renner
League Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2004
- Messages
- 178
- Points
- 0
- Age
- 40
- Location
- Oakland, TN, USA
- Website
- www.fetchquest.com
Mike's Notes:
This was the followup to the earlier "In Which Steve Knox Sells Out To The Man", also written for the Elite Championship Tournament over in PTC. It's meant to serve as the bookend to the previous story, but can be easily followed up on just in case I happen to make the finals.
* . *
The most fascinating thing about Steve Knox was that he was wholly unfascinating when you stripped away the thing that made him tick: professional wrestling.
In a way, he was continuing the legacy of his father, Earl Knox, in terms of in-ring greatness. While he didn't share the same amount of enthusiasm and almost blind admiration of his father as his younger brother, Simon Knox, he still greatly admired what his father accomplished as a wrestler. Earl Knox, though hardly a fancy guy, was able to blend a style of brawling with the sense and strategies of a technician. Steve was just as direct, usually resorting to a combination of brute strength and tenacity to blow away his opponents.
Not to mention an array of suplexes; if Steve Knox could, he would suplex his way out of any problem. Stuck in a traffic jam? He'd suplex the cars if he could. Long line at the theaters? Start suplexing people until you get to the front. Some doucheprick trying to flirt with your date? Suplex him through a window.
Of course, suplexing people wasn't exactly what one would consider to be socially acceptable. They tended to frown upon that in some civilized countries and probably everywhere on Earth in general. Maybe on some distant planet, far and away from the Earth, a society of beings with sixteen tentacles and one eye would suplex each other as a greeting. Here on Earth, though, a certain amount of restraint was needed.
Perhaps if Steve Knox knew how this day would go, however, he'd have been more open to flipping out and suplexing everything in sight.
* . *
July 18th, 2008; Hollywood, California
Steve Knox's daily life had become a dizzying mess of back-and-forth tour dates and constant air travel. Between taking tour dates for New Frontier Wrestling and the Squared Circle, as well as getting involved in a mess called the "Elite Championship" and wrestling the EPW World Heavyweight Champion, Steve Knox looked more like he was experiencing the same car wreck over and over again.
Though his match with Lance Marshall was impending, creeping closer and closer to a clash of a titan and a guy who thinks his sheer awesomeness matches Marshall's girth, Steve Knox had to do something he had unfortunately agreed to a few weeks ago. He had agreed to work with his father's producer, Willy Wilkerson, to shoot a commercial. Wilkerson was hoping to capitalize on the Knox family name and Steve's growing presence in the hearts and minds of the wrestling world. Steve was hoping to just get Wilkerson out of his hair so he could go back to his insane wrestling schedule.
Steve walked into the studio, looking about as good as a disshelved wrestling-obsessive who didn't so much care for his appearance as he did care about keeping himself in shape. His short brown hair was mussed up, his face bore a couple of bruises from his meeting with Jesse Jamester just two days ago, and he wore an NFW shirt with jeans. He looked entirely too casual to be ready to shoot any sort of movie.
Steve did not come alone, but in retrospect, he kinda wish he had, since his partner for that day was Alexandria Malone.
Alexandria, for a girl who didn't often care about her own feminine wiles given the fact that she participated in the testosterone-filled world of professional wrestling, almost looked like she was more into this commercial thing than Steve was. This seemed odd, given the fact that she had vocally objected to the idea. Her raven black hair was neatly arranged into a set of short pigtails. She wore a lacey light blue tunic that might have been a size too big on her, as the bottom of the tunic went far below her waist and made it look like a tiny dress, instead. She completed her ensemble by wearing a pair of black leather pants and black boots.
Like night and day, so too were Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone.
Truth be told, Alexandria had been in a particularly sour mood ever since Steve agreed to this commercial. She despised Willy Wilkerson the moment she met him, and this was not exactly an unusual occurance when it came to Wilkerson. The fact that Steve Knox was practically acting like a doormat to appease Wilkerson disgusted her. To be honest, most of her didn't want to come, either. However, for some reason, she chose to come for Steve's sake. Even if she had her arms crossed and she was looking as far away from Steve as humanly possible.
The studio wasn't particularly the most lively place, surprising given that it was a Hollywood studio. Only a handful of crew were involved, including the man approaching Steve and Alexandria. He was a shorter man, only slightly taller than Alexandria's five feet and five inches of height. He had a disshelved and thoroughly unprofessional appearance, his black hair was messy and wiry, his shirt looked to have been worn for five days straight, and he wore a pair of jeans that appeared to have a couple of ketchup stains on them. He didn't so much walk around as he did shamble around at times, as if he was operating on little sleep and a whole lot of coffee. His appearance was almost zombie-like, at least at first glance.
Fortunately for him, Steve Knox only had a "no androids policy", not a "no zombies policy". Although he certainly came close after that incident in Pasadena.
"You Knox?" the man asked.
"Uh, yeah." Steve responded. He wasn't up to admitting that the man that sort of swayed in front of him was throwing off his "awesome" vibe right from the start. The zombie-like man looked at Knox for a second, before he extended his hand.
