As we prepare to start the annual year-long chess match with our old adversary Father (or rather, Motherfucker) Time, let’s try to kick off 2011 the best possible way: by evolving.
The legendary John Hughes entertained a generation with his classic piece of proto-slacker cinema, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But Hughes was the first one of us – the movie geeks, the loners, the glasses-wearers, the Farmer Teds – to make it inside the dream factory, where he told his stories (which also happened to be our stories as well). And I think he used Ferris to do more than tell his or our tale; I think he used his flick to send a message to all the geeks who’d follow…
“I’ve cracked the code.”
In Ferris, Hughes was trying to communicate simple tenets which, when followed, would offer the happiest, carefree existence people like us could ever require. And by us, I mean the Breakfast Clubbers. The Weird Scientists. The Pretties in Pink.
Generation Hughes, if you will.
In a world of yowling terror and jackanapes galore, to offer up the very road-map to serenity is a gift as kind and compassionate as that of any savior or messiah of record or note. I still believe in the God, sure…
But I practice Buellerism.
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——————–The Tenets of Buellerism————————
- Get along with everyone. Strive to be welcomed by all: the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads. Be a righteous dude.
- Look out that window. How can you possibly be expected to handle school/work/insert-worry-here on a day like this?
- Your parents are clueless, but they love you. And the key to faking them out is the clammy hands.
- Lay off your brother; he loves you.
- Your sister loves you, but she also knows your full of shit.
- It is no problem whatsoever to always provide ALL pertinent information on any given subject.
- Stay cool. Remember: when the meek get pinched, the bold survive.
- Never condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. Quote John Lennon often, as he knew what he was talking about: he was the Walrus who never had to bum rides off people.
- Never say no to a limo – particularly a nice stretch job with a TV and a bar.
- Distrust authority or anyone that has a problem with a little bending of the rules. Only rules you gotta follow are the ones that keep you out of the police station. Otherwise you’ll end up like Charlie Sheen. Sorry – Charlie Sheen’s CHARACTER.
- Gordie Howe was #9 on the Detroit Red Wings.
- Hide in plain sight. Lip-sync in the face of danger.
- Always park your own car.
- Always lock the garage. And running a car in reverse doesn’t turn the mileage back.
- Take some time for yourself, every once in awhile. At least nine times a year.
- If people don’t like your policies, they can smooch your big ol’ white (or other shade) butt. Pucker up, Buttercup.
- Play only by the rules if you enjoy gym.
- In any zero/zero score game, there’s always a winner: The Bears.
- A fifth grade threat still packs an amazing amount of influence.
- Between grief and nothing, take grief.
- The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. This was akin to something d-o-o economics. “Voodoo” economics.
- You can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.
- Stay in bed when you’re ill; in your weakened condition, you could take a nasty spill down the stairs and subject yourself to further school absences.
- The word “asshole” is French.
- Don’t go to college all wound up so tight, or your roommate will kill you.
- Don’t let the snooty or the snotty stand in the way of a good time. Let ‘em know who you are: Abe Froman – the Sausage King of Chicago.
- Youth will always leave the cheese of the old out in the wind.
- You can never go too far. But if you’re gonna get busted, don’t let it be by a guy like THAT.
- Don’t live your life like you’re in some kind of museum that’s very beautiful and very cold, where you’re not allowed to touch anything.
- Swing, batta.
- Les jeux sont faits!
- Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.
Thanks for the blueprint, Mister Hughes.
You are missed.
- Kevin
12/31/2010
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You’re still here?
It’s over.
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Go home.
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Go…