Yeah, but the thing is, I'm kinda like the leader. Kinda like the king of the dipshits.

John Hughes died. He had a heart attack while walking around in Manhattan. He was only 59. While I didn't know him personally his directorial work and writing during my formative years last century helped mold me into the asshole I am. I'm saddened by his passing for the same reason most people get worked up about someone they didn't know dying: it puts into stark relief the passing of my own time and brings into slightly better focus my eventual dirt nap. I'll be thirty-eight in a minute but I still feel like The Geek from "Sixteen Candles." Weird, isn't it? The way some things just stay with you despite your best efforts at changing them. One day I was sixteen and everything was hugely important and meaningful and possible. Then one day I was thirty-seven and wondering what lay on the other side of forty. The years in between are all marked and 'membered both physically and mentally and emotionally and yet they aren't. I think I've lived two lives and am embarking on a third. The first life was optimistic and naive and fueled by passion and curiosity and ended when I got married. The second life was being married and making a rather miserable go of it because I had quit breathing or thinking or seeing. The third life started when the second imploded and recently I've been able to see it clearly and I'm excited about it as it's got some of that first life to it but informed and tempered by the second. Will there be more lives in my future? Dunno. Don't care. There will or there won't but either way the Dude will abide.

Go out and watch "The Breakfast Club" today and contemplate Gen X and how we've turned out thus far. At some point, raise a glass to John Hughes and thank him for some fine work.

Peace out, bitches!