no boys allowed in the room!!!!

but john hughes was invested in at least getting a representative moment of parents being awful onscreen. and harry dean stanton is fairly prominent in pretty in pink. kids bitch about their parents in john hughes movies at least. with duckie, it was like his entire life involved trailing andie around.

Pretty in Pink means a lot to me, guys.

yeah, i just remember the distinction between the ones who did and the ones who didn't more than the overall absence of parents

watts - no visible parents, has no one to eat with
keith - dad is obsessed with his future, eats dinner with his family every night

duckie - throws cards angrily into a hat in his sad graffiti room
sam - unemployed pop cares enough to buy her a dress (albeit an ugly one)

lloyd - has a sister, but don't remember any parents (were they dead?)
diane - affectionate overzealous dad

surely there are more, but those are the ones that i remember most clearly. it didn't help that in english class we were always reading about little picaresque street urchins.

yeah, but you only get a moment, then the parents conveniently disappear in order to further the plot. this bred years of resentment of my parents who were around a lot (like they never went on vacation, and my dad was a school teacher so he was home all day during the summer) and neither cool or awful.

xp - i liked some kind of wonderful more than pretty in pink because keith's parents seemed more like my parents in terms of their regular presence in his life, plus Watts had a cool car and played drums - and of course, there was Duncan

shit, english AND spanish class
i was under the impression that the world is very full of industrious orphaned waifs on a journey

I always assumed that Duckie had parents but they were of the sort who did not care if their son spray painted his walls or slept on a mattress on the floor. So either super permissive hippies/artists or drunks. Or both. The Glass Castle by Duckie Dale.

oh yeah - lots of orphaned waifs in english class!

that seems plausible

xp

There were parents all over the place in Sixteen Candles and Weird Science.

those parents went on vacation!!!!

god i LOVE weird science

i totally had a Watts moment in my early 20s - where i dressed up in pseudo-chauffeur garb to pick up my best friend (who I had a huge crush on) and his gf at the airport.

that's crazy sarahel!

he was also a painter, he later became my bf

Did you play drums? Where were your parents during this time?

haha

i didn't start playing drums until i was 31! my parents lived 70 miles away.

i did sleep on a mattress on the floor though!

did you offer to help him practice kissing while he was at work?

i fantasized about it. the relationship was more complicated than that though ...

i didn't start playing drums until i was 31!

i'm a touch older than that (34) but you just gave me some much needed HOPE

!!

i totally sublimated a crush on a guy by having him give me drum lessons

AMANDA. Take drum lessons. I will take piano lessons at a certain community college where I get half-price classes. We'll have a band.

i'm super excited because i actually have room in my apartment for a piano now

i want to, but i don't know if i want to pay for them! our band will be hilarious. i should warn you that every time i have tried to write a song it sounds like a weird al song.

maybe we will write weird al style songs.

you could probably get some under-employed musician to teach you for like $20-25 a lesson

I don't have a piano, but I have a nice full-sized keyboard that Amanda gave me! And since we're moving to a bigger place, I'll have a place to put it that is not under the bed. Rock!

did you ever read that Sassy article about how to start your own band?

I did get an offer from a friend who lives like 3 blocks away, but I was shy about pursuing it. I guess I sort of need to be taught some basics -- I don't want to just like flail around like a toddler. I need a little structure. He offered me use of his drum set, but didn't seem to want to take the time to teach a grown ass woman how to do really basic shit.

just like everything else, there are tutorials on the internet. but having someone actually teach me really helped. Take him up on it!

i realize my reticence to pursue this goes against my advice above, but it also involves spending time in some dude's apartment which is kinda weird

i will do this someday, i swear it

it's kinda awkward and weird when you start playing as it is - you'll feel totally goofy (at least i did), so if the dude feels weird about having some chick in his apartment you'll be somewhat even

I had some kind of "Learn to Play Rock Drums the Easy Way" dealie when I was a kid. It came with tapes and I had a little drum pad, and drum sticks. I would sit at our kitchen counter and use the washer (it was one of those portable ones that you could hook up to the faucet) as a bass drum and an empty bottle as a cymbal.

Unfair world alert: when we got to pick our band instruments in fourth grade, I tried to pick drums, but the school had a rule that if you were a girl, you had to be in sixth grade before you could start to play drums.

ugh that sucks!

It's okay. I played saxophone instead, and last time I tried (three or four years ago), I could still play the sax intro to Baker Street so I think it worked out okay.

Jenny! Amanda! Did you have screenings of Free to Be You And Me when you were in grade school?

playing drums is so fun. i'm not great at it and in total admiration for anyone who does it well - so much body-brain coordination!

i just got a new jam space :D playing there for first time on friday. and oh i am gonna play loud and do some healthy yelling/singing. sweetness.

No! I didn't even know what that was until I went to college and heard somebody sing it.

xp yay Robyn! Jam space is awesome!

robyn - shared practice spaces are rife with cute guys

i had my own space that was just mine because i was kinda self-conscious about playing/rocking out, until i became single & started living alone and couldn't afford it. hearing the people in the other rooms, and basically being equal to the other dudes in my space (because they're all dudes, except for the bass player in one band) - really made me just say fuck it, i'm a musician too.

also lol - said sole other female occupant of practice space used to post on ilx

Jenny! Amanda! Did you have screenings of Free to Be You And Me when you were in grade school?
Like Jenny, I never heard of it until someone mentioned it in college. Honestly, I still don't really know what it was. Drums were not an option for anyone when I was in gradeschool (all girls school) so I played the clarinet. In high school everyone who played drums was a guy, and they were really good already, so I thought I had missed my window. Also I was very small.

When I was 19 I almost bought a drum kit during the summer between my first and second year of college, but my mom asked where I was going to put it and I was like uhhhhhhhh, so I didn't buy it.

REGRETS, I'VE HAD A FEW

drums are great if you're small though! everything's totally modular.

well, i was referring to the high school marching band drum corps -- some serious egos there iirc -- and they had to carry the drums and march around in 90+ degree heat and i just was not built for that, small or not.

if being small helps a person play indoors drums that one does not have to tote all over a football field, then sign me up.

it doesn't hurt - because everything's adjustable. you might want to get smaller sticks if you have small hands.

I can play concert snare and clarinet for the orchestral versions! When you're playing at the oscars or the VMAs!

oh jees you aren't even talking about starting a band anymore. I should go back to work.

what are your thoughts on Age of Consent, K?

what's the difference between a concert snare and a regular snare? do you use trad grip with it or matched, or is that not an issue?