Generally speaking, I am not one for standing around staring at cars. Yet here I am, standing around with my eyes fixed on a silver 1970 Camaro — an RS/SS, 412 CID, Muncie four-speed, 12-bolt with 4:11 gears. I believe this means the car is special in some way, but I can’t be sure. I put my hands on my hips and puff my cheeks in what I hope is a that’s-a-heckuva-ride way, but no one seems to notice. To my left, a guy with a mullet is talking to a man with a chrome object in his hand. "I’m putting 200 horsepower in the rear end," the mullet says. "But my contribund excroliator stratifates with the drub-flap clatch-sprog."

Or something.

Today, the Bayside Expo Center — home of the 29th annual World of Wheels exposition — is full of people saying stuff like this. Over the course of the weekend, upwards of 100,000 people are expected to come here to gawk at hundreds of buffed-up, beefed-up, cosmetically enhanced automobiles. There are dragsters shaped like toothpicks, pimped-out vans with disco lights and chain-link steering wheels, cars with wheels as big as kiddie pools. And everywhere you turn, there is someone saying something about compound curves, brass ferrules, and how much horsepower a rear end should get.

As for me, my custom-car acumen doesn’t extend much beyond, "Oh, there’s a yellow one with a big engine; oh, there’s a red one with a big engine; oh, there’s a woman with big bosoms."

But then, I’m not really here for the cars, or even the bosoms. I’m here to see Verne Troyer — Mini-Me from the Austin Powers series — the weekend’s big celebrity autograph signer. Indeed, I’ve been lured here with the promise of an audience with the diminutive actor, perhaps even the opportunity to hang out with him. I picture Verne passing me the rolls, regaling me with another hilarious on-set anecdote: "And then BeyoncŽ says to me, ‘It’s not the meat, it’s the motion picture!’ " First, though, I have to spend a few hours enjoying the vehicles. It’s not been easy.

The World of Wheels is billed as "The Hottest Show on Earth," and as I stand here wondering what a Muncie is, rivulets of sweat running down my inner thigh, I’m inclined to agree. The problem is, I’ve seen this Camaro a minimum of three times now. My cheeks are tired from the appreciative puffing. I’ve browsed the banks of auto products (Wax As U Dry, All-Nu Upholstery) and perused the novelty stickers (i’m not fucking stupid, but i would). I’ve ridden the virtual-race-car machine, eaten two hot dogs, drunk two Buds, and had a poster signed by the busty Verena, who represents Toyo Tires.

By now, though, even the requisite custom-car hotties — the buxom custom-rim hawkers, the long-legged tinted-windshield peddlers — are starting to wear on me. I know I’m in real trouble when I elbow my way through a crowd gathered to watch a guy take a wheel off quickly, and am almost tearfully grateful for the diversion. Then, the tire-removal spectacle over, I make my way over to a sign: due to circumstances beyond our control, we regret to inform you that beetlejuice will not be appearing. Beetlejuice? "He’s the drunken midget from the Howard Stern Show," says a young woman sitting behind a table. Oh.

In fairness, most of the other people here seem to be having an okay time. The crowd is overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly baseball-capped. There are a few kid-toting, fretful-looking women. There are clumps of teens with pierced everythings and pants that could accommodate three people per leg. There are guys with long gray goatees and wallets on chains. There are prepubescent boys who ignore the cantilevered chests of the bikinied girls, but nonetheless display a morbid interest in the Toyo Tires product line. And then there are the die-hards, the auto-geeks, who do little else but gaze upon jutting engine blocks with expressions of genuine awe.

A number of these enthusiasts are milling around a gleaming, powder-blue Ford pick-up truck, exhaling from the corners of their mouths with a sincerity I could never hope to muster. The truck, it turns out, is the property of a very nice man named Richard Metz, who hails from New Hampshire. "It’s unique," says Metz, gesturing at his vehicle. "Like you and me, like the snowflakes." Of course, Metz wouldn’t dream of actually driving his truck. After all, the thing is worth, by his estimate, $300,000. "I’m going to give it to my daughter," he says, "when I buy the farm." A vehicle that can’t be driven. It’s very odd.

I check my watch. Time to go see Verne Troyer.

