found drama

Back-drop is essentially a mid-to-late-80s live action children’s television show. Something very closely linked to Reagan’s D.A.R.E. program. Cheesy set that’s supposed to be an urban youth center but has obviously too much land out back to be urban and is obviously too well funded to be real. The youth center counselors are clean cut go-getters — the kind that would appear in a late-80’s government-funded public service announcement or a late-30’s Berlin poster. I’m not actually here. It’s more like I’m watching this on TV. But I’m clearly supposed to empathize with the adolescent protagonist — brown hair, an 18 year old playing a 12-to-14 year old (you know the type). He’s naive to the world around him and slightly confused. He’s been riding his scooter (motorcycle?) over from his mom’s apartment to this place and is a little disheveled. All he really wants to do is take it out back to do a little motocross. But there’s the whole forced routine with the stunningly-blonde counselor. Then it gets really TV. Really end of a G.I. Joe episode. WWF wrestler Rick Flair shows up out of a puff of smoke. He’s not wearing his usual gear though. He’s got on some sort of spandex super-hero outfit. But the outfit isn’t very late-80s. It’s more like late-60s cartoonish. Maroon, with sweeping rings that seem to float around the shoulders, a neckline that plunges to the navel, and a big gold belt. He almost looks like a carton of McDonald’s fries with his own platinum blonde hair. I don’t even really know who Rick Flair is but this is him. And for just a moment, you’re supposed to believe that he’s one of the good guys. Because the celebrity guest always is. But as soon as the very mundane but very pretty boy counselor has turned his back, Rick Flair is all up in the kid’s face. Calling him Joey (even though his name totally isn’t Joey) and telling him to try some “Peppers”. He’s got this brownish light-fast medicine bottle out and is shoving it in “Joey’s” face. TRY SOME PEPPERS! Except that they can’t all be the same drug. The pills are all white. But they’re all different sizes. TRY SOME PEPPERS. “Joey” takes some, just to get Rick Flair off his back. And then Rick gives him the whole bottle and disappears in a puff of smoke. But Joey can’t handled the Peppers and spills the bottle all over the place. Revealing the mushroom-shaped pills with little red dots on them. Then Joey starts to lose it…

About Rob Friesel