That was a plot device in Wim Wenders’ 1991 film Until the End of the World, a rather amorphous future-noir in which a bunch of disciples of Max von Sydow’s use a machine he has invented to record their dreams. Unfortunately this proves more habit formng than Tylenol PM, and soon no one is doing anything but sitting around watching instant replays of last night’s circus of the subconscious, barely rousing themselves to sing a valedictorian version of “Days” at the creator’s cremation…

I was reminded of that dream-recorder last night when I got around to watching a week’s worth of shows I had recorded. I don’t know about you but if it wasn’t for Tivo I would probably not see anything but cable news (“Everywhere is war”) and a few baseball games (subway series?). First I sampled the pilot of Studio 360 on the Sunset Strip (our friend David Handelman is on the roster of writers serving Aaron Sorkin) and found it as entertaining as advertised. Then I watched some short films that TCM had shown last week, including a couple early shorts by David Lynch.

It was great seeing TCM’s genial host, Bob Osborne, who is more comfortable introducing films starring Gregory Peck or Grace Kelly, grimace his way through the Lynch set-up. He looked like he was selling gum surgery. And indeed “The Grandmother” (1970), the longer of the two films, was the most horrifying thing I’ve seen coming out of my Sony since Bush addressed the UN. If I hadn’t been so tired I might have gotten up off the couch to get rid of the images of the vampirish little boy (half Brian Ferry, half Eddie Munster) who grows a monster grandmother to rescue him from the animal parents who alternately abuse and neglect him.

It wouldn’t be quite fair to say I have never seen anything like it; it’s a preview of coming Lynch attractions, most obviously Eraserhead. In the director’s subconscious, so close to his film world, the birthing process is monstrous, children are monstrous and the only thing more monstrous is the world they are born into. Eraserhead was the first film of his I saw; it played at midnight at the Roxie in San Francisco for months. I remember being so impressed that I took a girl I was seeing at the time to a screening. It was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

I erased “The Grandmother” and the equally horrifying but shorter “Alphabet” from my Tivo but I can’t delete them from my dreams.

Among the many hats I wear is that of what my friend Jessica Greenbaum would call “domestic scientist,” her name for the person who stays home and tries to figure out, through tireless experimenting, the proper temperature at which to serve a roast, the best way to patch a screen door, how to interpret the mysteries of NY recycling (milk cartons go with glass bottles and cans, of course) and so on. A housewife, they used to call us, or in my case, househusband.

(Jess herself is a fine poet, as well as loving wife, mother of two beautiful girls, active community member and so on. And when I’m not being a domestic scientist I am teaching, writing two books — with one hand! — giving moral support and nourishment to my wife and children and trying to save Brooklyn and the world, not necessarily in that order.)

I don’t think those who are not also domestic scientists realize just how much time and effort are involved in some of the most mundane but necessary tasks. Take my kitchen sink — please. We remodeled our kitchen back when Saddam was still in his spidey hole and among the new hardware we installed was a Leonardo faucet with a sprayer attachment (the Davinci 970, for those playing at home) the architect loved. It has a cool little button on the sprayer itself — push down for a shower effect, pull up for garden-hose stream — which works great. Until it doesn’t. Which turned out to be about three months after we bought it.

After several emails to architect and several calls to AF Supply, the Whitney Museum of plumbing products, I was offered a replacement. Which broke about six months later, as well. The button comes off with no way of putting it back on. Now I am in negotiations with AF for a different model, with phone calls being exchanged about once a week. Developing story. Meanwhile, Saddam’s trial is dragging on and the judge has gone on record telling the defendant that he is not a dictator. This judge is becoming the Lance Ito of Iraq…

I guess I’ll have to find another way to wash my spinach.

How unchecked is your ego? Most of us have moments where we like to think of ourselves as king of the forest (not queen, not duke, not prince) but generally we have reality to keep us in our place. Your parents can generally be counted on to keep you in line, not to mention your children. A good friend can deflate your head when it gets to Macy’s Day proportions as well, providing you are wise enough to listen.

Some writers, like Page Six celebrities, make the mistake of buying their own press — or taking that little voice too seriously, the one that is up late brushing up their Nobel Prize acceptance speech. (Most of us have enough daily humiliation dished up by the publishing trade that we don’t need any extra deflation.) A writing program I am affiliated with recently circulated the bios of my fellows and they were filled with the usual thumbnail sketches, who had published what where, and what accolades, if any, they had collected. But one writer, who shall remain nameless, was identified as “among the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time.”

Golly! If this were someone like, say, Joan Didion, who is in fact one of the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time, this might not seem so embarrassing. But this is merely a writer who writes a lot, and often not well, on a number of topics — a name you are familiar with but not one that would make you buy a magazine just because the writer was in it. Worse, these sorts of bios are submitted by the writers themselves, like the actors CVs that appear in the back of a playbill. No hiding place down here.