Let’s start by stating the obvious: Verne Troyer is not a large man. In fact, the 34-year-old actor stands a mere 32 inches in his tiny stockinged feet. That’s about level with my knee. As a publicist leads me through a back room to where Troyer awaits with his traveling companion, a relatively large little person named Phil Fondacaro, I run through a mental checklist of phrases to avoid — big star, huge following, tall order, and so on. After all, as it said in my horoscope this morning:

You will meet new and exciting friends today.

Not quite. As it turns out, people like me aren’t allowed unfettered access to people like Verne Troyer. In the few minutes I am allowed to spend with him — my Mini-Interview — I manage to scribble down the following quotes:

"A chance to meet the fans one-on-one."

"I led the Chicken Dance at an Oktoberfest in Oklahoma. No, I’m not going to do it for you."

"Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that this would be on the level it is."

"Your life changes a lot. I can’t do the things I used to do by myself."

"I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m a ladies’ man. I don’t know where I got that reputation. Right now, I’m off the market."

"It’s surprising to me how many celebrities want to meet me as much as I want to meet them."

"I enjoy cars, yes."

"I’m off to Cincinnati tomorrow. There’s a lot of traveling. It wears you out."

Sensing that the interview is drawing to its miserable end, I squeak in a final question, my hardball question. "On a recent episode of the Today show," I say, using my best 60 Minutes voice, "Katie Couric treated you as though you were a child. Wasn’t that kind of annoying? Do you get that sort of condescending attitude a lot?"

This, it seems, was a good move. Troyer wants to talk about this stuff. "Katie is just a sweetheart, a terrific person," he says, sounding as though he’s just sucked down a canister of helium. "But that does happen. You try to explain, ‘I’m an adult, you’re an adult.’ Though you try not to be rude."

"You seem very nice," I say, buying time.

"Don’t let him fool you," says Phil Fondacaro.

For a little person, the fedora-wearing, scruff-chinned, heavy-lidded Fondacaro seems awfully tough — even scary. Fondacaro is Troyer’s closest friend, his adviser, his protector. After 20-odd years in movies (Willow, Return of the Jedi, Troll), he’s had plenty of time to pick through the mesh of adoration and mockery that goes along with being an extremely short celebrity. And where Troyer seems a little na•ve and eager to please, his buddy has perfected the art of self-protective sarcasm. When I ask Troyer if he’s traveling with an entourage, for instance, Fondacaro says, "What, I’m not enough for you?"

Right now, Troyer tells me, the two actors are involved in a dramatic feature about the people who played the Oompa-Loompas in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. "I play a young actor," Troyer explains. "And Phil’s someone who has been in the business for a long time. It’s about little people always being stereotyped. He explains to me that I will always be treated as an elf." In the real world, Troyer adds, "I feel like I’ve changed that to a certain extent. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to do that."

And then I make a huge, huge tactical error — I bring up Beetlejuice, "the drunken midget from the Howard Stern Show." There are a few mumbled never-met-hims and don’t-know-hims before Verne Troyer and Phil Fondacaro are whisked away. "Fondacaro," I cry in a desperate last-ditch attempt to change the subject. "Does that mean you’re fond of cars?" He looks back, straight-faced. "No."

As I squat there, alone, gazing forlornly at the retreating character actors, I am assured that spending more time with Verne is a distinct possibility. If I don’t mind hanging around for another three hours. Oy.

Besides Verne Troyer, there are actually some other non-automotive attractions at the World of Wheels expo. Steve Wilkos is here, the shaven-headed, grumpy-looking security guard on Jerry Springer, and so is Dennis Gage, who’s said to be the host of TV’s My Classic Car. There are a bunch of kids trying to break their necks performing BMX stunts, a paunchy, disturbingly large-packaged Spider-Man posing for photos with some of the younger attendees. And then there’s the Texas Bikini Team, "The World Leader in Swimsuit Entertainment."

Despite being perfectly shaped, and barely dressed, there’s something oddly asexual about the Texas Bikini Team girls. "If you like what you see, don’t be shy," yells the team’s director, a very pregnant woman in a leopard-print shirt. "Just scream and shout!" But as I watch the quintet of cheerleader-quality girls flouncing around to the sounds of Elvis Presley, I don’t really feel like shouting. In fact, I feel strangely pensive. With a pair of bronzed buttocks shimmying a matter of feet from my face, I can think of little else but the cars I’ve been gawking at all day.

