Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Story of Steve Dono

So I've been having alot of dreams lately. Last nights was about the 3rd one in the past week. However, the dream I had last night was....uh, quite disturbing, but as usual, completely random.

So, the dream is an episode of some game show that Joe Rogan is hosting. I'm not really sure about the details of the game show, but it's basically a "Would you Rather" show where they dare people to live up to statements they've made in the past that go something like: "I would rather ___ than ___." In the episode in my dream, a pretty 20-something year old girl is the contestant and she'd made the statement to her friends that "I would rather eat peanut butter off of Steve Dono's chest, than date another asshole."

Steve, is a guy that she had gone to high school with, and all the rest of her friends she had made the "would you rather" statement to, rembember him well. At this point Joe Rogan does a backstory on Steve showing video clips of him growing up, etc. His video montage begins when he is about 8yrs old and with his family. They are all at the house listening to music. Steve begins to dance...or at least attempts to. Everyone in his family begins laughing at him because he can't seem to move his hips right to the music and it looks completely awkward. He's humiliated. As Joe Rogan narrates, they show Steve progressing through childhood through yearbook photos and the effects that fateful day had on his life. He began to get fatter and fatter as he sunk into depression still unable able to dance.

At this moment, the last picture we had seen of Steve Dono was his Senior picture where he was about 350lbs, greasy, pale, and an unshaven, sparsely hairy face. Basically someone who had completely given up on life. No one feels sorry for him, just that he's a loser for caring about something so deeply. Joe Rogan makes the typical announcement of a show host: "let's bring out Steve", as if he's some sort of circus monkey we should marvel at in awe and wonder. Steve is brought out onto the stage sitting on a diving board perched precariously over an extremely large see through tank of water, much like one of those dunking booths at a fair. Steve is now nearly 1200lbs of blindingly white skin and fat, still depressed as ever.

Jennifer, shocked and embarrased of her statement coming to light begins to excuse and beg her way out of the situation. Joe quickly puts a stop to it though and says that she MUST eat peanut butter off his chest or take back her comment on dating assholes. She refused to giving in that far.


....Now here's where this dream goes from something that's ridiculous, to completely messed up. With her peanut butter and spatula in hand, she began to slowly approach Steve, sitting glum in a pile of his own self pity when the diving board breaks, sending Steve forward into the pool and a wave of water crashing over the sides. Steve is so large he can't swim as he lay floating face forward in the pool. The camera zooms in on his face as you see a man who's so depressed and humiliated with his life, yet trying to fight for what humiliating part he has left of it. Meanwhile Joe Rogan is scrambling around trying to figure out how to save him before his head goes completely under and host a live TV show all at the same time. Jennifer sits aghast at what's going on, halfway glad that she won't have to go through with the challenge.

As cameras sits fixed on his face with his head slowly sinking under the water because he can't hold his head up any longer, we see a sense of delight on his face that his horrible life ended in such spectacular failure. Everyone pauses and sits transfixed on Steve with their heads cocked to the side feeling momentarily sorry for him as he finally dies.

As Steve is being lowered from the tank to the floor, Joe finally comes to his senses with a mentality of "the show must go on"! Joe says to Jennifer "While that didn't go the way we expected, you've still got to follow through on your end of the deal." At this point she is shocked, livid, and at the point of throwing up. Joe defiantly takes the peanut butter and begins spreading it over Steve's lifeless chest. She looks into Steve's empty eyes and realizes that now, "she'd rather date an asshole than eat peanut butter off Steve Dono". And it's at that point that I wake up....