Honoring an Amazing Wife

Seven years ago, in my dad's words, I was dip donging around, without a single care, happily resigned to a life of perpetual bachelorhood. I had just been in three weddings in four weeks, all over the state. The three weddings constituted three different groups of friends, so the question was asked often: "When are you settling down and getting married?" That may not have always been the exact wording, but that was the gist of the question each of 856 times I was asked the question. My answer was a simple never. It wasn't meant to be rude, neither toward the interrogator nor marriage in general. At the time, I just could not envision someone who I felt could convince me to spend forever with them, and I certainly couldn't envision anyone caring to spend forever with me. In short, I just didn't ever see marriage as a possibility. It wasn't a sad or angry thing for me, I was resigned to being a single man, and that was truly okay with me. I was nearly 25, and while observing my peers settling down all around, I just saw nothing in it for me. Lucky for me, I was wrong. A couple of months later, on my 25th birthday, I met a really cool girl. At first, I thought, "This girl is really cool and fun to hang out with." Within a month, I thought, "I want to marry this girl and spend forever with her." Her amazing qualities shone through immediately, and although I often tell people I made her fall in love with me, I fell in love with her pretty quickly. Come to think of it, maybe I did make her fall in love with me, since I was already so in love with her. Well, fast forward years later, on this, our five year anniversary. Five years ago today we said "forever and ever" in front of 200 or so people, and followed it up with a nice little party. In these last five years, we have been through the textbook of ups and downs. Family funerals, including my dad and her grandmothers, all of whom were deep influences on us, friends' weddings and divorces, financial ups and downs, me going back to school, and of course, our two beautiful children. I could go on for days about my wife's qualities that make her the picture of perfection to me, but I will just say this to her: "Thank you for everything you've given me. I could give you an extravagant gift every day for the rest of our lives, and it would pale in comparison to what you have given me in the form of love, support, cheerleading our children. You are a wonderful wife, mother, teacher and best friend, and that's just the things you do for me and our family. You're the best thing I never even asked for. God just saw fit to make us for one another, and for that I will thank and praise Him for all of my days. I will also thank and praise you always. I love you so much, and let's keep doing this wild ride together, with the hopes that our ups will always be a little higher than the downs. You're my everything, and I am constantly blessed by getting to do forever with you."

Class

Class (1983) is the feature film debut of Andrew McCarthy, Alan Ruck, Casey Siemaszko, Virginia Madsen, Lolita Davidovich, and of course, John Cusack. It also stars Rob Lowe, Jacqueline Bisset, and Cliff Robertson. The guy who played Lt. Proctor in the Police Academy movies also makes a fleeting appearance in a bar scene. With this many moderately big name actors, one would think this would be a very good film. One would be wrong. Here's what Roger Ebert had to say about it 27 years ago.

Don't get me wrong, it's miles away from the worst movie I've ever seen. It's not even as bad as the worst movie I own. I dare say it foreshadows some of the brilliance to come from Rob Lowe. It most definitely foreshadows Andrew McCarthy's career: roles in which he stares vacantly into the distance with a goofy half smile, pines after the unattainable woman, somehow obtains said woman, immediately loses said woman, then broods about it. If there's a word that means to do the same thing as brooding but doing it in a sissy way, it should be "andrewmccarthy." For example: "Dude, you should get over that girl and go out with us tonight." "No, I cannot. I am so sad. I'm going to make a white wine spritzer, watch Project: Runway, and andrewmccarthy." (Full Disclosure: I have a deep dislike for Andrew McCarthy and think he can't act his way out of a paper bag. He only works in ensemble casts, like this one, or St. Elmo's Fire. Also, quick trivia: Mannequin's working title was Class. Although, that's Mannequin from 1937.)

Andrew McCarthy stars as Jonathon Ogner, a working class kid from Pennsylvania who begins attending an elite prep school in Illinois. He rooms with Franklin "Skip" Burroughs IV (Rob Lowe). Despite their class differences and the fact that Rob Lowe is 93 billion times cooler than Andrew McCarthy, they become best friends in about 29 seconds. After a minorly comedic scene that features the cinematic debut of Virginia Madsen's boobie, Jonathan is banned from the school's dance with their sister school. Skip's concern that Jonathan will stay in their dorm room and andrewmccarthy all night forces him to give him $100 and send him to Chicago to find a nice hooker. After several embarrassing encounters with various women at the bar in Chicago, he decides to give up and andrewmccarthy at the bar. A very nice looking middle-aged lady (Jacqueline Bisset) offers to console him by making sex in an elevator, then in a hotel room for the rest of the weekend. They continue their affair until she discovers he's a high school student and abandons him in New York City. He then spirals downward into what I can only refer to as a deep andrewmccarthy, being ever so sad about his lost "love."

He consoles himself by going home with Skip for the holidays. Skip's family is loaded, and they have quite the palacial estate. Upon arrival, Jonathan discovers that Skip's mother is SPOILER ALERT! his former lover. Insert requisite awkward facial expressions that essentially scream, "We have met before, done the nasty in all sorts of places, and it ended poorly." Yadda, yadda, yadda. Skip finds out, hates Jonathan, they don't talk for a long time, then finally explode on each other in a fight scene only slightly less homoerotic than Top Gun volleyball. Think the Stripes mudwrestling scene with Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy. The movie ends with Seinfeld finale-like disappointment after their fight, wherein they have apparently made up amongst the mud.

Okay, I spent far too long on the movie synopsis, especially given that this movie wasn't good. The true focus of this project is John Cusack, and we'll now look at his performance. He plays Roscoe Maibaum, a classmate of Jonathan and Skip. Initially, he seems to be kind of a jerk, his first lines are "Great, douchebag", but he becomes likable throughout the movie. That being said, his role is rather minimal and this will not fall into the category of "John Cusack Films That Changed My Life." At any rate, the point of this project is to view the entire Cusack catalog, and it has begun. The beauty of this small role is that he had nowhere to go but up, at least in terms of roles that showed his amazing talent.

Class--Overall Grade-C+(only brought up by Rob Lowe's performance)
Cusack grade-incomplete (He will receive an incomplete for all movies in which his role is minimal, unless he just knocks it out of the park or really brings something to the movie through a small role.)

Next up is Sixteen Candles, a movie I've seen so many times I could quite possible write out the screenplay by memory with 90% accuracy. I also know this is another small role for Cusack, but if I remember his scenes correctly, he does some things quite well. At any rate, it is on hold at the library and awaits my viewing.