Page 29 has that great “You loaned me your car without telling me it has a blind spot, McFly” conversation, where George says “I assume your insurance will pay for this?” and Biff says “MY insurance? It’s YOUR car with YOUR blind spot. YOUR insurance should pay for it. I want to know who’s gonna pay for this?” and shows how he spilled beer all over himself when the accident happened.
It survives in the book relatively unmolested!
But then instead of it letting us reach our own conclusion of “Ah, drinking and driving, Biff really is a jerk!” the book has Marty spell it out for us just in case we’re dumb:
“Maybe the judge who hears you were drinking while driving will pay for it”, [Marty] interjected.
And I’m glad they cut it out because courts don’t work that way, right? Judges don’t normally pay for damages in the cases they hear that are otherwise unrelated to them? At least that is my understanding from television??
Biff tells George McFly to “tell your kid to keep outa this, McFly” (and I continue to be bothered how the book spells it “outa” and not “outta”), George offers a twenty to Biff for his suit, Marty quips “That’ll probably pay for two of those suits”, and Biff flushes and then tells Marty to “Shut up”, but then ENTIRELY FAILS to refer to him as if he has got a butt for a head!!
I certainly hope “butthead” shows up soon because if nobody gets called a “butthead” in this book then I’m not sure why we’re reading it! You know what my epitaph will say? I’ll tell you what it’ll say:
HERE LIES RYAN NORTH
All he wanted was to see a teen drive a car through time so that he could be called a butthead in two distinct time periods.
-My epitaph
Afterwards we get the “do you have my reports for me, McFly” scene and George says “I thought I’d do them later” and we get the rap-on-the-head “Think, McFly, think!” scene, and it’s all like in the movie, which means it’s all so good!
Only here in the book, Marty watches it and we learn that he feels like he might throw up, because his dad is a wimp and also because he just realized his date with Jennifer was out the window. What kind of day has it been, Marty?
It had been the worst of all possible days.
Knowing that we have just witnessed the worst day in human history for all people across all possible timelines and realities, we’re now on page 31! It has to go up from here!
