Mel Edison has just lost his job after many years and now has to cope with being unemployed at middle age during an intense NYC heat wave.

Bickford Waner, an apparently naive young man from Fort Worth, arrives in the tiny Texas town of Dime Box and takes on a variety of menial jobs. He's befriended by Reese Ford and his wife Molly, but before long Molly has seduced Bickford. Only with the arrival of Bickford's former girlfriend Janet Conforto is it revealed that Bickford is actually the notorious train robber Kid Blue. Humiliated by a scandal arising from his affair with his friend's wife, Bickford gives up on going straight and plots a crime.

Reverend Brooks leads his small Iowa town in a contest to stop smoking for a month. But some tobacco executives don't want them to win, and try everything they can to make them smoke. If townspeople don't go nuts from wanting a cigarette, or kill each other from irritation and frustration, they will win a huge prize.

Moments after receiving his graduate diploma, Jacob waits at a train station. The future lies ahead, but life abruptly intervenes. Images flash in Jacob's mind: of war, injustice, assassination, protest, the entire spectrum of 1960s angst and anger - sending Jacob into a catatonic state. What follows during his bizarre rehab and its aftermath will be another form of madness.

A computer at a nuclear power plant malfunctions and receives erroneous information of a radiation leak. It seals off the compound, trapping the crew inside.

A small-town loser determines to have one more shot at the big time by winning a football game.