I looked at Miles like he was crazy, until he laughed. “Duh? Sandler? I’m kidding?”
“There’s some fast food ahead,” I said, pointing to an exit sign that had a spoon on it. “We can fill up there.”
Miles started singing, “Fast food a-head, fast food be-hind, oh, we will never go-a hung-ry.”
“You have a terrible voice,” I said.
“I have a great voice,” he said, aiming us off the highway and into the parking lot of a Super Burger Barn.
“What’s the difference between a Burger Barn and a Super Burger Barn?” I asked.
Miles shrugged. “About twelve bucks in neon?”
I walked in, past a huge plastic Cabbage Cow. Cabbage Cow was Burger Barn’s mascot and spokesman. He wore a big apron and a chef’s hat and handed candy to children at the end of a purple spatula. I could never understand why big smiley Cabbage Cow was so happy, given that most of his family had probably ended up between the seeded buns of a Triple Bac-O Burger. Shouldn’t Cabbage Cow be in mourning? Shouldn’t he have a black armband around his hoof? A black hoofband around his arm?
“Can I help you?” the counter guy asked.
“Yeah, can I talk to the manager?”
He looked scared. “Did I do something wrong? I greeted you, right? I was friendly, right?”
“No,” I said, “you were great. You were perfect. This is about something completely different.”
He looked relieved. He had a big button on his shirt with a picture of Cabbage Cow that said ASK ME ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES IN FRANCHISING!
“The manager’s not here right now. The assistant manager is, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Umm . . . I dunno if talking to him is such a good idea. . . .”
“Why not?”
He looked down at the gleaming metallic counter. He looked up at the menu board. He chewed his bottom lip. He pulled at his hairnet and his bow tie and his hat. I felt sorry for him. “Okay,” he finally said, and went into the back office. I could hear voices, and then a man walked out in a polyester outfit. It was Chad Chilton.
“Can I help you?”
The goatee was gone and he wore a tie and his hair was cut short, but it was definitely him. The counter guy was right. It was a bad idea. My entire body froze.
“Chad Chilton,” I said.
He squinted, looking at me. “Yeah? Do I know you?”
‘Umm . . . no . . . ,” I said. “Definitely not.”
“Okay, so? Andy here says there’s a problem.”
“No, no problem. . . . It’s just . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever heard of bio-diesel?”
Miles pulled the van around back, by the kitchen door, and began unspooling the hose.
“Nice ride,” Chad Chilton said, looking admiringly at the VW’s spoiler. “Did you build this crazy thing?”
I wanted to say yes, but didn’t. That would have been a lie. Not an exaggeration, a flat lie. I’d resolved that by the time we got to California, I was going to be different.
“Um, no. My father’s a sort of inventor guy.”
“Huh,” Chad said, nodding, and then gave the cooks instructions on how to attach the onion ring machine to our pump. He spoke halfway decent Spanish. Then a clerk came out the back door. “Um, Cha . . . Mr. Chilton?”
“What is it, Ralph?”
“Someone wants to pay with their Cabbage Cow Gold Card, but the swipe thingy won’t work.”
Chad Chilton explained how to punch it in manually. Ralph sighed with relief and went back inside. Chad and I stood next to each other, shoulders practically touching, watching cars on the highway. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“My name’s Stan Smith.”
He looked at me blankly. He adjusted his tie. I noticed he was wearing a nice watch.
“Stan Smith?” I said again. “We were in the same grade. A lot of the same classes, actually. Hey, I know what you’ll remember. I lit your locker on fire.”
He gave me a hard stare. I tensed up. Then he laughed. “You’re the locker guy? Wow! That was some stunt.”
“It was?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “All my friends were jealous they hadn’t thought of it first. You were, like, every pyro’s hero.”
“You’re taking it pretty well,” I said, “considering your stuff burned and all. Your leather jacket or books or whatever.”
He shook his head. “No, I never use a locker. I just said that for the insurance. Some old junk burned. Actually, you did me a favor. They paid me almost three hundred bucks.”
“And then after, you said you were going to kill me? Remember?”
