Monday
24Jul2006
Some Kind Of Wonderful
I just finished watching Some Kind Of Wonderful. You know the flick. And if you don't, then we can't be friends. Seriously. There is something wrong with you. I've seen this movie at least a few hundred times. It gets me every time. EVERY time. John Hughes you devil you. How do you do it? Molly Ringwald isn't even in this one... and here I am bawling my eyes out after this timeless scene. And then I CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE by Lick The Tins swells as the couple stroll down the lamppost lined street.
No matter what I'm doing, where I have to be or what time it is.. if a John Hughes movie is airing on TNT.. I'm watching. No matter that it's interrupted every three minutes with commercials, no matter that the swear words (translation: the good parts) are edited out so sloppily that Andrew McCarthey looks like an actor in an old japanese kung fu movie, no matter that I have the DVD right there on my shelf.
I. Am. Watching.
I will cry. And I'm a tough chick dammit! I hate romantic comedies, really I do. Reese Withersoon and her Legally Blonde brigade are not for me. Nor was that leering jackolantern Julia Roberts and the ridiculously overrated Hugh Grant starring as, who else, Hugh Grant. Keep your Kate Hudsons and your Jennifer Garners to yourself.. I've just never been interested.
Ironically, I will never tire of Some Kind of Wonderful, Can't By Me Love, Pretty In Pink, Say Anything.. You know the ones. Any movie starring any variation of John Cusack, Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall. These movies are as much a part of my growing up experience as my own travails in junior high and high school.
Judd Nelson as Bender in The Breakfast Club instilled deep within me an immense admiration for the bad boys. He hooked me at "Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?" He began reeling me in with his ingenious impersonation of his parental plight at home..
"Stupid worthless no good goddamn free loadin' son of a bitch retarded big mouth know it all asshole jerk! You forgot ugly lazy and disrespectful- Shut up bitch! Go fix me a turkey pot pie! What about you dad? Fuck you. No, dad, what about you? Fuck you. No dad what about you?! FUCK YOU"
He is angry! I am in love! From Bender to the man every girl is still looking for.. Jake Ryan, where are you?
From my journal: August 10, 2003 Why must I be so concerned with boys? I don't like girls that live for men, so why must I? I'm perfectly content on my own. You know, movies have dones the women of the world such an injustice. You see these perfectly wonderful relationships on the big screen, that it took 50 takes and 20 pounds of make-up to get right - and the rest of us bastards have to try to live up to that crap. It will never happen. I'm 26 years old and I'm still longing for Jake Ryan to pull up in his red porche while the Thompson Twins IF YOU WERE HERE swells in the background. Fuck. Fuckity Fuck! Is it true that I could find the guy of my dreams, my best friend who sees the best things about me, that can't imagine living without me or is it all a crock of bullshit?"
Apparently, that same entry exists within the pages of almost every American woman's journal. In his article "Real Men Can't Hold A Match To Jake Ryan" Hank Stuever says the movie Sixteen Candles offered the hope, before life dashed it. Stuever urges women to finally admit that Jake Ryan is not coming for us. "Not in the red Porsche 944, and not wearing that Fair Isle sweater vest. Not with his shiny black hair moussed gently heavenward, not with his gooey brown eyes and square Matt Dillonesque jaw. He will not be standing there with his hands in the pockets of his 501 button-fly jeans (while leaning against said Porsche), and he will not be shyly waving at you from across the street. ("Yeah, you," he mouths, just as in the movie, after you look behind you to see what girl he could possibly be interested in.)"
So he's not coming. Fuck you Stuever! Can't we have our dreams? Since y'all aren't capable of living up to Jake's impossibly high standard (seriously though, who would dump the blonde cheerleader that puts out for red-haired freckle-faced Molly Ringwald?) let us have Jake on our TNT reruns dammit! A girl can dream.
All of the glorious movies mentioned never stray far from the same theme on high school stereotypes. Jocks. Cheerleaders. Nerds. Burners. Freaks. Geeks. Neomaxizoomdweebies.. Whatever.. But we can all identify because all the stereotypes are represented properly. We can find ourselves in there somewhere..
High school to a certain degree defines our personalities. For life. For the most part high schoolers are empty vessels waiting to be filled with pop culture, what's allegedly cool and not cool. The NOT COOL moniker is a sticky motherfucker. You can say you don't care, but in a way, you spend the rest of your life trying to prove those high school fuckers wrong. Clothes, hair styles, who you eat lunch with.. all of it takes on a ridiculously intense level of importance. You go to school to get grades, yet every day you're graded by your peers. And it's so easy to fuck up.
For much too long after high school, many of us secretly continue to believe those labels.. It's tough to shake that mental image of yourself. Were you fat in high school? You might be the thinnest person in the room now, but you still feel fat, don't you? Were you beautiful in high school? That's even worse because you will spend the rest of your life trying to be the pretty girl and inevitibly, you'll grow old. And depressed. I say being the beautiful person is worse than being a freak. A freak can always turn into the hottest person at the reunion. Everyone is secretly checking out the former beauty, glorying in every wrinkle, every pound of weight gained..
