Galaxy Michael
An Original Screenplay in my Own Words
(Because real ones are hard to read!)

 

"How incongruous, how insane, yet it all fits together!"

*******************

Note:
(The dialogue can be loosened up through "on-location" improvisation)

Overture from "Man of La Mancha" plays, the theme from the Don Quixote musical, brassy gallivanting showtune from the mid 1960's-- suggests heroic, absurdist, misguided idealism

(Sound of prison doors opening and closing)

Opening shot of myself sitting at a table in handcuffs. Sheriff's hat, flannel shirt, and black "Free Winona" t-shirt. Chewing toothpick, mean and ornery. Then I say, in a slow, carefree Southern voice:

"My name is Michael 'Lawless' Adams"

(Spits out toothpick, leans forward on elbows)

"And I'm in here because I'm a fan of Ms. Winona Ryder"

Cut to shots of paparazzi photos with rushing sound. Final one shatters into pieces of broken glass and falls down off screen.

"I was always a 'bad boy', wanted what I wanted-- did as I pleased".

Cut to shot of frozy younger me, all of ten years old, playing an ancient Atari in my Dad's cluttered apartment of bargain-basement derangement. Underheader reads: "Dad's apartment-- 1991". Screenshot of "Chopper Command", the wide expanse of orange as chopper blasts away with slow, methodical shots. Wearing striped early '80s shirts with white arching collars. My younger, thinner brother whines that "it's my turn". I punch him in the gut with "older brother" brutality. Brother yelps.

Back to the jailhouse

"I was a terror around women"

Cut to shot of younger self lumbering up apartment steps and Ashley, the cute little blond urchin, greeting me on the landing. "Hi Michael" she says with perkiness. I scrunch up in bashfulness and mutter out a shy "hello".

Back to the jailhouse

"My momma didn't love me"

Cut to shot of Christmas morning at my upper middle class mother's house, decorations hanging on the plants, and my pile of loot on the fancy glass table. My mom expectantly asks what I got her in bouyant, enthusiastic tones, and I give her a pencil and snicker.

Back to the jailhouse

"I was a deprived child"

Cut to shot of fat younger self eating a tiny little ice cream cone greedily

Back to the jailhouse. My head is cocked, and I'm half-smiling

"That-- MATCHLESS childhood would give me the indomitable will to chase after what I wanted in life. You can just call me-- the Don Quixote of the 21st century"

Shot of myself in my home office of insane collage. (Pictures are hung up everywhere). I turn around and smirk.

"I always got my idea of how life should be from the movies"

Cut to shot of scene from "Beetlejuice" when the ghost's head is spinning round and round and round is manic, madcap glee. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are reacting in shock and/or horror

"It always seemed more fulfilling than life itself, you see".

Cut to shot of tired drudges pushing shopping carts through Kmart

"Folks never seemed to notice or care about my alternative point of view"

Cut to shot of taking grotesque heavy metal "Kiss" mask off the rack, and slipping it over the head of a benign pumpkin scarecrow above a pile of on-sale blue-jeans. Younger brother and I stand back and snicker, eyes bulged our heads. Tired drudges of shoppers push carts pass now-grotesque scarecrow as sweetsy Muzak plays.

"I was always on my own planet"

Cut to grainy satellite shots of rings of Saturn, with clicking sound

Cut to shot of me walking down insane asylum corridor in strait-jacket, legs shackled together

"And my peers didn't know what to make of me"

Cut to shot of howler monkeys making hellacious racket, swatting

"Well, for the record no one knew what to make of Winona either"

Cut to shot of scene from Beetlejuice when she says, "I myself am strange and unusual"

Cut back to shot of howler monkeys going apeshit.

"It seemed like a match made in heaven. . . . . ."

Cut to shot of question mark with a little dinging sound.

Music comes on "Themes from T.V. Dinners"-- happy 1950's motivation music

Shot of me down at right-wing paramilitary training camp, blowing away pumpkins with taped-on faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton on them. Charging at a dummy with a bayonet. Running around with a Ted Nugent camaulfage hat. Blowing up abandoned cars in the woods with taped explosives.

Shot of Winona Ryder from Reality Bites turning her head away in disgust. That is, at the overlay of the sound of gunfire.

"But then again, maybe it was just that red state/blue state divide".

Cut to shot of gray day, view of Arch over the river. My Dad, younger brother, and I are on a Mississippi river boat days before Christmas, here to see Santa Claus as kids. Into a large, rectangular room, cotton snow on the floor, empty presents wrapped up in garish decoration. Santa sitting in chair, red-faced and cheery. On closer inspection, Santa is drunk.

Cut to shot of the wrestler, "The Ultimate Warrior" bellowing in his Wrestlemania VI speech in which he vows to take down Hulk Hogan.

(Song comes on in background: "I Drink Alone" by George Thorogood & the Destroyers"-- a mean blusey drinkin' song)

Shot of me mounting one leg up on slaughtered buffalo carcass, AK-47 rifle slung across my neck like an axe handle.

"Yup, vast cultural differences existed. . . . ."

(Sound of buzzing flies)

"Maybe it was that hippie-dippie family of hers. Them thar countercultural-intellectual types"

I hock and spit

"The only culture I ever knew grew on moldy bread at the day-old bread store"

Cut to shot of lone little building, the day-old bread store.

Shot of me gathering up spilling armfulls of Twinkies and snack-cakes, paying for them, and walking out the door. Sitting on the curb, I then proceed to rip into a large pound cake.

"Intellectual?"

(This, through bites of pound cake)

"My I.Q. ain't above room temperature, take your pick of Farenheight or Celsius. On a hot day IN HELL, that is"

Cut to shot of me sitting down in pscyhitrist's office, trying to solve a puzzle on the table, head in hands

(Narration in a real ornery voice)

"I hate I.Q. tests. . . . . ."

(I flip over the puzzle in a rage, sending the pieces flying)

"They insult my intelligence"

Cut to shot of James Hetfield of Metallica in live concert video shouting into the microphone, exhorting the crowd to repeat his words: "SHIT!" "FUCK!" "CUNT!" "FAG!" "SLUT!" "YOUR MOMMA!".

Cut to shot of me outside of Arena liquor with 32 ounce can of Miller high-life, pop can and drink it with deep guzzling draughts, partially crush can in hands and grin

"It's cool being a low-life! In and out of trouble since I was ten years old. . . . ."

(Cut to shot of fussy old grandma warning we kids playing outside the apartment complex that if we kick a ball and break one of her windows that she will call the police. We kids are kicking a basketball around on the terrace, drop kick basketball so it shatters her first-story window. Blinds roll up with a ferocious slapping sound. We kids run for cover, running up the back exit. I panic, and hide under some sleeping bags in my room, and in a blubbering voice ask that my younger brother bring me some fruit drinks)

"I was a menace. . . . ."

Cut to shot of younger self in convenience store, and candy bin that reads "2 for 10¢". Shows myself reaching for three pieces, old codger reaches down and grabs my wrist. "Well, well. . . . . . look what we got here. . . .  . heh, heh, heh". And myself turning red on my self-conscious heel and leaving as fast as I can.

"Never cared much for school"

Cut to shot of mother smiling over my 4th grade report card, Close up of teacher's comments says "Michael is very attentive and studious"

"All I wanted to do was read Mad Magazine and watch movies"

Cut to shot of Beetlegeuse from first movie using stick to lift up Geena Davis' dress and marvel with a low-down whistling sound

Cut to shot of Ashley and I sitting on the apartment stoop, eating ice cream out of cheap white paper. Clanging of ice cream truck in distance, prerecorded "Pop Goes the Weasel" music. I look at her furtively from time to time.

