Stan and I were in front of a house, looking in. Although it seemed like it was the beginning of some “House Hunters” show, and we were only looking at a house through the the eyes of TV and not part of the physical experience, it changed and it was like we were right there staring inside the house through a large front window. The house seemed like a ranch house that had major remodeling throughout many decades. The kitchen was large and faced the front. All kitchen cabinets were painted brown/light beige in a glossy oil paint, covering all imperfections and many other generations of paint jobs. It was nasty. I don’t think I could ever live in a house with painted kitchen cabinets. I noticed some strange plumbing under the sink, like really old pipes from maybe the 19th century. They too had been painted beige. Nothing in the kitchen was arranged in a normal kitchen layout. The olive green stove was next to the olive green refrigerator on the opposite wall as the sink and other appliances. There were some strange appliances that I didn’t know what they were; I assumed they were trash compactors or some handyman’s desk with drills and widgets. The washer and dryer were also in the kitchen, plus a microwave atop a dishwasher. There were no tables or chairs for sitting down on.

Then people started to appear; older people, not quite aged parents age, maybe more like 65-70 years old or so. But still old enough to have a goofy sense about them. Some older guy seemed to want to offer us some food, and brought out some vegetable dip from the fridge. He said laughingly that it was “Velvet Underground Vegetable Spread.” I thought that was hilarious, and took the plastic tub of spread from him, lifted up the top and spoke into it, “Lou?” Then I said, “Maybe there’s some John Cale in it.” (Get it? Cale? kale? vegetable? Weird how one can make jokes/puns in one’s sleep) But the old people were all being very noisy and didn’t hear my joke. Then Stan tries to say it louder, like “Maybe there’s some John Cale in the vegetable spread” in hopes that would make the old guy laugh. Unfortunately, the guys were old gits and although they were probably the age of the surviving members of the Velvets, there’s a strange sort of age disjointedness that goes on amongst people that they only seem to know about music that preceded them, not music that was created by their generational/chronological peers. Especially music that was as obscure as the VU was at the time they were listening to music in their younger days. These 65-70 year old people in the ugly beige kitchen seemed no different than how I remember 65-70 year old people from 40 years ago.

Then I find the cardboard box that the “Velvet Underground Vegetable Spread” came in and take a look at it. No where on the box did it actually say “Velvet Underground,” so I had to wonder where this guy was coming from, the guy who originally said that. But the box did say something weird. It had the name of my street as the brand or style something. It said “W_______o Street Vegetable Spread.” I went to show it to Stan, telling him that the story gets weirder and weirder.