Say anything

My love for John Cusack did not start with Say Anything, as it did for so many people.  My best friend and I watched Sixteen Candles almost every Saturday night for the first two years of high school, and my love and appreciation for JC grew from his role as Farmer Ted's sidekick, video equipment strapped to his head, Members' Only jacket with the popped collar.  In college, I must have watched Grosse Point Blank forty times, wishing that I were Minnie Driver (that tall, gorgeous tramp smooching on my man), laughing at his wonderful deadpan exchanges with his wacky sister, Joan (also in Sixteen Candles, if you were paying attention), who somehow manages one toe this side of total psychosis.  I'd be friends with her, but might also fear her.  A good basis for friendship.  

There are songs that take me back to places and people in time.  I can't hear 'Jungle Boogie' without thinking of my darling friend Ayla (it's her birthday today - happy birthday, A!) and the year we met and became friends, more than twelve years ago, in faraway British Columbia, bonding over our mutual love of high church and Kool and the Gang.  Alanis Morissette (no, not THAT song) singing 'Unsent,' swirls me back to my sophomore year in college, listening to this song in the car with my friend Matthew, who loved to point to himself when she sang the first line, "Dear Matthew..." and all the ups and downs of that year.  The recent and tragic death of Whitney Houston also brings me back to that year - the year I had the best college roommate EVER, Selena.  She was wicked smart, sassy, wore my clothes without asking, left her things everywhere, and it didn't matter, because we lived so very well together.  This circumstance was never to be duplicated, ever.  We even joked about the monster living under her bed, beneath the mountain of crap.  His name was Herbert, or was it Harold... She drove a car she referred to as "the flaming Honda," and could look at me at any time and say, "Chinese food?"  She was the best.  "I love Paris" always turns into "I hate Paris," Meg Ryan's interpolation in the movie French Kiss, and my friend Casey.  We watched this movie in her apartment outside the gates of LSU, a wonderful 2nd floor of a house, crowded with books and movies and things that smelled good.  We've been friends for something like 16 years, and I can always count on her to be reading something interesting and, like me, in search of the best lip balm ever.  It's a lifelong quest.  "Jimi thing" heralds the summer of 99, Woodstock on the radio in the car of my friend Kristy.  I can't remember where we were going, but we had to change clothes in her car.  God it was hot that day.  And the list goes on.  

It's sunny today, here in St. É.  I have rehearsal in a little more than an hour, and while I'm seriously inclined to sit here and youtube Peter Gabriel for the next 45 minutes, I should probably detach myself from the nostalgia train.  To all the ones I love - I miss you.  But not necessarily in the Lisa Loeb kind of way :)