THE KIDS NOWADAZE

There’s a crucial scene missing from Dazed and Confused-the one at the end, where we find out what the young characters have grown up to become. American Graffiti, Animal House, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High all gave us these updates. Since director Richard Linklater didn’t, we decided to supply his characters’ futures for him. Pink (Jason London): The onetime stoner quarterback, having parlayed his profits from cofounding High Times magazine into a Dallas real estate empire that went bankrupt during the S&L crisis, now coaches high school football in Austin. He favors the long-bomb play and lectures his players about the perils of chewing tobacco.

Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi): Finally out in the real world she had yearned for, Cynthia became the star heartbreaker and Law Review editor at Yale. Upon joining Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Little Rock firm, she specialized in the criminal defense of misunderstood youths. Her current job at the White House: preventing Roger from punching out passersby.

Mike (Adam Goldberg): Imprisoned after violating SEC insider-trading rules, the former idealist intellectual starts playing handball with fellow con Ivan Boesky, who bankrolls his obsessive research for his dream project: a film about JFK’s assassination. Mike regards Oliver Stone’s JFK as the result of a vast conspiracy against himself.

Mitch (Wiley Wiggins): A precociously tenured Stanford professor of anthropology, always-wise-beyond-his-years Mitch effortlessly made a fortune by prescient investment in the Home Shopping Network.

Darla (Parker Posey): Having metamorphosed from sexy freshman-abusing bitch to member of Oregon’s Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh free-love commune, she has now become a radical lesbian separatist campaigning to excommunicate Camille Paglia for going mainstream, offending the sisterhood, and liking Madonna.

Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey): Currently the oldest living undergraduate at Texas State Tech in Waco, he continues to cruise freshman mixers and moonlights as a David Crosby look-alike. -Tim Appelo