Farewell to the King of Teen Angst (and much more)

Well, I've been back for several days now. We had a great time in New York. Now I'm back home, scrambling to make money after just getting my bills paid by the skin of my teeth. For some reason, we forgot to turn off the bills when we left, and there was a stack of them waiting when we got back to Utah. Anyway, we ate some good food, saw the sights, slept in a lot, and hung out with Amy's sister and her husband. I remembered how much I love baseball when we went to a Mets game at the new Citi Field, and found New Yorkers to be not only not rude, but very pleasant and many of them downright friendly. A subway worker, for instance, seeing my Minnesota Twins hat, came up to me and asked me what famous Twins player he shared the same birth day and year with. (Answer: Kirby Puckett). I found a lot of the sights and history very moving, and the next time I go I want to do it in style. Those of you looking for more details, Amy will be blogging about it soon.

As many of you heard, John Hughes died last Thursday during a visit to New York City, just two days after we had left. Four days is an eternity in the blogging world, but I have found myself wanting to blog about that loss more than the trip (but my blog is usually not of the travelogue variety anyway, unless I'm in a rare mood). Hughes was never nominated for an Oscar as far as I know, but he wrote and directed some legitimate classics, the kind that people watch over and over. If you're channel surfing and The Breakfast Club is on, you'll stop flipping. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Home Alone. Pretty in Pink. Uncle Buck. And my personal favorite, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I believe that the reason his work is so well-loved is that he really understood people. His characters have a depth and believability that are uncommon, especially for the class of films he specialized in. He disappeared shortly after making enough money to buy a private island with the success of the Home Alone franchise, and moved to... Wisconsin, and became very reclusive, rarely giving interviews in the past 15 years. As late a couple of months ago, I searched his name on the Internet Movie Database, hoping for some news. I always hoped he would come back. But I'm grateful for what we got. I feel that I actually got a few nuggets of wisdom from him. Rest in peace.