The world was apparently in a time of transition, an era of extreme media rising out of the ashes of something hazy and naive from a previous time. The era of "comfort food" on television was over--

[CUT TO CLIP of the actress who plays "Blossom" in the old show circa 1991. Maybe even the theme music, when the actress dances around charismatically in a ballerina outfit to a doggy, finger-snapping blues song that's so family-friendly you could puke. Doing handstands, cartwheels, gymnastic tricks, such charming enthusiasm that will quickly look "out-of-date" and absurd in "the age of irony"]

-- hardening like sand fused into black glass in the aftermath of the Gulf War and the recession and the fall of the U.S.S.R. and then breaking up into a million pieces like a bunch of squiggling worms as the nations turned to democracy, the power went to the people, the free markets set up shop, and corruption set in. For every set of chains a society busts, another pair snakes up to entangle you link-by-link that are even harder to break.

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of African child soldiers in pink wigs running around with carbines, committing mayhem]

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of war-torn Bosnia and pools of blood where the Serbs have shelled the marketplace. . . . . all is chaos as the U.N. dickers around impotently with the piteous voice of the BBC in the background]

And one knew not what to feel about the ennui, the exhaustion of the times that varied between "where do we go from here?" heaviness and the worst kind of material crassness that you could imagine. A pale, sickly wind seemed to blow and the world was just about flat out of ideas.

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of the 1995 Academy Awards]

If the 1995 Academy Awards happened on t.v, it made you think "who cared?". The familiar faces of prestige and good looks were there but ultimately the culture felt like nothing more than "a hollow shell", like the sloughed off remains of a scarab beetle in the desert. Meager and dried-out, like a thin piece of steak cooked in a pan over my Dad's grubby stove.

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of thin, meager steak being fried in a pan over a grubby stove. This sure ain't the set of "The Today Show" with idealized circumstances and plump, pleasing celebrity chefs!]

There was no "Porterhouse" or "Filet Mignon" this time out, so we settled for "this" and supposed, with weary resignation, that it was "good enough".

[CUT TO SHOT of Clint Eastwood in the Academy Awards looking tired and withered, like a slice of mule-jerky]

[CUT TO PICTURE of "The Winona Ryder Scrapbook" where she strikes a very serious, languid pose of yearning]

Much like another one of those endless line of bad Winona Ryder movies that took itself way too seriously "with no room to breathe", such withered sacredness was quickly losing ground as the right-wing crowd of militias, home-school advocates, strict constitutionalists, and libertarians off on the internet published treatises on "small government" in the crappy stink of what felt like a small-minded "dead-end", wheezing on like a cancer-stricken rancher who had fallen upon "hard times" in these days of bitter drought that would not be soon lifted.

[CUT TO SHOT of line of Port-a-John's on Oklahoma construction site]

But people were too invested in the system, and would just as soon invest in bison meat which was supposed to be "the wave of the future" but went bust like putting your money in gold or voting for Lyndon LaRouche or betting that the UFO's were going to show up any day now in some screwy idea of sci-fi deliverance.

[CUT TO CLIP of herd of bison]

[CUT TO CLIP OF VINEGARY OLD COWBOY loading GOLD BARS on his table in a dingy kitchen]

[CUT TO PICTURE of OVAL-HEADED MARTIAN standing there like a computer programmer at a single's bar]

Or believing in "the flying car" which was supposed to come out "just around the corner", like "in the next five years" or even some dim-witted character down in the Florida swampland who called into a paranormal radio program claiming to have captured "a dinosaur" and wondering how he could sell it before the government stepped in and confiscated it. All along, it turned out to be a South American lizard that had slowly migrated north by irresponsible pet owners.

[CUT TO PICTURE of "Reverse Evolution" with a caption that reads "The Descent of Talk Radio"]

"The Descent of Talk Radio"

[CUT TO CLIP of "How to Make an American Quilt" when an old grandma and Winona's character are having a heart-to-heart conversation]

You couldn't sell that to the Hollywood, fashion, or artistic community-- let alone the well-to-do material of pottery classes and ballet lessons and juice makers and wind chimes and well-meaning world harmony. Yes, "New Left" couples talking about "balance"-- loose screws in the first place who sympathized more with the Vietnamese than they did with America. They could give their reasons-- physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual-- but probably otherwise wouldn't survive outside of their "blue-state confine".