He looked off into the distance. “No, I don’t. I said that?”
“Yup.”
“Huh.”
He shrugged, and I believed him. I tried to remember. Was it possible I’d made it all up? I guess there weren’t any real witnesses. Was it all a lack of stifling creativity? Was I insane?
Miles got out of the van. “Chad, dude!” he said. “What is going on?”
“Hey!” Chad Chilton said. “I remember this guy. . . . You’re Niles, or whatever, right?”
“Miles.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, are you still going out with that hot Cari chick?”
Miles looked at me, and then shrugged. “Umm . . . not really.”
“Too bad, dude, she was hot.”
“Yeah,” Miles said, “except now she’s busy being hot at college in Ohio.”
“Not an easy distance, dude,” Chad Chilton said. “Not good.”
“Tell me about it.”
The cook detached the hose. We were full. Andy the clerk ran outside and said, “Cha . . . I mean, Mr. Chilton! A bus of seniors just pulled up! They just ordered a hundred AARP burgers and extra Buzzy Fries and I don’t even know how to ring the discount in!”
Chad looked at me and rolled his eyes. He rubbed his chin, where the goatee used to be.
“Anyway,” I said, “it was good to see you.”
“You, too.”
He reached out to shake my hand. I took it. His was hard and leathery, but so was mine. A lifetime of scrubbing yams. Then Chad Chilton led Andy back into Super Burger Barn by the shoulder, explaining the register to him in slow, patient tones.
I looked at Miles. “Nice guy, huh?”
Miles punched me on the arm, really hard. I knew I deserved it. We got into the van and pulled onto the highway. He put some Led Zeppelin in the CD player and cranked it on full blast. I floored it, revving the engine to our maximum fifty-three miles per hour, and then swung the wheel, aiming straight for California.
“When we get there, I’m starting a band,” he said.
“But you can’t sing.”
“It’s going to be called Seeing For Miles.”
“It’s going to be called a lot of things,” I said. “Mostly by angry audiences.”
“You’ll see,” he said.
I leaned forward and turned up the radio, all the way to eleven, as we drifted into the fast lane.
Treatment for the feature-length film titled
GOING NOWHERE FASTER©
Written by Stan “Stan Smith” Smith
Okay, there’s this one guy, see, and he’s got an esteem problem. And doesn’t have a girlfriend. And doesn’t shave yet. And his mom is an Amazon and his dad couldn’t get a job at Ronco if he paid them, and his house is, like, the pirate ride at Disney World, and his sister is getting so old it’s scary, and his dog produces a tofu by-product that smells like a thousand moldy bagels, and someone is trying to kill him. Okay, that’s your setup. Add a best friend who gets punched in the nose and a kiss in a room full of bratwurst and a quick trip to jail and a trashed store and a boss who could eat his way to the moon without even trying, and you’ve got what we call “plot arc.” Then what happens is, these two guys overcome
all these obstacles, flat tires and painted dolls and liar girls who will smooch anyone with lips and fat hippie killers and, mostly, a complete and utter lack of overall coolness, and they decide to hit the road, like get in the world’s coolest fry-burning van and drive across vast, sprawling, virgin (don’t tell anyone) America. During this trip they find adventure, love, and the meaning of life. It’s a short film with a happy ending. It’s a short script with a great chance of being sold. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s a horror story starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Or a bunch of stapled paper with way too many commas. Either way, these two guys are going to get great gas mileage. Or whatever.
Who ever said all plots are a cliché? And what happens when you realize your boring life isn’t as boring as you thought? And even if it is, what’re the odds there’s a whole lot more interesting material just over the state line?
“Here comes the state line!” Miles said.
I gave it 2 to 1 odds. I just needed a new title.
“How about Dude, Where’s My Scar?” Miles suggested.
“How about Drive, He Said,” I said.
Cut to close-up, steering wheel. Cut to long shot, road. Cue music. Cue sound effects. Medium shot, van speeding. Close-up, yellow highway stripes blurring together. Off camera, laughing. Off camera, a tooting of the horn, beep-beep. Long shot, horizon, blue and still and welcoming in the celluloid distance.
