Peter Sparks drove to Mexico
to film his grandmother praying at the volcano. She died 79 miles south
of the border. How expensive it would be to get her embalmed and shipped
home; instead, Peter chose driving back across the border with her propped
beside him, asleep to Customs. He continued toward California where he
knew he had another border check, this time for fruit. In the desert a
sickening sweetness flowered and forced Peter to call his mother for
advice. Put her in the trunk and find a town to get her pickled. (He
should have called his father.) The mortician went to examine the body in
the trunk, but the Mercedes was gone--granny, trunk--everything
gone.So Muriel is riding a storm of soap and squeegees, drowning
screams of joy. A duck and a bleached Santa ride a china
slipper through a gravel lawn. A man with a goatee jogs around a house
wrapped in a red bag. A boy serves a tennis ball on a rubber band and it
returns. A woman waters her lawn and waits. At a palm on San Vicente
Prince Valiant plays harp to a woman holding tinfoil. Lucky Bacchus told
Chester Godfrey that D.W. Griffith discovered indirect light of reflection
by accident. An ice cream truck plinks.