Do Pop Culture Junkies Dream of Random Celebs? (This One Does!)

Hello, fellow music lovers! It’s been a while!

Film Review: 1998’s Velvet Goldmine

I’ve had a few false starts by way of new articles here.

But this was one idea that genuinely inspired me:

Recently, on the “Fireflies” post over on the ‘Gum, I went on a slight tangent that involved my history of dreaming about celebrities in random contexts.

A couple of you (shout-out to Dutch and Pauly!) suggested I ought to write an original article to delve more into it. That actually ended up getting the ball rolling—a welcome change, as I’ve been struggling with writer’s block for at least a couple months now.

I dug into my old diaries to figure out how long I’ve been experiencing dreams of this nature.

And, as it turns out… not very long.

All my digging yielded was that I apparently dreamed about my high school crush quite often and wrote about him just as much (ugh, boring!). I know I had a couple of Harry Potter-related dreams in which I imagined the characters looking like the actors, but I feel like that doesn’t count. That feels like its own separate category.

I’ve been fascinated by all things pop culture for as long as I can remember.

But my celebrity gossip vice really intensified when I was nine years old and read an issue of Star magazine at my grandma’s house.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what was on the front cover, but it probably had something to do with the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman divorce because I remember being VERY emotionally invested with it.

Ever since then, I’ve often grappled with the reasons why I keep coming back to reading about celebrities. I think it’s because they’re responsible for much of the entertainment we consume, and that ignites a certain inherent curiosity about them and their world.

Maybe it does also come from a somewhat voyeuristic place, being on the outside looking in on their bubble and all of the ridiculous things that go on within it. While I’m more interested in future film projects or interviews with my favorites these days, I will admit I’ll still indulge in the gossip.

Because I like to be in the know about these sorts of topics, that obsession (for lack of a better term) has naturally started bleeding into my dreams.

As is often the case with others, I’m sure, most of my dreams will fade as soon as I wake up. Other times, I might get the general gist of what went on in them, but the exact details escape me. However, the ones that have stayed with me longest have strong visuals lingering in my mind. It also helps to be creative and have a very healthy imagination!

So, while I don’t have as many vivid, intriguing celebrity dreams as I thought I did, I still have enough to talk about in an unranked, numbered list:

1. The time I was watching Oppenheimer and seeing in-character Cillian Murphy shove a guy’s face into a pie:  

This was the bizarre dream I mentioned having in the “Fireflies” rteview, so this one is still pretty fresh in my mind!

Of course, I’m looking forward to the Oppenheimer biopic later this summer, and I’m happy to see that he’s going to be in a starring vehicle of this caliber. I just finished the biography in preparation–I gotta say, it will likely go down as one of my favorite non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Highly recommend.

Anyway, I sometimes have dreams like this, where I don’t know what’s going to be in a given piece of media, but my mind will wildly speculate over the plot.

In the past, that’s often been video games. The real finished product will often be a disappointment compared to what I’ve come up with while asleep.

Sometimes, but more rarely: it’s movies. I can’t quite explain this one. But it is hilarious.

In this scenario, I’m in the theater watching my mind’s skewed version of Oppenheimer on the big screen. There’s a “scene” in the Los Alamos lab in which Oppenheimer (played by Murphy) and a colleague shove another guy’s face into a coconut cream pie that they just set in front of him.

Obviously, this will not be a scene in the actual movie, but it would be crazy if it was. I think I’ll probably be too busy comparing it to the woefully underseen WGN show Manhattan (RIP) and saying that the show did it better. It’s just this feeling I’ve got.

2. The time I went on a date with Bill Hader:

I think I was slightly too young to appreciate it at the time, but considering all the distinct eras of SNL, I’d say the Samberg/Hader/Wiig/Sudeikis era is one of my favorites.

The humor was often zany, and all of these players just went for it every time. Not every joke or sketch landed, but that was OK, the commitment was always there. Bill Hader was my favorite out of all of them, partially because watching him break was always fun, partially because of the array of impressions he had at his disposal.