"Name's Kyle Nergal. I'm the director here." he said. Steve looked at his hand and briefly thought about how many diseases he would catch from shaking this guy's hand. He didn't think it would be particularly awesome if he happened to catch the bubonic plague just before wrestling his next match. Then again, he also thought that perhaps it would be a good stealth strategy of infecting his opponent, too, but then he remembered that he didn't partake in the ways of sado-masochism when dealing with opponents.
After all of that thinking, Steve shrugged and shook his hand.
Nergal idly turned back towards the set that was being built, giving Steve plenty of time to quickly wipe his hand on the back of his pants. Kyle then looked back at Steve, "We're gettin' ready. Sit over there."
Kyle gestured idly at a couple of spare chairs, and then started to shamble back towards the movie set. Steve watched him for a second to make sure brains were not being eaten, before he complied with his rather abbreviated orders. Alexandria ended up lingering for a short bit, before she, too, joined Steve in sitting down. Still, she did not speak to Steve. After the director, Nergal, relayed some instructions to some of the crew on hand.
Steve looked around to see some of the other people around, and realized to his dismay that a lot of the people around here were seemingly worse off than Nergal himself. The cameraman looked like he had eighteen cups of coffee every minute, because he was so jittery that he could barely keep the camera steady. Some of the grips looked like they were working with three hours of sleep between them. The guy manning the lights literally looked like the walking dead. The lady working catering hadn't even so much as moved since Steve walked in, and Steve was beginning to suspect that she was actually either A) dead or B) a mannequin.
The only person working in this entire place who looked like they'd had some semblence of sleep or rest was this young makeup lady in a short pink dress. Steve noticed that her skirt was short almost to ridiculous extremes, she was a little taller than Alexandria was, she had long blonde hair affixed in a ponytail, and she wore high heels that only seemed to serve to draw even more attention to her legs.
Of course, Alexandria caught that Steve was looking at her, and very unsubtlely elbowed him right in the side of the ribs.
"Ow!" went Steve. He turned to look at the cause of his sudden pain, but Alexandria had already turned away from Steve with her arms crossed, acting as if she didn't do anything at all.
Steve looked at Alexandria for a second, "Jesus, Alex. What's your problem?"
"I'm not talking to you right now." was Alexandria's response.
Steve had known Alexandria for a little over eighteen months, now, and had been dating her for about four months. Throughout their friendship, Steve had always known Alexandria to be a bit of a child. She was every bit as whimsical and imaginative as a child, and she also had a similar ability to hold a grudge if she felt wronged. She also had a habit of sticking her tongue out at people, much as she did to Steve as soon as he turned away from Alexandria again. Though he glanced back at her upon catching this action out of the corner of his eye, she pretended not to have done anything at all.
It was that child-like behaviour that both infuriated Steve Knox and yet, at the same time, was the trait he found the most endearing about her.
Nergal, the director, sauntered up to the feuding couple, though his attention was solely on Steve Knox at the moment. Nergal's hand was over his face, as if he was trying to block out as much light out of his eyes as possible, "Mr. Knox. We're ready for you over there."
Nergal pointed at the set. The set actually just consisted of a single green screen with very little props. It seemed to Steve that he would have to act without anything to go on. Damned technology, Steve thought.
Nevertheless, Steve took a position at the front of this green screen. He squinted a bit, because the lights were blaring right down on him. Nergal sat down in his director's seat, and grabbed a megaphone from the side. He looked at Steve with his sleepy eyes before he wearily spoke to him through the megaphone, "Okay. Got the script?"
"I was never sent the script." Steve responded.
A long, nearly exaggerated sigh came from Nergal. He turned to the makeup girl, "Jennifer, get Mr. Knox the script."
The makeup girl, Jennifer, had a certain way she walked which might have been the result of her high heels and her short skirt. She sort of swivelled her hips with each step she took, drawing a lot of attention from pretty much all of the guys in the room. Suddenly, at the same time, Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone both realized at the same time exactly why all of these guys have probably stayed awake for inhumanly long hours.
Jennifer handed Steve the script, who dumbfoundedly took it and started to examine it. Meanwhile, oblivious to Steve himself, she started to "check out" Steve, much to the ire and general annoyance of Alexandria. Steve noticed that the only thing in his script were his lines. He looked up at Nergal after a moment.
"All you gave me were my lines." Steve said.
"That's all you need. We'll fix all this up in post-production." Nergal said.
"I don't even know how to approach this, though," Steve explained, "Not to use a cliche or anything, but I don't know what my motivation should be. Am I happy for Old Spice? Am I sad? I don't know. Give me something to go on, here."
"Okay. Think Will Farrell meeting Santa Clause in Elf." Nergal suggested.
Steve looked oddly confused, and he gave Kyle Nergal a similarly confused look, "Okay. Who's Will Farrell?"
Nergal didn't say anything at first. Instead, he turned to one of the assistants who looked like he was on his 37th cup of coffee today, "Benny."
"Y-yes, sir?" he asked.
"Fetch me my smokes. This day just got longer." Nergal said. The assistant went off to get Nergal's cigarettes, and he turned to Steve with a sleepishly annoyed look on his face, "Will Farrell. Guy in Anchorman? Semi-Pro? Stranger Than Fiction? Talladega Nights? How do you not know him?"