"And I was a mass of contradictions. . . . . . never really sure of where I fit in"

Cut to stop-motion shot of collage of imagery being added to all the time, stacked up like crazy, like mad mosaic

"All I knew was that being 'appropriate' was boring and safe. I liked the outlaw, the maurauding boor around the edges"

Cut to shot of Randy Quaid in "Moving"-- the neighbor from hell-- swiping free mustard jars, swag falling down and breaking

Cut to shot of Chris Holmes in "Decline of Western Civilization Part II 'The Metal Years'" floating drunk in his pool chair,  pouring whiskey all over himself in depravity

"It sure beat upper middle-class security!"

Cut to shot of children singing in pristine Anglican choir

Cut to shot of hoosiers guffawing around an old "Space Invaders" machine

"I wanted to grow up to have fun for a living. . . . . ."

Cut to shot of Beetlegeuse reveling outside of the whorehouse

"And maybe leave myself behind. . . . ."

Cut to shot of younger self watching Ashley and her mother come in with groceries through the keyhole. Come out, and half-hesitate to knock on her door before going back inside my Dad's apartment in stooped defeat

Cut to shot of Winona Ryder asking Beetlegeuse who he is, and he replies-- "I'm the ghost with the most, babe"

Shot of me back in the jailhouse, hands in handcuffs. Lift hands in explanation.

"So you have the film-maker before you today".

Opening Credits roll, ripping off the beginning of Penolope Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years" when it shows the crowd at a heavy metal concert reveling in the pit. A song is on: Motorhead's "Cradle to Grave". Pure guttural revelry, in other words. Song fades out.

Show shot of squirming worms in the moist earth, twisting and turning

(For the narration here, I'm speaking normally)

"Lethargy. . . . . 'gorping' hunger. On some basic level in our father's den of bargain basement derangement we were like worms pitifully revealed beneath a damp, lifted rock. No motivation whatsoever, man!"

Cut to shot of Charlie Chaplin stand-up, staring on passively with dog-like eyes.

"Everything significant and glamorous and glittering had happened a long time ago, and we'd certainly never be part of it. We were shit-all Missourians, and "The Show-Me State" didn't cotton much to romance and excitement"

Cut to shot of Self-Help Center, a ratty building standing alone in concrete wasteland

Cut to shot of mental patients talking and smoking around tables, brother and I playing Nintendo in marginal lounge

"It was 'live, work, die'. Unless you could find secret little pockets to slack off and revel in freedom's lazy bounty-- you know?"

Cut to shot of Super Mario jumping up and down with inane sound effects

"Our Dad was the director of 'The Self-Help Center'. It was a drop-in center for the mentally-ill, kind of like a club-house for mental patients with nothing better to do, and he took us to work with him during the summer days and the weekends. Just tagging along. . . . ."

Cut to shot of us raiding bag of vanilla sandwich cookies

Cut to shot of mental patients playing Trivial Pursuit, getting overwhelmed and flustered with this frenetic, high-speed game. We kids call out the answers across the room effortlessly while playing Nintendo. Larry George, a tall menacing-looking man who looks like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel, looses his temper and tells us to go fuck ourselves, even though we're kids. We run from the room in shock and panic.

Cut to shot of Mike Hayes, a jolly, overweight, manic man with a bushy beard trying to nap exhaustedly on the couch in the television room. I snicker over him, half-jesting to pour an empty can of diet Dr. Pepper on him. He says don't do that, tittering, even though the can is empty. I turn the thing upside down and some soda splatters on his nose. He gets up with a "God Damn It" and chases me down the hall with his belt in his hands, as if to spank me.

Cut to shot of us as a frozy, poor-looking family eating dinner at "Jack in the Box" on a cold, winter night. For the next couple of scenes, have the whistling part of "Marcetta" from "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" playing. It's a zany whistling Western track that connotates giant mustant ants scurrying around in the vicinity of the Los Alamos nuclear testing site in New Mexico

"On our Dad's side of the parental divide, I supposed we had broadening experiences that kept us humble. There was the time we ate dinner at 'Jack in the Box' on Christmas Eve"

Cut to shot of marginal, buck-toothed cashier giving us a complimentary small fries which we devour at our table like obese rats. "After all, it is Christmas" she says with a guffaw

"Or when Batman & Robin came to town"

Cut to shot of two nodding mustached dudes in drooping spandex standing next to beat-to-shit 1970's car with a Batman logo painted on the side, handing out Xeroxed autographed photos to the eight kids who showed up at the McDonald's parking lot.

"Or when we went out to flea markets"

Cut to shot of myself innocently rifling through nudity books at flea market stall, and hoosier with corncob teeth growling, "Get away from there!" with a wave of his hand

Cut to shot of us as family pushing cart through Aldi's, "the poor man's grocery". As narration lays over, show shot of us holding up bag of Recess Peanut Butter Cups and Dad shaking his head "no".

"But that was so much better than being 'white bread'. As 'working class scrappers', we could carry ourselves around in 'thrifty dignity', even if we lived like princes up at our Mom's place half the time"

Cut to picture of Mom's house

"Speaking for myself, I was spoiled pulp-rotten. . . . . which gave free reign to an imagination that went everywhere. . . . . . call it a titanic romantic streak that filled up my days with nifty joy far, far, away"

Cut to shot of younger self pulling down books from shelves in library-- vampires, werewolves, and ghost stories-- a huge pile which the librarian checks out without a second glance

Cut to shot of me reading "Ripley's Believe it or Not" in bunk-bed, focus in on page of exotic turbaned man from the old world grinning down with a mustache

"Just about anything seemed possible. . . . . or at least it sure felt good to think so"

Cut to shot of me and my brother snickering, randomly pressing the remote doorbells down by the mailboxes on the apartment's first floor. A certain doorbell is pressed, and Ashley appears at the top of the steps. She asks if we rung, so cute, and I stutter out "N-n-n-n-n-no" before she bounds up the steps again. I gulp and swallow, and lean up against the wall wide-eyed while my brother doesn't notice

Cut to shot of brother and I playing in our room

"But in the vast "gorping-ness" of things, a yardsale haze that put us squarely somewhere between "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" and "Battlestar Galactica", a doddering structure made out of mud, slime, and pus, it always seemed better to keep your fingers crossed for what time would eventually kick our way. . . . . and not to "rock the boat".

Cut to shot of myself with an empty, glazed, Attention-Deficit-Disordered expression, mouth hanging ajar, eyes partially rolled back in my head

Cut to shot of Mindy photograph, play a song by Tangerine Dream from the "Three O' Clock High" soundtrack-- a slow instrumental that suggests tingling glamour and potential somewhere off in the night with it's stinging guitars

"But for motivation's sake, there was Mindy-- one of Mom's meditation partners. Her voice was gentle, a brilliant mind. A laid-back woman from Utah, who saw the world squarely. Possibilities of possibilities, that you could be anything you wanted to be if you only worked hard enough. The American legend of Arnold Schwartzenegger, for instance. . . . . ."

Cut to shot of "Conan the Barbarian as President picture" with logo, "Only in America" as the narration continues

". . . . . how an immigrant came over here with nothing but his gym bag & free will and became Mr. Universe, if not the #1 action star in America"

Cut to wide shot of Mindy, my mother, my brother, and I tramping to the video store on a cold winter's night as narration overlays--

"What bounty, what riches, what TREASURE for the adventurer, the bold-at-heart if he should only strive for something MIGHTIER"

Cut to shot of us sitting on the floor at Mindy's, eating Oreo cookies on paper plates as the opening titles of "Beetlejuice" comes on. As the music from the movie plays, cut to shot of my face just sitting there eating and watching

"This was 1991. America had decisively won the first Gulf War and was standing proud and tall. "The War on Drugs" was in full swing, and the solution to social problems was force. Guns N' Roses was on the radio, and as that song, 'Right Next Door to Hell' went, 'Times are hard, thrills are cheaper/as your arms get longer your pockets get deeper'. The world, at the age of 10, seemed rather uncomplicated. Courage, you see, courage. The courage to stare down life like a man"

Cut to shot of me sipping sugary soda, empty straw sounds

"Or then again, you could duck off into another secret pocket, slack off, and once again 'catch a breather'-- that is, inside any one of the chambers found inside the electric heart of modern culture. Yeah, whatever man!"

