Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story

The Talent Show

The Ridgemont High Talent Show was the last of the February blitz. It was held at 7:30 P.M. in the auditorium on the last Tuesday of the month. Some of the participants were chosen from auditions; the rest were doing it for a grade in English or speech class. The idea was to convince your parents not to go, go with your friends instead, and laugh at the contestants.

The talent show was the specialty of Gregg Adams, the drama whiz and boyfriend of Cindy Carr. He served as chief organizer, arranged the school band, wrote the show opening tune, wrote the material, and hosted the show with his own sidekick, David Leach. Gregg Adams owned the night.

Twenty minutes before showtime, as the school jazz band, led by Mick Stillson, played its boozy warm-up music, Gregg Adams was backstage getting ready, rushing here, rushing there. Are you okay? Great! Are we ready, Leach? You look incredible! Okay, let’s really put on a show for ’em. Let’s go.

The red velour Ridgemont auditorium curtains parted and out bounded Gregg Adams and David Leach. The school band switched to a jazzier, showtime tempo.

Adams and Leach grabbed microphones and hopped onto a pair of stools. Adams had written the whole bit.

“Hi, everybody! Welcome to the Twentieth Annual Ridgemont High School Talent Show.” A few sophomore girls screamed. “I’m Gregg Adams!”

“And I’m David Leach!”

“And have we got a show for you!”

Gregg Adams then began singing his own show-opening tune, “Wild Feeling.” He sang in a semicroon, semiyodel, switching verses with David. Then—and this was Adams’s favorite part—he got to speak to the audience over the instrumental passage.

“. . . And I’ve got a crazy feeling, David, that these people are in store for an incredible evening of entertainment!”

“Some great singing,” said David.

“Some hot dancing!”

“And a monster surprise later on!”

They swung back into the last verse of the song, which revealed the wild feeling to be, of course, looooo-ooooove, and Adams finished up with a Tom Jones-style pump.

Gregg Adams was no fool. After the applause died down, he let David Leach tell the first joke.

Leach was different from Adams. A nice guy, but not quite as good looking as Adams and not quite as funny. His first joke was one he’d told before in Mechanical Arts.

“Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?”

“WHY, LEACH???” There were some rowdies sitting near the front.

“He was dead.”

The rowdies unloaded on him. Threw programs at him. Cackled at him. Leach grinned. He loved the attention.

Adams introduced the first act. “First off,” said Gregg, “is a good example of good entertainment.” Poor Adams. He hadn’t been in English class much this year. There was always a rehearsal or something. “We have a good singer who’s not recognized ’cause she’s not in a lot of the groups or anything. But it’s . . . it’s Brenda Harrison, and she’s singing a song called ‘I Never Meant to Leave You.’ Let’s bring her out!”

Brenda Harrison, a pretty brown-haired girl with large Irish eyes, curtsied and launched right into the song. She was accompanied by a single piano, and after two normal notes she quickly headed for the point of no return, that Bermuda Triangle for amateur singers . . . the next register. Would she make it?

Too bad.

It was easy to forgive if you were up on the behind-the-scenes info, as most of the students in the audience were. The song “I Never Meant to Leave You” was clearly for Brenda Harrison’s adoring ex-boyfriend, Tim Copeland. Tim was a young-looking sophomore, known for always being seen with squeaky-clean hair, white-and-green-striped Nike tennis shoes, and Brenda Harrison. But Brenda had recently broken up with him, after two years, for a policeman she’d met one night at her job at Yum-Yum Donuts. Sorry, Tim! I never meant to leave you!

Brenda Harrison even grabbed herself for the final line—“I never meant to leave you/But one day you’ll understand/That I love you forever/And I’ll always be your friiiiiiieeeeeennnnnnd.”

She leaned forward into the spotlight and whispered, “I love you, Tim.”

In the audience Tim Copeland’s friends slapped him on the back.

“She loves me,” Tim said ruefully, “but she’s jumping on some cop.”

“Our next guests combine talent and beauty into a musical feast! Virginia Finch!”

Whooooooa.

“And Marla Buchanan.”

Yeahhhh.

“And Janine Contreras on vocals and flute.”

O-kaaaaay.

“And Mick Stillson on guitar!”

What a fox!

“And they’re gonna play ‘Landslide,’ by Fleetwood Mac!”

The red spotlight hit Mick Stillson, school fox, as he sat on a stool with his guitar. He was wearing a red shirt and new Levi’s. He began fingerpicking the introduction to the song, and there were gasps from the seniors.

“Landslide,” still the most requested lyric for reprinting in school annuals and graduation presentations, is the stuff of which many elderclassmen’s high school lives were lived by. When you got together, “Landslide” was on the radio. When you broke up, it still reminded you of him or her. They would probably graduate with “Landslide.”

Janine sang the song in a quavering voice, barely audible out from behind the Ridgemont superstar backing.

A strange beeping noise began at the back of the gymnasium.

Next up was the Girls’ Dance Chorus, featuring Linda Barrett and new soloist Laurie Beckman. They fanned out across the stage, a row of young girls in red, white, and blue tights, singing “Boogie Wonderland.” It went on a little too long.

“Okay,” said Gregg Adams, “are you guys ready for something radical? David, are the special effects ready? They are! OKAY! We are almost ready for the fascinating Puuu-eee Balls Dance!”

“THE WHAT?”

“For you guys who don’t know what that is,” Leach announced with authority, “this is a Maui dance that originated in New Zealand and will be performed for you by the drill team!”

