAN to raise money for Kim Jong-un’s regime,” I report.

“Why not just open real strip clubs?” she asks.

“Real strip clubs get raided,” I explain. “Virtual strip clubs means virtual dancers who are also customizable for a premium fee – and you don’t have to pay them.”

“Okay, but why would you need a club full of pods? If it’s virtual, guys could just use the service from home.”

“If they’re rich,” I say. “The pods are still in the prototype stage and the first commercial ones won’t be cheap. Neither will the broadband connection you’d need for an optimal customer experience. Besides, novelty sells.”

“Good work,” says Hillary. “Get out of there. Go to KLIA Terminal 2 – we’ll arrange your flight out.”

My taxi arrives and takes me to the airport, Terminal 2. In fact my flight is waiting at Terminal 1 – the idea is that I will take the shuttle train from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1, but the train will make an unscheduled stop en route. I’ll get off the train then and take a maintenance tunnel that leads to my gate, enabling me to bypass airport security and the immigration checkpoint.

However, the train starts heading away from Terminal 1. I try to remember if it’s a circular route – if so, maybe it’s just going the long way round. But we seem to be moving further away from the airport, and I’m starting to wonder if the North Koreans have rumbled me. And if so, when – because that could mean the virtual strip club was a disinformation play.

And then I woke up.

Secret agent man,

This is dF

I am in an episode of The X Files, tagging along with Mulder and Scully as they investigate strange events occurring in a grocery store in Stockholm. The store is part of a national chain of grocery stores, which operates under several different brands targeting different clientele (upper market, deli, import brands, etc).

Mulder and Scully discover that in fact, the mysterious occurrences are not limited to that one store, but across the entire franchise. Finally in one store we encounter a talking border collie who looks at Mulder and says, “It’s time to go home, Fox.”

“Do I know you?” Mulder asks.

“No, I’m just the emissary. But they’ve been waiting for you to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Who you are.”

“Who am I? And who are they?”

“So you still don’t know. No wonder it took you so long to find your way here. You’d better follow me.”

The dog leads us to the back of the store, where I expect to find a stockroom or loading bay or something. Instead it’s a high-tech operations center with lots of screens – it’s also apparently automated, as there is no one inside. The dog barks a command and a large screen displays a map of Sweden that shows every store in the grocery chain.

Essentially, the stores serve as outposts for aliens to monitor Earth’s activities and determine when First Contact is feasible. Each brand of the grocery store chain represents a different alien species, identifiable by a slight difference in sign design (at the top of the sign is a cross, a circle, an “S”, etc). All the different species coordinate with each other and share information.

“Why did you tell me it’s time to come home?” asks Mulder.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you, but we were unsuccessful. We took shapeshifting into account but your memory loss complicated things, to say nothing of your career choices.”

“Okay, enough of this vague riddle crap,” says Scully. “For once, just tell us straight – what is going on.”

The dog shakes her head. “That never works. You’re humans. You won't believe anything outside of your preconceptions unless you see it for yourself. Go to the produce section and pick up a vegetable. Any vegetable. Then all your questions will be answered.” She looks at Mulder and adds, “Your sister will be so pleased to see you.”

Mulder looks at Scully and dashes out of the control room into the store. He arrives in the produce section, picks up a stalk of broccoli, and suddenly transforms into a triffid.

The triffid turns to a shocked Scully. “I remember everything,” he says.

What he remembers is this:

Fox Mulder and his sister are both triffid-like aliens who can also shapeshift to imitate other lifeforms. They were visiting Earth with their family when suddenly the US government discovered the existence of aliens on their turf and dispatched agents to capture some and kill the rest. This triggered a mass evacuation of all alien species, and somehow in the confusion Mulder was left behind. The memory of his sister being abducted is a distortion of the truth – he saw her get on the ship but was too late to get onboard himself.

To evade capture, Mulder was forced to maintain his human form for so long that he eventually forgot that he was a triffid and the memory of his sister was distorted over time. His decision to become an FBI agent and hunt for UFOs was a subconscious effort to return home, and he never knew.

It was only years later that the aliens set up the monitoring outposts, having learned the hard way that humans were not ready for alien contact. The triffids searched for Mulder, but because he was disguised as a human and had no idea he wasn’t a human, this made him difficult to find. Once they did find him, extraction was complicated by the fact that the US govt was watching him extremely closely because of his investigations that threatened to uncover its various conspiracies.

The produce shelves slide aside to reveal a hidden tunnel that leads to some kind of teleportation device. Mulder turns to Scully and holds out his hand. Scully takes it and they step into the tunnel together. The shelves slide back into place.

And then I woke up.

I want to believe,

This is dF

I am staying in a hotel that is outfitted with lots of TV screens in the public areas. They are all tuned into the US presidential election – it’s Election Day and the voting has just started. The big news story is that Donald Trump is having some kind of dramatic public meltdown over new allegations of sexual harassment.