Of course it’s possible the writer’s agent submitted this piece of puffery for their client, unbeknownst to them. It’s not much of an excuse — kind of like telling the kids at school that your mom made you wear those stupid shoes that have made you a figure of fun at recess. But it’s better than admitting that you picked them out yourself. Most kids in those circumstances will go home to hide those shoes in the closet, never to be worn again.

It reminds me of a lunch I once had with the editor of a fashion magazine. We were discussing a writer who had made a career of sorts writing about his misadventures in dating. “This guy has dated every A-list woman in New York,” she said, “including me!” Made me wonder about the writers who tackled all the B-list babes out there, and what they did with their castoffs.

Before heading to the New School this morning I spent about an hour pamphleteering the late-shift commuters of Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill with a cheat sheet of candidates opposed to the Atlantic Yards Development, conveniently put together by the nice folks at No Land Grab. A few potential voters I assaulted seemed sick of the subject already, their tired looks all but shouting: “Don’t you know it’s Fashion Week? And I haven’t even had my latte yet!”

But if Bruce Ratner has his way you’ll be drinking your latte in Greenpoint, pal — because there won’t be anywhere to park here. And if you can find an outdoor cafe (one preferably run by a chain latte provider, like that Starbucks in the hideous Atlantic Center, another architectural gem we can thank the developer for) it will be in the shade, thanks to the 60-story apartment buildings that will ring the arena.

Primaries are boring, I know — unless there are real issues on the table. By taking five minutes (and believe me, on slow days like this, that’s all it will take) to cast a vote for those who have gone on record opposing this hideous project that threatens to turn our neighborhoods into a buffer zone for something that will look like the Javits Center on steroids — Bill Batson for State Assembly in the 57th AD, Chris Owens in the 11th Congressional District, Charles Barron in the 10th, and Velmanette Mongomery in the 18th — you are casting a vote for sunshine, fresh air and all that hippy shite.

In a typically lame front-of-the-book essay in the terminally boring New York Times Magazine Sunday, James Traub asked the always provocative question, “Whither Bohemia?” His thesis, such as it was, was that bohemia was now a state of mind (hey!) since every time cool people found a cool neighborhood (the Village, Williamsburg, Dumbo) uncool people came and made it unaffordable, and monochromatic. He posited the idea that Ft. Greene is that neighborhood now, a haven for interesting folks of all colors and establishments catering to them, but that our time was nigh thanks to the inexorable…Atlantic Yards Development! Yes, folks, there is no arguing with progress and a well-connected, racially divisive bilionaire. The fact that Ratner is building the Times next great edifice has nothing to with his argument, nor their editorial endorsing this fiasco.

Hit the polls, people. Don’t let Ratner, Sulzberger, the mayor et al tell you what’s inevitable. The fate of Brooklyn hangs on your chads.

Since reading in the New York Times this morning that the CIA tortured Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah by playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers at ear-splitting volume, I’ve been thinking about what kind of music we could use to torture Dick Cheney with. I know, the vice president is not in charge of the CIA (a situation he plans on rectifying if he can just have a little more time to expand those executive powers) but the new torture-all-the-time atmosphere that has been stinking up the joint since 9.11 emanates from Cheney like those rays from the dark eye of Sauron.

I turned for inspiration to Meet the Press where Cheney was the guest this morning. Tim Russert opened with a softball, asking the VP if the war against terror was discouraging terrorists and then followed up by pointing to a poll that indicates over 50% of American believe it is creating more terrorists. Cheney used the old line about Osama et al wanting to establish a Caliphate across the Muslim world (“Sounds like an improvement to me,” said my wife, who spent some time in the Middle East). Then Tim held up today’s Washington Post and pointed to the headline “Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold.'” Bad intel, said the veep. And that terrain where he’s hiding — it’s like the dark side of the moon.

Bingo! I bet Cheney would hate Pink Floyd, even though he once told Russert that in interrogating terrorists the US may need to go to “the dark side” — though he’d probably dig that old Syd Barrett-era chestnut, “Be Careful With That Ax, Eugene.” But the later, more pompous Floyd would probably drive him over the edge. Maybe we could make him watch The Wizard of Oz at the same time and stop the film and the CD endlessly to talk about the places we think they sync up.

Playing old video clips, as Russert did, of Cheney claiming that Saddam had WMD, or that he was pals with Al-Qaeda might be torture enough. The only person who believes in those canards now seems to be Cheney and his cabal (which includes, of course, the president) and they don’t want to hear any facts to the contrary. We don’t need no education, he sings to us. (To which we can reply, with that dopey chorus of kids, “We don’t need no thought control.”)

“I’m not sure what part of what I’m saying you don’t understand,” Cheney bristled at one point when the formerly docile Russert pursued the lack of connection between Saddam and Osama. Kicking your former Toto won’t help. The man definitely needs a trip to the Wizard, since he is lacking the courage to say that he was wrong about pretty much everything; the brains to see that pursuing the same strategy is a roadmap to oblivion; or the heart to feel for the tens of thousands of lives wasted in this pointless war.

He does have a home, though. It’s in Wyoming. May he find it soon.