I, for one, have always regarded cars as functional things, a means of getting from point A to point B without having to stand next to Michael Dukakis. The World of Wheels attendees, though, seem to view automobiles as statuary, objects to be ogled, critiqued, fetishized — anything but driven. If you ascribe to the line of thinking that a thing is what a thing does, then you have to ask yourself whether these cars are even cars. If their sole purpose in life is to be looked at, then surely they are just large, elaborate tchotchkes.

The cars at World of Wheels represent a fantasized version of the driving experience, an automotive fairy tale that can never come true. Similarly, the Texas Bikini Team presents us with little more than a simulacrum of sex, a fictionalized, jazzed-up, and utterly unattainable ideal of womanhood. These girls, like Richard Metz’s powder-blue pick-up truck, look great. But, like the pick-up, there’s something almost too precious about them, too glossy, too polished. You can look, but you can’t touch. And you can never, ever, actually take them anywhere. What’s the use of that?

Apparently, however, I’m in a minority again. As the girls dance, a large, enthusiastic crowd gathers. There’s a good deal of hooting and hollering. And videotaping. Again, the preteen boys adopt poses of tremulous indifference. The dads, meanwhile, are less shy. "Holy shit!" says one of them as a breast starts to creep out from inside a costume. "Jesus Christ!" And when the girls are done with their routine, the dads and the boys alike line up to buy Texas Bikini Team calendars, Texas Bikini Team T-shirts, Texas Bikini Team mugs. Many go so far as to shell out $20 to pose for a Polaroid with the girls.

I need a beer.

A couple of lifetimes later, having downed many $6 Buds, I make my way over to the stage where Verne Troyer is signing autographs, the ever-stoic Phil Fondacaro at his side. At one point, my eyes meet Troyer’s, and he smiles at me. You will meet new and exciting friends today. For some reason, I am too embarrassed to smile back. As Martin Amis notes in his memoir Experience, interviewing famous figures can be a weirdly self-abasing business. "[A]s a human, you yearn for the birth of a flattering friendship."

All around the stage, people are yelling, "Verne! How you doing?" Like they’ve known him for years. Once again, I’m confronted with the question of what is real and what is not. These people might know Verne Troyer’s movies. Some of them may even have a working knowledge of his background, his likes and dislikes. But none of them actually knows him. The familiarity of celebrity, of course, is not the same thing as the familiarity of friendship.

Verne Troyer told me earlier that he loves his fans. But this, too, has its limits. At four o’clock sharp, he’s ushered off the stage, regardless of the fact that dozens of autograph hunters are still waiting in line. The situation quickly descends into chaos. "Verne!" cry the people who didn’t make it to the front of the line. "Mini-Meee!" It’s like the Beatles. Princess Diana. Verne Troyer disappears into the mob, and there seems to be a real possibility that he will be trampled to death by these would-be friends.

A few moments later, the crowd moves en masse to the men’s room. Troyer, it seems, needs to take a pee. A stern-faced security guard stands sentry at the bathroom door, lest the actor be mobbed at the urinal. So we wait. And we wait. As I stand there hopping from foot to foot, notebook in hand, the World of Wheels PR guy informs me that Troyer will not be doing any more interviews today. What? No more interviews. Sorry. When Troyer finally emerges from the bathroom, the crowd surges again. None, though, can hold a candle to the fervor of yours truly: "Veeerrrrne!"

The pint-size star of the Austin Powers series, however, will not be swayed. I follow the Troyer retinue into the cold, damp afternoon air, where his car awaits. On the way out, Troyer says something about needing to shave his head, and I write this down. Meanwhile, the contrite PR guy ushers me to the car and opens the passenger-side door. "Get in!" I know Troyer wants only to go back to his hotel room, to rest, maybe get something to eat. A bit of normalcy.

Fuck that — I could get in the car, couldn’t I, force him to give me a few more quotes. "Get in!" But as the car’s engine roars to life, I reach for the door and slam it shut. With a splattering of slush, the car lurches forward. Troyer and Fondacaro are sitting in the back seat, but I can see neither of their heads. Then they’re gone.

Later, I find myself in a colleague’s crappy old Volvo. There’s trash on the floor, the windows don’t work properly, and the chassis seems to have, at best, a passing relationship with the car’s axles. But I don’t mind. As the Volvo chugs and shudders through the snow, I’m beginning to warm to the idea of a drink at my local bar, the company of friends, the prospect of seeing my girlfriend. This car has no racing stripes, no hydraulic suspension, no velveteen interior. But it moves. And this, in my book, makes it the finest automobile I’ve encountered all day.

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.