maybe the longest and dumbest dream ever

dream this morning:

i'm in vegas, but an orlando type of vibe vegas. the first night i am drinking and playing slots and winning. my wife is there, she asks if the winnings are mine. oh yeah they are. the night goes on and things get blurry. the next thing i know, i'm in a rental car. it's daylight. i feel very drunk and tired. i'm sitting in a line of cars waiting to get into a parking garage. everything is painted in a faded lemon color. the parking garage walls, the pavement, the rental car. i'm getting impatient because the guy in front of me has stopped for some reason. i start wondering if i should back out and go around another way. i doze off... finally i come to, but i don't know how long i've been out. i look around and there are no cars behind or in front of me. definitely feeling too drunk to drive. i need to park on the bottom level, but i can't. i end up on the very top level (where the sun beats down) and park and go in through some big glass doors.

once i'm in my room i just want to nap. it's all wood paneling with little white tables and chairs made out of hard plastic. the carpets are also white. there's a small bedroom off the main room. there's a knock at the door, it's some people i don't recognize but who know me. they are music business people. one of them has dark curly hair and looks like a cross between jon favreau and andrew the giant. another is a smaller, thin old man with stark white hair. there's a woman with them but somehow i never see her face. they are here for a music conference. they are surprised that i am surprised that i am playing said music conference. which band? nobody knows? really? why can't i remember? i don't say anything because i'm embarrassed. these new strangers don't leave. they settle in and tell me they're looking at managing the band. ok. they ask if my wife came with me to the music conference. "no, this is the first time she didn't come to vegas for some reason" i said, clearly not aware that she was there the previous night. after some other boring conversation, i tell the strangers i'm going to bed and try to sleep in the other room. except favreau and starkwhite begin having a loud conversation and in no time at all i am up and drunkenly yelling for them to get lost. they begrudgingly leave. i still need to know which band is playing and when, so i find a las vegas type of nuvo magazine and start pouring through the pages, looking for either band's name. i can't find it anywhere, but i did see Mothership listed in an ad.

i go downstairs to what looks vaguely like 'the strip'. i run into jason rich. he wants to go get a beer. i can't though, i've got to figure out wtf i'm doing here and why i don't know what's going on, who's playing and where. while we're talking i see some video screens on the ground, they have advertisements for upcoming events. i see one out of the corner of my eye, it has three photos with the artist name and date. in the middle is a photo of me, wearing a cowboy hat, looking pissed, with STEVE JANIAK across the top. at the bottom is says the venue and date, but it scrolls left too fast before i get a look. SHIT.

at some point i see a what looks like a big plastic kids toy, like a 4 or 5 foot long fisher price school bus. the top part looks like a shopping cart. there are two homeless girls living inside it. i end up climbing in the bottom half and have a conversation with this blonde girl. she's telling me she is semi-famous and works with this international youtube star. his cassette is hanging up on the wall inside this toy bus they live in. i can't remember the name on it exactly, it was like IOTA or IOTA MAN or IO MAN or something. the cassette is bright yellow with black ink. the school bus is also yellow, inside and out. we have a conversation about living our dreams as she wants to be a youtube star. she tells me that IO MAN always tags his videos with her name, but i am skeptical. so she pulls out her smartphone and i sit through a techno video by IOTA MAN. i can't believe that is popular but i tell her it's pretty good. sure enough, at the end there is a logo that pops up, it's white with a blue border that looks like a diagram of an atom. it says IOTA something, and with an asterisk below it says 'sponsored by amber so and so'. she looks really proud of herself and that is super cool, but she lives in a toy school bus under an overpass on the strip. i eventually say i have to go and make an exit.

at this point i am carrying my big klipsch speaker and some other stuff, maybe a backpack and a box of random junk. i see favreau and he is coming to talk to me. a train pulls up as we (jason and i) are close to the tracks. jason says "follow me" and he gets on the train. i pick up all my stuff and get on the train. jason goes up and out through another set of doors. he's off the train. the train starts moving. uh oh. how long is this train and where does it go? i look back through another set of windows to a separate compartment. favreau is looking at me from across the way, somewhat menacingly.

now the inside of the train becomes just like a school bus or a subway car. i throw my shit in the seats. i walk to the front of the bus to get some answers. the driver of the train bus says this bus train goes to the Anheuser-Busch brewery and museum. how long does that take? "no idea" he says. the train bus heads up into the clouds on a monorail track. i can see all of the vegas strip below, but it looks more like a giant theme park. as we get closer to the brewery, which pokes above the clouds like something out of the wizard of oz, the train starts slowing down. i can feel the heat of favreau's prying eyes. the train stops in the middle of a cloud so dense i can't see any ground. the conductor-driver yells details about the stop and the brewery and tours and such. i jump off the train bus. i look down past the rows of cars and see favreau also gets off. as the train starts back up, i jump on at the last second. favreau's eyes go wide as he chases the last car and grabs on.

a few more conversations with the conductor, and i'm convinced he knows absolutely nothing. after more flying through the clouds, we get to a huge complex in the sky and the train bus goes right into the building. the sides of the train bus melt away and we are sitting in bucket seats, attached to a moving rail above. we're in a museum. there is all kinds of wacky stuff on both sides, but we're going too fast to see anything. one part i did notice was a 3D simpsons room. there were characters and scenes being generated via hologram. i could hear homer's voice booming from a speaker as his 15 foot head was beamed from the dark blue floor; "the meaning of life is ... donuts... mmm" but i can't quite remember it exactly. after the simpsons room we went into a shiny mirrored hallway with bright lights. there were hard lefts and hard rights and the bucket seats swung so hard i thought i would fall out.

the next thing i know, i'm in a small, wood paneled room. there are two or three other people in the room, one of which is favreau. on a small brown loveseat is an injured cowboy. i don't know any of the others, nor can i recall seeing their faces. but it becomes apparent to me that we have to eat, since we're trapped. (duh). i pull out a massive knife from a drawer. everyone starts to freak out. "we've got to survive!" i tell them. next, i pull out a giant axe from the drawer and tell the rest in the room to hold down the cowboy, who starts yelling "Nooooo" as i plan to chop off his left foot. favreau is yelling for me to stop, but it's too late. suddenly things seem to get a bit weird as i know in my own mind i only chopped off his big toe, but they all saw me chop off his entire foot. i tell the cowboy "i hope your feet are clean, but we've got to survive" as i toss his foot onto a massive skillet that has been heating up in the background.

i can't remember actually cooking and eating this cowboy's foot but in time we get released and nobody says a word about it. i have to get back on the train bus because i left my speaker and junk behind. plus i still need to figure out wtf i am doing and if i'm playing with a band or as a solo country artist. i start think that i am dead or possibly just dying. we come down from the clouds and back to the strip. i had no money so i had to jump in the back of one of the cars with a flatbed. before security can see me, i hop down to the sidewalk when the train begins to slow. i run up to some lady in a police outfit. "i need to get my stuff! i left my stuff behind!" she scowls and puts up her hand for me to shut up. "you need to wait here, you're getting in everyone's way" so i stand there impatiently as people slowly get off the train and enter the sidewalk. across the way is angry old lady in a wheelchair. she's waiting behind a small railroad crossing gate.

waiting there is about the last thing i remember.