...at least in my dreams.

I had a dream the other night that I was good friends with John Leguizamo. I've always been an admirer of his, ever since To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, where he played a feisty Latin crossdresser. (Also, his role as Tybalt was the One Decent Thing about that Romeo + Juliet movie a few years back.) His stand-up routines are some of the funniest I've seen. So you'd imagine he'd be a difficult guy to entertain.

You'd be wrong. In my dream, we were watching late-night zombie movies and laughing riotously about them over a bowl of Doritos. I kept making satirical, Mystery Science Theater-type comments, which he found to be wildly entertaining. I don't remember any of the specific content, but it must have been some of the most hilarious ad libbing in the history of comedy. (Prehistoric comedy, of course, consisted mostly of one caveman luring another caveman into a tarpit with promises of tangy, tasty, piping-hot woolly mammoth ribs.)

This dream was nearly as good as the one I mentioned in an earlier entry, in which I was telling jokes to Jon Stewart. Luckily, I still remember one of the jokes I told in that dream. I pointed out a window to where a man was throwing a canvas tarp over a bunch of pigeons, and I said, "anybody want a bag of birds?" Now, this is what some might call an esoteric joke—maybe a little too lofty for some people's tastes. But in my dream, Jon Stewart laughed so hard tears were streaming from his eyes. That's gold, Jerry. Gold!

It's interesting to note that both Johns are comedians, which makes my nocturnal grandstanding that much more presumptious and unlikely. But it also makes me wonder what other famous people named John I could be entertaining in my dreams if I put my subconscious mind to it. There's John Lithgow (whose funniest role to date was of that pseudo-British guy in Cliffhanger), and John Cleese would be the best audience ever. Sadly, it's too late for John Belushi, John Ritter, and Johnny Carson. But if the living-impaired are not to be excluded from the proceedings (and really, we're talking about dreams here, so why should they be?), then I could draw inspiration from any point in history. I bet I could make John Jay laugh. (Those Federalist Papers were a riot). And anyone who's ever had a college literature course will remember with fondness the comic stylings of John Milton. ("Justify the ways of God to men," my buttocks.)

Do you still doubt me, you who snicker at that "bag of birds" thing? I will have you know that my humor is wonderfully subtle—in this respect it is Andy Kaufman-esque—so that you may not even notice when I am unleashing my wit on the world. If such a miscommunication occurs, please be advised that I am just as funny as ever. It's that you're not funny enough to appreciate my humor. I mean, who is the Judge of Funny, anyway? Where does this judge sit, who pounds his gavel against a podium and declares, "Not Funny"?

Tags: dream