I’m in a basement watching the Dead Milkmen play an R.E.M. cover. It’s a song I’ve never heard before. Joe Jack takes out a marker and draws a line through a tattoo on his arm that says “CALL R.E.M.”.

I am a criminal in a gang making a movie. I believe at the time we are doing crimes to make more movies, and I’m so in. But really we are just going to sell VHS copies of this one movie—that is the real plan, unbeknownst to me, the director of the film but non-leader of the gang. Upon completion of the movie, I realize that this has all been a plan for a pyramid scheme; that I was never important at all, the gang did not in fact share my vision, the content of the movie mattered not at all, it’s just a product we are going to somehow trick rubes into trying to sell. But it’s even worse.

As I am leaving, disgusted with this situation that I have gotten myself into, the prostitute gang leader I have been living with tells me,