The stage was lit in dark fluorescent blue, the kind you see in Tahitian restaurants where umbrellas come in the drinks. Then Day-Glo colored balls began to pitch about the stage. Faster and faster. It was the members of the drill team, hidden in the lighting, whirling these fluorescent balls around on twine. Incredible! A Puuu-eeeee Balls Dance! All right!

It was a big hit with the audience, and when the ovation finished Gregg Adams made like he was exhausted, even by watching.

“There’s going to be a twenty-minute intermission.”

“Don’t you dare go away!”

“And there’s PTA punch in the lobby!”

The school combo started blasting the jazz-rock Muzak again.

In the lobby, once nervous performers were now stars. They stood around with parents and relatives, luxuriously sipping PTA punch and considering futures in show business. Even Adams and Leach were in the lobby.

Adams was cross-examining Cindy Carr. “Did you come late? You came late, didn’t you? You missed the best part. David and I came running out and sang part of this song and then talked over it like a couple of Broadway Joes. It was totally classy! And you missed it, didn’t you?”

Back on stage for the second half, Gregg Adams was all pro. He led with a joke.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’ve been noticing Lieutenant Flowers. He’s actually a nice person! I went to him the other day and said, ‘Some sophomore looted my locker,’ and he went and took care of it in the calmest way he knew how. He SHOT THE KID AT SUNRISE!”

Big laughs.

The second half of the Ridgemont Talent Show opened with a duet between Kathy Golson and Dave Kepler. They began at opposite ends of the stage and worked toward each other as they sang. It was another case of aspiring amateurs. For the first time all night, the rowdy contingent came alive.

Then came the noise again, an incessant little series of beeps, nearly impossible to trace to its holder. Jeff Spicoli was playing a pocket computer football game in the last row of the auditorium. Gregg Adams chose not to mention the noise from the stage.

Rex Huffman came out for a skateboard routine—all his best tricks, then Ernie Vincent did his balancing act, culminating in his balancing a wheelbarrow on his nose. No one knew he could balance until he auditioned for the show. (Interviewed in the school paper, he said, “It started two years ago with a broom, and the rest is history . . .”)

“Okay,” said Gregg Adams, “now we have a special nonsinging nondancing act. We’ve got Rhonda Lewis, whom you’ve seen at the fair and at the Baton Twirling Championships at the sports arena. She’s one of Redondo’s biggest baton twirlers, and we are glad to have her with us here tonight! Rhonda Lewis!”

The music started—a scratched and crackling record that would have been better suited to a Tijuana strip joint—Rhonda Lewis, in a ballerina costume, flipped through her first few twirls with a self-assured cock of the head. It was just like her at school; she did not acknowledge anyone in the slightest.

Then she tried a high-kicking twirl . . . and dropped the baton. Parents gasped. She was upset, gave a snotty little stomp of her foot, and picked up the baton again.

Now, Spicoli had decided to give her all the breaks, but after that . . . well, there was no choice. He started in with the football game. He was merciless, beeping away while she dropped it two more times.

Gregg Adams and David Leach returned, continued with their all-showbiz philosophy of ignoring the casualties around them.

“Well, David, you know what time it is?”

“What time is it, Gregg?”

“It’s time that we answer your questions. And you know what, David? It’s funny, but every year we get asked the same question on talent show night.”

“What’s that, Gregg?”

“They ask, ‘Where did you get those great tuxedos?’ ”

Boos.

“They sure do ask us that. And we always tell them . . .”

They sang in harmony, pointing thumbs at the huge clapboard signs that had been sitting on both sides of the stage all night.

“We got ’em at . . . Re-gis. REGIS FORMALWEAR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. A BIG HAND!!”

“You look like SHIT,” someone yelled.

“Okay okay! The next number for you cannibals is . . . a slight deviation from the program. Originally it was to be Reginald Davis’s Stevie Wonder medley. But he’s sick, and he’ll be replaced by Paul Norris, with his original composition, sung a cappella, “The World.”

A lot of people didn’t know Paul Norris could sing, but sing he did. In a very loud voice.

“The wooo-hu-hu—hooooooorld . . .”

He sang every syllable as if his very life depended on the line.

“The woo-hu-hu-hooooooorld is a pa-laaaaaaaaaace of dooooo-uuuuuuu-ha-ha-ouuuuuut . . .”

He kind of snapped off the ends of his words.

“But we are Chilllll-dreeeeeen of the woooooooor ha-ha-ld.”

Some thought he had finished and applauded, but Paul Norris was just getting warmed up.

“The woooorllll . . .”

In the audience, Jeff Spicoli’s friends were goading him, challenging him. Go ahead. Go ahead, Spicoli.

“I say beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-heeeeee . . .”

Spicoli started tapping on the electronic game, bip bip bip . . . and right away Paul Norris started noticing it.

“I say beca . . .”

Paul was getting nervous.

“Because you got to, I say GOT TO take a chooooooicc . . .”

It was a low-threshold night for Paul Norris. He probably didn’t want to be there, but Reginald Davis had no doubt called and bottom-lined it. Man, I’m just not up to that Stevie Wonder medley tonight. . . .You could see something inside Paul Norris snap, his concentration shatter.

“KISS MY ASS!” he shouted.

He dropped the mike at his side and stomped backstage. There was silence, then embarrassed applause. Adams and Leach came bounding back out.

“Okay . . . we’ve reached that special part of the evening when we present THE BIG SURPRISE!”

The big finale of the Twentieth Annual Ridgemont High School Talent Show was pretty standard stuff. More fluorescent lights, another scratchy Polynesian record, and a big Tahitian dance featuring the entire football team in hula skirts.