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of Oklahoma City Bombing, the newscast leading in about a Ryder truck loaded with explosives and Timothy McVeigh and his pal Terry Nichols involved in the far-right militia movement]

[CUT TO PICTURE of TIME magazine cover of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber]

A whole world was forced onto the nation, blown up on the pages of "TIME" & "Newsweek" magazine, what the bicoastal liberals and blue-state dots of the cities in-between feared the most-- the angry Scotch-Irish white male. The backbone of the south and rural wastelands, the warrior elite in our military, the scowling, small-minded cynic who didn't necessarily respond to liberalism and big government's flowery overtures of submission. He was the clenched fist, the knife-thrower launching a piece at the head of "Big Bird" on "Sesame Street"--

[CUT TO CLIP of "Big Bird on Sesame Street having a knife thrown at its head, making it "instantly silent" and lecturing on no more to little children in an explosion of feathers. Little kids run away screaming]

-- "the one who just wouldn't go along". And that scared the piss out of people who wondered why everyone just wouldn't "give in to comfort and be sensible".

[CUT TO PICTURE of TIMOTHY McVEIGH'S MUG SHOT]

But looking around, when a lonely, unattached man with literal-minded proclivities falls into computers, or Star Trek, or ideas about small government & "we the people" with the click of a loaded handgun, that existence can get "pretty stark" when you don't have anything else "to fall back upon" except the simmering tar pit of negativity.

[CUT TO PICTURE of TERRY NICHOLS looking on with an owl-like expression]

It was the world of stilted speech, lack of confidence, and mail-order brides as a bewildered feller tried to carve out an existence with everything creeping, subterranean, and impure.

And how the world refused to understand. . . . . and even laugh at them as they lived it up like royalty.

[CUT TO SHOT of Aspen Ski Lodge and 24 year-old Pearl Jam fans in stocking caps cracking earnest, ironic quips circa '94/'95]

[CUT TO SKI LODGE restaurant with "ski bunnies" and politician and movie star-types eating fancy cuisine on gleaming, white cutlery]

If it wasn't someone like John Kerry snowboarding in an $800 snow-suit, it was "The New York Times"/goat cheese set and their young, brain-dead hanger-on's who looked like the models out of those "Tommy Hilfigre" cologne ads in "Rolling Stone" magazine. Too rich, too blessed, too silky, too good-looking, to ever know about down-in-the-dirt struggle. If they had problems, it was drugs because they simply had no problems and were vacant and bored.

[CUT TO PICTURE of damaged-looking model in magazine ad]

Maudlin feeling came into play, like weeping for starving children in a third world land or conscientious vegetarianism or Eastern religions or fragile mortality-- some time, 50 years from now, sobbing over a once-handsome, arrogant movie star like Ethan Hawke when he has turned into a hunched-over, sour old man like a snarling cat. Yes, like the dropping of petunia petals into the crying wind over a lake. Better kill the pain. . . . . with more drugs.

[CUT TO PICTURE of a very zonked-out looking River Phoenix in a tuxedo at a Hollywood gathering]

"Huh?"

It was the romanticism of the 1960's leading into even-worse '70s, those who took their stand against the system like petty thieves carpet-bagging from the false ruins of "good citizenship". The sins of "the counterculture" could be forgiven against that of "the establishment", which in the liberal narrative was portrayed as some kind of all-black, grasping "octopus" of corruption, lies, and "pure evil".  Taking license was "all relative" next to what you were against, but by this time "idealism" had changed into reveling in "the twisted blindness of the universe" as if it was some kind of answer, flirting with destruction in some kind of "slow, postmodern death-fuck" that jumped into the void of nothingness like a transcending answer.

[CUT TO SHOT of ugly Basquiat painting with narration overdub that says he's a legend in the art-world and that his canvases have sold for millions]

In an explosion of hip, 90's, multi-ethnic advertising color, the advertising industry that co-opted these ideas told you "to do your own thing" while sipping their cola like alternative princes, a dreadlocked buddy in a jumping-jack pose as "the magical black man" on to the secret of soul that evaded the rest of us.

