Dream Log: Ultimate Fighting Against Ben Affleck on "Reality" TV

I dreamed I was on a "reality" TV show. I write it like that because I can think of few things which have less authenticity than these types of shows, made by penny-pinching morons who save money by not hiring any people who are actually qualified to make good entertainment: actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors -- artists in general. Tim Robbins' character in The Player was already making fun of these kinds of shows in 1992, years before they began to exist.

As I say, actors appear relatively rarely on such shows. Especially actors whose careers are going well. And so I was very surprised to see Ben Affleck as a contestant on this show. Ben seemed to be in a very bad mood all through this dream -- maybe because of some long series of unfortunate events in his life which had resulted in him appearing on a reality show.

It was also surprising that I was on the show. Firstly because I really sincerely would prefer not to. And strike two, I'm not at all famous.

I didn't recognize anyone in the entire dream except Mr Affleck and myself.

This was one of those "reality" shows which are also competitions. We contestants had been divided into about a half dozen teams, and there were about a half dozen members on each team. Just coincidentally, or so it seemed to me, I happened to be sitting next to Ben Affleck as the show's host explained the next round of the competition: ultimate fighting. We would all engage in mixed-martial arts fighting, each one of us versus one person from another team.

Ben Affleck had broken some rule, and was fined $20. He seemed quite annoyed, but promptly fished a $20 bill out of his pocket and handed it to the host. The host seemed to think for a minute, and then he handed the $20 bill to me.

I didn't want to annoy Ben Affleck, but I put the $20 bill in my pocket, because I didn't know what else to do.

It was a strange looking $20 bill: it wasn't green at all. It was white. Perhaps that's actually not strange. I haven't been keeping up to the minute with the changing appearance of US currency.

After a while I fished the $20 bill out of my pocket and handed it to Ben Affleck. This seemed to make him even more angry than he already had been. I didn't know why. But I suspect that if I tried to reach out to him and communicate about the incident, tried to reassure him that I meant neither to cheat not to insult him, I would only make him angrier. This sort of situation -- unintentionally angering someone and not knowing what to do to make things right, is very familiar to me, because I am autistic and have great difficulty reading non-verbal communication.

I didn't know whether the show's host had intended all along to stir things up between me and Ben Affleck, or if he noticed the tension between us and changed plans on the spot because of that. Whatever the reason, he announced that Ben Affleck and I would face each other in the first round of ultimate fighting.

In waking life, I've been working out for the past 2 months with a 100-pound dead ball, and I have found it to be a great conditioning tool, and I feel very strong. In the dream I also felt very strong. As we all started getting physically, and, above all, it seemed to me, mentally ready to engage in this combat, there was a lot of talk among the contestants about the match between me and Ben Affleck. Many people remarked that I outweighed Ben Affleck, which would give me an edge, but that he was younger and seemed to be in much better condition.

Although in many situations, as I've said, I'm very unskilled in reading non-verbal communication, in this situation, before the ultimate fights were to begin, it seemed very clear to me that almost all of the contestants, male and female alike, were 1) terrified, because they were utterly unprepared for this sort of fighting; 2) in denial about being afraid; and 3) exhibiting great amounts of machismo in order to try to convince themselves and their opponents that they were very well-prepared.

I thought that trying to convince myself or anyone else that I wasn't afraid would be a waste of the short time I had to prepare. I ignored the macho displays as much as I could, and tried to prepared mentally for the match. I had very little in terms of ideas of what to do. I never watch ultimate fighting. I came up with a 3-part plan: 1) pretend to be interested in punching and kicking right from the start, when in reality I would be waiting for Ben Affleck to over-extend himself with a punch or kick; and 2) try to grab his arm or leg which he had exposed by the overly-aggressive punch or kick; and 3) hold that limb under under one arm while beating him with the other fist.

It worked: Ben Affleck made a huge roundhouse kick, I was able to grab his leg and hold it fast under one arm, then I charged until he fell on his back, never letting go of the leg, and with him on his back and me above I punched him in the face over and over until the referee stopped the fight and declared me to be the winner.

As we both stood up on very wobbly legs, the host announced that the bout -- he used the word "bout" -- had lasted 12 seconds. Blood was streaming from Ben Affleck's nose. I looked at him and spread my arms in an offer of a post-fight hug, because I've seen boxers hug often after fights. He accepted the hug. I still said nothing, because I was still didn't know why he was angry, and I still was worried about making him more angry.

Then I woke up.

