Channeling My Inner '80s Geek

Last night I did the best thing I'll do all summer. I went to Diablo Cody's film showcase at the New Beverly Cinema, featuring one of my all-time favorite movies, "Pretty in Pink."

If I could pick two words to capture the golden era of movies from my youth, they would be JOHN HUGHES. 20 years after first falling in love with the Brat Pack and their pre-Gen-X angst, I'm amazed at how these movies hold up. Why? John Hughes is one great writer who gets people. He is unmatched in his ability to take ridiculous high school drama, where the most important things in life have to do with ditching school and going to prom, and put round characters set in real social contexts with real family issues and make you give two cents about what happens to them. Granted, it helps if you have a penchant for good quality sap like I do.

The best part of last night was before the movie showing, when Diablo and special guest Jon Cryer (Duckie Dale fans given permission to freak out now) did some Q&A about the film. I learned the Molly Ringwald had a crush on Robert Downey Jr. at the time and hoped he would get the role instead of Cryer. I learned they actually filmed the *real* way fans know the film was supposed to end, but it didn't work so well with Ringwald's stomach flu. I learned that Trax was actually right on Third Street Promenade, the then-void lot of empty storefronts. And I learned that Jon is just as funny and relateable in real life as his Duckie was.

Then, watching the movie, I was reminded of why I loved it so. I have always identified with the outcast-hero that is so celebrated in the John Hughes canon. Andie Walsh and Duckie Dale, like Keith and Watts, or John Bender or Farmer Ted or Cameron Frye, represented to me then that the one who didn't have it all could still win something in the end. I will always be more Andie Walsh than Amanda Jones (pardon the mixed movie metaphor), and I embrace that. I just haven't found my devoted Duckie Dale yet.


Best scene: Anyone who would do a little Otis deserves to get the girl.

The Dark Knight

Every superhero movie starts with a normal guy. Last night, I saw the much anticipated new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight." With hero Batman on one side and villain Joker on the other, both victims of pain and loss, the movie explores what happens to people after they suffer. It also suggests that we have a choice in the matter. If there's one thing Batman teaches us, it's that our pain never just disappears in a vacuum, the way we wish it would.

Towards the end of the movie, the Joker poignantly comments that madness is like gravity - it just takes a little push for it to come tumbling down. And as I watched characters in this fictitious world respond in very non-fictitious ways to loss in their lives, I felt glad that we have been given a way out of madness. And in the real world, it doesn't come down to me biting the bullets of pain that sometimes hit, it comes down to where I go with that pain. Though few of us process by wearing freaky makeup and engaging in sociopathic behavior, or donning an animal costume to fight crime, we all process in some way. What do we do with the pain of emotionally absent fathers, mothers who have abandoned us, loved ones lost in tragedy, estranged relationships, broken hearts or hopes completely dashed?

Lately I've been looking around and seeing a lot of rubble -- the remaining schrapnel of my own past and those around me. Gone are the days of youthful idealism, where the future is full of opportunity and possibility. Real life can leave some real scars, and even knowing that anything can happen, I have been aware of the surgery and stitches needed in some of the deeper places of my heart. And in real life with real God, pain is no less real and loss doesn't magically undo itself.

But miraculously, all things can be redeemed. I see it in my own life and I see it in good friends around me who are choosing to wrestle with God and let him give new hopes and new dreams to replace the ones lost. Though we are all mid-process, I'm hanging on the edge of my seat for the dawn that always follows a dark night. I hear it's better than any Hollywood happy ending our human minds can conjure.

A Good Mix is Forever

I popped a CD mix I had made for my sister a few years ago entitled, "Waiting for Somebody." It had been so long since I'd listened to it or thought about it, I forgot what was on it. So I found each song a delight -- clearly they are all songs I love since I had created the mix. Some of them I hadn't heard in years, others I had forgotten about entirely. So there I was driving on the 60 singing things like Sinead O'Connor, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins and Neil Finn at the top of my lungs.

As I listened to the lyrics of songs I had carefully put together years ago to encourage my sister, I found myself also encouraged. It's been a long time since I've been in the phase of hearing God sing me love songs. But by the time I hit Nina Simone's "My Baby Just Cares For Me," I was actually struck by God's own love for me, that isn't concerned about anything else that can seem so important to the rest of the world, "Liz Taylor is not his style, and even Lana Turner's smile is something he can't see; my Baby don't care who knows, my Baby just cares for me."

I felt emboldened to reclaim strength in my singleness. The longing of a single person is to know the experience of being fully loved, just as they are. And their fear is that no one will ever love them in that way. So what have I got to worry about?

The Power of Promise

I have been thinking lately of the words "promised land." It has become a phrase specifically associated with Old Testament Bible stories of Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years, or as a vague symbolic notion in Christendom. But in the day-to-day struggles of not knowing what is to come, the words have been on my mind lately. There is something amazing about the concept: There is a land of promise of something better that God intends for us. A promise can be so real as to be a land -- a place to live and experience and be.

I don't have a bad life right now. I can't complain of a stable, enjoyable job, the ability to pursue DJ-ing as a creative expression on the side, or longtime friends who know me and love me. But there are days I fear that I have hit adulthood normalcy, and there is no more to look forward to. Is the rest of my life just to be more of the same? One long road of working and some nice extra-curricular activities? A life with no promise of something better quickly loses its meaning. It's the promised land, both in this life and the one to come, that gets me through the day. Though I don't know what exactly it holds, or what that place will be like, I know it will be good.

Ghetto Girl

I just had one of the most pleasant Fourth of Julys I've had in years. I spent the day catching up on sleep and doing next to nothing, then on a whim went to the fireworks show at the Coliseum with my roommate. After parking in a totally red zone (with the hundred other cars breaking the law) and gathering on the Natural History Museum's dying lawn with a couple hundred mostly Black and Latino families from our hood (freely launching their own illegal pre-show firecrackers) we watched 30 minutes of fireworks set to the cheesiest Americana you could dig. We then drove along the 10 to get In-N-Out burgers, with fireworks from celebrations all over lighting our way. It was a very L.A. Fourth.

As both of us shared about some of the blues we brought into the day -- memories of ex-dates in years past, current friends in hard times, and our own things we're getting through -- I was grateful again for quiet days like this one and friends to share it with. I've had a lot of reflective moments this year, and tonight, as I enjoyed the hood culture that has become so familiar to me over my 10 years living here, I realized that this hood has become my home.