I am taking a lift down to the lobby. The lift stops and an elegant looking woman gets on, accompanied by two bodyguards. She looks familiar but I can’t place her. She looks slightly troubled. I ask her if she’s okay – she says yes.

The lift descends and stops. When the doors open, a man tries to charge his way in past the bodyguards, hands clawing at the woman as he screams rabidly, “YOU FUCKING BITCH I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS! YOU’VE RUINED EVERYTHING! TWO YEARS DOWN THE FUCKING DRAIN! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

I get a good look at him. It’s Donald Trump. His face is a mask of orange rage and his hair is a wild mess. There’s a team of paparazzi behind him, documenting the whole thing on live television and Facebook. The bodyguards shove him back and the lift doors close.

That’s when I realize I just happen to be staying in the same hotel where Trump’s campaign team has holed up for the election.

I arrive in the lobby, which looks more like a shopping mall atrium with a network of escalators. I see Trump going up one of the escalators, talking to the press as they follow him. He says that he’s received word from the Federal Election Commission that his nomination has been revoked and that he has to hand in his American Flag lapel pin, which means he’s no longer eligible to run for office.

“I’m done, I’m out, nothing I can do,” he says, looking haggard and exhausted but also somewhat relieved. “Talk to Crooked Hillary’s friends in the FEC. It’s out of my hands. I told you this would happen.”

As he rises out of earshot, I look at the nearest TV screen. The media is naturally going crazy about this development, as it’s literally unprecedented in US presidential election history – so much so that no one is sure what it means or what the consequence is, especially since voting has already started.

Possible options offered by talking heads:

1. Mike Pence will simply be bumped up on the ticket and inherit whatever votes Trump gets, although as Pence has no running mate, that could disqualify him
2. The FEC decision will probably trigger a constitutional convention that the GOP-controlled Congress will use to prevent Hillary from taking office
3. Or perhaps we’ll just have to do the whole thing over again and postpone the election to 2018, which would give Obama another two years in office, which has conservative pundits convinced he engineered the whole thing and hired those women to set Trump up. Liberal pundits respond that Trump probably staged the whole thing because he knew he was going to lose – being stripped of his candidacy by the FEC means no one can say he lost.

The only thing everyone is sure about is that Trump is finally out of the race.

And then I woke up – momentarily thinking, “Wow, so he’s finally out.”

Trumped,

This is dF

I am traveling in Malaysia to edit a daily newspaper for a telephones convention that week. A PR person I know tells me that somewhere in town a South Korean tire dealer is planning to give away its entire stock. I tell her I don’t really need tires for my car, but she says, “Hey, free tires.”

Eventually I happen to be nearby the tire dealer when the giveaway starts, but when I get there most of the stock is already gone. They do have some 12” tires, which is the size I would need (at least I think it is – I’m not 100% sure) but they're not in great condition – not used, just shabby.

Shift: the B-52s are playing the convention this year, and I get a chance to interview them. Somehow this evolves into me going on tour with them while they play various shows in Malaysia. Kate Pierson and I end up being good friends, and we hang out a lot and talk about various things, though I remember mostly telling her how much I love the B-52s, and how I wish I could talk like Fred Schneider.

I also ask her how they came up with some of their stage antics, to include a “kissy doll” routine where she and Cindy Wilson would make themselves up as china dolls and kiss each other on stage (pecking style, not sexy lesbian style). Kate says she doesn’t remember, since a lot of what they did was improvised, and if it went over well, they’d repeat it for a few shows.

On the last day of the tour, the narrative shifts into a pulp-fiction novel in which Kate and I are supposed to meet the rest of the band on the other side of a river. The bridge we need to cross is a rickety wooden affair. It’s raining and the river is rising, so we figure we’d better hurry. We go back to my hotel to get my stuff, but we take a wrong turn and go the long way around to the side entrance.

We catch the hotel manager rummaging around in my room. The hotel is a bit of a fleabag, and the manager looks like Harvey Pekar.  At first I think he’s crabby because he thinks I was skipping my bill, even though that doesn’t make sense because all my stuff is still in the room. But then Kate notices that he is turning on all the gas outlets in the room, as well as a large fan to circulate the gas around the whole floor.

Belligerently he shoves a matchbook in my rear jeans pocket. That’s when we realize he’s planning to burn down the hotel, collect the insurance and blame it on me (and I will have conveniently died in the explosion so I can’t contradict his story).

We make a run for it, and the manager blocks our way. I shove him and he falls onto the fan, which shreds him to pieces. I don’t actually see this, and when I look back the manager is gone but there’s no blood or indeed any sign of him at all.

“That’s not a very convincing ending,” I remark.

“I’ll take it,” says Kate. “C’mon, this place could still blow up any second.”

