But Call Me Betsy

Watched Cameron Crowe's  Say Anything last night for the first time in about fifteen years. I am trying to decide if it's a feminist film or not. It's one of the few teen movies where the guy is totally willing to give up everything for the girl and the girl is the one who has big plans. In this movie, she's the valedictorian and she has earned a fellowship to study in London. Conversely, Lloyd isn't sure what he wants to do (aside from not want to "sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career"). His main goal in life is to be the boyfriend of Diane Court. He's Lloyd Dobler, as played by the long-eyelashed, super tall John Cusack, who I have a fondness for because he's a native Chicagoan and because I also like his sister, actress Joan Cusack, especially her green-eye-shadowed character in Working Girl.  There was a spat of these "unpopular guy gets popular girl" films in the 80s, like Patrick Dempsey's Can...

How many songs can a brain hold? It happens to me often where I'll hear just a chord from a song I haven't heard in a long time, and all of the lyrics rush back. That occurred to me driving to work the other day, where I heard a John Denver song--can't recall the title of it now, something about going home, and I was thinking how I hadn't heard that particular song in probably fifteen years. I'm certain there are songs that I will never hear again that I used to listen to all the time, and some that I don't ever want to hear again (the first one that comes to mind is "Cat's in the Cradle"). And then there are some songs that I thought I would never hear again but that I can't seem to shake, like "I Don't Want to Lose Your Love Tonight," by the Outfields, a song that always reminds me of this guy from high school, Jimmy Deputy, who was an actor and went to a different school, but who I had a huge crush on. He had a really deep v...