[CUT TO PICTURE of MAGICAL BLACK MAN in jumping-jack pose]

The apparent attitude was "total non-judgment", an air of socially-conscious tolerance, but this was just the charming face of the salesman leading you over to "the show-room" of expensive lifestyle accessories. Presumably, if you bought the whole line of music, clothing, athletic shoes, video games, and book-bags, you would be just as cool and casual and beautiful as they were. . . . . as I stared with my hands and nose pressed against the glass.

[CUT TO SCENE in "Higher Learning", a pompous, "up-to-date", politically-correct film that shows college kids walking around a campus like an MTV spot]

The caste system. . . . . the bold, the beautiful, the confident, the casual, the socially-skilled. "Monkey see, Monkey do".

[CUT TO PICTURE of ITALIAN LIQUOR AD featuring a monkey holding a bottle of hootch up to its lips and looking "right satisfied"]

There I paced outside, wondering if I could ever insinuate my way in. To somehow "break the code", or "sing in the right key" like Ali Baba watching "The 40 Thieves" utter "OPEN SESAME" and enter their cave of untold loot.

[CUT TO PICTURE of Children's Story Book of 1001 Arabian Nights and Ali Baba watching the 40 thieves from the bushes]

In video games there are sometimes hidden sub-basements of programming called "Easter eggs" that open up the gamer to hidden rooms or bosses. If you tap the controls at the right instant, at the right place, at the right time-- like an occult ritual, almost-- then "the universe will split open" and perform magic. It is the stuff of hearsay and rumor among the nation's youth, seeking to break into "the higher reality" that underlies the rules like young magic adepts who probably need to "get outside" more often.

[As this happens, CUT TO FOOTAGE of MORTAL KOMBAT video game when the player breaks into the super-secret level as a guide explains the process]

And there I was "in my Jedi knight cave", brooding on all of this--

I wanted, one supposes, what every teenager wants-- to be a winner. All with not having to put in a whole lot of effort, though struggling with deep-seated "attitude slumps" that couldn't be "cleaned up" with the "quick-fix" shoestring of positive thinking or dime-store Zen, shopping around like an anxious consumer loading up on pseudo-profundities in a modern-day shopping cart as if the mess can be cleaned up with "Bounty" paper towels, "the quicker-picker-upper" of 1950's corporate jingles where all problems could be "squared away" with the right application of force and wouldn't blow up in your face like a can of squiggling worms as the machine of rationalism powered up "to win the war".

[CUT TO PICTURE of BRAWNY PAPER TOWELS LOGO that then explodes into a mass of revolting, squiggling worms]

Perhaps, I followed the magazines and media a little too avidly, trying to fit it into a grand narrative, wanting to believe that "all this blindness had a higher meaning".

[CUT TO STOP-MOTION spread of music & movie magazines, becoming more and more cluttered]

[CUT TO SHOT of the Milky Way galaxy and a SUCKING BLACK HOLE DEVOURING STARS]

What seemed to sell was the aquarium-like expression of the emotionally-featureless. The drifter, the sociopath, the gambler, the drug user, the edgy actor with "the attitude" who could be set down anywhere in America and you wouldn't be quite sure if he'd draw a horde of screaming girls or be fencing somebody's hubcaps. Johnny Depp. . . . . River Phoenix. . . . . Christian Slater. . . . . idols of youth, "bad-boy lite".

[CYCLE THROUGH THESE MOVIE STARS' PICTURES]

What seemed to mark their movies and attitudes was a strange, incongruous weirdness, darkness, and vulgarity that was completely inexplicable to the outsider not in tune to that hip culture, looking on puzzled like a corn-fed Midwesterner. Just how that seemed "revolutionary" without being "revolting", I could not say-- but the public gathered around them and hailed their genius because it was "the smart thing" to worship.

[CUT TO SHOT of pseudo-sophisticates in black turtle-necks looking on in a modern art gallery and nodding their heads]

I figured that knowledge and self-awareness had expanded, breaking us out of the box and into new frontiers as the bounds of our world widened. You could say that I was one to believe in the transcendence of consciousness-expansion, of what a record or book or movie could do for the human race-- taking them to higher and higher levels of rapture, that we were entering "a new plane of existence".