I thought he was easily the most naturally talented of this era, and I’ve been stoked to see that his career post-SNL has really taken off. And yes, he’s another celeb crush (you might be sensing a pattern…)

I had this dream a few months ago, and there wasn’t a ton of details in it, more of a brief snippet. But a memorable one. In this one, I’m at my current age with 2005 Bill Hader when he had the floppy hairstyle that I swear so many men and boys had back then. You know the one, where it’s an overall shaggy cut with bangs draped over one eye.

3. The time Pedro Pascal gave me bad financial advice (with bonus Jon Favreau!):

Pedro Pascal has become quite the household name this year.

The Mandolorian was getting him to that point. But this year’s The Last of Us truly cemented his status. And I found his SNL episode to be the most enjoyable one I’ve seen in years. Through the power of pop culture osmosis, I’d first heard of him when he played Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones due to the gruesome death his character experienced (don’t think I need to give any of you the details, most of you might already be aware).

I later saw a clip of the GoT panel at Comic Con the following year, and I found him rather charming there. In general, he seems like a gem of a human being in interviews, which have been a decent source of entertainment for me these past few months.

But: could he give me thoughtful banking advice? Or was it going to be as chaotic as his Starbucks order that went viral?

In the dream scenario, I’m FaceTiming him from an unknown location, though I see that he’s in his trailer. Jon Favreau is sitting just behind him for some reason (probably because I’d watched their LAD Bible Snack Wars interview a few nights before).

He’s telling me I should withdraw $10,000 from my savings account every year for ten years and go crazy with some of it.

I tell him:

“That’s easy for you to say, you have Disney money!”

Pascal shrugs, while Favreau is nodding even more enthusiastically.

Then, I say:

“I’m going to be overdrawing on my account, I’m going to be broke!”

I think he says something to the effect that I won’t go broke, and if anything, I’ll end up making more money than I had to begin with. I angrily cut off the FaceTime call, and the dream ends.

I doubt I’ll meet any of these people. But if I somehow ever met him, I’d like to find a way to organically tell him about the dream where he tried to bankrupt me. Maybe that would be too weird a subject to broach, but it’s just that random and funny that I should have a dream that’s both nonsensical and mundane at the same time.

4. The time I went to summer camp:

There is one dream I didn’t have that I’m almost envious of.

I have a friend who once had a dream that various rock musicians were waging a war of biblical proportions. Literally! His favorite guitarist at the time was supposed to be a stand-in for Jesus, and some vocalist (don’t recall who) was supposed to be the devil. It’s been years, but I remember almost being doubled over laughing when he shared all these vivid, ridiculous details.

However, while I’ve never had this kind of symbolic dream, I had one in high school that had similar levels of weirdness. I have never gone to summer camp in my life.

Summer school – where it was a program with fun educational activities and not a punishment – I had attended when I was younger. But, I never went through the experience – and for some, a rite of passage – of being shipped off to a camp in the woods for a month.

Instead, my brain took me there one night and decided to add celebrity counselors too… because of course it did!

In the dream, I see that it’s not the typical layout of cabins, but more expensive, with an all-purpose building and paved pathways. After all, there wouldn’t be celebrities involved unless there was a steep price tag. There are still the usual camp activities like kayaking, with a certain celebrity heading up the proceedings. It’s one I find much more odious these days but was quite enamored with when I was a teen.

He is a lousy counselor here anyway. The kayak we kids are in springs a leak, and what does our fearless leader do? He jumps in the lake and swims away from us! He doesn’t try calling for help or anything. We basically have to find our way out ourselves. In retrospect, it could have been my psyche making a commentary on his true personality. Maybe I should have listened to it… I could have saved some money not watching a terrible 2012 vampire movie in the theater.