Appendix
Appendix A
English Report
By Stan Smith
Mrs. Brompton’s Class
4th Period
The Role of the “Teen Movie” in the Promotion of Hyper-Infantilism and the Subsequent Diminishment of Reality in the Modern Adolescent
It’s a recent phenomenon. Some scientists have been referring to it quietly, and off the record, as “Mad Keanu Disease” (MKD). It typically starts with a sense of euphoria and renewal of hope among a certain type of dispossessed adolescent. Said adolescent watches a film about street dancers or Rollerbladers or competition surfers, who also happen to be good-looking fifteen-year-olds (disturbingly played by actors in their mid-to-late twenties), and as these actors overcome unlikely filmic obstacles, the gullible teen suffering from MKD becomes convinced that small cinematic victories can be applied to their own insurmountable problems. The MKD sufferer then returns to school thinking the Hot Girl might actually see beneath his nerdish persona and love him for who he really is, or the Football Player might be dissuaded from beating him to death through the timely usage of a clever phrase, or the correct combination of keystrokes and the spilling of a Jolt cola into the back of a computer might cause a crazy surge of CGI electricity that will turn his Dell into a talking-robot buddy and maybe even summon a beautiful model-servant who needs to be taught to dress herself.
Sadly, the outcome of these Teen Movie delusions usually involves, at the very least, further ostracism, but more likely a bloody sweater and a visit to the school nurse.
Other common sicknesses include: The New Kid in Town Syndrome, in which being sort of different and funny and wearing a torn Clash t-shirt makes all the kids at the new school sort of like and grudgingly respect you after a few months of threatening you, especially when that girl you’ve been smiling at in English class turns out to be the girlfriend of the school’s biggest bully. The Last-Minute Display of Talent Syndrome involves spending a few hours (in film time) being hassled and made fun of and caught up in nutty hijinks, like being tripped in the cafeteria or stuffed into a garbage can and rolled down the hill, and then being counseled by your friendly uncle or the sorta-crazy town mortician so when there’s a big crisis, you suddenly display this hidden ability, like being able to fly an airplane or draw really well or perform a liver transplant or run really fast, and then everyone loves you.
Then there’s the Swan Lie, where you’re this sorta mousy girl, even though everyone in the audience can tell you’re actually pretty hot but are just wearing big bulky glasses and dumb clothes and no makeup, and then somehow you get into an argument with the hot girls in school, and then the funny-cool mom in town shows you how to dress and walk and wear eye-shadow in a heartwarming montage set to an old Journey song, and then you show up at the dance and amaze everyone by how hot you really were all along. The gym teacher almost comically swallows his whistle and the dumpy English teacher smiles with a tear in her eye, and when the football player comes over and wants to dance, you reach for the hand of your quirky but sensitive friend instead, the music swelling as you stare into one another’s eyes in the middle of a joyously clapping circle.
Finally, and perhaps worst of all, is the Boy from Across the Tracks tale. See, there’s a rich girl. And she has clueless (but not mean) rich parents and rich (but mean) friends and a rich (total jerk) blond boyfriend, and yet, amazingly, she’s not entirely happy. Despite owning a brand-new red Jeep, there’s something missing in her life. Until that fateful moment when she first sees the Boy from Across the Tracks. He’s usually working at an auto repair shop or a deli. Or maybe he’s just the quirky punk-rock kid who hates everyone at school. Anyway, he and Rich Girl bump into one another, at first disgusted, but there’s no denying the SPARK. They meet again somewhere, a few weeks later, like behind the pool house at some party, and realize they are PERFECT for each other. Her friends make fun of her, and his friends (if he has any) make fun of him, and then there’s some misunderstanding that keeps them apart until the end of the movie, when they get back together, flouting all conventions of class and social expectation and audience gag reflex.