We leave the hotel hurriedly and head for the bridge. I suddenly realize I have no shirt and no shoes. “Damn, I left my stuff behind.”

“Got it right here,” says Kate as she pats a duffel bag I hadn’t noticed her carrying. She hands me a shirt and shoes. I put them on and we cross the bridge.

And then I woke up.

My own private Idaho,

This is dF

It’s the zombie apocalypse, and we are waiting for it to arrive in Disco Bay.

We’ve been watching on the news how the zombie virus is spreading globally, but hasn’t yet made it to Hong Kong. However, the experts say it will inevitably be everywhere and the world’s governments need to take steps now to ensure that the uninfected can stay that way until the zombies are eradicated. However, most world leaders are too busy either blaming their political enemies for the outbreak, or pretending it isn’t happening at all.

“This is stupid,” says KT as she picks up her smartphone to call one of her church sisters, who happens to know someone who has been posting conspiracy theories about govt-manufactured zombie viruses for years, predicting that eventually the virus would get out in the wild, either accidentally or deliberately. KT figures they will have a back-up plan to survive an outbreak.

We go to meet the conspiracy guy and his wife in Tung Chung. They are waiting in a black armored van. They explain that they have secretly built a safe haven to shelter survivors somewhere in the New Territories.

“But we have to go there now,” the man says. “The govt has been feeding the media misinformation – the virus is already in Hong Kong, so we don’t have much time.”

“Okay, but we need to go back to DB first,” KT says. “My dogs and my mom are still at home.”

“No way,” the man says. “We don’t have time.”

“We have to get them,” KT insists. “My mom can’t look after the dogs by herself. She can’t even cook her own food, she’ll just sit there and eat Pocky all day.”

“We can’t go into DB,” the man argues. “This is a private vehicle. They’re not allowed in DB.”

KT gives him a warning look. “Dude, it’s the zombie apocalypse, society is collapsing, and yr worried about vehicle rules in DB?”

The man nods. “Good point.”

We drive to DB and collect our family. No one tries to stop us. We don’t see any zombies on the way, so we decide to prepare food for the dogs before we go.

Shift: we are in the safe haven, which is equipped with a pirate TV studio that is meant to broadcast survival information to people outside. Since I have broadcast experience, I’m hired to do onscreen interviews with various experts. But the scripts are badly edited, so I have to improvise my way through them. It doesn't help that my panel of experts have hard-to-pronounce names, and I don’t have the chance to meet or talk with any of them prior to broadcast, so I’m not even sure who is who when I introduce them.

The director says it doesn’t matter – it’s not meant to be professional, it’s just to give people information. I start the interview. None of the panelists seem interested in being there, except for one guy who is trying to give an elaborate presentation (with stage props) on how telephone companies can make money using their customers’ personal data.

“But what does that have to do with zombies?” I ask.

“I’m getting to that,” he assures me.

And then I woke up.

Off topic,

This is dF

1. Teleporting zombies

I am living in the zombie apocalypse. The twist: zombies have teleportation powers. A zombie that looks far enough away to escape from can then suddenly be right behind you, ready to bite a chunk out of you. Even better: the zombie virus is transmittable by touch. So even if you don’t get bitten, if the zombie so much as lays a hand on you, yr doomed. The only thing working in favor of the living is that the zombie teleportation is highly inaccurate. They can’t do targeted arrivals – they end up where they end up. So if one gets within biting/grabbing range, it’s dumb luck.

2. Poetry slam

I am involved with some kind of performance project with Henry Rollins. It started as a discussion group in which I had read one of his poems aloud. He was impressed with my delivery and wanted to do a show with different people doing readings of his work. When it’s time for my reading, however, I find myself disorganized – I am juggling several different books, and I am distracted enough that I get off to several false starts. Henry is watching from the sidelines, and he seems patient with me, but I feel bad for fumbling it, especially when I did it so well the first time.

3. Fact checking: the virtual reality app

At a trade show, someone from the BBC shows me a new augmented reality app for the iPad. You open the app and hold the iPad up to a TV screen showing a newscast, and the app will fact-check everything the newscaster or commentator is saying, and provide the results – as well as contextual background info – in an overlay grid in real time. The idea is that you can use the app to tell when the speaker is wrong, exaggerating or outright lying. The app also makes the newscaster look like one of the aliens in They Live.

4. That blowed up real good

I am involved with some film project in my mom’s old house. I need to film something exploding. I’ve set up the cameras and models and explosives in my bedroom, and will run everything by remote in the hallway for safety (though this means I can’t actually see the explosion). It’s not supposed to be a big explosion, but it sounds louder than I expected. I go back into the room, and it’s been semi-detached from the house. I step onto the floor and the weight sends it tilting to the ground. I start wondering if there’s any way for me to fix it up enough so Mom won’t notice the damage.

