During a local fishing contest, people are being mysteriously dragged into the lake and killed by a giant fish hook. After a sufficient number of deaths, the killer is finally revealed.

Somewhere in the American southwest, Taz, a nutty visionary, has temporarily misplaced the wizened dried-out Brainstem he found in a mysterious subterranean world -- which he believes is the key to immortality. Three rebellious punks, Sean, Head and Billy Dork, unknowingly steal it in the course of a convenience store robbery believing it to be a stick of beef jerky. Newlyweds Bruce and Sheila have the misfortune to stumble into the confrontation between Taz and the Punks. The punks kidnap Sheila as a hostage, Taz kidnaps Bruce as his hostage; the bizarre chase is on! The two "teams" race across a landscape of identical convenience stores, housing developments, and rampant consumerism.

While digging into their town's infamous past, a group of high school students unwittingly unlock an even darker secret. Now, an evil spirit has been awakened and will stop at nothing to find his true heir.

In a virtually all-white Iowa town, Flip daydreams of being a hip-hop star, hanging with Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre. He practices in front of a mirror and with his two pals, James and Trevor. He talks Black slang, he dresses Black. He's also a wannabe pusher, selling flour as cocaine. And while he talks about "keeping it real," he hardly notices real life around him: his father's been laid off, his mother uses Food Stamps, his girlfriend is pregnant, James may be psychotic, one of his friends (one of the town's few Black kids) is preparing for college, and, on a trip to Chicago to try to buy drugs, the cops shoot real bullets. What will it take for Flip to get real?

Story of a young Minnesota woman called Claire and her relationships with two men, one of them the cook where she works as a waitress.