A dream between 5 and 8 a.m. today — when I woke up to fix a typo I'd made at work yesterday and when I woke up for good – that managed to combine most of this blog's summer yet somehow not Mike Mussina:

I was in some kind of small class, playing Pole Position on a full arcade game, with the machine spitting out quarters as I kept winning races, but no one in the room noticed and I seemed to be keeping up with what the teacher was saying. Somehow I end up at an afterparty or concert where Springsteen and half the band were playing through some kind of work connection. Bruce played a few opening chords from Incident to warm up, but I didn't notice any other songs. Little Steven was banging on the drums. Bruce introduced a couple extra members of the band, two brunettes on the left side of the stage, joking about the first one's chest (she laughed) and introducing the second girl by her ancestral country, causing a blonde member of the crowd with the same roots to get confused and jump up on stage, thinking Bruce was introducing her. He politely ignored her as she stood directly in front of him until we pulled her away. As Bruce came off stage, he summoned me to the side of the club and said, "When I introduce Neuharth, you yell, 'Free Hank Hill!'" I said, "Because that was the crazy presidential candidate Neuharth always liked?" Yep, Bruce replied, I said sure, and he walked backstage. But as I stood around, there appeared to be no next party or second part of the concert.  I wondered if something was going to happen the next day because Neuharth was getting up there in years and was probably a morning person now. Then I woke up.

More highlights… Sitting in Amtrak's quiet car by accident. Having no idea until a shusher silenced a talker. Listening to the shusher's second round with a talker draw interruption from a conductor (the rules). Avoiding a mascot of some kind at Penn Station.

Meeting the cool USAT people in the bureau, courtesy of friend and blogger Anne. Finding out Gannett owns the cut-out deck atop the building. (There's a gazebo up there. It's very Neuharth.) Seeing Rob hard at work. Getting the "Are you in school? Out of school?" question from Rob's office. Hearing guys unloading a truck talk about the Gambino arrests, "finally getting that trash off the streets!"

Learning arepas with cheese have just cheese inside. Realizing I'm drinking at a bar where I've seen Marah play on video, later realizing I'm wrong but that the band does play there, and thinking maybe Rob's apartment down the street is well-placed. Enjoying Rob's television, a projector he's rigged to hang from the middle of the ceiling. Eating lunch at The Pink Pony. Food was delicious. Staff was nice as could be. The books on the walls stacked to 20-foot ceilings, and a high-up fan swung on the breeze of fans at the blades' ends.

Walking the three decks at Top of the Rock. Reading about the five people they once employed there to find and scrape stray gum. Considering the NJ implications of the death of gum-removal staffers (cultivating respect for place, eliminating trouble surfaces in structure design, providing ease access to trash cans, etc). Finding the NBC store sells Dunder-Mifflin warehouse shirts.

Having dinner at Cellini where the maitre'd knows Rob. Learning the restaurant is Rob's work take-out place. Weighing the Gannetteria against Cellini. (I love the Gannetteria, but first Conde and then this … my defenses were destroyed.) Eating Cellini's biscotti.

Windy tenement streets. The comparative advantage of Babe Ruth. Sudden, blowing, freezing snow. And a man dressed like his dog.

I read Making of McPaper one night last week, the quick-moving book about USA TODAY's founding and a good night's read if you take an ice cream break in the middle. Whether it was the story or the sugar-fueled Chocolate Fudge Brownie, it took me hours to fall asleep afterward.

Where to begin on my favorite parts… the chart showing the average newsroom age at the paper's birth was 33… the "young geniuses" of the prototyping Project NN were younger still… the "line" and "service" differences… the ridiculous approaches to internal engagement, hitting the extreme here:

[Founder Al Neuharth] told them that USA TODAY's loss for 1985 had to be under $75 million. To make sure it was, they would police all costs line-by-line. Before any new hires could be made, approval was required in writing from Neuharth or John Curley. Neuharth added a warning: Any deviation of more than 5 percent from the plan "will be considered unsatisfactory and the executives responsible for such deviation subject to dismissal."

After this grim meeting, they adjourned for dinner to Bernard's Surf, a Cocoa Beach restaurant that was locally famous as a hangout of the astronauts, a place where Gannett had hosted hundreds of company dinners — but never before or since a company dinner like this one. Neuharth had summoned them to town to shock them, and shock them he did.

The restaurant was run by a Jewish friend of Neuharth's, Rusty Fischer. When the USA TODAY executives arrived at the Surf, the door to their private dining room was closed, and Neuharth was not around. Thirty minutes later, the door opened and there was Neuharth: He was wearing a crown of thorns. There was a huge wooden cross leaning across the wall behind him.

Neuharth and restauranteur Fischer had arranged the room so it resembled the scene of the Last Supper. Gannett executives were used to drinking Pouilly-Fuisse, but this long, sparse table had jugs of Manichevitz wine and pieces of unleavened bread on it. "I am the crucified one," Neuharth told them. Then he presided at what he called, "The Service for the Passed-Over," which he had based on the Jewish observance of Passover.

Neuharth had decided upon a loose, theatrical adaptation of two religious events, and the result was a mixed religious metaphor. He superimposed the service for the Jewish feast of Seder, a Passover ritual which commemorates the Jews' escape of Egypt on top of a setting in which he played the role of Jesus at the Last Supper. "Passover" appealed to him because if USA TODAY did not cut its losses soon, they were all going to be "passed-over." Then this meal at Bernard's Surf might indeed prove to be their "last supper." …

I don't feel that I need to explain my art to you, Warren.