You either hate who you were in high school, always trying to escape that persona.. or as in the case of the former beauty you'll never live up to who you perceived yourself to be in high school (D.G. Nielsen, the asshole jock quarterback that tried to screw me in the back of his truck then ignored me the next day after I refused, I'm looking in your direction) Thing is, despite his obvious assholeness, everyone loved D.G., the football star. Because in the end, you are identified by the sport you may play, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, how you wear your hair. That's why we all love John Hughes. Because as obvious as his stereotypes are.. one of them rings a bell deep within us all. And we remember, even though many of us want to forget.
"Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.
Jul 24, 2006 | The Girl Who... | in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Musings | 33 Comments | Share Article 
Reader Comments (33)
Love the shirt Monica! Cute pic of your dad!
The word denotes a spiritual manifestation, but in my case the epiphany came through a conversation with a friend last Friday at lunch.
The friend said “I don’t hear that joy in your voice, I don’t hear the once carefree laughter coming from you, you need to be yourself, and you need to remember who you once were before life got into your head”.
It wasn’t exactly like that but that is what I took from the conversation.
Today I realized it is summertime.
Today I realized I make all my own choices.
Today I realized I decide my own happiness. (Someone else told me that too)
Today there is no fog.
Today I have that smile, the one when you see it makes you think I know something you don’t know.
I have that smile letting me enjoy the joke that is always there (could be described as a shit-eating grin)
I understand the cliché “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem”.
I’m still a cynical bastard, but I am going to enjoy my fucking life. So eat my cock and suck my balls, and if you are into it you can eat my ass too (of course after a shower).
Love,
This silly motherfucker.
Formerly known as Cunning Linguist, I am glad you're happy today, your recent posts seemed rather down as opposed to your usual sarcastic, philosophical nature. Are you going to use the name "this silly motherfucker" now? I rather like that. Sicksadworld! Glad you are back.
hmm. sounds like SOMEone turned into a complete fucking pussy while she was away. "ooooh, Mon, love your shirt, oooooooooh!!! cutesy wutesy and lil duckies!!!" fucking hell.
Yes, I know, we're supposed to be happy that the cute rich guy admits he really loves her and we're supposed to feel our hearts swell with emotion after they walk off into their happy ever after, but I really wanted her to tell him to take a hike and end up falling in love with Duckie who loved her all along.
Maybe I could just feel for Duckie who was there no matter what, plunged into the pool of sharks at the prom with her, and then got ditched in the end. Yes, I know, they wrapped it up neatly with that girl giving him the eye at the end, but even if he got a girl, she wasn't the right girl!
My girlfriends would just shake their heads at me, "It's so romantic! You just don't get it!" No, I got it, but hated what it said about us chicks not being able to see what's right before our eyes. (And who isn't guilty of that, yours truly included??)
I think that's why I preferred Some Kind of Wonderful, since it had the ending Pretty in Pink should have had.
I hate you and I hate your shirt.
Love,
Sicksadworld
JR
oh yeah, my life-partner Graham loves your hair color.
Figures... Geeks didn't become cool til AFTER I graduated high school.
Also: Not John Hughes, but I think I liked Cusack best as Lane Meyer in "Better off Dead."
"Gee, I'm really sorry your Mom blew up, Ricky."
Since when are you the above mentioned guy? HE BROKE MY HEART TWICE, PEOPLE!
Me and my bff in high school watched Sixteen Candles EVERY NIGHT. We knew (and still know) every line in that movie. Best movie ever made!! Thanks for the flashback!
I catch some heat for watching these movies all the everloving time, but it's because I have been most of those girls at some point in my life. The poor girl, the smart girl, the geeky girl, the bitchy girl, the tomboy.
Nothing changes in these movies. You watch them over and over, and Jake Ryan never lets Samantha down. Every single time, he shows up at the church with his Porsche. How can you not love that?
I did, however break your best friend's Chevette while doing her in the back seat. Twice.
And by "back seat", I mean "back door".
and by "twice" I mean "I have it one tape if you wanna watch it."
Ryan.
Luv him-- my heart quivers every, single time I see that scene while the Thompson Twins are playing. I have to limit my viewings of 'Sixteen Candles' because after the 1,000th time of watching it, it kind of becomes mundane. I am able to recite almost the entire script, and I think my fav line is: 'I can't believe they fucking forgot my birthday'
Lake. Big Lake.
If you haven't seen it yet, rent it tomorrow. Don't think about it. Just do it. You'll be glad you did.
It even stars John Cusack.
Jake Ryan. Sigh. Movies haven't gotten any better than they were when I was a pre-teen in love with love. And I'm going to be 32 on Thursday and I still love 'em!
That should be interesting! I did see one of Frank Zappa's pompous daughters on some VH1 program going on and on about how her book is a rebuttal to High Fidelity, whatever the fuck that means. All I know is I wanted to reach into my TV and punch her in the mouth.