Dream Log: Ben Affleck Dissed By Young Whippersnappers

I dreamed that I both was and was not an Average Joe/Good Guy/Everyday Hero character played by Ben Affleck in an action/adventure movie. I was the Average Joe, but at the same time I was just me, just watching the movie. Affleck had stumbled across a crime in progress, being committed by characters played by actors in their 20and early 30's, who were probably famous, maybe even as famous as Affleck, but to me they were all kind of a blur because of their age. They were holding Me/Affleck prisoner because I/he had seen what they were doing.

And as if that weren't already bad enough, they were making fun of Affleck because he was old to them.

Ben Affleck, who just turned 47 yesterday, with Ben Affleck's abs and guns and buns and Oscars. The father of Jennifer Garner's children. Seriously, who did these whippersnappers think they were?

We were in a mostly-empty high-rise downtown in some city, like a new building which hadn't yet filled up with tenants. There were lots of rooms painted white, with no people, no furniture, no rugs, no anything. The younf movie stars were committing some sort of large-scale robbery, using both guns and computers. They weren't paying much attention to Affleck, who repeatedly escaped their custody, but only briefly before they caught him again. Sometimes Affleck got as far as a white-pained stairwell, sometimes he actually got outside of the building, into alleys where truck were loading and unloading or onto crowded sidewalks. I/Affleck felt like I/he was getting closer and closer to actually getting away, and coming back with cops and sweet, sweet justice.

One of the whippersnappers was particularly snarky and unpleasant, and apparently more evil than the others too, because he thought they should just kill me/Affleck and be done with me/Affleck before I/Affleck escaped and got them into trouble, but none of the others seemed to want to go that far. They were all like: get the job done, cut me loose and disappear. In the course of repeatedly escaping and then being captured and brought back to the HQ, I/Affleck was talking to these more reasonable members of the gang, trying to turn them against their murderous or would-be murderous cohort. Affleck felt like he was beginning to get through to some of them. They were decent kids, not murderous. They had just gotten caught up in a bad situation. Some of them even started to ease up on the stupid remarks about how Affleck supposedly was old.

Then I woke up.

Hollywood Autism: Vice News: "Autism Under the Lens" and The Accountant, Starring Ben Affleck

Last night's episode of "Vice News" on HBO was entitled "Autism: Under the Lens." "Vice News"' Executive Producer (its only Executive Producer, apparently, in an age where it's more and more common for movie and TV credits to have long lists of Executive Producers for every show) is Bill Maher, well-known for advocating anti-vaccination positions. Anti-vaxxers have promoted the thoroughly-discredited notion that vaccines cause autism, as well as the notion, which I certainly hope is in decline or at least being re-examined by a significant amount of people, that autism is, in anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy's words, a "horrible disease." (And seriously, what's up with calling all of these shows "Vice" in the first place? "Vice," "Vice News," and a whole "Viceland" network. Surely I can't be the only one who finds the name ridiculous.)

And so I was pleasantly amazed that vaccines were not even mentioned once in the entire episode, and that -- along with some researchers and therapists specializing in autism who referred to autism as a disorder as if there where no debate about that, and who might be inclined to refer to the condition as a "horrible disease" -- significant air time was also given to the point of view sometimes referred to as neurodiversity, which considers us autistic people as not disabled, but just different, as atypical. At least one autistic person on the episode referred to achievements of his as being possible because of his autism and not in spite of it.

Is this evidence that Bill Maher, unlike some of his anti-vax and New Atheist pals, can learn? Maybe not. Maybe all it means is that Bill's position as Executive Producer of "Vice News" does not include him paying any attention to the show. I would like to think that Bill is learning, and becoming more sophisticated on topics on which he has been led astray.

My one major criticism of the episode was the weight given to the belief that autism is becoming more common. It's true that diagnoses of autism are becoming more common. But I myself feel that this could be entirely explained simply by the fact that diagnosis is getting better and becoming more widespread. The term "autistic" is barely 1 century old. As recently as the 1970's, the vast majority of people, including the majority of physicians, had still never heard of autism, let alone understanding it well or diagnosing it. People in general are still just beginning to learn about autism. So of course the diagnosis of autism is becoming more common. People who believe that autism is becoming more widespread, and that it is a horrible disease, say: Oh no, oh no, it's a plague. People like me, who think that autism is about as common as it has always been, and that what's changing is that we're understanding it better, think that things are getting better. Understanding is key, and it's definitely happening: neurologically-typical people are understanding autistic people better, and we autistic people are understanding the rest of the population better. It's not a plague, it's a healing. That's how I see it.