And so, it is these artifices (artifi? artificum?) and all their variations (really not that many) that have transformed much of current unpopular teen-dom into Unrealistic Fantasists, who, despite repeatedly using the above techniques in difficult situations and failing just as badly as they did in any situation previously, continue to be blinded by the maddening pink cloud of MKD. They continue to think that their funny pal “Booger” can teach them how to be alterna-cool by belching loudly and wearing goofy hats, or their mastery of “hacking techniques” can change their grades in the guidance counselor’s office computer, or their clever use of a fishing rod and paper-clip hook can remove any number of hot cheerleader bras. It is a dangerous and deluded precedent set by the meat factory that is Teen Hollywood, and only with parental vigilance, toll-free hotlines, and many, many well-written pamphlets, can MKD be defeated.
Donate now.
Appendix B
Stan Smith’s Totally Official List of the Sixteen BEST Truly Awful Films Ever Made (Compiled somewhere between Nebraska and Utah)
ROADHOUSE — I don’t think there’s any question this tops the list of the most hilarious two hours of moronic genius in celluloid history. See, there’s a roadhouse bar outside of town, full of bikers who are just way too much for one bouncer to handle. Or are they? Patrick Swayze, a freelance bouncer/troubleshooter, is called in to restore order, and quickly mops the floor with dozens of wild-swinging henchmen, bringing them to their knees with FBI-style finger-locks and snappy one-liners. Who knew there was a professional bouncer’s circuit? Who knew only one man could be the best?
POINT BREAK — Best line: “It’s death on a stick out there, mate.” The Swayze returns as “Bodhi,” which is either short for “Boddhisatva” or “Body Odor.” In this role, he’s a Kerouac−style loner who can both surf and quote some Yeats by the driftwood fire. Thing is, he understands the waves. Keanu plays FBI agent “Johnny Utah,” who goes undercover to infiltrate Swayze’s crew of bank robbers, mostly by saying “Whoa” a lot and wearing sandals. Anthony Kiedis from Red Hot Chili Peppers bounces around like tattooed wallpaper to add street cred. Keanu almost gets a face full of lawn mower. Almost.
THE POSTMAN — Kev Costner rebounds from WATERWORLD in possibly the dumbest movie ever made. There’s been a nuclear holocaust, the government has collapsed, there’s no electricity or running water, but someone has to deliver the mail, don’t they? You bet they do. Kev wears a leather trench c
oat and bravely hauls a bag of AOL sign-up CDs, pizza menus, and offers for platinum credit cards to survivor encampments, each one equipped with a beautiful little rosy-cheeked girl wearing a torn and muddy dress who stares with reverence as Kev roars off on the best horse in all of Apocalypse-ville. The bad guy has a really thick goatee and shows off some super-high kicks that Kev handles with the old forearm-block. Men ride horses fast in all directions. The decision to go ahead and make this film, despite what had to have been massive internal studio objections, rivals Mussolini’s green-lighting the invasion of Ethiopia.
SHOWGIRLS — It’s possible this is just plain good.
TANGO AND CASH — Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell in a meeting of the minds so unexpected that it seems possible, even a half hour in, that this is really a documentary about the Potsdam Conference. How did one camera manage to shoehorn both egos into the same movie? Did they use a special NASA lens? Anyway, somehow Sly and Kurt end up in prison, where they beat up every single prisoner, twice.
COBRA — Sly (a loner cop named “Cobretti”) blows away two gang members while they’re robbing the meat counter of the local grocery store. “The only thing that stands between these animals and the Black Forest ham is me!”
THE COLOR OF NIGHT — Includes many unpleasant shots of a half-naked Bruce Willis. The script may have been dictated by a transplanted brain being kept alive in a jar of saline solution while being prodded by a series of low-voltage electric shocks.
RAW DEAL — Arnold before both THE TERMINATOR and elocution school. Arnold drives a convertible Cadillac full-speed into a dump truck and walks away without a scratch on him. Arnold beats up a mannequin. Arnold has tiny handgun that somehow, instead of the usual eight, appears to hold a couple hundred bullets. He works his way up from mob enforcer to trusted confidant in order to exact revenge on the Big Boss, and then shoots 173 people. He somehow keeps a straight face the entire film, even though his character’s name is “Joey.”
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