Islands and Movie

I had two, very long and very strange dreams last night. The first one began with me and some friends and family going on a tropical vacation. I was in this little self-paddled boat, like a canoe or something, making my way towards an island. All around me were dozens of other little boats, full of family, friends, and strangers. I think we might have been on a tour group, but each of us had our own boat. We landed on the little island, which couldn't have been bigger than a few thousand square feet. The island itself was made up of grass and palm trees with a few gazebos here and there. Along the shore were several wooden docks. We all explored the little island, looking about, but there really wasn't much to see. I was wondering why we were here at all when I noticed a dark vertical cloudy line near the horizon. It started growing larger and larger and that's when I realized it was a twister (or waterspout, since were in the middle of the ocean or something).

I started shouting, warning the people around me that it was coming. I looked around for some kind of authority figure, like a tour guide, but couldn't find anyone. So I just did what everyone else did: grab onto a palm tree for dear life. The waterspout passed over the island and there was a huge rush of wind. Yet I don't remember feeling any of the wind or any of the water. But I could definitely see the ferocity of the wind. There were things inside the twister, smaller trees, planks of wood, dirt and grass, all flying about. People around me were being lifted up off their feet as the twister got a hold of them, but no one was actually taken away as they anchored themselves to the palm trees. This coming and going of twisters and/or waterspouts actually happened a few more times. The area was infested with twisters and for some reason, the tour lead us here. Perhaps this was the attraction, trying to survive a twister on this little island.

However, this one time it was changed up. I spotted some dark line coming towards us, but it was small and coming from the sky. It struck the island and made a little boom, and that's when I realized a meteorite had fallen from the sky. It was small and round, about 30 inches in diameter, but the crater it made was smoking and there was a little bit of fire on the dirt and grass around the edges. People started gathering and then some people just started to jump and dance around it for some reason. I joined in, thinking that maybe the meteorite might give me special powers or something. I didn't have much time to contemplate this as another actual twister came around again. We grabbed hold of the palm trees again as the winds came and I looked off into one direction, seeing a lot of other little islands I hadn't noticed before. They were all roughly the same as the island we were on, some bigger, some smaller, all different shapes. The winds died down and I continued scanning the horizon, seeing larger and larger islands, some actually big enough for buildings to be built on them. And that's when I noticed this majestic sight, a gigantic island off in the distance, half-hidden in fog. The land was mountainous and completely green with vegetation. Structures and settlements were built right into the mountainside, but the thing that caught my eye was this gigantic structure that looked like the tower of a castle, painted in a royal-looking purple. The scenery looked like something out of a fantasy game. I had no idea how I missed such a large island when we looked around and somehow I knew the island city was named Gardenia. I wanted to ask why we didn't head over there instead of the stupid island we were on, but I woke up...
The second dream started in school, either high school or college, I'm not sure. But I did have a backpack on, so it was a school nonetheless. I made my way into an auditorium for some kind of convention. For some reason, my first impression was that it was for an adult convention, but this was at school. And at the doors was my cousin, showing people inside. She waved me on through and I entered a lobby. There were newspapers on the floor for reading before whatever was going to start started. To my left where double doors leading into a wide banquet room. There were dozens of small tables with people sitting at them, all facing the small stage by the back wall. I sat down at the first table I saw, closest to the double doors and furthest from the stage, because I saw some old high school friends there. We exchanged some greetings and then they went to reading the newspapers they got from the lobby. I took a section they had already read and noticed some weird ads before a teacher got up on the stage and got everyone's attention. I took out a pencil and notepad to take notes and realized this was a large film class because of the large projector screen behind the teacher. She started talking about a strange and rare film directed by some unknown person. Then she put a VHS into a machine that didn't look like a VHS tape player, but a movie was projected onto the giant screen behind her anyway.

For the life of me, I can't remember how the movie started, but I assure you that it was as strange and surreal as it could get. I got up and moved to the front row for a better view of the movie and sat down beside this parked car. Yes, a car that was parked inside a school auditorium like it was a drive-in movie theater. I sat on the floor next to the passenger-side door and noticed one of my college friends inside. I said "hi" and continued to focus on the movie. There was a man in an apron barbecuing in his backyard. I'm not sure he was actually cooking anything because a friend of his showed up with two cardboard take-out boxes of fast food hamburgers and fries. He tipped one down into the barbecue grill, setting the contents on fire before handing it off to his friend, who thought nothing was weird about that. I turned to my friend in the car and asked, "Did that guy just set a hamburger on fire and give it to his friend?" to which he replied with a laugh and a shrug. The scene changed in the movie, this time with a lot of little people running away from some kind of giant monster. It looked like a tyrannosaurus-rex, but fused with machine parts. I thought that I should actually take some notes on the notepad I took out when a girl in the movie said that the t-rex was a metaphor for gigantic details in a movie, whereas no one paid attention to all the little details, such as the people who were running. Then I noticed that the little people had been wearing strange costumes of all sorts, but didn't see that at all earlier. And that's when a phone call woke me up...