Cut to shot of Winona Ryder in "Beetlejuice" stalking across the attic very slowly-- such a wonderous girl.

"Call it what you will, but it sure beat having discipline!"

Cut to dramatic scene of Conan the Barbarian posing with a sword, weighing his Nitzchiean destiny, along with swelling Basil Paledouris theme from the movie soundtrack

(Narration continues over this scene)

"At the end of such a mighty quest, would be someone remarkably like Mindy or Winona Ryder from Beetlejuice. Somehow, I just knew that I was destined for great things. . . . . but just give me a rain-check on the heavy lifting"

Black screen comes on-- text in Gothic lettering comes on silently, reads "Two years later-- Wydown Middle School"

Howls of the damned come on, bestial howls, guttural and animal-like, like long-haired insane man in dungeon pit rattling his chains, possessed by demons. It's a song-- Venom's "Warhead"

Show myself in the 6th grade, sitting at a desk, mouthing along to the howls, as a succesion of teachers lay down piles of assignments and pencils like disinterested French waiters

Music comes on, operatic theme from "Conan the Barbarian", suggests fire, emergency, and searing crisis

"6th grade. . . . . hell on earth. A new dimension of uncanceled liability and the inferno of social pressure"

Cut to shot of kids walking down hallway with backpacks

"If neurotics build imaginary castles out of thin air and psychotics live in them, it felt as if someone was dangling me out the window by my ankles"

Cut to shot of world famous painting of the French Revolution, Lady France/Lady Liberty bearing her breasts while holding up the flag and leading the people, man in stovetop hat gripping a rifle with gumption, shouting little boy holding up a pistol in knee-pants. Overlay with sound of cannon fire

"Looking back with my anxiety disorders, depressive tendencies, and penchant for overdramatizing the banal twists and turns of everyday life, this was nothing short of fuckin' opera"

Cut to shot of uptight adult cafeteria monitor walking through cafeteria with yellow ledger book of names, close up shot shows that sheet reads "AFTER-SCHOOL DETENTIONS". Show kids acting rambunctiously at their lunch table, and the cafeteria monitor going over to that table in particular to take down all the names. Their faces are crestfallen, with this most unfair punishment-- carpet-bombing entire tables for the crimes of one

Cut to shot of me waiting in line to go to recess by the exits, a large crowd of 6th grade boys behind me waiting restlessly too, scuffing their shoes against the floor. I go out in the hall, and extend my palms out to my sides, as if to say "what's the deal?" as the class snickers. Then kids start butting up against kids and they're all out in the hallway, charging out towards the exits in a stampede. Opera music is still playing, growing more intense

Cut to shot of adult cafeteria monitor, turning around in shock and horror to see the kids rioting outside the cafeteria, making all sorts of noise. Janitors look up from their mopping. Lunch ladies appear startled and bovinely from beneath their hairnets. Chaos, pandemonimum. Lunch monitor trying to shake in common sense in young lad, slapping in some sense, as countless others stream past.

Cut to shot of us bursting out the exits as newfound brothers from a multiple of angles

Cut to shot of some of us raising flag of the Soviet Union

Cut to shot of me raising my arms in air and shouting triumph out in the green grass as the operatic score ends abruptly. Cut to black

"Instigators jailed, harsher examples made, no recess for a week. Stricter patrols, the denial that this event had ever occurred. But the kids have won today!"

Cut to shot of me sitting in classroom in a Metallica shirt, chin falling into my chest as the teacher drones on about the 19th century railroads

Song comes on, Metallica's "Whiplash"-- suggests wildness and craziness

"Cheap thrills. . . . . Cheaper laughs. . . . . ."

Cut to photograph of Metallica in their early days goofing around

"That's all that really seemed to matter"

Cut to shot of teacher handing out assignments, sheets of paper

"I couldn't tell you the meaning of life, but 'beating the system' was a means unto itself"

Cut to shot of teacher explaining the assignment, that we are to be assigned partners and come up with three minute plays revolving around the theme of wolves facing extinction

Cut to shot of me and partner wasting class time, when we should be working on the play. Emphasized is our complete dearth of ideas. Finally we think up of that Super Nintendo game, "StarFox", and think to change things around a bit. That's right, "StarWolf"! We ask ourselves, "wouldn't it be cool to hook up a Super Nintendo to the classroom monitor hanging from the ceiling and come up with dialogue as we play the game?". As we're talking, cut to shots of the game as StarFox flies around blasting enemy ships

Cut to shot of befuddled teacher, an unhip older woman with gray hair cut short, not really understanding but sort of half-agreeing as we ask her about it

"It seemed to be the hallmark of genius!"

Cut to shot of me leaving the classroom with a self-congratulatory expression on my face

"But days later. . . . ."

Cut to shot of teacher gently redirecting, believing that some video games are "violent" and that "inappropriateness" is imminent

"We were going to have to reform the script, which of course in our 6th grade incompetence we never got around to doing!"

Cut to shot of classroom, kids performing play, something about a courtroom drama and wolves gravely asserting their right to exist. My partner and I are whispering back and forth, going over the one page script, and furiously folding paper airplanes. Teacher tells us to be quiet, and we go back and forth even more intensely. Finally it's our turn, and there's little we can do but trade forgotten lines in high squeaky voices as we zoom StarWolf and company around in front of the laughing classroom, making a mockery out of the hallowed rubric of this unhip assignment. The teacher is shocked, aghast, like a mother goose pummeled by the fists of rude modernity, but the class loves it. I shoot out, "StarWolf be on crack" in a shuffling black voice to the deseg kids' hilarity. I mash Starwolf's ship into the carpet and say, "Starwolf be extinct!".

Cut to shot of Porky Pig doffing his cap next to a "FUCK CENSORSHIP" logo with a "boinging" sound effect

Cut to wide shot of teacher trying to retake the classroom, raising her hands up in down like a policeman upholding public morals. I hold up my arm, and in a feral voice befitting an early 20th century anarchist, cry out "TEAR DOWN THE STATE!".

Cut to black, with sound like tomb being closed

"Perhaps some 'alternative' education was in order. . . . ."

Cut to slow motion shot of myself walking down a ratty hallway, my expression nervous. Song is on-- "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More" by Mudhoney. Harsh, extreme, bitter song. This is an alternative private school, and the kids are dressed up like goths, punks, and grunge rockers in Doc Marten boots. This scene is kind of like a music video and shows kids hanging out and smoking with dubious, mean-spirited expressions. Intersperse with shots of MTV clips, and scenes from "The Crow", "Reality Bites", and "Pulp Fiction". Ugly postmodern art, pictures of heroin abuse, and third world horror. This montage represents my loss of innocence and first head-on exposure with the extreme darkness of the world. Song ends.

Enter scene of illustrative example-- shot in black & white. . . . . . 

Cut to shot of Duncan and Laura leaning against the stark, white brick wall of "Dirt Cheap" discount smoke shop. He is porky and ruddy and huge, with tousled brown hair and a lisp; she is slender, short, and delicate. Both are world-weary and bored, smoking cigarettes with slow drags. Blake walks up, his head shaved except for a top-knot tied into a ponytail. Very neo-Eastern. He is wearing a "Nine Inch Nails" t-shirt that scrolls the message "god damn this noise inside my head" over and over. He leans up against the wall, and slides down to conserve energy. 