There’s another celeb counselor I encounter who’s much cooler:

What’s funny is that, apparently, she was just in that Netflix basketball movie with Adam Sandler, Hustle, from last year! But, before you get too excited about me being prophetic, I think basketball plays a role in a movie I haven’t seen but know she’s in, Just Wright. It would have already been released on DVD by the time I had this dream, so that dim awareness probably factored in. Still, if she’s anything less than a kind person in real life as she was in my dream, I’d be truly disappointed!

There might have been other celebrity camp counselors in this dream, but those were the two that definitely stood out the most.

5. The time I had a Before Sunrise experience in John Lennon’s childhood home:

I’m going to be a bit more on the selfish side with this one. This is yet another dream I had a few months ago but one that left a powerful impression on me.

I might be erring on the side of superstitious as well.

Because who knows? I might end up enjoying an experience like this one in my real life some day. It could happen. Doesn’t mean it will, but hey, maybe the door’s open! I hesitated even sharing this one, but I couldn’t think of any other celebrity-adjacent dreams I’ve had that have lingered in my mind. I will say it’s by far one of the most visceral dreams I’ve ever had.

This one stemmed from my love of the Get Back documentary that I finally got to watch this past December because my local library had acquired DVD copies.

I found it fascinatingly hypnotic. I remember having lunch with a friend, getting some Christmas shopping done, then immediately resuming my watch when I got home. I don’t know how Peter Jackson did it, but he and his team edited the footage together in such a way that I was never bored.

Yes, there’s that moment when George felt artistically alienated and quit the band, but that is a footnote in everything else that goes on. Get Back now has probably gone on to be one of my favorite music documentaries of all time, I loved it that much.

Naturally, this bled into a dream I had around three weeks later. I see this relatively small, cozy white house from its exterior with a green lawn.

I’m not sure whose, but I somehow narrow it down between Paul and John (because I remember reading somewhere they’d torn down either George’s or Ringo’s, it might have been the latter, so that would have ruled them out).

Accurate to how I’d probably act in real life in a situation like this, I’m too shy to do anything and back out as quickly as I’d come in. I look around the downstairs part, the living room, dining room, etc. before making my way back upstairs again. I literally bump into the guy, we laugh it off, and then we proceed to get to know each other as we wander the house together.

Somehow, we’re the only two people at this obvious tourist attraction for music nerds. I have no idea why, it just pans out that way!

The rest of the dream, where I’m going to be more withholding, is essentially me having this Before Sunrise experience in which I’m having a deep conversation with a cute British guy. He might be an actor I’ve seen in a few things, but I didn’t know then…

…and still don’t have a clue now. I don’t do a great job recognizing him in the dream either, he feels completely unfamiliar to me.

I later looked up John Lennon’s childhood home to see what it looks like.

And that’s all of the celebrity dreams that I can remember.

Some fairly odd ones in that set, but I gotta love my brain for coming up with some rather imaginative storylines. That’s not even counting the blips where I’ve thought I’ve “met” other actors/musicians but couldn’t get enough of a read on who they were supposed to be.

I vaguely remember the outline of one where we’re apparently chatting in a desert. Yeah, no idea. I think I might have had already seen Dune Part 1 at that point—either that or I was getting hyped for it.

As for real-life celebrity encounters?

I have never come across any myself.

I do know someone who met Sean Astin at a con panel once, and I was happy that. They had a photo to share on social media.

From how this friend told it in their post, he was a very lovely person to meet. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

I might not have been in either of those cities the day he was there, but I can’t help but be tickled that Will Ferrell was 30-40 minutes away from my town at one time.

Even funnier, Henry Winkler was at a speaking engagement at a city even further away but still in the region just a few days later. Great things were said about both men, by the way.

So, have you had any zany dreams about celebrities, TNOCS? Or perhaps any memorable celebrity encounters?

Heck, you’re more than welcome to share any stories about an autograph you might have gotten.

Feel free to comment below! And thank you for reading.

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