We were having a small degree of difficulty breaking the story for our third episode yesterday, so Neil Goldman and I were texting possibilities to each other late into the night. Finally, I texted that I was going to sleep, and that I would use a trick I learned from one of my 90 ex therapists. I would “give myself permission to have an important dream.”

Here is the dream from which I just now awoke:

I was Columbo. I reported to the scene of a homicide only to find no body. My Captain was there, and told me he wanted me to retire, but that before I did, I should shave in a hot tub. He handed me an electric razor. I climbed into the hot tub and submerged myself, where I found a corpse floating, dressed like me - that is, dressed like Columbo. Realizing that my captain was trying to kill me in an elaborate plot that my waking brain is at quite a loss to explain, I leapt from the hot tub just as it became electrified, cooking my dead doppleganger.

I fled the scene and hid in the loft of a nearby warehouse, in which many bodies were hidden. For several hours, I watched and listened as my captain and a few accomplices wrapped and weighted bodies. They then left to dump them at sea, during which I elected to stay where I was.

The captain returned, having realized the Columbo body he had dumped was not mine, and he climbed into a suit of power armor with long arms, stilt legs and huge manhole covers for feet. He said he knew I was up there in the loft, and ripped down a wall to give himself more access to my hiding place.

I climbed down the opposite side of the loft into the lobby of a hotel (good move, Columbo), where the receptionist informed me I was doing the opening for this year’s Oscars, so checked into a room, took a shower and changed into a tuxedo. I reported to the auditorium with a case of pencils, and when the Oscars started, I danced in a spotlight, and was well received by the crowd (considering). I began throwing the pencils, and it seemed like people liked that a lot. So I kept throwing them, and everyone cheered, and then the Oscars began.

Natalie Portman was hosting. I took a seat in the audience with my girlfriend and watched. Toward the end, I was informed by the usher that Natalie wanted to present an award with me (having written for the Oscars, I can tell you this is not how it usually works). Flattered and excited, I walked around the auditorium looking for Natalie Portman, who eventually found me and told me she had decided to present the award with Tom Kaufmann (Tom is a young talented writer from Channel 101) because he didn’t get a chance to do a lot that year (again, not exactly how the Oscars work, but I think it may have been a metaphor).

I took my seat with Erin and watched the rest of the Oscars. Dino found me and said NBC wanted to talk to us upstairs. We went up to a room where the executives from NBC were sitting at a banquet table. After some small talk about the Oscars - in which it became apparent that several people in the audience had received eye injuries during my pencil-throwing bit - they handed out NBC schedules in newsprint catalogues and enthusiastically took me through them page by page, at the end, proudly revealing that Community was being moved to 10:30 pm.

I asked what was currently at 10:30 on NBC. “Nothing,” they said. I looked in the catalogue to see what we would be running against. “Dance Party USA.”

The meeting adjourned. I met with Dino in the lobby and got depressed when I remembered how much stuff I had to pack in my hotel room. Then I woke up.

On the up side, I used to just dream spiders were chasing me and my Mom was the Hulk.