Duncan: "Want a cig, Blake?"

Blake, speaking in a grave, solemn monotone, closing his eyes: "I'm so tired. I have reached the outer limits of waking consciousness. Everything is meaningless; only by an effort of will does anything make sense"

Laura, smiling in disbelief: "C'mon, you can at least hang out for one cigarette?"

Blake reaches out and takes the proffered cigarette. He takes out his black lighter and flicks it over and over again. Alas, the flint is worn down. He sniffs the sulfur smell. Fried electrolytes and dripping brain residues-- unreplenished. Duncan brings out his Zippo lighter, a point of casual pride. Blake nods.

Laura: "Dillon had Bixby so snowed in art class. . . . . he made that ceramic elf that really was a bong!" 

A shot of an addled art teacher in a white t-shirt and jeans with wavy hair, overwhelmed. Writing down "A+" in a grade book while the class of '94 snickers.

Duncan: "Like, he should sell those. But the police would shut him down. Authority is like, so wrong!"

Blake: "Capitalism is so wrong, dude. The corporations-- t.v. and the media, controlling what you think. With mathematics you can get at the truth-- going over the proofs yourself"

Laura: "I hate math-- I'm so right-brained. Like, art and stuff. I want to sell my photography. I have my own dark room at home"

Duncan: "Yeah, communism works on paper but it doesn't work in real life. It's like, human nature you know?"

Blake, somewhat roused but still speaking in a grave monotone: "Those in power use 'human nature' to justify the status quo--"

Laura: "Status WHAT?"

Blake, slightly irritated: "How things are-- to stay in power"

Duncan, dismayed: "That's so wrong!"

As this conversation is going, Ellen, Maury, and Eliza walk up. Sixteen year olds who stand off to the side, their arms crossed, but insinuate themselves. Ellen is dressed up like a gypsy, with milky skin and long red hair in a black dress. Maury is wearing a trench coat and a black beret, the short one of the three. Eliza's head is shaved on one side, the hair hanging down greasily and her nose pierced with jewelry. She is wearing this t-shirt:

Eliza: "We need to live like punk-rock communes. There should be like, no forms of hierarchy. Those rednecks with guns are so stupid. We should take away their guns and make them move back to the city. Conformity is so wrong!"

No one says anything as she smears an anarchy symbol on the wall with red lipstick.

Eliza: "Capitalism is like, so alienating and pollutes the environment. We need to go back to BARTER"

Whatever the foibles of capitalism, the "Dirt Cheap" employee Tommy comes back from his lunch break. A cigarette tucked behind his ear, shaved head, a Corona beer cap, an irresponsible adult in his mid-20's who sold the kids underage cigarettes. Hey, alternative newsweeklie-reading libertarian maturity, man. He wears a Jack Daniels t-shirt, a scrap of hipster credibility. They hail him about his habit of covering a statue of the Virgin Mary with a necklace of his girlfriend's bloody tampons. Tommy holds his hands up in the air and snickers with a dry "eh, eh". The girls go in to buy cigarettes. Duncan and Laura toss their butts absent-mindedly. Blake has fallen asleep, and they simply leave him there and walk off. Cut to shot of Turkish jade girl, a cartoon cigarette mascot-- so depraved

"What kind of credibility could I possibly form with these indie hipsters? My problem was. . . . ."

Cut to shot of Dad dropping me off at school in old junky car as narration continues, hipster kids hanging out against the wall, smoking. I'm very uptight at this juncture

". . . . . not being a wayward latchkey kid, not having meth-addicted skate-rats as friends, and not having the soulessness of a fly-zapping gilla monster"

Cut to shot of Dad's muffler falling to the ground with a clatter, and then him driving off with it clattering behind the car. Then cut to shot of me-- I'm absolutely mortified. Hipsters are watching

"If this was 'liberation' compared to Wydown jail-- easy classes and less school work-- then why did I feel like such a prisoner? I was enslaved to someone else's standards of 'hip', and the penalty seemed to be social exclusion forever in this brave new 1990's world"

Cut to black & white shot of long-haired boy in mascara, head tilted back, in deep voice, going "I'm such a FREAK, man"

Cut to show of me sitting alone, hunched over

"I could absolutely not take account for this strangeness, my sense of radical alienation, and my reaction was to withdraw and say little. No glorious "Conan the Barbarian" future seemed possible for me now, even if I wanted to strive mightily for one, but just 'getting by' without being seen would have seemed like such a gift"

Song on-- Nirvana's "In Bloom"-- suggests strange new alternative world.

Cut to shot of indoor soccer stadium, the all-school soccer game. High school students sitting on the bleachers, watching fellow students play

Cut to shot of me stalking around self-consciously behind the scenes, sitting in the murk of the soda bar, watching television in my brown leather jacket. Video games and pinball machines flash in the murk too.  I get up and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. Narration--

"Me. Twelve-and-a-half years old. This was it, this was now, and how worthless I felt"

Cut to shot of myself standing out in the soccer field, the wide expanse of green

"Drowning in a sea of my own inconsequentiality. . . . ."

Cut to shot of ceiling, the blinding honeycomb lights

". . . . . I would have only wanted to have merged my drab, wasted little life into something grand and complete"

More shots of the soccer action

"There was no ideal of stability and certainty in this world except the death I feared"

Cut abruptly to black-- no more music, no more visual

Shot of mother, and father and I having conversation, focus on mother

"Oooohhh" she squeals. "You're going to have so much fun at summer camp out in Colorado. The beauty of the scenery!"

Cut to shot of Dad, he is much more cautious and gruff

"But can't we send him to a cheaper camp? When he came back last time he was listening to heavy metal! Why don't we send him to the Y.M.C.A. and teach him some moral values?"

Mom: "Oh, Ray-- camp is a once-in-a-life-time experience, to give our son opportunities we ourselves never had. You need to stop being such a cheap-ass!"

Dad, with arms crossed, grunts into his chest

Open up to shot of the Colorado foothills, a beautiful shot of the morning, this is summer camp

"Summertime, escape from the inferno, the war inside my head. Or so I thought. . . . ."

Cut to shot of boys of older cabin taking cow skull found in creek, covering it with a blue bandanna, and mounting it up on a stake. These are rough, rich, spoiled kids from the military academies, there because of discipline problems

"Wow, where'd you find that? Cool!" I say.

Cut to shot of them scowling at me, clearly I'm not part of the gang

Cut to shot of obnoxious kids in my cabin. These kids are from California, Colorado, and Texas. Telling stories in their bunks, hands clasped behind their heads, of how their privellged neighborhoods sound like war zones of rich, neglected kids. Drug dealers, paying bullies to beat people up and break bones, a disturbed young man laying on the roof of his house and picking kids off their bikes with b.b. guns. MTV lore, the stories of Kurt Cobain, the heroin/suicide nexeus and the sad, twisted state of this fucked up world that 13, 14, and 15 year old boys shouldn't know about. How death is permanent and sudden, and how this is it. Then extinction. I'm listening with rapt attention like Forrest Gump.

Cut to shot of Kurt Cobain caricature:

Cut to shot of rude, wealthy, flitting rich girls standing around with their arms crossed, talking about how they related to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails-- such dramatic songs as "Happiness is Slavery", how they talked their best friend out of swallowing a jar of sleeping pills, how they were members of PETA-- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and how River Phoneix was a member, and "wasn't it so tragic that he died outside the Viper room on Halloween" How they knew a retarded boy who vowed to commit suicide at the age of 27 just like Kurt Cobain and "wasn't that sad".

As they talk, cut to various shots of various icons they're referring to,

Cut to shot of Forest Gump from movie going "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get"

Cut to shot of girls saying that movie is so moving, the simple-heartedness of a retarded man.