"Sorry." was the only response Steve could manage. Nergal used the thumb and index finger of his left hand to rub his eyes in both annoyance and exhaustion.
The assistant, Benny, came back a few seconds later and sheepishly handed him his cigarettes. Benny kinda held them out for Nergal for a few seconds, with the latter not realizing that he had come back until he happened to glance in his direction. He then snatched the cigarettes out of Benny's hand, startling him, before reaching in and grabbing one of the cancer sticks from the package. After a moment's pause, Nergal looked up at Benny, "Lighter."
"Y-yes, sir!" Benny shouted, more excitedly than he would have normally, before he rushed out to find a lighter for him. This allowed Nergal to train a gaze at Steve Knox, one that could literally cause the dead to rise up just so they can all kill themselves again.
Steve Knox was too awesome to be phased by it, "Something wrong?"
"I'm puzzled. Perplexed, really. But let's try this again," Nergal said, before he started to make exaggerated hand movements with his unlit cigarette dominating his right hand, "You're... Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore and you just got a hole-in-one on a par four."
"I'm who in what and I got a what on a what?" was Steve's response.
"Jesus H. Christ, how far the **** back do I have to go!?" Nergal shouted, for the first time losing his composure. Benny came back with the lighter and Nergal quickly snatched it out of his hands, fumbled around with it for a few seconds, and then eventually lit the cigarette dangling from his mouth. With the cigarette lit, Nergal calmed down a bit and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
"Tell me, Mr. Knox. Did you live with the Amish or something?" Nergal asked, "Everybody knows who Adam Sandler is."
"No, I just don't watch movies." Steve said, "I have better things to do."
"I'm sure you do," Nergal said, not the least bit interested about what Steve Knox really did in his spare time, "Fine. You're happy. You're ******* ecstatic. There's your motivation."
"And why am I happy?" Steve asked.
"Why do I always get the difficult ones?" Nergal muttered to himself, and then he spoke outloud, "Because Old Spice is the best ******* deodorant on the planet, okay?"
"I'm more of a Arm & Hammer guy." Steve responded. Nergal shot him a dirty look, one that would not only to cause the dead to rise and kill themselves again, but might cause even Chuck Norris minor pain. Even Steve realized just how much he was pissing this director off, and he would probably have to tread carefully if he wanted to get out of this without too much incident. He decided to look at the script again, but what he found was something that struck him as odd.
None of the lines written sounded like anything he would realistically say. They were all nearly-generic promotional dialogue, likely written by someone who only spoke advertising, rather than outright knowledge of who was actually delivering the lines.
Steve knew what he had to do.
"Let's just get this over with." he said. Nergal nodded in agreement, and called for the cameras to be rolled.
Rolling up the script, Steve held one end of it towards his face. Alexandria recognized the posture that Steve was taking, but Nergal and the others didn't know what the hell he was doing. In fact, Nergal was half-tempted to shout at him for what he was about to do, but he decided to let him go for it just to see what would happen.
"My name is Steve Knox," he began, "And every day, I work to introduce my level of awesome to the wrestling world."
"What the hell?" were the words that Kyle Nergal could only mouth as Steve Knox continued.
"See, I want to talk about something, and that something is OLD SPICE. For too long have these other deodorants talked the talk, thinking they're better than everyone else. Thinking they can just kick the crap out of whatever odor comes along. But see, odor's a cheating jerk, always raking the eyes of other deodorants and hitting them with steel chairs. Well, to hell with that, I say! Take Old Spice! It knows ALL of odor's tricks. When odor tries to rake the face, Old Spice just suplexes it out of its boots. When odor goes for the low blow, Old Spice wears a CUP. And when odor tries to use the steel chair, Old Spice kicks it RIGHT BACK in its face. It's the odor-killing champion of the world, and it is the very definition... of awesome. Just like m--"
"CUT!" shouted Nergal. He couldn't take any more. In the background, even Alexandria couldn't help but smile.
"What the FLYING FAIRY **** was that?!" Nergal shouted. He actually stormed out of his seat and pointed at Steve Knox. He didn't dare get close, primarilly because Steve Knox was almost literallly twice as big as he was, "What was ANY of that?!"
Steve Knox cleared his throat, "I was cutting a prom--"
"I don't CARE!" Nergal shouted, "Stick with the script!"
"The script?" Steve asked. He took an idle glance at the rolled-up piece of paper in his left hand, before he turned back to Nergal, "The script is useless. I don't sound like anything written in that script."
"This is Hollywood! Nobody sounds like themselves around here! Read the script!" Nergal shouted. The more he shouted, the less like a zombie he seemed. Steve looked at the script again, and he pointed at it.
"I don't think anyone WANTS me to start listing off scientific facts about flipping DEODORANT," Steve said, "Nor should I be talking to a talking HIPPO!"
Nergal's glare could now cause the dead to rise, kill themselves again, cause minor damage to Chuck Norris, AND could cause the recently-deceased-via-suicide to rise up again and kill themselves AGAIN. Steve was almost inclined to sell it for Nergal, but he figured bumping in the middle of the set would be frowned upon by most average people. Especially if it came after no physical contact was actually made.
"Listen, you neanderthal," Nergal said, any hint of friendliness having now dissipated like a morning fog, "Read. The ****ing. Script. Now."
