Pretty in Pink

I love the "Stuck in the `80s" podcast. Everytime I listen, I wish they would invite me to sit in. I'm not quite the target audience, as I came of age in the 1970s and wasn't as susceptible to the same cultural influences as the hosts, so maybe I wouldn't have as much to say. Still, this is the only podcast I know where I actively talk back, sometimes out loud. It's embarrassing.

This week they're discussing Pretty in Pink, which is absolutely one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures. I hated it -- abhorred it -- when it first came out, mainly because of Andrew McCarthy, who I thought was just too bland and too pretty and just too bloody Andrew McCarthy to be convincing as a high school dream date. I wasn't in high school when the movie came out, so I was quite distanced from the whole Brat Pack thing and the movies it spawned; I thought they were just a bunch of spoiled rich assholes, and I always felt a certain amount of glee when their careers hit the skids.

And yet, this goofy high school movie is one I simply can't pass up whenever it's on TV, mainly because of the ending where the hapless yet weirdly hip Ducky (Jon Cryer) gets the hot blonde (whom I have just learned is Kristy Swanson) as OMD's "If You Leave' swells on the soundtrack.

It's a dream of a high school movie. Speaking of high school, "Stuck in the 80s" co-host Cathy Wos attended my alma mater, Northeast High School in St. Petersburg. Cool.