Amateur Dream Analysis

DREAM: I'm at a laundromat/pool hall. Yes, I'm serious. The front room was a working laundromat, filled with washing machines as far as the eye could see. You went down a hallway in the back, and walked right into a brightly-lit billiards hall, with roughly 20 tables ready to go. Anyway, I'm not only at this setting, I'm here with Craig Ferguson and roughly 20 other folks. We were all part of Craig's studio audience, and after the show, he takes us all out for a group laundry session. So there we all are, happily folding our whites while Craig cracks jokes. Once we're all done, we head back and shoot some pool.

ANALYSIS: Who needs sex dreams to have a good time while you're sleeping? Wouldn't it be a kick to spend an evening shooting pool -- and, to a lesser extent, doing laundry -- with Craig Ferguson? I presume my subconscious created this dream solely because I've been watching so much of Craig's show lately. Conan isn't on until midnight here but it repeats at 1:05 on CTV, so my routine has been to watch Conan up until 12:37, then flip over to Craig and usually watch it in its entirety unless the guests are completely uninteresting. Once it's over, I flip to CTV and catch the last half of Conan (provided, of course, that Conan's second guest was worth coming back to see). It's a pretty sweet two-hour comedy block.

If you've never seen Craig Ferguson's show before, it's well worth checking out. Of all the talk show hosts, Craig is the one that comes off as by far the least "performery," even though as an accomplished actor, he has far more of a performance background than Conan, Kimmel, Letterman or Leno. (And I guess Stewart too, though probably not Colbert.) Apparently most of Craig's very loosely-organized monologue is actually written, in terms of concrete jokes. He's basically just given some topics and then just rambles and rants every evening. This leads into some banter with his robot sidekick and then a viewer mail segment that's usually interrupted by at least one appearance from Secretariat. These appearances are so stupid, but yet they make me laugh every single time. It may be the funniest recurring talk show bit since the Walker Texas Ranger lever. Now, no question, I'm a Conan guy through and through, but Ferguson runs a strong second. He seems like the type of naturally entertaining and charismatic person who would be entertaining whether they're hosting a chat show or, you guessed it, doing some mundane task like the laundry.

But there's another reason for the venue. My friends and I were recently brainstorming ideas for businesses, and I believe that, much like how 'Let It Be' came to Paul McCartney in a dream, my subconsciousness has given me a multi-billion dollar concept. A combination pool hall/laundromat. Genius. What's the single biggest problem with doing your laundry in a public place? Having to wait around for it to wash and dry. Ergo, we provide a built-in way to kill time. You can challenge your fellow laundry-doers to games of billiards, with the winner getting quarters. If you get on a hot streak, your entire laundry could be paid for just like that.

Years from now, I look forward to Aaron Sorkin writing a more-or-less fictional account of how my business empire came to be. It will be called The Corner Pocket. My only fear is that I'll be played by 30 Rock's John Lutz.