Steve sighed, and unfolded the script. He looked at it a bit and then he signalled that he was ready after handing the script over to Jennifer, and then cleared his throat.
"Hello, Squiggles. How is your deodorant?" Steve said. If he sounded any more monotone, you could swear that he was one of the very androids that he so despised. For some reason.
"CUT!" shouted Nergal. He stormed out of his seat again, and literally marched over to Steve as if he had the entire Nazi Third Reich behind him. Along the way, he snatched the script out of Jennifer's hands so suddenly that it caused her to yelp in surprise. His glare could, in fact, severely injure Chuck Norris at this point.
"What the hell was THAT?" he asked.
"It's from the script."
"Yes, I know that! Why the hell are you coming off as a robot, now? At least when you were ad-libbing, you had more personality!" Nergal complained.
"You told me to read from the script. That's what I'm doing." Steve explained, utilizing some hand gestures to "better explain" what he was trying to do, "Unless you WANT me to ad-lib, because I just thought of a promo I could cut on Arm & Ham--"
"Stop!" Nergal said, holding his hands out in front of Steve as if to add on to his command, "Stop, stop, STOP. We'll have none of that. Read your script, and put some ****ing backbone behind it!"
Nergal turned around to get back to his chair, but a single word came from Steve Knox that made him stop in his tracks.
"No."
The way that Kyle Nergal turned around, you would almost think that he was a mantis of some sort. His head turned quicker than the rest of his body could, and you could almost see the pain and discomfort that this motion caused him.
He spoke one word, himself. Though it was usually phrased in the form of a question, in this case, the tone indicated that it was a statement, "What."
"I'm done here." Steve said, before he put his hands in his pockets and started to walk away from Nergal. Nergal threw the script down onto the floor forcefully, and then pointed at Steve.
"What about the ****ing commercial!?" Nergal asked, "You have an agreement!"
"A verbal one only, though," Steve said, "So get somebody else to talk to your animated hippo."
Steve joined Alexandria Malone, who was suddenly beaming at him. He found that a little weird, but he accepted it for what it is. The two of them started to walk out of the studio, with Kyle Nergal so angry that he couldn't really form words any more. In fact, many of the staff in the studio began to step as far away from him as possible, lest they get caught in his "blast radius".
Stepping out of the studio, Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone walked side-by-side. This time, however, Alexandria was starting to pay attention to Steve again. In fact, she had to ask him a question, "Did you mean to do that the whole time?"
"What do you mean?" Steve asked. He started to fish in his pocket in order to find his cell phone, so he could call a cab and get out of this miserable mire of commercialism that was Hollywood.
"When you agreed to do this commercial, were you planning on walking out on them at the last possible minute?" Alexandria asked. Her hands behind her back, Alexandria leaned herself forward and to the side, curving herself so her head faced Steve.
"It wasn't the plan, really. I just didn't expect talking hippos and lines straight out of cookie cutter advertising. I think they just wanted some sort of marginal, C-list star to take part in it. I guess that was me." Steve said.
"You know you'll lose out on a large bit of money, and possibly an entire career in the film industry because of this, don't you?" Alexandria asked. Though she seemed like such a child, she always had this knack for bringing down the mood by pointing out the possible consequences of people's actions. It was a trait of Alexandria's that Steve often found to be among her most displeasurable.
"Yeah," Steve said, sporting a smile that seemed to indicate that it didn't bother him so much, "I don't care. This isn't what I wanted to do, anyway. Never even liked it when my dad did it, to tell you the truth."
"Then why'd you agree to it in the first place?" Alexandria asked, a puzzled look on her face.
"I wanted to know something," Steve said, before he waved his hands around to gesture at Hollywood itself, "I wanted to know what allured my dad to this god-forsaken place in the first place. I wanted to know why he decided to give up the profession he used to love in order to come here and make movies with a bunch of people who, as I've surmised, are a bunch of pushy jerks."
"You sound like I do. I got into wrestling because I wanted to know why my brother, Joey, nearly broke his knee in half trying to stay active." Alexandria said. She paused, stopped walking, and then added, "Did you get your answer?"
Steve stopped, "No. You?"
"Still haven't figured it out," Alexandria responded, reaching up to scratch the side of her head as she said it, "What is it about wrestling, for you, anyway?"
Steve smiled at Alexandria, and put his arm over her shoulders, "I enjoy wrestling. So that's why I do it."
"You *enjoy* it? Look, I don't mean to alarm you, but 98% of the people we encounter on a daily basis happen to be complete and total self-serving jerkoids, and there's more than a few times where we're dropped on our heads." Alexandria said. She crossed her arms and huffed, "Seriously. I'll never figure it out, and I'm a wrestler too."
"You Malones always were a little strange." Steve Knox remarked, before he let go of Alexandria and flipped open his phone, moving away to call the cab company. The happier expression on Alexandria's face slowly faded when she realized what his comment really implied.
"Hey! What do you mean by that?!" Alexandria shouted while waving her arms into the air, as Steve tried to wave her off so he could talk.
In the end, Steve chose not to follow his father's footsteps into acting. In so doing, he and Alexandria Malone ended up patching up at least a few of their differences, although their relationship remained just as unusual as it was before.