5. Star Wars product placement

I buy a Star Wars branded katana that comes with a cut-out of Yoda. If you put the katana in a special sleeve in the cut-out, it looks like Yoda is wielding the katana. The shopkeeper also tries to interest me in some new comic books that are rare prequels of a well-known series with lots of background info on the characters. I’m not interested, but I listen to her pitch politely.

6. What a bargain

I am traveling somewhere with KT. We see a smartphone at an electronics store that looks like a pretty good deal. After we tell the salesperson we’ll take one, he demonstrates that in fact the smartphone is a remote control for a complicated hi-fi system, which also comes with a tablet. They all snap together somehow. I’m trying to explain to the guy that I didn’t want a hi-fi, just a smartphone. He’s mystified by my comments, because he’s basically offering me an entire hi-fi system and two smart devices for the price of a smartphone (and a low price at that). The problem is that the hi-fi is pretty bulky and I have no idea how I’m going to get it back to the hotel, let alone fit it in my luggage for the flight back home.

A man’s got to know his baggage weight limitations,

This is dF

I need me one of these.



[Via Magic Transistor]

Insert NSA joke here.

Electric dreams,

This is dF

I am somewhere in America, walking across a large shopping mall campus. I need to get to the Parkroyal Hotel to meet some friends, but I’m not sure where it is or of it’s within walking distance. I see a taxi and decide to flag it down.

The taxi is more like a van, and there are already some people inside, but the driver tells me it’s cool – it’s more like a mini-bus service than a taxi service. The driver looks familiar but I can’t place him. He hands me a business card – his name is Tom Petty.

Well that explains it.

The people in the van are a mix of passengers and friends (most of whom I assume are the Heartbreakers), and Petty jokes around with them – it’s like a party, though with no drinks. He pulls up to the front of what I assume is the main shopping mall building and drops off the last of the passengers, then drives off.

As we go up some kind of ramp next to the mall, I ask him if we’re going to the Parkroyal next. He says, “Oh, it’s over there on the left.”

I look out the window. From the elevated vantage point of the ramp I can see that the building we just left has a courtyard in the front, and the courtyard is the lobby of the Parkroyal. So we were already in front of it when he dropped off the last passengers.

“Okay, then just let me out here,” I say.

“Sure, just hold on a minute, I can’t stop right here on the ramp,” he says.

The ramp leads to a vast rooftop parking lot that is technically next to the Parkroyal but still a good distance away. He stops the van and everyone gets out – me, Petty, and the Heartbreakers.

“How come you didn’t just take me to the front entrance again?” I ask.

He scowls. “Because I didn’t want the reception that people were going to give me when I showed up! And they wouldn’t be saying ‘Cobalt!’ neither!”

I seem to remember that “Cobalt” was Petty’s nickname among his fans. I realize now what he’s talking about – he used to be a rock star, now he’s driving a cab, and he doesn’t like the assumptions people make about that.

“I got tired of the music business, and I have more fun driving a cab, but people see you go from rock star to taxi driver and they think it’s because you don’t have any talent anymore, or yr a loser! Well fuck that! I don’t need that shit!”

It’s at this point I realize two things: (1) he’s a little drunk and (2) he doesn’t look like Tom Petty so much as he looks like Gary Busey playing Tom Petty in a TV movie.

Petty sits down on a curb and starts to throw golf balls with enough spin that they rebound back to him. The golf balls keep hitting him in the crotch, but this is apparently on purpose, as he goes off on a monologue about how the only purpose of marriage is for a woman to legally and metaphorically kick a guy in the nuts.

I sit down next to him. “Bad marriage, huh?”

He gives me a look. “Like you don’t know. The media milked it for weeks.”

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I don’t follow celebrity gossip or watch much TV. I don’t even know who you were married to.”

“Heather Locklear,” he says.

I nod. “Oh, right. I remember hearing about you two being a couple, but I didn’t follow the details. You wanna tell me about it?”

Petty proceeds to tell me about his marriage and divorce from Heather Locklear. The other Heartbreakers fill in some details as well. We all sit there casually throwing golf balls as the story unfolds, and by the end Petty seems to be feeling better.

“It helps to talk about this,” he say. “Especially to someone who didn’t hear the tabloid version first.”

“Yeah,” I say, “my experience is that it’s always good to talk to an outsider who doesn’t care.” When Petty frowns at this, I add, “What I mean is someone who has no stake in the game. Like when you know a couple that gets divorced and yr friends with both of them and they expect you to take a side, and they resent it if you try to stay neutral.”

He nods, then he gets to his feet. “C’mon, I’ll drive you to the lobby.”

And then I woke up.

DISCLAIMER: I'm pretty sure Petty's nickname in real life is not "Cobalt". But that's what he said.

Also, I have no idea if he was ever married to Heather Locklear.

Don’t do me like that,

This is dF