[CUT TO CLIP from "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?". Johnny Depp sitting down impassively and having an unusual conversation with a free-spirited girl mentioned that praying mantis females bite the heads off the suitor in the mating act then devour their bodies]

When I had long hair and was wearing flannel shirts at the age of 13 or 14, my Dad remarked that I looked a little bit like Johnny Depp in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" from the side and back.

[CUT TO CLIP of JOHNNY DEPP from the movie walking around from the back]

I wondered, with this compliment, if I didn't look a little bit like that standard Johnny Depp trope if I could not BECOME Johnny Depp and be "a real winner".

Why, with long hair I would become a lone guitar bard. . . . . camping out on the floor of his loft, practicing for weeks, never looking up (-- like Johnny Depp!).

[CUT TO SHOT of 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS doing this in a hip, spare loft with circus posters hanging everywhere-- a parody and caricature of Johnny Depp's lifestyle. Yes, where circus posters hang up of weeping clowns and bearded women raising their skirts]

I would be a coffee house philosopher, laying out a revolver on the table in a game of "Russian Roulette" to prove a point to his dignified, solemn brethren (-- like Johnny Depp!).

[CUT to shot of 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS reaching down for a revolver, and cocking it like a revolutionary in a room full of artists, nihilists, and poets. . . . . if not a homeless drifter who looks like Tom Waits]

Find him brushing snow from muscular shoulders as he entered the gym at daybreak, a rider in the snow (-- like Johnny Depp!).

[CUT TO FOOTAGE of JOHNNY DEPP from Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man"]

[CUT TO SHOT of 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sitting in his new room with his eyes closed]

At the time, "a spiritual call" washed over me, seeking "a test"-- wondering if my moment had truly arrived. You sit there brooding in your room, waiting for confirmation from the above like the Jedi Knight deep in concentration and feel a slight sizzle rising from the back of your scalp. Was this "the sign"? "The Miracle"? Your brush with God? You supposed it was because there was nothing better to believe in, . . . . and one did not want to be overly "shut" to the mysteries of the universe.

"To embrace the blindness", "to crack the code", "to burst through to the other side", you would do something very daring. To be a revolutionary in sympathy with Basquiat & Johnny Depp and the authenticity of the lone guitar bard, and free-soul drifter wandering down that lonely highway like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy and Allan Ginsburg. . . . . to unite the past, present, and future from the 1930's "New Deal" farmer to the astronauts in the 1960's "Space Race", and "back-to-the-land" protest politics and modern art and "Star Trek" and "the occult underground" and in the name of "everlasting life", I took to not showering when I got home from the gym.

It made perfect sense up in my head-- playing into the cosmic divinity-- but whatever I was trying to do, "my act stunk". No one knew my intentions, nor wanted to understand, and I had no idea how to explain my motivations even if they did care.

[CUT TO PICTURE of AGHAST SOCIETY WOMAN holding up a TIN OF ALTOIDS MINTS to ward away the undesirable]

Yet I could not believe my eyes, the fact that people were not accepting me, and I held on even fervently to my long-brooded calculations. The whole crux of my alternative liberal arts education was "think different", and there I was trying to reinvent the wheel, thinking I was Gallieo up against "the ignorance of his time", nailed up to the church door as "a martyr for truth". This was "tolerance" & "diversity" taken to its logical conclusion, right?

[CUT TO CLIP of classic Vaudville Stage, and a long-haired poet going out there to read atrocious verses. The crowd starts roaring in disapproval and then begins throwing rotten vegetables as the sophisticate calls them "backward simpletons" and keeps reading, a hook is reached out there to try to drag him back, but he avoids it-- "not taking the hint". . . . eventually a squash knocks him in the face and he goes down with a crash, his papers flying everywhere]

Needless to say, "The Lady-Bug" wouldn't go out with me. In fact, asking her out started the riot. He was abominable! He was hideous! In the script of consensus he was little more than a "stage villain"!

[CUT TO CLIP of "Snidely Whiplash-type character sneaking across the stage toward an innocent lamb of a young female, her back turned]

And how the merry audience calls out encouragement to the maiden picking flowers in a sunbonnet, warning her as cruel Hades arrives in his chariot to abduct her with a crack of his reins off to his underworld of dirt!

