Our Hero

After years of having every embarassing moment of her life recounted and exaggerated by her father in his newspaper column, 17 yr. old Kale Stiglic has decided that she has had enough. Kale begins searching for something that she could use to publicly embarass her father. When she finally finds the ammunition she needs to get even, it backfires on her and threatens to destroy the marriage of her parents. What makes matters worse is that Kale's annoying 25 yr. old brother, Ethan has separated from his wife and is moving back in with the family. Now she must figure out a way to repair the damage that she is responsible for. Through all this stress that is going on in her life at the moment, she discovers an outlet to express who she is, what she feels and thinks in a zine that she creates entitled, ""Our Hero.""

One of the teachers at Kale's high school, Mr. Minetta decides to make the special required project a ""Passion Play."" What should be an organized project turns out to be a mess, starting with the the mistitling of the play. Where it should cover the last days of Christ, Mr. Minetta is having the students cover his birth. Also, some students like Dalal are offended by the play's strong religous content being covered in a public school. Mary E. is euphoric and takes great pleasure in being involved in the mixture of a misguided and innacurate handeling of such a serious topic. Kale also doesn't want to do the play because she dreads being the person who has to play a costumed cow again. She discovers that Ross has got the permission to do an alternate ""independent study"" project and decides that she wants to do one on her zines. First she has to meet with her assigned project advisor. She decides to bring all her zines to school for the meeting. There, Kale lets Ross and Mary E. re

Kale is ecstatic to find out that her zine was showcased in a literary magazine, but is disappointed that the other zines that were also covered in her opinion seemed to be more interesting than hers. She decides to make her next issue more exciting by approaching and setting up an appointment at her home to interview a dirty disheveled man nicknamed, ""Crazy Guy"" who wanders around the area near the health food store making odd faces everyday staring up at the sky. He also smokes like a chimney and then drops the cigarette butts on the ground. After that, he picks it up and then stuffs them back in his mouth. Later in the evening, Kale prepares dinner for her and crazy guy, but begins to panic and wonder whether this was such a good idea. Meanwhile, Mila reluctantly agrees to let her son, Ethan create and perform a stand-up comedy routine for a benefit that she is in charge of preparing.

Finding out that she is low on funds to continue making copies of her zines, Kale decides to get a job working at a health food store. A dark cloud of frustration and uneasiness begins to hover over Kale's new job when she has to work with Shana who has a bad attitude and appears to have a negative outlook on life. As she continues to work, Kale discovers that Shana is a single mother of a little girl and is less fortunate than her. She tries do help out by attempting to place some extra money anonymously in Shana's bag. Instead of helping, it makes things worse as an angry Shana gives the money back and tells Kale that she doesn't want her pity or help. Meanwhile Ross continues his streak of wearing outragous clothing by coming to school one day wearing very unique, shiny shoes to school. This garners the attention of everyone including Kale and Mary E. who begin to question Ross' sexual orientation. It proves an interesting and hilarious conversation topic for Kale and Mary E.

Kale's dreams finally come true when she gets to go out with Perfectly Frank. As the date goes on, Kale realizes that the fantasy that she built up surrounding Frank doesn't seem to match with reality. Meanwhile, sparks fly between Mary E. and Ethan.

As the annual taking of the family Christmas card picture approaches, Kale decides that now is the opportune time to seek her revenge on Ethan for making her look foolish in the previous Christmas photo shoots. Kale tricks Ethan into believing that he had gotten the girl that he cheated on his ex-wife with, pregnant. She starts regretting what she has done when Ethan starts to fall apart. Meanwhile, Mary E. receives an unclear and inaudible phone message from Ross who went on a trip to meet a zine writer that he had communicated with on the internet. She starts to become worried and attempts to seek help from his grandparents, but their minimal understanding of English proves to be a problem.