F**ck you very much.

John Cusack, you have a lot to answer for. I know everyone born between 1968 and 1978 has already taken you to task for this, but I just have to say it, too. Rob Gordon? Lane Meyer? Lloyd FUCKING Dobler? Do you realize how utterly you've ruined the women of my generation? Of course you do, because people keep telling you. People like Chuck Klosterman, whose book I opened mere hours after obsessively watching the special features for High Fidelity for the gazillionth time. People like my girlfriends, and all the men who regretfully shake their heads when picking up my girlfriends, saying, "I could NEVER imagine being able to live up to your image of Lloyd Dobler!" No one can live up to your particular brand of romantically flawed self-awareness. NOBODY WANTS TO TRY. So, thanks. Thanks a whole parking lot.

And you. Yeah, Klosterman, I'm talking to you. Did you have to go and out us? Because we are the sort of cynical girls who would rather keep that stuff on the d.l. We know. We get that you are intimidated by our understandable attraction to the sensitive slacker that is Mr. Cusack. Would you rather be intimidated by our mystifying attraction to, say, the androgynous King of the Goblins, as played by David Bowie? Isn't that a little lowering? He wears incomprehensible make-up! He wears very, very tight leather jodhpurs! HE'S A GOBLIN KING. There, now you've made me shout for the second time in a single blog post. Happy?

While we're on the subject - Elvis Costello. Umm, Alison? Veronica? You were the only fucking rock and roll star who ever made me want to change my name. You made it acceptable for mildly attractive and completely nerdy guys to go for girls who are patently out of their league. You know the type - you and Mr. Cusack up there conspired to create them, practically- the dangerously smart, stylish girls with careful, messy hair and giant shoulder bags instead of purses, full of Maybelline Great Lash in blackest black and mix tapes featuring Tokyo Storm Warning and You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Yes, you're sneaky enough to pass on your own music and that of Bob Dylan). Girls who sport quirky teeshirts and India cotton skirts and 21 hole Doc Martins. Girls who quote the Simpsons and Kant in equal measure. My point being, us mildly attractive and completely nerdy girls who were once in those guys' league are suddenly beneath them, and it's because of you. And John Cusack. And the guy who invented the tape recorder.


THIS, my friends, is why I only listen to rockabilly anymore.