Cut to shot of boys saying that line, making it so down-home and southern that it looses all connection from the movie. The spoiled bitches think it's great.

"Then I tried saying that line-- wondering if some of the earnest nature of that gosh-dern retarded man would rub off on me"

Cut to shot of me starting in after others. "Shut up!", they point

"I wondered why I couldn't have simply been born retarded instead of feeling socially retarded"

Cut to shot of jaded older boy, as a calculated measure, saying "I sometimes feel like, so suicidal". Girls cross their arms in trendy fashionable concern and say, "Like, that's so sad"

Cut to shot of me at night leaning over the swimming pool. Moon reflects off the tranquil waters. I keep leaning over, transfixed, hypnotized by my own depression, close-up on my face, until I fall in. I thrash around in the water and get out of the pool

Cut to shot of camp activity down by the rapelling rocks. I'm sitting around, withdrawn, my chin down in my chest, feeling sorry for myself

"If you could know how lost I felt, because no one in the world understood me. The counselors were a bunch of vague, Pearl Jam-listening adults who couldn't get at the bottom of things in a million years with their modern-day numbness. To be a strung-out member of Generation-X, laying on the beach with sunglasses, watching two sea turtles mating and saying this in a detached voice, 'that's so moving, man'"

Cut to shot of pretty 14 year-old girl, Courtney, leaning back on tension of the rope as she gets ready to rappel down the rocks with passive, "can-do" attitude

"This was the rock-bottom of pierce-hearted desolation. . . . . if I could only find the courage to take a running leap and throw myself off a cliff then it would all be over. But I couldn't even do that"

Cut to shot of Courtney rapelling down the cliff-- she lands at the bottom and takes off the harness

Cut to shot of me depressed, then Courtney takes a seat next to me

Music on: "La Missione San Antonio" from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" soundtrack-- suggests sitting down after a long, long journey-- taking a rest-- but still having a long way to go in the quest

As music plays, silently show us beginning and sustaining a warm conversation, we've just met, but we mesh together really well. It's almost like we've known each other all our lives. Song plays out to completion.

Cut to shot of loud, fat female counselor announcing the start of the camp-wide "Capture the Flag" game. Shot focuses on her mouth, and withdraws until it reveals her bossy self

Cut to shot of kids running back and forth over the line of demarcation, making youthful idiots of themselves

Cut to shot of me walking up to Courtney under a tree, she's reading a book: "Understanding the 4th Dimension" We talk some more, laughing, but the voice-over drowns that out

"Courtney was a gifted girl from New York City who lived on 5th Avenue, the richest street in the world. She made my own St. Louis look like shit on a farmer's boot. Yet she found me amusing. That was the purpose of my brief, wasted life-- that she found me amusing. For her, I could be the sardonic librarian of cultural references. . . . . It's good to feel necessary, if only temporarily"

Song on-- "Il Forte" from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" soundtrack-- suggests dusky pathos

Cut to shot of breakfast in the dining hall, I take a seat across from Courtney, begin my charming cultural librarian routine but there is an older boy, about seventeen, sitting next to her. As I'm talking they smile and look into each other's eyes. I figure that something's wrong, then it hits me with shock. Pained look in my eyes.

"Nothing I could say or do could divert her attention. She made her choice, and chose my rival. Tall, lanky, a rancher's son from around these parts. Literal-minded. Taciturn. And what did I have going for me? I was half-Jewish, overweight, and from the undistinguished Midwest. Some contest!"

Cut to shot of cafeteria at night, title beneath it reads "Camp Dance"

Cut to shot of dancing couples and off to the side kids looking self-conscious and miserable in the dark. Song on-- Eric Clapton's unplugged version of "Tears in Heaven"-- song of blusey, cry-in-your-beer pathos, the logical epitome of a grown-up teen jukebox single

"Maybe it was supposed to be a coming-of-age ritual, but for most it was probably just a ritual of pain and horrid, wretched inadequacy"

Cut to shot of Courtney and rival dancing together, holding each other close, her eyes are closed

"The dance floor was a whirlpool where the beautiful and the handsome and the confident found each other in the eternal moment while the rest of us slunk around on the outskirts like pole-cats"

Cut to shot of me standing around with my hands in pockets, next to tall, beautiful, blonde Belgian cook in flower-print dress

"I don't think I've ever been anymore depressed"

As song ends, Belgian cook asks if I'll ask her to dance. There's a little bit of impish impatience in her voice, disgusted with all these weak young men out there who won't even try. I'm bumbling and stuttering like Richard Nixon, taking her out on the floor, hesitating to put my hands on her hips. "You can touch me, you know" she laughs with a blurt. I do so, and she puts her arms around my neck.

Song on: "The Story of A Soldier" from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" soundtrack, a gentle track that suggests mysticism

Cut to shot of Belgian cook and I dancing slowly, from a multiple of angles, swaying back and forth gently, cut to reactions of my face

"What was I thinking there in the dark? Gratitude for this gift. I felt something of my childhood slip away like a mist. I could feel her warmth, smell her scent; it was like roses and soap. I was becoming a man, and there was no going back"

Song ends

I ask, "Do you want to go outside and make out in the grass?"

"You little monster!", she exclaims half angrily, half affectionately, and runs her hand over my head as she walks off.

Cut to shot of modern-day self sitting in jailhouse, cooking light of interrogation on me. I'm holding a pipe betwixt my fingers and reflecting, Man in Jimmy Cagney voice asks, "Did you really ask that 27 year-old woman to go outside to 'make out' with you on the grass?"

"Yes" I answer. Then I break out laughing.

Fade to black

Fade back in

Cut to shot of me back in the jailhouse, thinking

"After that I vowed to come home and become a better. Actually putting time in my school work and ending this long stretch of getting by with pitiful excuses for excuses-- you know what I mean? Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Maybe at last sowing my wild oats to the end and becoming heir to something more. Broadening my mind and at last coming to terms with this 'alternative' culture. If I wouldn't have a glorious life, then at least a modest one of quiet transcendence. We are more than piss, shit, iguana eyes, and indie recordings!"

Cut to shot of me walking down suburban street with long hair, jeans, and flannel shirt  to Guns N' Roses' "November Rain"-- a ballad of whimsical, noble gentleness that goes on and on

"For me, maybe, my wild days of childish zaniness was over. I had become a serious young man"

Cut to exterior nighttime shots of St. Louis county library, formidable old building

Cut to shot of me working at desk in the library, books and binders all spread out. Quite the studious young man

Cut to shot of me from behind the headrest getting up at 5:30 in the morning, on my sacred third floor suite, the alarm clock function on the boom box in the other room waking me out of bed with swelling music Rushing over to turn it down. Sitting there on the zebra-striped couch, tasting my mouth.

Cut to shot of me preparing breakfast in the kitchen, bagels and cream cheese

Cut to shot of me taking rechargeable batteries out of the charger plugged into the wall, and putting them into my yellow Sony walkman.

Cut to shot of me walking to the gym through the dawn

Cut to shot of me arriving at the gym, portly black woman behind the counter with platinum curls greeting me "Good Morning" with fine cheer

Cut to shot of alternative school's literature room-- music is still playing

"Life was stripped-down, without many frills, and to me Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" was a very beautiful play. We read it in middle-school, a tie of historical continuity with the progressive "New Deal" tradition even though the doofuses and dweebs in my grade didn't much know the difference"

Cut to shots of frolicing middle-schoolers goofing around

Cut to shot of me reading play amid all of this-- clearly I'm somewhat removed

"The beauty, the pathos, the ordinariness of everyday life in wholesome, small-town America as we lived out our tiny lives. The earnestness of feeling, how everyone worked together as a community yet had to pull their own weight. No slackers, no 'gold bricks', no poseurs, no pretenders. Just real honest-to-god Americans. "Our Town", the great American play. America; ideal of greatness in simplicity. Believe in wholesome things, and salute the flag. That was its own quiet transcendence, and a true initation into adulthood. That was truth, that was beauty, and the truth shall set you free!"

