Current mood:	excited
Current music:	The Preakness post-race crapple
Entry tags:	31 songs, music

I feel fine and I feel good

Which 80s High School Movie Are You? ...aka the Molly Ringwald appreciation quiz...
brought to you by Quizilla
You are Pretty in Pink: Everybody's favorite movie about a poor girl who shows them all when she sews her own 80s-cool prom dress and goes to the dance alone. Too bad she ends up with the wrong guy. Come on, everybody knows she and Duckie should have gotten together.

Which is the perfect segue into song number 2 of my 31 songs.

I was going to talk about Springsteen and my deep and abiding love of his music but... in the car this afternoon, I heard Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order.

This song is... this song is my life from 16-21. This song is every dance, every hopeful thing, every guy I liked and every random hook-up on the dance floor in a club or at a bar when I was in college.

Every time I think of you
I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue
It's no problem of mine but it's a problem I find
Living a life that I can't leave behind

A lot of people will argue that 80s music has no soul, that it's devoid of true feeling and that cheesy synthesizers and hair bands and Madonna are all that 80s music is, but they're wrong.

Bands like New Order, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, Erasure, and the Cure were the voice of my high school years, and I probably ought to include Just Like Heaven and How Soon Is Now and Oh L'Amour and Kiss Off in any discussion I have of those times, but there's just something about Bizarre Love Triangle… I've heard it played in bars and clubs and at weddings. It's like the one new wave dance song that crosses all lines, because it just makes you want to dance. There's no way I can keep still when it's on, and there's no way I can keep the smile off my face.

I feel fine and I feel good
I'm feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way, I just don't know what to say
Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday

It's making mix tapes for in Nathalie's basement before that friendship went to hell and winter games of frisbee in the street and sitting outside in the freaking freezing cold without coats to eat lunch, trying to look as if we'd *chosen* to eat lunch like outcasts instead of just not having a table in the caf, and especially sophomore year, when you could -and did - have any one of three possible lunch sessions each day, and you always hoped someone would be out there while you were freezing your ass off so you could share an Orange Slice and a basket of fries.

It's standing around the flagpole sipping root beer floats from Mr. Softee; running through West Top on free with CS, jumping up to hit the exit signs and discussing Metallica and U2 and the synchronized locker slam and just... yes.

There's no sense in telling me
The wisdom of a fool won't set you free
But that's the way that it goes
And it's what nobody knows
While every day my confusion grows

It's the beach in Acapulco and three tequila poppers past gone and a strange guy putting his hands up your shirt and you laughing and letting him though he wasn't the guy you really wanted, it was okay.

It's the Schooners in Beach Haven and getting my ear pierced a fourth time (and I've told that story often enough) and the share house and the five of us in one sofa bed and praying all my stuff didn't smell like hash when we got home and making sure your badge is showing when the Beach Bitch comes around to check.

Every time I see you falling I get down on my knees and pray. I'm waiting for that final moment you'll say the words that I can't say

***

Whee!

Funny Cide just won the Preakness, running away from the field. Which bodes well for him being able to win at Belmont. Can you imagine? New York horse wins Triple Crown at New York raceway? That would be so. Fucking. Cool.