The only question was, what would the consequences of Steve's actions be?
This was the followup to the earlier "In Which Steve Knox Sells Out To The Man", also written for the Elite Championship Tournament over in PTC. It's meant to serve as the bookend to the previous story, but can be easily followed up on just in case I happen to make the finals.
* . *
The most fascinating thing about Steve Knox was that he was wholly unfascinating when you stripped away the thing that made him tick: professional wrestling.
In a way, he was continuing the legacy of his father, Earl Knox, in terms of in-ring greatness. While he didn't share the same amount of enthusiasm and almost blind admiration of his father as his younger brother, Simon Knox, he still greatly admired what his father accomplished as a wrestler. Earl Knox, though hardly a fancy guy, was able to blend a style of brawling with the sense and strategies of a technician. Steve was just as direct, usually resorting to a combination of brute strength and tenacity to blow away his opponents.
Not to mention an array of suplexes; if Steve Knox could, he would suplex his way out of any problem. Stuck in a traffic jam? He'd suplex the cars if he could. Long line at the theaters? Start suplexing people until you get to the front. Some doucheprick trying to flirt with your date? Suplex him through a window.
Of course, suplexing people wasn't exactly what one would consider to be socially acceptable. They tended to frown upon that in some civilized countries and probably everywhere on Earth in general. Maybe on some distant planet, far and away from the Earth, a society of beings with sixteen tentacles and one eye would suplex each other as a greeting. Here on Earth, though, a certain amount of restraint was needed.
Perhaps if Steve Knox knew how this day would go, however, he'd have been more open to flipping out and suplexing everything in sight.
* . *
July 18th, 2008; Hollywood, California
Steve Knox's daily life had become a dizzying mess of back-and-forth tour dates and constant air travel. Between taking tour dates for New Frontier Wrestling and the Squared Circle, as well as getting involved in a mess called the "Elite Championship" and wrestling the EPW World Heavyweight Champion, Steve Knox looked more like he was experiencing the same car wreck over and over again.
Though his match with Lance Marshall was impending, creeping closer and closer to a clash of a titan and a guy who thinks his sheer awesomeness matches Marshall's girth, Steve Knox had to do something he had unfortunately agreed to a few weeks ago. He had agreed to work with his father's producer, Willy Wilkerson, to shoot a commercial. Wilkerson was hoping to capitalize on the Knox family name and Steve's growing presence in the hearts and minds of the wrestling world. Steve was hoping to just get Wilkerson out of his hair so he could go back to his insane wrestling schedule.
Steve walked into the studio, looking about as good as a disshelved wrestling-obsessive who didn't so much care for his appearance as he did care about keeping himself in shape. His short brown hair was mussed up, his face bore a couple of bruises from his meeting with Jesse Jamester just two days ago, and he wore an NFW shirt with jeans. He looked entirely too casual to be ready to shoot any sort of movie.
Steve did not come alone, but in retrospect, he kinda wish he had, since his partner for that day was Alexandria Malone.
Alexandria, for a girl who didn't often care about her own feminine wiles given the fact that she participated in the testosterone-filled world of professional wrestling, almost looked like she was more into this commercial thing than Steve was. This seemed odd, given the fact that she had vocally objected to the idea. Her raven black hair was neatly arranged into a set of short pigtails. She wore a lacey light blue tunic that might have been a size too big on her, as the bottom of the tunic went far below her waist and made it look like a tiny dress, instead. She completed her ensemble by wearing a pair of black leather pants and black boots.
Like night and day, so too were Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone.
Truth be told, Alexandria had been in a particularly sour mood ever since Steve agreed to this commercial. She despised Willy Wilkerson the moment she met him, and this was not exactly an unusual occurance when it came to Wilkerson. The fact that Steve Knox was practically acting like a doormat to appease Wilkerson disgusted her. To be honest, most of her didn't want to come, either. However, for some reason, she chose to come for Steve's sake. Even if she had her arms crossed and she was looking as far away from Steve as humanly possible.
The studio wasn't particularly the most lively place, surprising given that it was a Hollywood studio. Only a handful of crew were involved, including the man approaching Steve and Alexandria. He was a shorter man, only slightly taller than Alexandria's five feet and five inches of height. He had a disshelved and thoroughly unprofessional appearance, his black hair was messy and wiry, his shirt looked to have been worn for five days straight, and he wore a pair of jeans that appeared to have a couple of ketchup stains on them. He didn't so much walk around as he did shamble around at times, as if he was operating on little sleep and a whole lot of coffee. His appearance was almost zombie-like, at least at first glance.
Fortunately for him, Steve Knox only had a "no androids policy", not a "no zombies policy". Although he certainly came close after that incident in Pasadena.
"You Knox?" the man asked.
"Uh, yeah." Steve responded. He wasn't up to admitting that the man that sort of swayed in front of him was throwing off his "awesome" vibe right from the start. The zombie-like man looked at Knox for a second, before he extended his hand.
"Name's Kyle Nergal. I'm the director here." he said. Steve looked at his hand and briefly thought about how many diseases he would catch from shaking this guy's hand. He didn't think it would be particularly awesome if he happened to catch the bubonic plague just before wrestling his next match. Then again, he also thought that perhaps it would be a good stealth strategy of infecting his opponent, too, but then he remembered that he didn't partake in the ways of sado-masochism when dealing with opponents.