Cut to shot of photograph of a hokey Harry Truman playing the piano at a USO show, a leggy woman leaning on the piano seductively

"Getting by, and getting by, and getting by. . . . .".

Cut to shot of me sitting in my room with brown leather brief case, an impassive expression on my face-- like a crab contented in it's shell.

"It was the afternoon when school ended and winter break started that the phone rang. I didn't pick it up, because I didn't think it was for me in a million years"

Cut to shot of hallway, Mom's voice calling up the steps. "MICHAEL! PHONE!"-- "WHO IS IT?", I ask. "A GIRL!"-- she responds.

Cut to shot of me picking up the phone, gulping-- surprised

"It was Darcy, a girl in my grade, inviting me to her ice skating party. It was her 14th birthday, and she was inviting the whole grade. I was touched, the fact that I was finally part of things"

Cut to shot of short, stocky pretty girl surrounded by her friends in room at ice skating rink

"I chivalrously held out $15 and told her to--"

Cut to shot of younger me in ice skating room, holding out money, mouthing the words as I narrate in exaggerrated classy English voice--

"Go buy some Metallica CD's!"

Cut to shot of Darcy taking the money, not really understanding the joke, and going back to her friends

Cut to shot of kids gliding around the ice skating rink, laughing while I plod after them clumsily-- holding on to the railing

"There they went, laughing, gliding along with ease-- while I struggled along the best I could. The fact was, this analogy rung true for a lot of things. But I was always more comfortable, gliding with ease, up in my head"

Cut to scene in "November Rain" music video, at whatever point the song is at this point, gracefully-shot footage

"Life seemed like a symphony made just for me, and it was a beautiful thing"

Cut to shot of close up of my face, and I smile vaguely, dream-like

Cut to shot of Leanne walking down hallway in slow-motion, a beautiful blonde girl, perfectly-shaped, who looks like a classic WASP model

"My heart was with Leanne that winter break. . . . . the thought of her angelic-ness kept me thawed. As it would for what seemed like an ice age up on my lonely third floor"

Cut to shot of Leanne and my younger self rummaging through boxes in the school basement

"We worked together in year book. While others pouted and slacked and flaunted their perversions, Leanne was the 'can-do' volunteer on top of things-- the golden girl-- the shining princess of maturity. And would make a swell girlfriend for somebody. But she was four years older"

Cut to shot of me back in jail-house, facing the camera, my hands folded in front of me. lifting the thumbs occasionally for emphasis

"What you have to understand is that one-sided young love is like a Ouija board of intense ideals, and so long as you kept your feelings to yourself you can't lose"

Cut to shot of younger self sitting in year book club, the history/geography room, surrounded by older grunge/punk/goth kids sitting in chairs. Leanne comes through the door gracefully

"The room seemed bathed in a golden light when she came into the room, so much glory above so much grime. And how I would keep my feelings to myself for a very, very long time"

Fade to black

Fade back in

Cut to shot of "Loop" shopping district, like a little slice of New York City

"It was August-- and I felt like a man of the world before 9th grade began. 'Life was a journey, not a destination' as that Aerosmith song 'Amazing' went, and I had come such a far way"

Cut to shot of me walking into "Mayli Maylo" a toy/knick-knack shop

"I went anywhere and everywhere, seeking higher experience"

Cut to an over-the shoulder shot of me looking at a "Magic 8" fortune-telling ball

Cut to frontal shot of me looking down at the ball with great gravity, two girls in the background-- blurry-- camera focuses on them rummaging through a bin. The camera focuses back on me as I turn around.

"It was Darcy and a friend"

Cut to shot of me going over to talk to them

"I went over to introduce myself"

Cut to shot of two girls-- they're fish-eyed and vague, as if they're slightly neurologically-imbalanced and uncomfortable inside their own skin. Show us talking silently for about thirty seconds. I turn around and leave, happy

"Darcy was so adorable. And it hit me. . . . . . that she could be the one. The one I could share my vast inner world with, show her what I thought, what I known. Young love is such a beautiful thing. . . . . . the one-sided version, anyway"

Cut to shot of me staring at the telephone, reaching out toward it

"Be yourself, right? But the old crippling feelings of self-doubt. . . . . It took me three months to work up the nerve to finally do it!"

Cut to shot of me back in jail-house, staring off into space

"And what happened?" interrogator asks in Jimmy Cagney voice.

Cut to shot of me smiling slightly-- Music starts: "Ain't it Fun" a punk cover from Guns N' Roses that connotates "looking-over-the-shoulder" resentment

Abrupt cut to shot of classroom of 9th graders laughing, guffawing, throwing paper like goblins. Darcy, embarrassed, is surrounded by her cackling friends and won't even look at me. Doofuses and dweebs acting socially retarded.

Cut to shot of perplexed, pained reaction on my face

"Whatever life was, it sure wasn't like this--"

Cut to shot of classic LIFE photograph of teenagers at dance munching on doughnuts and gently growing up

"In my mind, this seemed to be an index of where society was heading"

Cut to shot of kids cheering when the jury finds O.J. Simpson innocent. Exuberant, flitting, wanting to be "cool wit de black man", one big hip-hop par-TAY

"Everything was just one big decadent party at the expense of honorable manhood"

Cut to shot of English teacher, Scott-- a tall 26 year-old in a ratty flannel shirt and a ponytail-- telling vile, outrageous stories to the laughing 9th grade class about college-age depravity and exploiting people, a vicious, rat-like expression on his face

"And who would be left holding the sack of personal liability?"

Cut to shot of everyone in the grade pointing, laughing, and giggling at the camera with evil smiles

"This was Thorton Wilder's "Our Town" ripped up by the roots, turned upside down, and absolutely defiled. This was Dante's inferno. This was people walking around with their heads screwed on backwards and hailing you out of their asses. This was an alternative, progressive school. This was liberalism in action. . . . ."

Cut to shot of Sarah, a plump English teacher, laughing that the Washington Monument is nothing but a phallic symbol and that partisans of the 2nd Amendment are symbolically protecting their penises. She laughs insufferably, the liberated up-to-date modern, educated American woman

"Then there was Sarah. . . . . the self-righteous, liberated, up-to-date, modern, educated American woman who played mind games with the class. Forget modesty, abandon reason, but all the young women were inducted into 'the tribe of the feminist'"

Cut to shot of girls sitting on a quilt in the grass, listening in rapt attention

"Like untested recruits curled up on a picnic blanket. . . . . writing poetry in the woods, hoeing beans, eating pussy, and planning a grassroots overthrow of mankind through infiltration of higher education, fanning out into society like rot"

She talks about the ancient Greek play when the women will stop war by not having sex with the men for one day. She titters, and thinks that's funny. I say that the men will just stop bringing home the bacon, and they'll come to their senses. She stops, points, and says "that's not funny" like I was joking about necrophillia.

Cut to shot of younger self scowling up at the sky

"Where had the real men gone,  in the world of honey-drippin' Bill Clinton and crabbing soccer moms and pesky, geeky political-correctness? Katie Couric, Matt Laurer, and Oprah? In this world of MTV posing, Quenton Taratino who looked like an insectivore, and all these wheedling sociopaths making their way around the American media consciousness? Whatever happened to decency and common sense? But still I wanted to believe. . . . . ."

