Peter Gabriel, too

I could never dislike John Cusack. I could lie and say that I do, but deep down, the art of all things Cusack is a loaded topic. I’m not sure I find him attractive. He’s a bit manic, and he always squints and half smiles. But the more I pick apart John Cusack, the more I love him for all of those things. I root for him because he always plays the underdog, continuously fighting an uphill battle he may or may not win. For example…

Lloyd Dobler. Diane Court gave him a pen and he gave her his heart. The best thing about Say Anything, is how gut-wrenchingly real it kind of is. Once you get past the fact that you probably will never wake up in the middle of the night to a sappy ballad blaring from outside your bedroom window, the movie is just a raw testament to knowing when you have something good. I also appreciate Lloyd’s friend Corey; she puts him in his place and tells him to be a man (and all of her “Joe songs” are inappropriate and amusing.)  ”No one thinks it will work out, do they?” “No. You just described every great success story.” 

Walter ‘Gib’ Gibson. Falls for another Diane Court type in The Sure Thing, a few notches up on the prep scale. He plays an underachieving class clown, with a misunderstood go-getter attitude.  He’s kind of sloppy, but you want him to succeed on some level because you see how smart he truly is. And you want him to break down this Gap girl long enough for her to roll up her self-conscious sleeves and belch beer. ”Consider outerspace…”

Lane Meyer. Better Off Dead is absurd, dark humor. Cusack’s character is suicidal after his girlfriend breaks up with him. And you feel awful for him – because everything seems so twisted and intolerable, which only adds insult to injury. Clearly, he isn’t better off dead; he’s just better off without the girl who leaves him for the captain of the ski team, or whatever. “My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning, and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it’s sort of a family crisis.”

John Kelso. What I like about Cusack’s character from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is that he has to play a tape with the sound of traffic to go to sleep in Savannah. Call it ‘Southern charm’ but every character is really taken by Kelso. He’s kind of naive; he’s the outsider. But thankfully, he has the drag queen on his side. “This place is fantastic. It’s like Gone With the Wind on Mescalin.”

Rob Gordon. It’s like a broken record player in High Fidelity. (No pun intended.) Again, another Cusack character is dumped by his girlfriend, and he spends the better part of the movie trying to figure out why he can’t get relationships right. Pining. Always pining away. “Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” 

There’s this subconscious pull that all women and men (comfortable enough with themselves to admit it) have to John Cusack as an unsung hero of sorts. If unrequited love had a face, it would look like John Cusack’s. Or…Lloyd Dobler’s. Sometimes it’s hard to see the difference.

Rain

When you think of classic ’90s music videos…what do you think of? 

Re: “At Last, I’m on ‘90210′!”

It pains me to do this. (To the male fans who read my blog: spare yourself the gory process of reading any further. It’s about to get all sorts of lame and girly.)

Dearest Diablo Cody, I love you. I do. You created United States of Tara, and the series is genius. We were both born in Illinois, we went to Catholic school, and we’re both gemini. But in your February article in Entertainment Weekly, you said, and I quote, “Fact: the new 90210 is cooler than the old 90210.” I’m willing to give you the get-out-jail-free card, because I’m hoping the only reason you feel this way is because you guest starred in an upcoming episode. And, you spend the greater part of the rest of the article detailing just that. Kind of. But, knights of Columbus, that sentiment could not be further from fact. 

In 90210 v. 2.0, “Degrassi Chick” is relentless. Her face is always screaming questions at me like she’s the newest and youngest poster girl for Botox. And she’s a far cry from Brenda Walsh. Lori Loughlin is not her mom, she’s Aunt Becky. End of story. The teacher, Ryan Eggold is 24, and I have a severe problem with that. The character of Jackie Taylor (Kelly’s mom) has been poorly scripted. They’ve turned her into an even bigger monster than she was when she was still wearing neon dress suits with matching earrings. And the entire West Beverly High landscape is a sham. Where’s the courtyard? The front steps? In the same place they left the original Peach Pit, that’s where. 

Okay. Details aside, where is the plot? The most tolerable episode of the season was when “Silver” had a root canal. I can’t even say that her recent Emily Valentine behavior was worthy. She may have burned all of her video footage in a flower pot, but did she try to burn down a school float? (No.) In the episode where the girls have a “sleep-over” but then turn it into a “rager”, they should have just stuck to girly bonding, had a seance, and summoned the ghost of Scott Scanlan. Maybe I just miss The Blaze, the radio station, Cindy Walsh’s home cooking, all of those surf trips down to Baja with Dylan…

Okay, I know. Denial is a river. I just hope the kids who watch this show these days are under 18 and consciously unaware of what the term “Donna Martin graduates!” means. Better not to know. Listen, if I can be logical about this for a second: aren’t there enough rich kid teen shows on television right now?  The economy is in shambles. How is any teenager supposed to relate to these characters? That sugar powdered window of time when we could all laugh and say, “Oh, but it’s entertainment; it’s an hour to forget our worries” has passed. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no such thing as a modern teen drama with gritty, believable material. Let’s take off our rose-colored glasses. Atleast the Walsh family recycled.

Fact: nothing can replace the old 90210. I’d take those floral leggings and James Dean sideburns any day over this. This is  killing the novelty.

I turn the radio on, I turn the radio up

It’s easy to compare Alanis Morissette with Lisa Loeb, but Lisa had something Alanis didn’t have. Eyewear. (I’m sure Contempo Casuals sold cat eyeglasses right next to the fluffy pens.)

She turned ‘four eyes’ into ‘nerdy chic.’ She owned it. And when you paired that off with a baby doll dress and Mary Janes, you were wearing the unofficial girly uniform of the Western world in 1994.

But looks aside, Lisa was singing about all of the things girls in the early ’90s weren’t hearing. Grunge was all the rage. So when Lisa Loeb came into the picture, and sang about wanting, yearning, and regretting, she was speaking to an untapped audience. In her single, “Stay (I Missed You)” which was nominated for a Grammy, making her the first and only recording artist to be nominated for a Grammy under no recording label at the time, she unknowingly painted an anthem for girls everywhere. It was pre-emo. But her music was emotional. And it was deep. In “Do You Sleep?” she continues that theme, when she sings about apathy and letting go. It’s very Alanis “You Outta Know” without the Canadian pitch and the total disdain. It’s cynical and unyielding. And it comes from that place that says, “Dude, I’m not going to put up with your mind games. Later.”

Her most notable albums, Tails and Firecracker are what set the bar for female rockers that followed. Her later albums were much more toned down and bubbily. Her 2008 album, Camp Lisa is just that. Youthful and innocent. Lisa Loeb is just cool. Like, play your guitar in the garage while kids sit around drinking orange soda, cool. And she probably snorts when she laughs. When I think about angry rockers, with a message, I think about Lisa Loeb. Shes’s the underdog.