After all of that thinking, Steve shrugged and shook his hand.
Nergal idly turned back towards the set that was being built, giving Steve plenty of time to quickly wipe his hand on the back of his pants. Kyle then looked back at Steve, "We're gettin' ready. Sit over there."
Kyle gestured idly at a couple of spare chairs, and then started to shamble back towards the movie set. Steve watched him for a second to make sure brains were not being eaten, before he complied with his rather abbreviated orders. Alexandria ended up lingering for a short bit, before she, too, joined Steve in sitting down. Still, she did not speak to Steve. After the director, Nergal, relayed some instructions to some of the crew on hand.
Steve looked around to see some of the other people around, and realized to his dismay that a lot of the people around here were seemingly worse off than Nergal himself. The cameraman looked like he had eighteen cups of coffee every minute, because he was so jittery that he could barely keep the camera steady. Some of the grips looked like they were working with three hours of sleep between them. The guy manning the lights literally looked like the walking dead. The lady working catering hadn't even so much as moved since Steve walked in, and Steve was beginning to suspect that she was actually either A) dead or B) a mannequin.
The only person working in this entire place who looked like they'd had some semblence of sleep or rest was this young makeup lady in a short pink dress. Steve noticed that her skirt was short almost to ridiculous extremes, she was a little taller than Alexandria was, she had long blonde hair affixed in a ponytail, and she wore high heels that only seemed to serve to draw even more attention to her legs.
Of course, Alexandria caught that Steve was looking at her, and very unsubtlely elbowed him right in the side of the ribs.
"Ow!" went Steve. He turned to look at the cause of his sudden pain, but Alexandria had already turned away from Steve with her arms crossed, acting as if she didn't do anything at all.
Steve looked at Alexandria for a second, "Jesus, Alex. What's your problem?"
"I'm not talking to you right now." was Alexandria's response.
Steve had known Alexandria for a little over eighteen months, now, and had been dating her for about four months. Throughout their friendship, Steve had always known Alexandria to be a bit of a child. She was every bit as whimsical and imaginative as a child, and she also had a similar ability to hold a grudge if she felt wronged. She also had a habit of sticking her tongue out at people, much as she did to Steve as soon as he turned away from Alexandria again. Though he glanced back at her upon catching this action out of the corner of his eye, she pretended not to have done anything at all.
It was that child-like behaviour that both infuriated Steve Knox and yet, at the same time, was the trait he found the most endearing about her.
Nergal, the director, sauntered up to the feuding couple, though his attention was solely on Steve Knox at the moment. Nergal's hand was over his face, as if he was trying to block out as much light out of his eyes as possible, "Mr. Knox. We're ready for you over there."
Nergal pointed at the set. The set actually just consisted of a single green screen with very little props. It seemed to Steve that he would have to act without anything to go on. Damned technology, Steve thought.
Nevertheless, Steve took a position at the front of this green screen. He squinted a bit, because the lights were blaring right down on him. Nergal sat down in his director's seat, and grabbed a megaphone from the side. He looked at Steve with his sleepy eyes before he wearily spoke to him through the megaphone, "Okay. Got the script?"
"I was never sent the script." Steve responded.
A long, nearly exaggerated sigh came from Nergal. He turned to the makeup girl, "Jennifer, get Mr. Knox the script."
The makeup girl, Jennifer, had a certain way she walked which might have been the result of her high heels and her short skirt. She sort of swivelled her hips with each step she took, drawing a lot of attention from pretty much all of the guys in the room. Suddenly, at the same time, Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone both realized at the same time exactly why all of these guys have probably stayed awake for inhumanly long hours.
Jennifer handed Steve the script, who dumbfoundedly took it and started to examine it. Meanwhile, oblivious to Steve himself, she started to "check out" Steve, much to the ire and general annoyance of Alexandria. Steve noticed that the only thing in his script were his lines. He looked up at Nergal after a moment.
"All you gave me were my lines." Steve said.
"That's all you need. We'll fix all this up in post-production." Nergal said.
"I don't even know how to approach this, though," Steve explained, "Not to use a cliche or anything, but I don't know what my motivation should be. Am I happy for Old Spice? Am I sad? I don't know. Give me something to go on, here."
"Okay. Think Will Farrell meeting Santa Clause in Elf." Nergal suggested.
Steve looked oddly confused, and he gave Kyle Nergal a similarly confused look, "Okay. Who's Will Farrell?"
Nergal didn't say anything at first. Instead, he turned to one of the assistants who looked like he was on his 37th cup of coffee today, "Benny."
"Y-yes, sir?" he asked.
"Fetch me my smokes. This day just got longer." Nergal said. The assistant went off to get Nergal's cigarettes, and he turned to Steve with a sleepishly annoyed look on his face, "Will Farrell. Guy in Anchorman? Semi-Pro? Stranger Than Fiction? Talladega Nights? How do you not know him?"
"Sorry." was the only response Steve could manage. Nergal used the thumb and index finger of his left hand to rub his eyes in both annoyance and exhaustion.