Cut to shot of famous photograph of blond boy placing flowers in the barrels of National Guardsman, an iconographic statement of peace and understanding

Cut to shot of months being torn out of a calendar, interspersed with mean-spirited social slights, turn to February with the 14th circled in red

Cut to shot of me sitting at a desk looking drawn and shell-shocked. . . . . the abuse has taken a toll

"Valentine's Day was fast approaching, and my angst turned to Leanne. She would be graduating soon, and leaving my shell-shocked little world behind forever. On some level I thought that all this would have been worth it if I could only be a success with her, if she could only know the real me away from the shy, awkward, marble-mouthed half-man who took a long time to 'warm up' around somebody golden like her"

Cut to shot of younger self entering guitar shop

"When it comes to girls, life is like a guitar shop. . . . . ."

Camera follows me over my shoulder as I look around, following the narration

"Of course you go up to the classy guitars, the $4000 axe that everybody wants"

(Follow younger me up to the expensive guitars and see me focused intently on the golden guitar)

"But to play that, you have to have some experience. You have to be a little more than a guileless long-haired youth off the street with a Metallica shirt"

(Cut to shot of younger me with stupid-looking expression on my face with a Metallica, "Ride-the-Lightning" t-shirt on)

"Of course, the sales clerk will bring out the $150 starter pack for a customer such as yourself, but remember that Darcy bit me"

(I grab hold of the starter pack, trip, fall over, with the crash of cymbals and get electrocuted on the floor. Strobe lights go off, miming electrocution, and smoke rises from the floor)

"That's L'amour!"

Cut to shot of black girls sitting at table, busily working over Cookegram messages

"The Candygram, the Cookiegram, eternal high school plaything of fun, frolic, and stupidity. Sort of a cute messaging system that the school hosted every year to raise money. This Valentine's Day you put down $3.50 and student council would send your target a rose and a cookie with your message"

Cut to shot of younger self stroking jaw, eyes darting around

"On the outset, it seemed brilliant. . . . . . how I could get what I felt out to Leanne without revealing my identity. That she would know that someone really, really cared for her but didn't know how to say it"

Cut to shot of me walking toward the table

"I wasn't good with words, more gifted with intuition, thoughts, and feelings inside my head"

Cut to shot of swans gliding onto a lake

"I wrote this:

"Dear Leanne-- I've been watching you for a long time. I think you're great. I suppose you can say that I'm too wretched to say this personally, but keep up the good work. Your Secret Admirer"

Cut to shot of Valentine's Day morning when kids are reading the pink hand-outs that the Student Council is handing out with interest

"Little did I know, but everything would be published in a school-wide newspaper!"

Cut to shot of kids laughing, wondering who sent "that one" to Leanne

Cut to shot of me slumping down in a chair with my hand to my heart

"I wanted to shrink, to turn invisible, to become one with the wall. I wanted to walk right out that door and never be seen again"

Cut to shot of me sitting alone by the soda machines, arms crossed, brooding, staring off into space. 9th and 10th graders come up and ask if I sent it. I deny it lamely. Then Leanne walks in, looking icy and bothered, and buys a soda. I just look down at the floor. Kids look on in awe as she leaves.

Song comes on, the last dramatic quarter of Guns N' Roses' "November Rain" Intersplice shots of the music video with me clenching my jaw, and walking down to the coffee shop where she works. Drama, turmoil, trauma. Punks, goths, stoners, and grunge kids sitting around the tables. I ask her if I can buy her a cup of coffee, the text appearing at the bottom of the screen. She shakes her head "no" with contempt. The video for "November Rain" reaches a conclusion when Axl Rose kneels at the graveside of his deceased bride in the cold November rain. Final shot shows my rose sticking out of the trash can

Cut to black & white shot of long-haired boy in mascara, head tilted back, in deep voice, going in drifting tone, "You're so STUPID, man"

Fade to black

"I suppose, that for me, that was the end of many things"

Cut to shot of me walking down the hall with military crew-cut and angry expression

Cut to shot, back of camulfage milita boots walking forward

Cut to shot of kid calling out, "Hey hippie, what happened to your hair?"-- "FUCK YOU!" I shout back

Music comes on-- choir singing "Ode to joy" intersperse with scenes of nuclear explosions, Ronald Reagan, religious fundamentalists, gun shows, Adolf Hitler, cops beating on Rodney King, and me slamming somebody up against a locker.

"I was expelled from school and asked never to return"

Cut to shot of me, shirtless, in an executioner's hood, mulling around a gallows and a chopping block to Metallica's cover of "Am I Evil?"-- a song that connotates rising defiance and the wicked overthrow of power.

"In my mind, liberals and liberalism was the enemy, a system that tolerated decadence and effeminatcy and evil which must be smashed down at all costs. So I did what any angry teenager could do. I became a young Republican"

Cut to shot of dummy being dropped through gallows trap door, brutally hung

Cut to shot of executioner chopping pumpkin in half on chopping block

Cut to shot of ticking time bomb, ticking faster and faster

Cut to shot of sniggering someone, punk obnoxious youth (-- THIS IS NOT ME), calling in a bomb threat at the new school's front office, under-header reads "New school the day before I arrived"

Cut to shot of fire alarm going off, kids flitting and chewing gum walking outside-- standing around, laughing, arms crossed. Bell still ringing, bell fades as shot cuts to me walking into school the next day with my outlandish right-wing appearance, carrying an orange nylon sack for a backpack.

Cut to shot of kids sniggering to one another, focus on Andy, a tall awkward 10th grader who looks like a cagey Frankenstein's monster, who says "I bet he called in that bomb threat. Like, like Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczinsky the Unabomber!"

Cut to shot of Unabomber's scraggly booking photo

Cut to shot of me stalking cautiously across the cafeteria, taking a seat at the table where the jocks sit. All I'm trying to do is fit in. Awkward silence. One of them, Payton, asks in a drawling, obnoxious, teenaged voice-- "Hey, man-- do you like, build bombs and blow up shit?"

Cut to shot of me drawing up tight in my seat, denying it adamantly.

Cut to shot of me walking into school past the smoking tree. Kids call out "UNABOMBER!".

Cut to shot of my eyes going wide, and darting around

"It's bad enough when you know there's something seriously wrong with you. . . . . it's worse when others pick up on it and won't let you forget it"

Cut to shot of me sitting in classroom, frowning over my binders

"But I threw myself into my studies, the ultimate repudiation of rule by the ignorant, corrupted teenaged mob left to wander in its own direction by permissive adult attitudes"

Cut to laughing white teenaged girls hanging out with depraved sleepy-eyed black boys

Cut to shot of D.W.E.M.-- Dead White European Male from the enlightenment, marinated in pomposity

This was its own form of elitism, a bodyguard of lies, to make up for one's own crippling insecurities. You either had 'worth', or you didn't. There was the insider operating on the national stage-- whether in politics, business, media, entertainment, or the elite Ivy League universities-- then there was the idiot consuming hip-hop music scratching his ass. In my mind, you were destined to either be thrown in with one or the other with the downward drag of the crowd. Anyone could be stupid-- what would set you apart?"

Cut to shot of me conducting "Ride of the Valkeries" in my room. Intersprse with shots of Richard Nixon, bombs falling on Cambodia, the mele at Kent State university, shots of Vietnam war footage

"I wallowed in my contrarian glory. . . . . so far as I was concerned, I became the very establishment that was under attack by the decadent, milling hordes. Forget peace, forget understanding. I was the NARC with the billy-club, and the solution to social problems was punishment and force"

Cut to shot of NARC arcade machine from several angles with "taking a photograph" sounds, then cut to screen shot of hero blowing up drug dealers with a rocket launcher, their flaming bodies flying across the screen

"The ultimate enemy of establishment credibility was drugs. Among the young and vacant, the celebration of drugs was a point of casual independence--"

Cut to shot of cartoon Jamaicans smoking weed

"-- and the idea of softness in the face of this was revolting. . . . ."

