Dear Winona,

Probably most fan-mail you get reads something like "you are the beautiful snow goddess of my heart" and "your eyes are like a doe's in which I found myself drowning in infatuation" or some other form of bad, fucked-up maudlin poetry nobody but the guy who wrote it would ever want to read over again!

That's pretty strange, you know. Fans sending you letters dripping with Hall-Mark-card sappiness when you've never met these sad bastards in your entire life! What are you supposed to say after some love-sick fan spills his soul on a shredded piece of notebook paper, barely-legible and stained with tear drops & creased, obsessive care?

What usually happens (-- this is only conjecture; I've never shot over a letter before) is that your bleached-blond, chain-smoking, world-weary assistant stubs out a cigarette in a stale puddle of beer, focuses her iguana-like eyes in the middle-distance, and sends them a mass-produced photo and generic letter that reads:

Thank you for taking interest in Winona Ryder.

Here's your "autographed" picture.

Now FUCK OFF! Only 1 photo per household!

Hey, I might be a demented loser by actually sending you something, but at least I'm not incapacitated while thinking of you & the better place you represent above this hellhole of modern life.

Well, here's my sap:

"It was within the first 10 minutes of Alien 4 when I, with the rest of my family whom are also fans of the franchise, realized that this piece of shit was by far the worst of them. An abomination of money-grubbing excess that defiled the fictional universe that we knew and adored on home video for years. It was then that the ship of motley space-rats came docking at the space station and I saw. . . . . I saw. . . . . I saw you.

For the rest of the film I was thinking "won't these other actors and creatures move out of view or just fucking DIE so I can see more of HER?". You were the only saving grace to a movie that should have been consigned to the film can and never unleashed on the gullible public. . . . an atrocity for studio executives to pace around over and lock themselves in a room with a loaded pistol.

I knew that I'd seen you somewhere before so I queried your name on the "Internet Movie Database" (imdb.com) and realized with a start that you were "spook-girl" from Beetlejuice, a sweet highlight from my youth. I think those are the only two films of yours I had actually watched. What "sophistication" on my part, because "Little Women", "The Age of Innocence" and "How to Make an American Quilt" flew over my fucking head.

HOWEVER, while watching your scenes in the movies I DID SEE, it kind of reminded me of "The Mask" where Jim Carey betrays his feelings to the world by pounding his fists on the table, whistling with both index fingers in his mouth, cartoonishly rolling his tongue over the floor like a faulty tape measurer, and other shenanigans that only $30 million of computer animation could buy."

That was my sap! Which brings me to the meat of my letter:

Soooooo. . . . if perchance your current Hollywood suitor (-- i.e. that cocksucker Matt Damon) doesn't work out and you happened to find yourself in St. Louis, I wouldn't mind taking you out for a stroll in our Botanical Gardens, one of the largest outdoor "one-of-those" in the country with more exotic trees and flowers than recovering dope fiends and/or hopeful scriptwriters in Hollywood.

To abet you in your decision-making process (-- just in case), here's a little "case for/case against" for dropping everything & dating me, an 18 year-old who still lives with his parents.

-----------------------------------------

PRO

-- Am 18; if we get married and those life expectancy tables have any accuracy, we'll croak at around the same time

CON

-- Am 18

-----------------------------------------

PRO

-- Am an outsider to Tinsil Town and the usual barrage of full-of-themselves millionaire actors (grrrrrrr)

CON

-- Am an outsider to Tinsel town and am not a millionaire

-----------------------------------------

PRO

-- I still live with my parents; you can have a place to stay

CON

-- Still live with my parents

-----------------------------------------

I know you'll carefully and impartially weigh the facts and make the sensible choice and only the sensible choice.

So in conclusion,
"See ya soon!"

Michael Adams

(To Her Assistant-- Thanks for not pitching this in the garbage!)

