You did not see this coming.

My girlfriend dreamt last night that I’d died and Dr. Gravitee had, because he knew I’d want him to, taken over as her boyfriend. When, months later, after an appropriate mourning period, she asked him if he’d like to sleep with her, he became irrationally angry. He picked up a Felix the Cat wall clock by the tail and waved it at her threateningly.

Thank you, Dr. Gravitee, for honoring my memory in dreams.

Others are honored this week. My friend Carnahan has a surprise birthday party tonight. He thinks it’s someone else’s party, and it is, but it’s also a party for Carnahan. I don’t approve of this surprise, since he’s fully expecting a party, and the surprise is that he’s being shoehorned into the festivities at the last second. Similarly, my girlfriend’s parents are throwing her a party on Saturday. She knows this, but doesn’t know that they’ve invited childhood friends she hasn’t seen in fifteen years, or that the theme is “Bali Luau” and the dress is “Business Tropical.” These are, in a sense, a surprise parties.

Other recent surprise parties:

Yi Jianlian
Thought he was going to: His coronation as Prince of San Francisco Chinatown.
Was actually going to: Milwaukee.

Joey Renard Gathright
Thought he was going to: Jump over a car without untucking his polo shirt.
Was actually going to: The minors. But he got to be on YouTube.

Musa D
Thought he was going to: Free LaserBall Day at Comerica Park.
Was actually going to: Neifi Perez Bobblehead Day at Comerica Park.

Frank Wychek
Thought he was going to: Eat free pizza every night for several weeks, and twice on Sunday.
Was actually going to: Remove jacket and pants to reveal Titan blue and white wrestling trunks!

Musa D’s Weekly Challenge: Correctly predict any one of my girlfriend’s dreams this week.

Tie-breaker: Write something in the comments no one could ever have expected.

Winner gets a Neifi Perez Bobblehead!

Frequency of Sinkhole Activity Decreasing

Another thing that's been decreasing is my metabolic rate. I think I've determined the contributing factors:

• Watching 5.5 seasons of The Sopranos in a two-month span.
• Leaving my bicycle locked to the bike rack behind the Thomas Community Center in Gainesville, FL, two years ago.
• Leaving my baseball glove in Africa, where I'm sure it's collecting dust. (Having one baseball glove is as pointless as having one tennis racquet. Having both one glove and one racquet is equally pointless. Having both or either is even more pointless in an African village, where there are no solid, large, horizontal or vertical flat surfaces, and no balls.)

Those 5.5 seasons of The Sopranos have caused me:

• A ten-lb. weight gain.
• Handgun fantasies.
• Worse posture.
• To use foul language around my grandmother, though she didn't hear me.
• To refer to paying my taxes this year as "kicking up to my uncle."
• To have a sit-down at work with Bill the mailroom guy about having him clip Harold from Accounts Payable.

Vanity Fair and I agree that The Sopranos is the most influential show of all time.