Stoner's Interlude #1: Bleeding Heart Graffiti

The boy is clumsily initiated into the mysterious world of adolescence by an older acquaintance who shows him the possibilities of hip, adept youth culture like two young squires. It is a very tempting spread of  "underground" lore that seems to go on forever and ever. Eventually they start "rough-housing" and the younger one wins, leading to "a falling out" and existential emptiness.

Part IV: Crucified by the Bell

The world of childhood begins to die once Michael "Lawless" Adams enters middle-school. He desires all the benefits of his new-found expanded consciousness but none of the costs, and feels "boxed in" by the requirements of running an artificially-ordered "learning environment" with all its glaring contradictions, hypocrisies, and downright brutality. The band, "Metallica" have become his heroes-- outlaws, low-down heavy metal cretins in this exuberant, nihilistic time. Corporations are expanding their grip on young minds, and our hero feels the deep "disconnect" between the world they portray, trying to insinuate themselves into young minds, and the actual reality "on the ground". Our hero leads an unsuccessful "prison riot" in the school cafeteria during lunch hour
and "is banished for life", being too much of a disruptive influence on the grounds.

Part VI: November Rain

Our hero's revolutionary fervor has cooled down and he "turns within" for answers, seeking out mysticism and "the occult" and consciousness-expansion.  It is a bland compromise that accepts its limitations yet still reaches out with ultra-vivid "wishful thinking" whatever the sad materialism of life and the passing of our days down at a haunted house or two. He actually gets to meet "Beetlegeuse", a man dressed up like his personal hero, in a long line. He is taken up with the romance of 20th century literature and how the history somehow has some kind of apparent, mystical continuity with the present, which isn't very obvious, if at all realistic. He finds himself taken with an older girl who looks like a classic American beauty, and a girl his age that invites him to a Christmas ice-skating party with whom he one day desires to share his vast inner world. his greatest gift that he feels like he can offer to anyone. But he must beat his shyness if he is to have a chance at winning with either, a clumsy oaf to the end.

Part VII: The Prisoner

The boy takes his existential stand for "tolerance and diversity", exercising such themes to what in his mind is their logical, transcendent conclusion in exhausted times of ennui and crass materialism where "sacredness" is a hollow shell and the country is becoming increasingly divided between artsy, flaky people and the militia crowd. But he lives in a world of pretenders, because no one escapes the classic fault-lines of negative human psychology when you find pockets of evil and corruption within the "us vs. them" narrative which is made all the more bogus because this is a society of outcasts who secretly loathe themselves. The system "does not add up" and the boy questions the questioners, the sanity of "magical thinking" especially in an failed attempt to win over the heart of a fabled older girl on Valentine's Day with a note from "your secret admirer". Folly of youth, tragedy of experience!

Part VIII: Star Wars Kid

Crash-landing into a new high school after being expelled for fighting, the boy is soon tarred an unhappy radical despite his attempt to make "a fresh start" for himself". The jungle quality of preppie 1990's existence is parodied and skewered in many clever ways. Whatever people wanted to say about the messianic promise of computers or the ultimate triumph of free market economics hurdling toward "the end of history", there were a lot of cracks in the facade as everything became increasingly bloated and the wrong things over-regulated by red tape. Even his former heroes, "Metallica" have become a cog in the system. Our society was overheating with worship of money, maximized individual rights, and addiction to comfort, obscuring the harsher facts of existence  that were becoming inescapable. So many people looked to the entertainment media and celebrities as some kind of fantasy, but one that could not be fulfilled as the market catered to illusions, a hunger for "some kind of  answer" which kept people distracted from those who were robbing them blind. Young men of an overly-serious bent go off in their various directions-- whether that of pomposity, death metal, or the worship of a certain Hollywood actress who shall not be named, lest she cause a giggling fit and he fall to the floor.

Part IX: Hellbound Train

Not knowing what else to do with himself, his prospects blown, our hero turns to cheap cynicism and sociopathy, thinking that's the only way you can get ahead in the world unless one wanted to be a minimum-wage drudge at the very bottom of the economic ladder who finds themselves crippled by the limitations of their naked, pathetic honesty and overall inadequacy after nearly being conned and taken advantage of at the local airport playing video games like a fat sucker. He thinks himself "a trickster" around the aisles of "Union Station" but instead finds himself drawn in and tricked as he works for a telemarketing scheme for "The Missouri State Trooper Association". A likely story, if any-- as our screenwriter is in for the education of a lifetime! But it is always said that truth comes in blows. . . . .
 

Stoner's Interlude #2: Bad Medicine Waltz: The REAL Beetlejuice

Hedonism and shiftlessness and "bottom-of-the-barrel" living seems like the way to go until the screenwriter decides that it's his destiny to write "Beetlejuice 2" and meet Winona Ryder. Because he can't get permission or licensing fees or the original actors, he instead decides to do a character study on his manic-depressive friend, Mike who lives just about on the same level with "The Ghost with the Most" as they detail vile old stories about "The Self-Help Center", a drop-in "club-house" for the mentally-ill from the very beginning where dust is plentier than pleasure, pleasure more enticing than virtue. Mike himself is struggling with his one, warped existential moment when he wishes he could have done something different to avoid his present, wretched circumstances. "The Divine Fool", so to speak, takes our mind of our own troubles and puts us on the road to recovery.

Part XI: Galaxy Jesse

Michael "Lawless" Adams finally gains a little bit of insight, that it's the small things in life that matter, that get us through, and maybe at long last he can leave his self-imposed prison of exile. The camera turns to his brother, a bridge to the normal world as they convene like two young wizards over a cauldron lighting up the cave with laughter. Will they ever meet their "dream girls"? Who knows, but so long as they have a Nintendo deck and some old movies they'll never be bored or lonely. And blood is more vital than the toxic sludge of modern-day life as they share a bond that can't be broken, despite everything else. . . . .