Favorite Photo Friday - Green Day

You can't really tell because this was taken with my iPhone, but that is Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day in those spotlights. It has always been the rule at most public performances that you can't bring in a camera. Now with cameras in every phone, it is a little difficult to enforce. I don't think they have to worry about me making any money selling illegal concert photos with this one.

I had a different photo ready to go for FPF. Having just heard the news of filmmaker, John Hughes' death, however, I felt the need to choose this one.

I went with a friend to see Green Day in concert on Wednesday night. It was really a great show. I had forgotten just how much I love punk rock. I love the anger. I love the rage. I love the destruction. I love the hard, pounding beat. I haven't jumped up and down, waving my fist in the air in YEARS! (Okay, I'll admit to being sore the next day.) The music was so loud that I could scream at the top of my lungs and the person jumping beside of me would not even hear my voice. I could let so much out.

I would never want a steady diet of punk. All things in moderation, right? But it definitely filled a need on Wednesday night. It brought back a part of me that has been gone for a long time, but I still so relate to it.

As far as I know, Green Day never did a song for one of John Hughes' films (but he named one of his movie's after a Psychedelic Furs song). They would have been perfect for his work, though. Their songs are about rebellion and fighting for what is right and learning life's hard lessons.

I was smack in the John Hughes generation teen angst films. I loved them all. 'Some Kind of Wonderful' was probably my favorite. That's because I was going through the exact same thing that Mary Stewart Masterson's character was going through. She (I) was in love with an unattainable guy that was in love with an unattainable girl. She even helped him pick out a gift for his unattainable girl. I have done the EXACT same thing!

Then there is The Breakfast Club. My friends and I would try to figure out which character most represented us, only to realized that the movie's theme was absolutely true. We all had some of each character in us.

'Pretty in Pink' started my love affair with Andrew McCarthy. Seriously, I wanted to marry that boy. I wanted him to follow me out into the parking lot after prom and tell me he was wrong to let his friends tell him that I was not good enough for him. ~~I was not too fat and not hot and a chorus geek~~ - oops, overshare. Then take me in his arms beside his BMW and kiss me, while I let my handmade purse drop to the ground.

I don't know why John Hughes stopped making films. It has been rumored that he suffered from serious bouts of depression and mental illness. Rumor also said that he may have been working on something new.

I wish he could have given us something new. Somehow, that man was able to perfectly relate to kids twenty to thirty years his junior. We were able to say, "The guy gets us." What would he have to say about us now? Would he be able to show us how we swore we would be different, but we all ended up like our parents? That it was all inevitable? Would he tell us women that having it all still means doing it all? Could he do a film that accurately portrays love after 20 years of marriage?

John Hughes, you can't be gone now because we still need you!

Thanks you John Hughes for being a part of my teenage years. Thank you, Green Day, for helping me relive them.