The Ramshackle Beards: A Rock and Roll Ghost Story

Jim Patching doesn’t have a job. He does, however, have an identity crisis, a ghost that follows him everywhere, and a fiance growing impatient. Upon seeing on television the mug shot of local escaped convict Bobby Norton, it becomes clear to Jim what he must do: grow a beard. With his new furry facial companion, Jim initiates a return-to-nature campaign, which includes building a tree fort in the woods where he can contemplate the failures of society in unemployed isolation. Others follow. Things start to get hairy…
As Jim’s fort rapidly becomes a den for a burgeoning population of unemployed bearded scamps, Jim is implicated in aiding and abetting escaped convict Bobby Norton’s attempt to evade police. Jim skips town and finds asylum amongst another band of ironically bearded men hunting in the next town over. Meanwhile, successful women are gathering at Starbucks to initiate a back-to-humanity campaign in an effort to curtail the effects of a soulless existence in a volatile consumer culture. When Jim awakes from a coma after a chance encounter with Norton, he has complete amnesia save for the recognition of his mother. With no identity, it is the ethos of the women Jim naturally adopts as he endeavors to navigate life afresh in this, our modern America.