The assistant, Benny, came back a few seconds later and sheepishly handed him his cigarettes. Benny kinda held them out for Nergal for a few seconds, with the latter not realizing that he had come back until he happened to glance in his direction. He then snatched the cigarettes out of Benny's hand, startling him, before reaching in and grabbing one of the cancer sticks from the package. After a moment's pause, Nergal looked up at Benny, "Lighter."
"Y-yes, sir!" Benny shouted, more excitedly than he would have normally, before he rushed out to find a lighter for him. This allowed Nergal to train a gaze at Steve Knox, one that could literally cause the dead to rise up just so they can all kill themselves again.
Steve Knox was too awesome to be phased by it, "Something wrong?"
"I'm puzzled. Perplexed, really. But let's try this again," Nergal said, before he started to make exaggerated hand movements with his unlit cigarette dominating his right hand, "You're... Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore and you just got a hole-in-one on a par four."
"I'm who in what and I got a what on a what?" was Steve's response.
"Jesus H. Christ, how far the **** back do I have to go!?" Nergal shouted, for the first time losing his composure. Benny came back with the lighter and Nergal quickly snatched it out of his hands, fumbled around with it for a few seconds, and then eventually lit the cigarette dangling from his mouth. With the cigarette lit, Nergal calmed down a bit and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
"Tell me, Mr. Knox. Did you live with the Amish or something?" Nergal asked, "Everybody knows who Adam Sandler is."
"No, I just don't watch movies." Steve said, "I have better things to do."
"I'm sure you do," Nergal said, not the least bit interested about what Steve Knox really did in his spare time, "Fine. You're happy. You're ******* ecstatic. There's your motivation."
"And why am I happy?" Steve asked.
"Why do I always get the difficult ones?" Nergal muttered to himself, and then he spoke outloud, "Because Old Spice is the best ******* deodorant on the planet, okay?"
"I'm more of a Arm & Hammer guy." Steve responded. Nergal shot him a dirty look, one that would not only to cause the dead to rise and kill themselves again, but might cause even Chuck Norris minor pain. Even Steve realized just how much he was pissing this director off, and he would probably have to tread carefully if he wanted to get out of this without too much incident. He decided to look at the script again, but what he found was something that struck him as odd.
None of the lines written sounded like anything he would realistically say. They were all nearly-generic promotional dialogue, likely written by someone who only spoke advertising, rather than outright knowledge of who was actually delivering the lines.
Steve knew what he had to do.
"Let's just get this over with." he said. Nergal nodded in agreement, and called for the cameras to be rolled.
Rolling up the script, Steve held one end of it towards his face. Alexandria recognized the posture that Steve was taking, but Nergal and the others didn't know what the hell he was doing. In fact, Nergal was half-tempted to shout at him for what he was about to do, but he decided to let him go for it just to see what would happen.
"My name is Steve Knox," he began, "And every day, I work to introduce my level of awesome to the wrestling world."
"What the hell?" were the words that Kyle Nergal could only mouth as Steve Knox continued.
"See, I want to talk about something, and that something is OLD SPICE. For too long have these other deodorants talked the talk, thinking they're better than everyone else. Thinking they can just kick the crap out of whatever odor comes along. But see, odor's a cheating jerk, always raking the eyes of other deodorants and hitting them with steel chairs. Well, to hell with that, I say! Take Old Spice! It knows ALL of odor's tricks. When odor tries to rake the face, Old Spice just suplexes it out of its boots. When odor goes for the low blow, Old Spice wears a CUP. And when odor tries to use the steel chair, Old Spice kicks it RIGHT BACK in its face. It's the odor-killing champion of the world, and it is the very definition... of awesome. Just like m--"
"CUT!" shouted Nergal. He couldn't take any more. In the background, even Alexandria couldn't help but smile.
"What the FLYING FAIRY **** was that?!" Nergal shouted. He actually stormed out of his seat and pointed at Steve Knox. He didn't dare get close, primarilly because Steve Knox was almost literallly twice as big as he was, "What was ANY of that?!"
Steve Knox cleared his throat, "I was cutting a prom--"
"I don't CARE!" Nergal shouted, "Stick with the script!"
"The script?" Steve asked. He took an idle glance at the rolled-up piece of paper in his left hand, before he turned back to Nergal, "The script is useless. I don't sound like anything written in that script."
"This is Hollywood! Nobody sounds like themselves around here! Read the script!" Nergal shouted. The more he shouted, the less like a zombie he seemed. Steve looked at the script again, and he pointed at it.
"I don't think anyone WANTS me to start listing off scientific facts about flipping DEODORANT," Steve said, "Nor should I be talking to a talking HIPPO!"
Nergal's glare could now cause the dead to rise, kill themselves again, cause minor damage to Chuck Norris, AND could cause the recently-deceased-via-suicide to rise up again and kill themselves AGAIN. Steve was almost inclined to sell it for Nergal, but he figured bumping in the middle of the set would be frowned upon by most average people. Especially if it came after no physical contact was actually made.
"Listen, you neanderthal," Nergal said, any hint of friendliness having now dissipated like a morning fog, "Read. The ****ing. Script. Now."
Steve sighed, and unfolded the script. He looked at it a bit and then he signalled that he was ready after handing the script over to Jennifer, and then cleared his throat.