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"Oh yeah, I'm still 'holding out'. Just waiting for that limousine to come rolling up in some midnight thunderstorm to whisk me away. It's like that Bruce Springsteen song-- 'The door is open, but the ride ain't free'"

"Michael, if a limousine came in a midnight thunderstorm it would be to splash you with water on the side of the curb while you were walking Buckley"

(Much snickering, cut to shot of my dog Buckley capering around in the backyard)

"Yeah, you're probably right. One time when Dad was a teenager he almost got flattened by Chuck Berry's limousine. The guy honked at him, and Dad lumbered out of the way in a hurry. And that was his brush with fame. Almost turned into 'juice' by Chuck Berry. I'm sure he could make a token appearance on VH1's 'Behind the Music'".

(I say "Behind the Music" like one of those cheap announcers on "Fox" who want to connote fame & Hollywood glamour from "the bottom up", like it's "real" and "belongs to the people" with a slick "everyman" Californian voice that's too smarmy to be believed)

"Whoa, wait. . . . . check this out!"

(Then, in the same voice: I go into my little skit: "The Archies": Behind the Music)

"Formed together as a video-only band on the mid '60s cartoon series, they became a touring monster around the world-- infamous for satanic imagery, drinking blood from skulls, throwing raw meat on the audience, and tying their ex-principal Mr. Weatherbee to the torture rack on stage. It was wild, man!"

"Then came the clash of egos! And drugs! Reggie could be a real prick, and left in a huff. Jughead flipped his crown on LSD and now thinks he's a hamburger-- he's locked up in restraints because he tried to eat himself! Betty and Veronica got addicted to Oxycontin and shoplifted, going to prison where they ran into Winona Ryder. Well, they turned her out. . . . . and turned her into a law-abiding grandmother. Archie drove his red sports-car into his mansion's pool. And then the dog, the band's mascot, mainlined on heroin and was found floating face-down in the pool on the same night!"

"Well, they had debts to pay off and got back together for ONE FINAL TOUR. And that's all there is to tell, dude!!"

(We're laughing at this throughout, and I'm struggling to complete the skit without completely losing my composure)

"God. I used to read those Archie n' Jughead digests for hours and hours when I should have been playing outside on the grass, getting some sun. It's like when we'd sit there early in the morning reading those Archie's covered with blankets like cavemen and eating toast drenched with butter and drinking sugar-free hot chocolate with those hardened little marshmallows. I'm really surprised that neither one of us has cancer!"

"Hey, those were 'the glory days'! And it's like, you were always 'the thin one'!"

"Well, there were a couple of years when I got so pompous with the Greco-Roman "greats", owning eight different translations of 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey', and actually owning the complete Edward Gibbon 6-volume set: 'The Decline & Fall of The Roman Empire', that I began to look like a round little sausage rolled in flour, my health was so poor. I used to think that 'the mind' was everything, like we're mostly brains attached to insignificant bodies and that I.Q. was everything. I got so 'stuck up', trying to buy every last hard-back edition of "the classics" that I'd never read, but pretending I would so I could feel so much more superior to everyone else because I was an indoor 'porker'. Everyone is subject to falling to that. It's like when I made that button back in the 4th grade that said: "Jesse Adams: Super-Genius" but spelled 'genius' wrong! The universe does not correct its higher-order creatures except by flashes of "truth", which comes in blows when you find out how critically mistaken you are"

"It's like 'Nature always keeps her books'. It's like the Iraq war, and how all those neo-conservatives were figuring that the Iraqis were going to 'greet us as liberators' and throw flowers. How wrong they were, man. Do you think Donald Rumsfeld will ever admit he made a mistake"

"Those guys will never apologize, they're that deep into it. Where there's always 'wiggle room', 'an escape hatch', most people will dodge and hold onto their erroneous convictions for another day. That's just as true for the liberals as it is for the conservatives. The neo-cons will always say that it was outside al-Queda fighters who despoiled their vision for everything, when in this case reality has a liberal bias"

"God. Back in high school I was like 'Donald Rumsfeld on speed'. I was a conservative psychopath. It was just to make up for sexual frustration, that I was a hard-core blowhard he didn't seem to have any luck with the ladies"

(We both laugh knowingly, at this state of overdrive sociopathy that makes up for some other rather glaring deficits)

"All those guys who are that hardcore have major holes in their lives. It just comes with the territory"

"It's like when I was up at the Washington D.C. high school trip and got into that quarrel with the libertarian chaperone about the benefits of putting all those convicted of three marijuana offenses to death. I got my hard-core ass trashed by this guy! It's like, 'if conservatives believe in the free market and democracy, then isn't the free market the truest expression of democracy?'"