[CUT TO CLIP OF CRUEL HADES galloping away with the girl, sound of whinnying horses and galloping hooves]

What I had to figure out is that in the marketplace, if you have 10,000 people all selling apples and you're selling bananas it will definitely put you at an advantage, but no one will but them if they are black and rotten and are drawing flies. There is simply no market-clearing price for your goods, and you're left with the stench of rotten fruit. Some might think that equality and fairness stand for exactly the same thing, but no matter how much you fudge around with the definitions you yet do not alter reality.

[CUT TO CLIP of "Market-Place" example, with people down a long line of streets selling apples, but one man has a sign with a bunch of bananas painted on it. The camera swoops down, and shows rotten fruit as the Italian grocer says, "Hey, fresh bananas!" The camera "walks away" and the guy keeps trying to sell the rotten fruit in view of the audience]

[CUT TO CLIP of GOTHS hanging out by a brick wall, smoking. 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS approaches and they look uncomfortable, then shout at him to leave]

"Who are you to say?", but people still gravitate toward what is better-- and crack down on what is disruptive or threatening-- and no one leaves the classic fault-lines of negative human psychology, whatever the presumptions of a progressive creed, when you find pockets of evil and corruption within the "us vs. them" narrative which is made all the more rotten because this was a society of outcasts who secretly loathed themselves.

[CUT TO PICTURE of "OUT & PROUD DRAG QUEEN" Flaunting his perversions]

But at least I could dream, while so many others wouldn't or couldn't. No man can comprehend more than what his imagination and courage of his heart can grasp, and most weren't dealing on a very high level. Here was the creed-- loud and shrill, like a big spoon rattled around in a swill bucket where the winners are those who can blat their glottal stops over and over the longest and loudest-- never use stereotypes about anybody. Especially the racist, sexist, and homophobic kind or any sort of prejudgment about goths, stoners, or furrowed Pearl Jam fans hopping around with hackey-sacks. Or slackers who pretended to be "workaholics", or even those who wrote pseudo-sophisticated punk rock manifestos that didn't bother to run "spell-check".

[CUT TO SHOT of LOLLAPALOOZA CROWD looking shiftless and furrowed]

But so long as you shook your finger at America's ways and cut down the accomplishments of mainstream civilization, pointing out the positive quirks of other world cultures throughout history and saying we should be more like someone else-- at best, socialist Europe of tanned soccer players in an iconic flash-bulb moment, and at it's worst, the snow-blue helmets of a United Nations peace-keeping force waving Styrofoam "wiggly sticks" in order to quell ethnic violence-- then you were with the right tide of opinion.

[CUT TO SHOT of SOCCER RIOTS and U.N. Security Forces futilely trying to maintain order]

[CUT TO CLIP of JUDY lecturing in front of the class, looking authoritative yet clueless, holding her palms out to make a point]

Perhaps this alternative "people's narrative" might have had more credibility, if not for the cruddy, New-Left utopian of a teacher continuing to lecture on the toilet with the door open while she pee'ed, farted, and condemned the divorce court, if not ex-husbands in general in a "Ms. Magazine" feminist rant.

[SOUND EFFECT: LOUD FART that underscores the pathetic nature of "revolution from below"]

But all the anger was directed against "evil white men", the same evil corporate entities who sold them their cigarettes, designer-label clothing, and vulgar MTV lifestyles.

[CUT TO CLIP of Winona Ryder & Ethan Hawke sitting around a Texas diner in "Reality Bites", the young and spry contrasted next to a mean old husk of a right-wing cowboy drinking his coffee. Clearly it's the ole' "us vs. them" mentality that is quickly made to look ridiculous]

[FREEZE FRAME THE CLIP & go into Short Commentary just explicated]

Whatever it was, it came down to a bunch of empty signage-- a bunch of radical talk that influences how people gestured and dressed but it wasn't like they were going to follow through and do anything. When "tearing down" was easier than "building up", when everyone carried on like a bunch of iguanas sunning themselves on a rock, those Zen-like depths of laziness to which one could possibly aspire-- the law of entropy, the eventual heat-death of the universe that swallowed all endeavor. Yes, consciousness and free will maintained by jolts of Mountain Dew, a jangled flow of alternative music running like gouts of yellow pus, and staring fixed in front of one's computer playing endless rounds of first-person shooter games like some kind of melded "Cyborg" interface.

