Jerry Gerber shimmies up to the counter that Mike is hanging over. To look at the two of them would be to know the meaning of opposite. Jerry Gerber is a goober. Exhausted, Mike presents a box of Sweded tapes, all based on Stephen Soderbergh remakes. The sighs he emits when there's nothing to sigh over make it clear that Mike has had enough of this.
"I want to live," he says.
Being a goober, Jerry Gerber assumes Mike is talking about the 1983 remake to the 1958 movie of the same name. Jerry Gerber assures Mike that they've already Sweded that and goes on to suggest places for lunch.
"I Can't..." starts Mike.
"Hardly Wait," Jerry Gerber finishes as he ejects the freshly Sweded version out of his camcorder. "You gotta see who we got to do Manilow's voice! ...It's me!" adds the dullard.
"Just Stop!" Mike yells. He has clearly lost his naturally cool swagger. He goes on a tirade about how they can't just keep remaking stuff, that the old stuff was great. Jerry Gerber makes a low blow about how Mike's idol, jazz great Fats Waller, would always improvise on previously finished music, and that's what they were doing - making jazz. Mike had seen Ken Burn's documentary on jazz and knew that at one point it was spelled "jass." In fact, last week Mike Sweded the documentary. All 1140 minutes of it. Even the special features. Truth be told, Mike had the time of his life recreating these 1140 minutes, but it left him spent, his head a mess of thoughts of ascending notes. Jerry Gerber didn't "get" jazz and taped over 896 minutes of these tapes with Sweded versions of most of the first two seasons of Weeds and whatever he could fit of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Colors" trilogy. He got half-way through Red when Mike stopped him. At the time his face was wet with tears of frustration and anger. When met with these tears, Jerry Gerber became slippery and slid out of Mike's grasp, long enough to spit out a lie and say that it wasn't the Jazz tapes at all, but their infamously awful Swede of The Deep End of the Ocean which they commonly referred to as "Pink Trout," always with great disdain. Neither of them ever having seen the original film, they assumed it was Deep Blue Sea and the result was a Swede that no one rented and only served the purpose of occupying shelf space. Mike hated this failure so much that he was actually relieved when he heard this was the tape being used. However, the sudden shock of seeing Pink Trout still on the shelf led Mike into the rage that culminated in the tackling of Jerry Gerber. Their friendship was forever strained after this.
Nevertheless, Jerry insisted that Mike watch this version of Can't Hardly Wait. He did so since he still had a few hours left on his shift and despite all the hatred he had for Jerry Gerber and the fact that he wanted nothing more than to just walk out, he still respected his duties as arranged under the management of Elroy Fletcher.
Mike watched the entire 15 minutes. The swear words that came to mind are unrepeatable, but he couldn't resist. Jerry Gerber did it, he captured the entire Love Burger set piece using only crazy straws.
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