Man, I had some weird dreams last night.

I meet this girl at a cafe or pizza joint. She gives me this newspaper, like an "alternative weekly"; it has a contest in it for "Guess our secret critic's favorites" in five different categories. They're all kinds of musicians, but odd ones, like "Singer-Rocker" and "80s glitter band," and they're all supposed to be female. The girl in the cafe tells me that she publishes the magazine, and they need to find a secret critic before tomorrow, so that they have some answers, and would I be the one? I agree. She goes away and I meet a couple more girls; they turn out to be her fellow publishers. They tell me about the contest, too.

Now they're feeling me out on my musical tastes... I think they know that the secret critic is supposed to be a man, and they want to see what a man's secret tasts might be. Meanwhile, I know that they're with the newspaper so I want to see what kind of stuff they're looking for; so we're both circling around each other, trying to figure each other out. I'm trying to think of acts that are appropriately obscure but not too obscure, trying to think of someone in between Joanna Newsom and Rosie Thomas, for example. At some point one of the girls says, "You wouldn't go for a quick shag, at all, I suppose?" And I shrug and say, "Actually, a quick shag might be just the thing"—which I have no intention of doing, I assure you, even in the dream. Rather, I'm being crafty: I realize that I could parlay some more time with these girls, to figure out their secret tastes. So they take me back to their flat and disappear somewhere, and I'm left alone with the newspaper, trying to figure out what to put for these five categories of female musicians! I woke up as tired as a rotten stone, and as dehydrated, too.