"Hello, Squiggles. How is your deodorant?" Steve said. If he sounded any more monotone, you could swear that he was one of the very androids that he so despised. For some reason.
"CUT!" shouted Nergal. He stormed out of his seat again, and literally marched over to Steve as if he had the entire Nazi Third Reich behind him. Along the way, he snatched the script out of Jennifer's hands so suddenly that it caused her to yelp in surprise. His glare could, in fact, severely injure Chuck Norris at this point.
"What the hell was THAT?" he asked.
"It's from the script."
"Yes, I know that! Why the hell are you coming off as a robot, now? At least when you were ad-libbing, you had more personality!" Nergal complained.
"You told me to read from the script. That's what I'm doing." Steve explained, utilizing some hand gestures to "better explain" what he was trying to do, "Unless you WANT me to ad-lib, because I just thought of a promo I could cut on Arm & Ham--"
"Stop!" Nergal said, holding his hands out in front of Steve as if to add on to his command, "Stop, stop, STOP. We'll have none of that. Read your script, and put some ****ing backbone behind it!"
Nergal turned around to get back to his chair, but a single word came from Steve Knox that made him stop in his tracks.
"No."
The way that Kyle Nergal turned around, you would almost think that he was a mantis of some sort. His head turned quicker than the rest of his body could, and you could almost see the pain and discomfort that this motion caused him.
He spoke one word, himself. Though it was usually phrased in the form of a question, in this case, the tone indicated that it was a statement, "What."
"I'm done here." Steve said, before he put his hands in his pockets and started to walk away from Nergal. Nergal threw the script down onto the floor forcefully, and then pointed at Steve.
"What about the ****ing commercial!?" Nergal asked, "You have an agreement!"
"A verbal one only, though," Steve said, "So get somebody else to talk to your animated hippo."
Steve joined Alexandria Malone, who was suddenly beaming at him. He found that a little weird, but he accepted it for what it is. The two of them started to walk out of the studio, with Kyle Nergal so angry that he couldn't really form words any more. In fact, many of the staff in the studio began to step as far away from him as possible, lest they get caught in his "blast radius".
Stepping out of the studio, Steve Knox and Alexandria Malone walked side-by-side. This time, however, Alexandria was starting to pay attention to Steve again. In fact, she had to ask him a question, "Did you mean to do that the whole time?"
"What do you mean?" Steve asked. He started to fish in his pocket in order to find his cell phone, so he could call a cab and get out of this miserable mire of commercialism that was Hollywood.
"When you agreed to do this commercial, were you planning on walking out on them at the last possible minute?" Alexandria asked. Her hands behind her back, Alexandria leaned herself forward and to the side, curving herself so her head faced Steve.
"It wasn't the plan, really. I just didn't expect talking hippos and lines straight out of cookie cutter advertising. I think they just wanted some sort of marginal, C-list star to take part in it. I guess that was me." Steve said.
"You know you'll lose out on a large bit of money, and possibly an entire career in the film industry because of this, don't you?" Alexandria asked. Though she seemed like such a child, she always had this knack for bringing down the mood by pointing out the possible consequences of people's actions. It was a trait of Alexandria's that Steve often found to be among her most displeasurable.
"Yeah," Steve said, sporting a smile that seemed to indicate that it didn't bother him so much, "I don't care. This isn't what I wanted to do, anyway. Never even liked it when my dad did it, to tell you the truth."
"Then why'd you agree to it in the first place?" Alexandria asked, a puzzled look on her face.
"I wanted to know something," Steve said, before he waved his hands around to gesture at Hollywood itself, "I wanted to know what allured my dad to this god-forsaken place in the first place. I wanted to know why he decided to give up the profession he used to love in order to come here and make movies with a bunch of people who, as I've surmised, are a bunch of pushy jerks."
"You sound like I do. I got into wrestling because I wanted to know why my brother, Joey, nearly broke his knee in half trying to stay active." Alexandria said. She paused, stopped walking, and then added, "Did you get your answer?"
Steve stopped, "No. You?"
"Still haven't figured it out," Alexandria responded, reaching up to scratch the side of her head as she said it, "What is it about wrestling, for you, anyway?"
Steve smiled at Alexandria, and put his arm over her shoulders, "I enjoy wrestling. So that's why I do it."
"You *enjoy* it? Look, I don't mean to alarm you, but 98% of the people we encounter on a daily basis happen to be complete and total self-serving jerkoids, and there's more than a few times where we're dropped on our heads." Alexandria said. She crossed her arms and huffed, "Seriously. I'll never figure it out, and I'm a wrestler too."
"You Malones always were a little strange." Steve Knox remarked, before he let go of Alexandria and flipped open his phone, moving away to call the cab company. The happier expression on Alexandria's face slowly faded when she realized what his comment really implied.
"Hey! What do you mean by that?!" Alexandria shouted while waving her arms into the air, as Steve tried to wave her off so he could talk.
In the end, Steve chose not to follow his father's footsteps into acting. In so doing, he and Alexandria Malone ended up patching up at least a few of their differences, although their relationship remained just as unusual as it was before.
The only question was, what would the consequences of Steve's actions be?