Sometimes I can look at my hands and just know that I’m dreaming without counting fingers or waiting for them to morph. It’s weird. I’m so mad though cos sooooo many RC’s failed in my dreams last night, it was retarded.
I had the same problem when I experienced my first DILD. I suddenly realized im dreaming and decided to make some celebrity appear in my dream. The first name that came into my mind was Brad Pitt, and I said to myself that when I go to another room, he will appear there. Suddenly there was just this weird looking man eating pasta, who paid no attention to me. 
Then Brad Pitt appeared, but he didn’t really look like himself. But I was happy to even get him to my dream. 
When I got my second DILD I tried to make my friend just to appear in front of me, but it didn’t happen. I think it just doesn’t sound logical and my mind didn’t believe that could happen, the “hey maybe he’s in that other room”-technique just seemed better (and more realistic).
I tried to find my DG last night by expecting him to be in my house and calling out for him, but couldn’t find him. To be honest it was kinda creepy looking in the kitchen, turning my back on it then expecting him to be there when I turned around. He wasn’t, of course, but it was a weird feeling to try to “generate” someone. Hehe.
To control your dream like that, you have to know, 100% that you can do it. You just have to think about it logicaly; a dream is created by your mind, and nothing else, therefore you can and will be able to control them all the time, everytime. If you find something you can’t quite do in a dream, just think about that, take control and force the dream to do what you want, it works for me everytime.
WEll, now I know that my idea wasn’t all that far-fetched, if someone experienced confirms it. I have had only one lucid dream in my life, and it was last weekend. I stumbled upon this compltely on accident and now I am obsessed. While in this dream I had a similiar idea to your magic wand thing to make a magic button. It was just an idea. It didn’t work to well, beacuse I was skeptical inside of my dream. Making the button itself, sadly, was the most spectacular feat I sould manage, for as soon as I finally started to have the slightest idea of what I was doing, i woke up soon afterwards. I tried to make a fruit tree, but it didn’t work.
I don’t have much experience, but I have an idea. I think what’s stopping you is the logical bit of your brain. How logical is it Rick Gomez could be found in real life, hanging around in a warehouse? Perhaps you could side step this problem by approaching it as if it were real life. Where would you expect to find Rick Gomez in real life? Posh hotel maybe? Do you know where he is working at the moment? If for example you knew that he’s working on a film set in Hollywood, you could try flying to Hollywood in your dream, and then even the logical part of your brain would expect him to be there. I think you would stand a much better chance that way.
As for people looking slightly different, ask yourself right now if you can actually picture the exact details of a particular persons face; the exact angle of the nose, the exact distance between their eyes, the exact shape of their hairline, the exact position of a dimple etc. and then maybe look at a photo to see how far off you were. I’m willing to bet that you were no way near accurate, and thats because we don’t process much of this information as important enough to remember. If you want to see people look exactly as they are in reality, I think you’d probably have to revise every detail of their face, and from different angles, else all you’ll see is the recognisable bits that you do know, with everything between filled in by your imagination. In the same way, I know what my favourite guitar looks like very well, but if I were to draw a picture of it from memory it would’nt be quite right; I could’nt think where all the screws on the scratch plate are, and although I could accurately draw seperate parts of it, I could’t draw them in correct proportions to other parts.
I had this problem in my Lucid Dream the other day, so i looked around and came across a thing called Passive Control.
Instead of trying to convince yourself that you can definately go through the wall tell your self some kinda of mini story to make what you want to happen more
believeable. I thought it sounded like great idea.
Such as a random example to go through walls :
the walls are just a holographic projection
they’re actually made of jelly
Possibities are endless 