"Shhhhhhhhh!", Jesse holding up a finger to his lips

(-- We snicker at this knowingly)

Cut to shot of cartoon illustration of campy 1950's man smoking pot

(-- We laugh)

Cut to shot of Ronald Reagan turning around and looking appalled

(-- We burst forth with explosive laughter)

"What's so funny is that pot is illegal, when you can simply huff paint. Especially the gold kind. Uncle Jim was telling me that there are these guys pulled over for weaving their cars around the road, and the cop looks at them and they got a gold rim around their faces!"

Cut to shot of this depraved scene along some rural back-road

"No, nothing's wrong, officer. Nothing's wrong. I haven't been drinkin'"

"Yeah, and it eats your brain tissue about five times as fast. Good ol' Missouri!"

"I heard it was the dog-fighting capital of America, the good ol' Ku Klux Klan rarin' up those pitbulls"

"Oy"

"But seriously, all those neo-cons were either skinny little twerps or wheezing fat guys into (-- speaking in dramatic, icy Russian voice of mock greatness) 'EXTREME POWER'. It all probably comes down to the fact that they couldn't get laid in college! And it's real funny, in the end these gray, unhappy men are not running around with Playboy bunnies, but these ugly shrews. Like Paul Wolfowitz and that Middle Eastern woman from 'The World Bank'. What a bitch!"

"Well, it's really funny how George W. Bush, the coke-snorting frat-boy, would end up married to a conservative librarian. None of those guys are going out with Penthouse Centerfolds. They'd probably be a whole less lot crazy if they were. . . . ."

"Remember William Bennent? The drug czar under the first George Bush administration?"

Cut to shot of William Bennent, a scowling ultra-conservative

"You look at him, and he looks like a solid, formidable guy but actually he talks in a high, squeaky voice. I think deep within his white, uptight race-conscious it comes down to the fact that he can't sing like the black man, dance like the black man, groove like the black man, FUCK like the black man, ect. I heard that he once went out with a blind date with Janis Joplin before she got famous and was so freaked-out that he became an ultra-conservative overnight!"

(-- Jesse speaks in deep, porky voice evocative of the grid-iron)

"Well, what he needs to do is 'GO OUT FOR FOOTBALL' under COACH LARRY FROST. If the team does well that season, the coach will come back with a pick-up truck full of beer and a prostitute. 'Don't be greedy, boys! You have to share! But this one in the front seat is for me!'"

(We're laughing hard at this!)

"Yeah, but William Bennent would decry 'the immorality of it'. Coach Larry Frost would peer over his shoulder, eyes widened, and ask, "ARE YOU GAY?!"

Cut to shot of William Bennett again

(We're laughing harder at this!!)

"It's probably a good thing that we have guys like Coach Frost around the high schools. They hand down the manly folkways of things, keeping matters from getting too abstract. I used to think that the mind was everything, but the mind and body is connected. It takes the mind to operate the body and a healthy body to produce a healthy mind. You talk about a brilliant basketball move, and deep down I really believe that because it takes a special talent to move that ball. Whereas, before, I would have dismissed it all"

"Yeah, Jesse. . . . . if we smarter people don't watch it, we're going to end up looking like the Talosians on 'Star Trek'"

Cut to shot of Talosians-- a geeky, brainiac race that is built really puny, like a bunch of aged grandmothers

"They got so weak, they couldn't even maintain their own civilization and had to enslave the crew of the Enterprise!"

