Life Moves Pretty Fast

I am a bit late to the game on this one, but I had to comment on the touching tribute to John Hughes that many of his former actors gave at the Oscars. It coincided with a great article in the March Vanity Fair by David Kamp that attempted to give insight into the reclusive writer and director.

As a solid member of GenX, I can't deny how Hughes defined my teen years. To be honest I can't even fully explain it in some ways, how a man 20 years older than me, could so capture all that I felt, all that I wanted to be, and all that I knew was out of my reach. He simply had a gift.

It was hard watching the Oscar tribute for me. It was emotional and touching, but on a personal front it was also disturbing to see how my idealized visions of youth—Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy and even Macaulay Culkin—are older, different, grown up. Because that means I am too. I hope that they feel that they are better now than they were then, as I do. But it is nice to know that when they need to know how far they have come, they have Mr. Hughes movies to go back to and remind them of who they were. Again, thank you Mr. Hughes.

Tex Mess

You know what? All of you Texans who want to secede—go right ahead. I don't want you anymore. Especially if you are going to insist on distorting history and science to suit your agenda. What my child learns in school should be about facts, not whatever partisan side has their knickers in a twist this week.

Apparently, Texas has this ridiculous power to hold the other 49 states hostage in terms of text books because they are one of the largest purchasers of school textbooks in the country. So what they want from publishing companies ends up being what the rest of us get. I guess that goes a long way to explaining why they want our country referred to as a "constitutional republic" rather than a "democracy." Apparently they are afraid that 10-year-olds will get the "subliminal" message that because our country is a democracy they need to be democrats. Something tells me that kids are smarter than that, but somewhere between pubescence and adulthood, at least in Texas, those same kids turn mighty dumb.

This board of 15 people have also decided to stress the Second Amendment (gotta make sure that kids know they can carry guns!), and ignore the separation of church and state. We wouldn't want a pesky thing like the Founding Fathers fundamental ideas to interfere with how our Christian conservatives run things, now would we? Next they are going to outlaw sarcasm and then I will truly be fucked.

But let's not make this about me. Let's focus on who is really being screwed here—the future of our country. Because if these Texas board members have their way, our kids won't be learning about capitalism, but instead "free market enterprise." Can someone please explain to me how capitalism became evil (aside of course from the way Wall Street has wielded it to impoverish the majority of Americans so a handful of white men can pull in seven figures)?

Oh yeah, and they of course are stressing religion over science topics such as evolution. You know, I truly believe our country is at a cross roads. If we don't take a clear path forward and focus on the future, by educating our children, by seeking advancements in environmentally friendly power, by correcting the errors in our banking, credit and investment industries, and by offering every one of our citizens the right to healthcare, we will not be a world power when the spawn approaches middle age. The conservatives like to focus on how we are the greatest nation, but right now that is all smoke and mirrors. And tomorrow, if other countries continue to prepare themselves for the future, rather than concentrating on the past, we won't even have the smoke and mirrors anymore. All we will have is a bunch of disillusioned citizens who won't know that the world wasn't created in seven days. What a mess.