[AS THIS NARRATION CONTINUES CUT TO--]

[CLIP of PEARL JAM'S "JEREMY VIDEO"]

[ANARCHIST PROTESTORS in black masks walking around with AN UPSIDE AMERICAN flag spray-painted with an ANARCHY SIGN]

[IGUANAS sunning themselves on a rock]

[DAVE PIRNER looking singularly stoned as he walks through a phalanx of photographers with Winona]

[A CLIP from "DOOM II" when the character is running through an abandoned military research station, firing away with a shotgun from a first-person perspective]

What concerned me were the culture magazines, and their fixations--how they represented the thermostat of our society that was festering with irony. Everything was a joke about "blow-jobs" and worshipping the director, Quinton Tarintino who looked like a clicking insectivore with his slick, amoral movies that worshiped style over substance with ugly, brutal violence which came down to "what you could get away with" instead of what was right.

And above it all, was the religion of egalitarianism-- that no man was inherently better than another even though I acutely felt "the downward drag of the crowd".

[CUT TO SHOT OF BALD-HEADED SATAN in a red-cape with a goatee laughing]

Put not your faith in governments, for they will under-serve you. Put your faith not in socialism, because there you have the rats feeding on the hoarded grain-- waving their tails.

[CUT TO SHOT of SQUEAKING RATS feeding like pestiferous vermin]

Put not your faith in a doddering committee full of self-serving idiots, because the filters through which they see the world are blurry and scummed-over with opiated waking dreams.

[CUT TO SHOT of table of ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS staring on like the Gerber's Baby]

And always know. . . . . that "The Swedish Blitzkrieg" will always tear the gizzard out of "The Mighty Ducks".

[CUT TO CLIP of "The Mighty Ducks 2" when the blond-haired, blue-eyed, homogenous Swedish team is mopping the floor with the diverse, politically-correct Americans]

[CUT TO SHOT of BALD-HEADED SATAN throwing back his head, laughing demonically as lightning strikes and it pours rain outside his castle]

[CUT TO PICTURE of JOHNNY DEPP leaning over, looking hang-dog and impassive]

If some "lucky skunk" like Johnny Depp ever had "a mystique" around him, it was because by "saying less" the audience thinks "there's more". If you strike an iconic pose, "keep it vague", and let others "fill in the blanks", then anyone can come across as far more brilliant then they really suppose themselves to be. But the audience does not dare question the icon, because the bigger the crowd, then the more credibility someone has.

Maybe they only "half-believe" in what they stand for, while the either/or "true believers" sink like a stone. And death goes to the hesitators who get nothing. In the Bible, Daniel went into "the lion's den" as an act of faith but God has no comment on those who would yank on the big cat's tale, going "KITTY!, KITTY!".

[CUT TO ANIMATED CLIP, a Hanna-Barbara imitation, of 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS skipping into the lion's den and yanking on the beast's tail. The lion wakes up and rips him to shreds as a 1960's "laugh-track" plays in the background]

But evidently I hadn't figured this out yet,

I became a focal point for students' and teachers' abuse who didn't understand, a handy dumpster of anxieties for everything no one wanted to be and was verbally slapped around like a Mongoloid idiot. As the Civil Rights movement as my witness, "I would overcome" like the march in Selma.

[CUT TO PICTURE of James Meredith laying shot on the road, yelling in pain]

In desperation, crucified like "Piss Christ", I clung to "the romance of victimhood" like Edward Scissorhands in the 1990 Tim Burton movie starring none other than Johnny Depp. But there seemed to be a couple of few, key differences between myself and that pathetic, flop-haired anti-hero who almost seems to revel in his suffering:

1) You never get the girl
2) You have no special talents
3) You may be a tortured freak, but you're not beautiful
4) The angry mob will always burn you in the end on a flaming pyre

My mother, concerned with my declining emotional state, took me to see "Powder". . . . . a movie about an albino young man in a hick, southern small town who turned out to have brilliant special powers and was eventually tortured to death by an ignorant mob that hated him because he was different. . . . but in a liberating metamorphosis, proving he was too good for this world, he turned into pure energy and transcended up into the clouds.