Cut to black & white shot of long-haired boy in mascara, head tilted back, in deep voice, going in drifting tone, "You can't do anything about me, man"

Cut to shot of kids hanging out by smoking tree as cop car sweeps slowly past

"To keep drugs-- particularly marijuana-- illegal at all costs was an excuse to crack down on undesirables, the vengeful capstone behind my reason to live. This was my childish, silly way to become a man in a very complicated, threatening world. Eggs must be broken to make the idelologue's omlette. . . . . and it was not without casualties"

Cut to shot of art room before class, a girl gang of chirping working-class urchins carrying on about nothing. One of them gets up there and does a strip routine up on the table as her friends titter. Then they go around making promiscuous suggestions in the boys' ears. Focus on a blond girl. It is Ashley from the beginning, the 11 year-old girl I had a crush on, now a teenager. Flashback to apartment scenes for emphasis.

"Ashley?" I ask with wonder.

"Yeah, who the hell are you?" she blurts.

"Nobody" I gulp.

Narration: "And how far our life paths had diverged. . . . . At the time I felt like the lamest social conservative on earth and I didn't know how to talk to her, much less lecture her. A very big part of myself wanted to tell her who I was, to turn her back into the innocent little girl she used to be, to make everything right when I was O.K. with myself in the world. But the harsher side of myself in this wayward, wrecked, and trench warfare-like existence would leave her to sink down into the darkness and abandon her to her fate. It was everyone for themselves, after-all"

Cut to shot of U.S. Capitol building

"But the Washington D.C. trip seemed to be the soaring glory above all this slime. Only a select group of the interested would participate, and merge with the GREATNESS of our nation's capitol. Yes, the main arena where the social democrats could be wiped out by the brute force of mighty argument and 'dealt with' using the underhandedness of 'trap-door' politics"

Cut to shot in Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom where Sikh warriors are getting eaten by alligators

"The ends justified the means, after-all, and I considered myself to be the ultimate freelance political operative, like god-damned Batman"

Cut to shot of Batman from 1989 Tim Burton movie emerging from the shadows in chemical factory to clonk a crook over the head

Cut to shot of me holding the lapels of my British pea coat in giant dining room where kids are sitting at tables, gathering food and eating

"To win over their hearts and minds was the objective, like a Green Beret dropped in the jungles of Laos"

Cut to shot of CD cover-- "Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt Barry Sadler. Music comes on, "Ballad of the Green Berets"-- suggests upright all-American straightness

Shot of me having dead serious conversation, kids shrugging, not into it. Intersperse with shots of Green Berets from war movies, squatting down with villagers. Kids getting up and leaving. Me looking chagrined and embarressed

"At the time, I figured that it was years of 'liberal-media' brainwashing that kept them from recognizing GREATNESS, in this feminized land of Katie Couric, Martha Stewart, and Marilyn Manson"

Cut to shot of Marilyn Manson video, a loony connection

Narration, with exaggerated English tones

"Oh, why must my tormented genius endure the soul-crushing LONELINESS of being misunderstood in a world full of IDIOTS? Trying to save the masses from themselves with self-discipline and self-respect away from the incidental, random, flitting, and stupid? What happened to the greatness of the ancients, and how did we slide into the degeneracy of today?

Cut to shot of ancient Greek bust of philosopher's head, then compare it to an ugly-looking album by the Smashing Pumpkins-- suggests geekiness, awkwardness, and the undermench condition

Continue on in high-handed English tones

"Why, it was the very 'Decline and Fall of the West'! And the key to stemming the tide was to keep drugs illegal at all costs to beat back the depraved, slacker hordes. . . . ."

Cut to shot of political roundtable discussion in hotel conference room, adult is leading the group on issues, and is asking us about policy proposals. Rather insufferably, I propose that whoever is guilty of three drug offences should be put to death by the state. Shocked silence in the room. Then girls began to cut in, talking about how barbaric that is in soft tones-- some of them actually beginning to cry/sniffle with the prospect. Now it is I who looks like the bad guy. I regroup, and say there should be at least long, mandatory sentences for marijuana with a grunt.

Cut to shot of me walking back to the hotel room

"I felt rather self-congratulatory. Was there no liberal in the world who would stand up to my self-evident truths? Why, if I kept this up, I could keep going all the way to the White House and knock Bill Clinton out of office and take his place as podium-pounding President of the United States!"

Cut to shot of staff member coming up to the hotel room, another one who was in the room, to debate with this insufferable tyrant the case for legalizing marijuana. He points out that alcohol causes more societal ills and costs more, while I point out that alcohol is a tradition in this country. For me, it's more of an irrational, emotional argument of cracking down on the types of people who smoke it though I don't know how to put it into words. While this is going on, play "battle music" from the Oliver Stone "Nixon" movie soundtrack. The clashing of ideas, footage of bombers dropping explosives, men advancing on hills as we argue back and forth dramatically. Actually, I'm the one being dramatic and wound up all tight, while he is laid-back. He is more the liberal rationalist, and in the end I look completely absurd-- especially when he "drops the big one"-- "if conservatives believe in the free market and democracy then isn't the free market the truest expression of democracy?". (Cut to shot of nuclear blast)  I just repeat my same discredited, refuted arguments over and over, A VERY SORE LOSER. The staff member shrugs and leaves. I wallow in gloomy defeat, a broken boy who can't be a man no matter how hard he tries.

"It was then that I realized that I was not nearly as brilliant as I thought I was. . . . . and if I wasn't A GENIUS, then what good was I? My self-concept had once again been raped by the real world, in just about the worst way possible, and it is said that 'truth comes in blows'"

Cut to shot of me wandering alone by the Potomic river, my hands in my British peacoat's pocket. Gloomy music is on, soundtrack from Oliver Stone's "Nixon". Suggests infinite swirls of lonely self-pity. I walk up the the Lincoln memorial and stare up at that great man, tears streaming down my cheeks. The statue is impassive. I walk off into the night and order a cup of coffee at a counter from a Hatian immigrant and mumble "thanks" with gravity.

Cut to shot of aide to Democrat going into speech about budgets and progressive taxation and the wealthy paying their fair share. He asks if there are any questions, I rise up with stiff-jawed Nixonian gumption to ask one and the entire room bursts into applause cheers for 45 seconds, I bow like a stiff European dignitary and ask "What right do you have to tax the rich more than the poor?! Is it their fault that they're successful?! Why 'punish' prosperity?!".

Cut to shot of aide clearing his throat, and tapping some papers on the lectern

"The Democrat looked on sadly, cleared his throat, and said something that I don't remember. He could have perchance asked me if I ever heard of 'Robin Hood'"

Cut to shot of hotel room, kids getting ready to go to bed, myself protesting loudly, shouting, and pointing. "Absolutely, absolutely not"

"But the ultimate blow to my self-concept was the very idea that on this trip we were supposed to share beds. I threw a hissy-fit, but no one was changing the arrangements on my account"

Cut to shot of boy laying in bed, going in effeminate gay voice: "Hey, Mike-- let's go furniture shopping together"

Fade to black

Cut to shot of hyperventing mother

"You can't quit school!"

"Fuck you", I reply defensively with my fingers arched at the table, like an animal in a cage, or a neoconservative trapped like a rat

Cut to shot of John Lewis knocking on the door, a tall, craggy, mean-spirited Republican candidate running for the Missouri State Senate primary. Door opens, and he goes into his all-American "respect-my-authority" spiel. Tax cuts for small businesses, getting rid of intrusive government regulation, and putting common sense back in public affairs. I reply that it sounds good, that I'd vote for him if I was even old enough to vote. Anything to drive "the liberals" out. John Lewis nods, and says that I should work on his campaign.