Dreams Nip at the Tan Lines of the Mind

I had a dream last week in which my girlfriend and I were walking around in rural Greece. I could identify it as such by the intense Grecian sunlight and the ruins left carelessly strewn about. We came across a peasant woman leaning over a handy bit of ruin, which was an atypical angle for someone in the process of giving birth.

As she strained, a boy popped out into the perfect sunlight, followed by a small, sturdy donkey, which immediately took its first tentative steps.

“How are they?” asked the exhausted woman, unable from her position to see her new offspring.

“Very practical,” I responded, which I think was a pretty good assessment, considering I was asleep at the time.

If I’d had the foresight to be living in ancient Greece when I had this dream, it might have been interpreted as a big-time omen, and a shrine would have been erected on the spot where I’d rested my head, with me on the inside track for getting the souvenir concession. Back then, people were always dreaming of doofus stuff and getting city-states founded over it. But try dreaming about a nude goddess riding on a clam these days and people will just refer you to Joyce Brothers.

Compared to Athens, the Colossus of Rhodes and the 99-cent pita pocket, the icons of our modern imaginings might seem like paltry things, but they’re all we’ve got, and it makes me sad to see them go. I’m thinking particularly right now of the Coppertone dog and girl billboard that is slowly fading into ruin alongside the Santa Ana Freeway just north of this fair county.

For most of my life, it’s been there, that little motorized black Scottie tugging on the mobile trunks of a tan-lined tyke. You could always count on it being there, a constant like the constellations in the sky. But sometime in the past couple of years (I don’t drive to L.A. much because once you’ve made the drive, you’re in L.A., and who’d want to do that on purpose?), the billboard and attached factory went to the weeds.

The dog has been put to sleep, the bikini bottom is frozen at half-mast, and, contrary to the once-promised tan, the whole thing is becoming blanched in the sun, except for the graffiti now covering much of it.

So what happened? Was the billboard put out of commission by a consortium of kiddie-porn and leash-law activists? Was the company a victim of ozone depletion, or, anticipating NAFTA, have all the tans moved to Mexico? Whatever the cause, one of our landmarks is vanishing.

“So what?” you might say. “I haven’t seen Poppin’ Fresh in the freezer case lately, either.”

By which I can only assume you’re arguing: “Who cares about these dopey corporate logos? Where are you going with this?”

Well, I care about those logos, at least some of them, a little bit, for reasons I’m about to explain. And regular readers have probably caught the drift by now that I never know where I’m going, though I’m hoping I’ll get to mention turkey and cranberries somewhere today. On the best of days, the road map of my brain has Mr. Magoo driving around on it. And for the past three weeks, I’ve been stumbling around with this inner-ear equilibrium malady called Meniere’s syndrome, which is like being on Space Mountain except Mickey won’t let you off.

Speaking of which, when I was a little kid living in Hollywood, whenever we’d drive to Disneyland we’d pass the Western Exterminator building. With its logo--the top-hatted guy with the big mallet--I always thought it was the first outpost of Disneyland. It had whimsy. It had style. It was cool. I still get a buzz from seeing the Western Exterminator statue inexplicably peering out from the bushes alongside the Costa Mesa Freeway just south of the Crazy Horse Steak House, mallet poised as if expecting a big mouse to come scampering down the southbound lanes.

Of course, even that statue has graffiti on it now. What doesn’t? Graffiti has become a cultural kudzu vine creeping over every inch of our state. I’m not one of the trendy number who regard graffiti as some form of charming folk art. However, I can’t see any justice in jailing its perpetrators unless we’re also going to arrest the jerks who have blighted our view with brainless billboards. What’s the difference, except the billboard people have money and want more of ours?

This may seem like a fine line, but I detest those, while I do really dig the giant golfers, carpet genies, huge doughnuts and such that more serious citizens consider to be civic disgraces. I loved Manny, Moe and Jack, but haven’t set foot in a Pep Boys since its corporate dweeb owners dumped them for a sleek, faceless logo.

When I’m in Seattle, I often break out in glee just to be in a city where you can see that ridiculous Space Needle jutting up into the sky, making you think you woke up in Tomorrowland.

The difference between those brethren of the Coppertone sign and most of the drab dreck affronting our eyes now is that, however tacky, they show a bit of dreamy imagination while the other stuff--Marlboro ads, beehive condominiums, strip malls et al.--just sucks out what little visual life remains in our communities.

We need playful things that can touch our sense of wonder because the landscape of the imagination is about the only one we have left locally. Most smoggy days you’d scarcely even know there were mountains a few miles from us.

The Greeks used to look up at the constellations and see gods and their adventures unfolding there. You can scarcely see any stars at night around here anymore, and jerks want to put Mylar billboards in the sky now too.

It’s easy to ignore that there is still a thing called nature--except for in recent weeks, when nature seemed to have taken a cue from visionary artist-musician Captain Beefheart’s ‘70s feminist observation: “Nowadays a woman’s gotta haul off and hit a man to make him know she’s there.”

I went out walking with my girlfriend the night of the Laguna fire. Instead of seeing sunny newborn donkeys, we wound up with hundreds of other neighbors lining Irvine Boulevard west of the Back Bay watching the terrifying, thrilling beauty of the flame-painted smoke roiling behind the hills above Newport.

The violent murk and Halloween colors lacked only metallic-insect Martians to look just like the nightmarish artwork on the set of “War of the Worlds” bubble-gum cards I had in the ‘60s. Then, with goosebump-invoking speed, the fire crested the hills in a jagged line, looking like an idiot’s scrawl drawn in burning gold.

Making it all the more psychedelic was some tiny misplaced grain of calcium or some such blocking a duct in my inner ear, giving me the nauseating sensation that the ground was churning beneath me.

The world on fire. Gravity bucking as your senses betray you. It’s times like this when you could use a few irreducible reference points in life. Lacking constellations, I’d settle for the once-eternal Coppertone tussle between the forces of dog and decency. Lacking that, I’m sure glad there are still turkey and cranberries in the world.