This is why events unnerve me

They find it all, a different story
Notice whom for wheels are turning
Turn again and turn towards this time

There are the people who adore the classic John Hughes teen film Sixteen Candles and the people I couldn’t imagine having to be around. That simple.

Some films, we soon realize, will be so monumental in the preceding years of our lives that, before we even purchase the box office ticket or press play on the dvd, we are enthralled. The idea of the plot, the trailers are enough sustenance to make the film an instant favorite. For myself, I started citing Sixteen Candles as one of my favorite films before I saw the edited TBS version, let alone the director’s final cut. The premise – a shy girl pines over an older crush while trying to simultaneously avoid the advances of a nerd and garner the precious and much deserved attention one should receive from family on her sweetest of birthdays – rang true. I, too clamoured over someone who was, without a doubt in a different social stratosphere than myself. My days were spent building website and organizing photos for yearbook; practicing the flute and rehearsing my lines. I was an active student but certainly not popular. I had friends but whose to say we were close? I tried to pretend the fact that we ate together at lunch, and nothing else, was enough social gratification one would need.

Perhaps it was a magazine article or a clip on the television that originally sparked my interest. I’m not quite sure what and to tell the truth, there is little importance in the matter. The critical point, then, is the fact that it was there, and that it is still there in my mind, forever as one of my favorite films.

While watching the film, one immediately gets the impression as to why the film is so great and why it has become so important to so many people. Many scenes seamlessly implant themselves in your mind, such as Andy’s bus ride home alone with “The Nerd” or her groping by her grandparents. We laugh because, even if we haven’t been in the situation (but most likely, we have and therefore can relate on some other level), we find the conversations, the facial expressions, the moments of silence to ring true. Ah yes, one thinks, I too have been in such an awkward moment. No one can truly count themselves as the most loather person at the school, and so you can, at ease recount being stuck in a situation with someone in which, even you, felt some sort of pity. Perhaps empathy. And, yes, I too have had to own my self, own my body before my family, both intrigued and perplexed by growth spurts, by the lost child that is no longer their own to preen and parade around.

The most important scene, however, is the last on the screen, as Andy and Jake sit on a table with a birthday cake and candles separating the two. Jake Ryan says, “Make a wish” and we all somehow realize that the film is not completely like real life. Do things actually work out that well? Do we ever really get the guy who we felt was out of our reach? I think about the guy I had a crush on before and I can see the dissimilarities, rather than similarities, between our situations. Whereas Andy’s situation was quite innocent, mine was confusing and resulted in contemptuous feelings that no one should have to possess in such complicated matters. And whereas Jake Ryan was arguably the most desirable crush any teenage girl could ever have (it is a toss up between Jake and Lloyd Dobler of Say Anything in my book), the real world invites all of these flaws that we try, desperately to ignore when you are in the first phases of any relationship, whether it be romantic or otherwise.

Therefore, Sixteen Candles, rather than completely portray the real pitfalls of our lives in secondary education, it provides us with that cinematic escapism which has always made the movies what they are: a chance to live out our hopes and dreams in an otherwise depressing society.

Glen Hansard is not so bad, also.

One can truly get the sense that the film makers wanted the audience to focus on the music or the relationship between the two characters exclusively. This is evident by the fact that the main characters have no names. In the credits, they are just referred to as ‘Guy’ and ‘Girl’. And once you’ve realized this fact, you come to terms with the notion that giving the characters names would have possibly taken away from the plot at hand. Or at best, giving them names seems inconsequential to the story of unrequited love and the process of making music.

And that last shot, so poignant.

Hipster Book Club

As a member of the Hipster Book Club of LiveJournal since its earliest stages, I find it so thrilling to see the small community gain recognition and expand beyond the walls of a community blogging site. The moderators of the community have recently created a full-fledged site with articles, reviews and interviews…the sort of snazz I hope to accomplish once I finally dedicate myself to something other than the latest issue of Nylon magazine and chai.

Crucial Recent Reads

Pro and Con of No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Slam by Nick Hornby

With My Apologies to Stephen Chbosky 

I have become a fan of stock images, or rather, images that are not my own. A personal experiment I am embarking on involves creating my own magazine, one that basically dives into all of the things I wish the magazines I read covered, or more specifically, my own interpretation of the special features that I salivate over in every magazine that I purchase. There are many of them: Dazed and Confused, i-D, Preen, Nylon. The image above is a still from the French film La Haine, one that has sat atop my Netflix queue, waiting for me to view. The complications with the mail system with my new apartment has left me in want for a week or so, and it finally arrived yesterday, in time for me to add to the material of the magazine, the zine. Something to focus on, I tell myself, is the historical relevance latent in the film, how the problems addressed in the film from the mid nineties correlates with the problems seen most recently in the mid first decade of the millennium. And how, even though the film is French, there are underlying ideas that seem to be relatable, regardless of one’s own background. Mainly, the distrust of authority, the isolation one feels as a youth in relation to the greater world, the greater emergence of technology as a force in connecting people, rather than separating each other from their day to day interactions.

As an actor, you have to be open-minded. That’s one of the great aspects of the job. In the real world, people make judgments all the time. But as an actor, you can’t judge. I would rather play someone who is different from me. You can’t be a bigot and be a great actor.

Reading is a solitary pursuit, even a lone passage to a separate world. Yet to read in public, amid strangers, gives it another dimension. Sometimes the city speaks to the page, or the page seems to open up to people passing by. An outdoor reader shares the pulse of a timeless urban conversation between the world and the written word.

Reading this article articulates my exact sentiments about the end of the summer. Not that so much was not done, which always seems to be the case, but the fact that those perfect moments of solitude will soon be loss to the bustle of time in school. I’m already starting to feel the wear of exhaustion as I begin my internship and work at the same time. As the year progresses, as I begin classes and organizations and volunteering, those quiet periods of time spent in a park, in the warmth of the summer sun will be gone. A sort of desperation washes over the city when it gets cold in that we all understand and know that this is what you must face as a citizen of the city, and yet, it still takes you by surprise, and it makes you yearn for the days that weren’t all spent outside, like you had promised the winter before.

I first started reading at Millennium Park during my freshman year, when I felt as though I had no friends, and, not because I didn’t understand the truth of college life, but I didn’t feel as if I was really living the sort of life transformations that had always been romanticized in film and literature about what it means to be young and willing everything. Now, I like to bring a book or two and a notebook, because, being amongst the people of the city and the buildings that clamor above makes one feel nostalgic, or if not nostalgic, at least reflective about their day to day interactions.

On the Outdoor Book Tour, the Word is Spreading 

Beautiful and haunting. This is exactly what I would visualize when listening to El Perro del Mar’s music. A side note, that is her picture a couple of posts down.