[CUT TO VARIOUS CLIPS of "Powder", a young man walking along the railroad tracks and then beaten to death by jocks]

Later, I read in a magazine that the artist who wrote, directed, and produced it turned out to be a gay pedophile who secretly molested little boys on film sets. Oh, well. . . . that's liberal Hollywood for you. I think with that knee-jerk realization, spinning around uncertainly for a little bit, I finally dropped everything and became a right-wing conservative. . . . . because no matter how self-indulgent, we cannot tolerate the intolerable.

[CUT TO PICTURE of CALENDAR turned to February, the 14th circled in red]

But not all "the magical thinking" had been wrung out of me yet. Valentine's Day was fast approaching, and my angst turned to Leanne. She would be graduating soon, and leaving my shell-shocked little corner of "jungle hell" behind forever in this "prisoner of war" camp. 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 infinitely shy, awkward, creeping, marble-mouthed half-man who felt the necessity "to act".

[CUT TO CLIP of trio of black girls snapping their fingers and soulfully harmonizing, then shift to a table where three black girls are sitting at a table in the hallway-- busily working over the Cookiegram message booth for a price]

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, whatever it would be.

[14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS' EYES dart around as he strokes his chin, coming up with the semblance of a plan]

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

[IN SLOW MOTION, OUR HERO walks toward THE TABLE]

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

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"

Maybe I believed in "magical girls", or "telepathic intuition"-- mentally inside the shell of the perfect guitar sting of a transcendentally-romantic rock ballad, but now I would find out "what was hidden beneath the cloth" for all this time.

[On Valentine's Day morning in the cafeteria, kids are reading a pink newsletter that contains the content of all the messages. OUR HERO'S FACE looks very sickly]

"OH SHIT!"

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.

[14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sits alone by the soda machines, arms crossed, brooding, staring off into space. Doofusy 9th and 10th graders with no sense of restraint come up and ask if he sent it. OUR HERO denies it perhaps too adamantly. Then LEANNE walks in with a dark cloud over her face, and buys a soda. As OUR HERO looks down at the floor, kids look on in awe as she leaves]

Everything is judged by its appearance. . . . . what is unseen counts for nothing.

[ENTER MUSIC, the last dramatic quarter of "November Rain" as 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS clenches his jaw and walks on down to the coffee shop where she works at lunch. Drama, turmoil, trauma as the film is spliced with frenetic shots from the video. Punks, goths, stoners, and grunge kids sit around the tables, looking contemptuous as OUR HERO comes through the door. They smirk mean-spiritedly.

OUR HERO meekly goes up to LEANNE working behind the counter, and subtitles appear-- getting across that he asks if he could buy her a cup of coffee. She shakes her head "no" with contempt.

The sequence reaches a conclusion when Axl Rose kneels at the graveside of his deceased bride in the cold November rain. The final shot shows the Valentine flower sticking out of the trash can]

[FADE TO BLACK]

[THIS IS SUDDENLY CONTRASTED BY THE HUMOROUS, INCONGRUOUS SHOCK OF--]

[A SCENE FROM TIM BURTON'S "BATMAN RETURNS" when "The Penguin", played by Danny Devito, is exposed as a loathsome monster completely shorn and disassociated from all of humanity. He runs through snow-fallen Gotham City park at a grotesque, loping gait as the police chase after him-- "There he is!"-- making grunting, bestial animal sounds. Finally, he makes it to a bridge and flops over into the frozen water, getting away as the cops try to catch up but miss him]

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

[14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS walks down the hall with a military crew-cut and a fierce expression]

[A wigger razzes him about his short hair]

[A musical sequences comes on-- a choir singing "Ode to Joy"-- as imagery of Ronald Reagan, tanks, the military build-up, the muadjadeen, religious fundamentalists, gun shows, Adolf Hitler, cops beating on Rodney King, nuclear explosions, and finally me slamming somebody up against a locker and beating the shit out of him]

I was expelled from school and asked never to return. . . . . and a big chapter in my life was over.

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Click here for Part VIII:
"Star Wars Kid"

(Back to the "Galaxy Michael" Index)