(I pause for a second, and sip from a diet cola)

"Remember when we went to that 'Paramount Super-Store' in Chicago where they had that miniature 'Star Trek museum? That's like, practically the only reason you wanted to go to Chicago and all it was, basically, was one big store with a few cheap 'tourist trap' exhibits. Boy, were you upset! What was the deal?"

"I think for all those years I had put up with so much repulsive bullshit. All the geeks, all the conventions, all those booths where you had the vendors selling their crap like pie-faced medieval usurers. The whole franchise gave me the impression that the whole thing was about something more, and that I would find it just over "the next hill". That was about the last hill I was willing to cross, and there was this giant store that might as well had "SUCKER!" embossed over it with gold"

"It was like the time me and Mom went to Egypt and saw the pyramids. I kept waiting for a great revelation, for a confirmation of all my pompous scholarly bullshit, but saw just a big pile of stones. Now, it was incredible that someone built that pile of stones, but it kind of had the effect of the screen door over at "The Elvis Is Alive" Museum knocking in the desolate wind"

Cut to shot of "Elvis is Alive" museum

"So when you got back you decided to be a sausage rolled in flour any more"

"Well, basically when I got back from 'Missouri Scholar's Academy on the Columbia University campus. We got an opportunity to see what it was that scholars did. What I saw was a bunch of pasty, unattractive people coughing over a pile of moldy old books. You ever hear of that respertory illness, 'scholar's lung'? Well, that's where it comes from. . . . . when you inhale a bunch of mold from old books. It cripples you up permanently, all "for the sake of knowledge" that nobody cares about. I mean, it's interesting-- but doesn't seem very constructive for the most part"

"Hey, do you think that Axl Rose has that problem?"

Cut to shot of Axl Rose, with a whinnying sound that suggests puniness and effiminancy and "flying off the cuff"

Cut to shot of us still playing "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game" and getting our asses roundly stomped in the final level, "The Technodrome"

"God, I used to have my total Axl Rose personality. If everything wasn't perfect. I'd think that I was being persecuted. Because I was the strange, odd/off/out-kid out in high school, people started calling me "The Unabomber" and screaming it from passing cars. You remember that time I got panicked, and came through the door when you all were watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"?

Flashback

"They're after me!", I huff with paranoia, looking around with wild eyes, sitting down to watch the movie which is already in progress. Nice lightsome fun, or so it seems. . . . .

A Ninja turtle is cornered on the roof and is getting the shit knocked out of him.

"Where's Raphael?", the Turtles ask in the apartment below, oblivious.

"Oh, he's probably just blowing off steam!"

Quick shot of Raphael getting pummeled.

"Oh, it's no big deal-- he'll be back. . . . ."

The bad human ninjas pick up an unconscious Raphael and throw him right through the plate-glass ceiling with a resounding crash. And then with a holler they kick down the door and stand there with their weapons drawn

Throughout all of this, the camera cuts to me looking extremely uncomfortable, trying not to laugh, then we're all laughing as the absurdity is heaped on. God above comes up with comedic, grotesque moments for "his children"

"Michael, that was a moment of sheer cosmic absurdity. Maybe right there you learned not to take things so seriously. It can only pull you down in the end"

"Yeah, like Cameron in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off" when he sent the car flying out of the garage"

Cut to shot of Cameron leaning on the car and going "I gotta take a stand!", then of the car flying through the glass and out of the garage into the gulch in a perfect parabola. The camera peeks over the ledge and shows a crushed and smoking sports car

"Well, in closing we've certainly had the exposure no one else had. It's like normal people stand in a single floodlight and cast a shadow, while we stand in a bunch of floodlights and cast about twenty shadows"

"That's an odd way to put it, but we were fortunate enough to come from the crossroads of the country at an in-between time, kind of an in-between time and an in-between place. Dad came from small-town working-class Missouri and was raised a Lutheran, and Mom came from the East Coast in an upper middle-class Jewish home. We're kind of the cross-pollination of all of that"

"Touchè!"

"Party on, Wayne!"

"And party on, Garth!"

Close with party theme from "Wayne's World"

The End