In any case, this episode of "Vice News," along with other things such as the 2016 Ben Affleck movie The Accountant, whose title character, played by Ben, has been described as "the first autistic superhero," gives me hope that Hollywood in general is getting smarter about autism. (And of course, just like anyone else who is opposed to actual plagues, like plagues of measles and influenza, I hope they're becoming better informed about vaccines too.) I don't know whether the Accountant actually is the first autistic superhero, and The Accountant, although not a bad movie at all, is far from the masterpiece that The Dark Knight is: it copies some of The Dark Knight's style in cinematography and editing and music and the back-and-forth chronology of the plot, without giving you the same level of thrills and chills as the Batman movie. The Accountant does have some very nice moments: the montage at the end with Sean Rowe singing "To Leave Something Behind," for example, should leave you pleasantly verklemmt whether you're autistic or not, I should think, if you've been watching carefully up until then.

Although the superhero stuff in The Accountant is occasionally somewhat silly, the movie is very smart and realistic about autism. It doesn't say that autism will make a child grow up to be a superhero: the superhero part has more to do with Affleck's character having been intensively trained in various martial arts all during his childhood, and then someone close to him having been murdered by the Mafia. But when it comes to the characteristics and behaviors of autistic people, The Accountant does a better job than any other movie or fictional TV show I've seen with the exceptions of Rain Man and Temple Grandin with Claire Danes in the title role. The real-life Temple Grandin was a technical consultant on Rain Man and the Claire Danes film. I haven't been able to find out yet whether she also worked on The Accountant. I didn't see her name in the credits. Maybe, at last, Hollywood can portray autism realistically without Dr Grandin's help.

As far as I know, Ben Affleck has not been on Bill Maher's show "Real Time" since that particularly unpleasant (for Ben) episode in 2014, during which Sam Harris mocked Ben for asserting that Islamophobia exists and is related to racism. That was Ben's 7th appearance on the show, dating back to 2005.

Often, Bill Maher Sounds Almost As Intelligent As Ben Affleck

And then there are times like last night's "Real Time," marred by Bill's ant-vax screeds. To be sure, Bill insisted that he's not anti-vax, but just a "vaccine skeptic." Well, those are the same thing. Just as criticizing people's religious beliefs is the same thing as criticizing the people who hold the beliefs..

A moron like Jenny McCarthy or Sam Harris is one thing. But Bill sounds perfectly intelligent most of the time, offering cogent and precise evaluations of morons who deny climate change and vote Republican and think that the Affordable Care Act is a tragedy. But when the topic is Islam or vaccinations, it's as if someone changed the channel to Fox News.



Bill points out that the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that climate change is happening, is caused by human activity and is big, big trouble for life on Earth, and that there is a clear fix: green energy, wind, solar, plug-in electric cars and so forth. The thing is, the very same scientists also overwhelmingly agree that vaccines have nothing whatsoever to do with autism, or kidney disease, or any of the other things the anti-vaz nuts link it to, and that not vaccinating children risks re-creating the very same plagues which vaccines eradicated a century ago. So it's quite surreal to hear Maher spouting unscientific bullshit to support his "vaccine skepticism," and concluding, "[...]and it's not like global warming, cause that's real!" and chillingly, last night Bill's audience cheered him for that, instead of booing him as any well-informed crowd would have been expected to do.

It's not just backwoods rednecks who have an anti-vax problem in the US: prosperous, liberal Hollywood has that problem too. Does Hollywood's anti-vax bullshit have something to do with Scientology, and with charlatans preying on movie stars and peddling holistic treatments and magic crystals and pyramids and other such garbage? How could it not have everything to do with those things?



(Some of you may be old enough to remember when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon suddenly became huge stars on the strength of Good Will Hunting, which they wrote and in which they starred, Damon playing a genius and Affleck a sympathetic but not particularly intelligent schlub. Maybe you remember the rumours following Damon and Affleck's spectacular Oscar win for the screenplay, rumours to the effect that Affleck, like his character in the movie, was not particularly bright, and that he owed his Oscar mainly to his good friend Damon's generosity in sharing the writing credit with him. In light of the screenplays Affleck has written since then, and the movies he's directed, those rumours now seem kind of dumb. Not that I see any reason to suspect that the rumours got it exactly backward and that Damon is dumb.)



I really hate to say it, but I see no reason to suspect that Maher is going to brighten up any time soon, either about vaccines or about Islam. I can only plead with his fans -- I'm a fan too -- to think for themselves when listening to Maher, and realize that sometimes he knows what he's talking about, and sometimes he doesn't have a clue, and that when he sounds like he's on Fox News, it doesn't mean that Fox News is sometimes right about something.