adventures in lucid dreaming
This story, like all stories worth telling, starts with JGL's twitter.
I'm bopping around on it yesterday, because I'm looking for a link to...something. I don't even know what now, but as is The Way Of The Internet, yesterday I NEEDED IT AT ONCE OMFG, and his twitter was the place I recalled seeing it, right? So I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I find a tweet mentioning that Rian Johnson had been the director of Brick.
"Wait," I think, "wait, what?"
See, the thing is, Rian Johnson directed The Brothers Bloom, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. And not that JGL being in Brick wasn't a selling point in and of itself, but this new information pushed the film into OH MY GOD WHY HAVEN'T I SEEN THIS YET territory. I check, find it is available for streaming on Netflix, and I watch it.
Or, well, I watch most of it. Then I get tired and pass out, and I wake up this morning horrifyingly sick. I call an audible on my day, tell work I will not be coming in, watch the last half hour Brick because, you know, JGL, lovely distraction, and then I fall asleep and have this dream.
I'm in a bar, right, this bar that looks a lot like a bar I love in NYC, and there's a highball glass in front of me. I take a sip and discover, to my extreme glee, that it is in fact a cucumber vodka tonic, made with this cucumber infused vodka that they make by hand at a bar in the town where I used to go to school. The bar I am in is not that bar (and look I recognize that this makes me sound like a hipster, okay, I get that, but OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU GUYS THAT CUCUMBER VODKA IS SO DELICIOUS I CANNOT EVEN), and this is how I realize I am dreaming.
Allow me to repeat: I realize I am dreaming.
Now, I feel I should mention at this point that this is not my first lucid dream ever. I have them a lot, although generally I don't do anything particularly awesome in them. (I didn't know I even could do awesome things in them until I saw the movie Waking Life, which, among other things, informed me that one of the ways to tell if you're having a lucid dream is if you flick a light switch and nothing happens. Trufax: morning after I saw that, I woke up, groggy and out of sorts, noticed that none of the lights in my apartment were working, and spent five minutes trying to make myself fly before it occurred to me that the power might be out. My life, not thrilling.) But so I'm excited, right, I drink all of my delicious vodka and my glass refills itself, I've called off work back IRL and as such have no alarm to dread, I can just go ahead and enjoy this.
And then JGL walks into the bar.
Now, please note: celebrity cameos in my dreams are generally just that--cameos. They kind of pop their heads in, fail entirely to speak to me, and pop back out again. And so I don't know why JGL decided to stick around, if it was just because I'd just watched the end of Brick or what, but it occurs to me, staring at him, sipping my fantastic fucking drink, that this is a pretty awesome situation.
I am having a lucid dream featuring Joseph Gordon Levitt. I mean, really, not even I could cock that up, right?
Oh, god, I always underestimate my own fail.
Dream!JGL: Hello!
Dream!Me: I feel obligated to inform you, for the sake of preventing awkwardness later, that you are Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Dream!JGL: Um. Yeah, I know.
Dream!Me: Well, just so long as we're clear on that.
Dream!JGL: Wait, that was your idea of preventing awkwardness?
Dream!Me: Oh, it could have been a lot worse, believe me.
Dream!JGL: You think so? Really?
Dream!Me: God, yeah. I could have mentioned about how I spend most of my free time writing gay fanfiction about you on the internet, for one thing.
Dream!JGL: ...Um. Do you spend most of your free time writing gay fanfiction about me on the internet?
Dream!Me: No? Just...just that character you played in Inception.
Dream!JGL: Oh my god, why would you tell me that?
Dream!Me: YOUR ASS HAS MYSTICAL POWERS, OKAY, I AM A LITTLE FLUSTERED HERE.
Dream!JGL: Okay, uh. Well, then. I'm just going to...go over here now.
Actual!Me: *wakes up horrified*
MY POINT BEING: CONGRATULATIONS, YOU GUYS, YOU OFFICIALLY KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS HIDEOUSLY AWKWARD WITH CELEBRITIES WITHOUT EVEN MEETING SAID CELEBRITIES, WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT.
