Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I’ve been walking around all day today snickering at myself because of this crazy dream I had last night. Thanks to illicit late nights, staying up to watch Twilight Zone and Night Gallery with my brother, I don’t remember my dreams very often. One or two vivid nightmares at a tender age will cure you of remembering dreams. With me…it was the “Ear Wick”.

My mother was well known for her crazy dreams. I think the most memorable one was the “Alligator Skin Cadillac”. In this dream, my mother was chauffeured around our hometown of Bluffton, SC in a Caddy that was covered entirely in alligator skin.

It’s well known that I have a huge crush on Anthony Bourdain. It has nothing to do with his bad boy smirk, his impossibly long legs, his lean mean tobacco chiseled physique, or his eminently jumpable bones. How dare you think such a thing! No…it is an entirely chaste admiration for his adventuresome spirit as it relates to all things food. Yeah…it’s a spiri-tchu-al thing.

See, I’m reasonably sure I could dish up Uncle Arthur’s scrambled squirrel brains, shallots and eggs to him and he would actually eat them. I never ate them, but Uncle Arthur just couldn’t get enough of the damn things. We had to kill thirty or so squirrels every Christmas Eve morning just to get enough brains for that dish.

So, in my dream, I am in a television studio. This is a very familiar setting to me, though it has been quite a few years since I plied my trade in one. I’m out in the hallway and I’m on my way to the make-up room (‘cause that’s one of the things I used to do...make-up artist).

For some reason, I’m gnawing on a head of raw broccoli. I guess I didn’t have time to get my breakfast burrito from the canteen that morning. I’m holding it by the stem and inelegantly chewing the florets off like a dog with a lamb shank(or…me with a lamb shank for that matter).

One of the doors leading into this hallway opens in front of me and out steps Anthony Bourdain! I’m not at all surprised to see him. Like me, he belongs there. Perhaps I am there to do his make-up. He seems to know me too.

He looks at the head of broccoli in my fist and says, “What is that?”

“It’s a head of broccoli.” I say. I feel self-conscious because I’m pretty sure I have broccoli in my teeth in a fairly major way.

“No,” he says, looking curiously at it. “What exactly is it?”

I realize at this point that Anthony Bourdain has never seen a head of broccoli. For some reason, this doesn’t strike me as odd.

“Well,” I reply, “Broccoli is a green vegetable of the brassicaceae family. Look, are you sure you’ve never heard of broccoli?”

He shakes his head slowly.

At this point, I offer him a bite.

I don’t know what this dream means, if anything. I’m not even sure if it is as funny to you as it is hilarious to me.

But I’ve been laughing my ass off all day and thought I’d share.