I'm bopping around on it yesterday, because I'm looking for a link to...something. I don't even know what now, but as is The Way Of The Internet, yesterday I NEEDED IT AT ONCE OMFG, and his twitter was the place I recalled seeing it, right? So I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I find a tweet mentioning that Rian Johnson had been the director of Brick.
"Wait," I think, "wait, what?"
See, the thing is, Rian Johnson directed The Brothers Bloom, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. And not that JGL being in Brick wasn't a selling point in and of itself, but this new information pushed the film into OH MY GOD WHY HAVEN'T I SEEN THIS YET territory. I check, find it is available for streaming on Netflix, and I watch it.
Or, well, I watch most of it. Then I get tired and pass out, and I wake up this morning horrifyingly sick. I call an audible on my day, tell work I will not be coming in, watch the last half hour Brick because, you know, JGL, lovely distraction, and then I fall asleep and have this dream.
I'm in a bar, right, this bar that looks a lot like a bar I love in NYC, and there's a highball glass in front of me. I take a sip and discover, to my extreme glee, that it is in fact a cucumber vodka tonic, made with this cucumber infused vodka that they make by hand at a bar in the town where I used to go to school. The bar I am in is not that bar (and look I recognize that this makes me sound like a hipster, okay, I get that, but OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU GUYS THAT CUCUMBER VODKA IS SO DELICIOUS I CANNOT EVEN), and this is how I realize I am dreaming.
Allow me to repeat: I realize I am dreaming.
Now, I feel I should mention at this point that this is not my first lucid dream ever. I have them a lot, although generally I don't do anything particularly awesome in them. (I didn't know I even could do awesome things in them until I saw the movie Waking Life, which, among other things, informed me that one of the ways to tell if you're having a lucid dream is if you flick a light switch and nothing happens. Trufax: morning after I saw that, I woke up, groggy and out of sorts, noticed that none of the lights in my apartment were working, and spent five minutes trying to make myself fly before it occurred to me that the power might be out. My life, not thrilling.) But so I'm excited, right, I drink all of my delicious vodka and my glass refills itself, I've called off work back IRL and as such have no alarm to dread, I can just go ahead and enjoy this.
And then JGL walks into the bar.
Now, please note: celebrity cameos in my dreams are generally just that--cameos. They kind of pop their heads in, fail entirely to speak to me, and pop back out again. And so I don't know why JGL decided to stick around, if it was just because I'd just watched the end of Brick or what, but it occurs to me, staring at him, sipping my fantastic fucking drink, that this is a pretty awesome situation.
I am having a lucid dream featuring Joseph Gordon Levitt. I mean, really, not even I could cock that up, right?
Oh, god, I always underestimate my own fail.
Dream!JGL: Hello!
Dream!Me: I feel obligated to inform you, for the sake of preventing awkwardness later, that you are Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Dream!JGL: Um. Yeah, I know.
Dream!Me: Well, just so long as we're clear on that.
Dream!JGL: Wait, that was your idea of preventing awkwardness?
Dream!Me: Oh, it could have been a lot worse, believe me.
Dream!JGL: You think so? Really?
Dream!Me: God, yeah. I could have mentioned about how I spend most of my free time writing gay fanfiction about you on the internet, for one thing.
Dream!JGL: ...Um. Do you spend most of your free time writing gay fanfiction about me on the internet?
Dream!Me: No? Just...just that character you played in Inception.
Dream!JGL: Oh my god, why would you tell me that?
Dream!Me: YOUR ASS HAS MYSTICAL POWERS, OKAY, I AM A LITTLE FLUSTERED HERE.
Dream!JGL: Okay, uh. Well, then. I'm just going to...go over here now.
Actual!Me: *wakes up horrified*
MY POINT BEING: CONGRATULATIONS, YOU GUYS, YOU OFFICIALLY KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS HIDEOUSLY AWKWARD WITH CELEBRITIES WITHOUT EVEN MEETING SAID CELEBRITIES, WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT.