Wanna feel old?

Molly Ringwald turns 40 today. Defamer Australia brings us this lovely tribute to Molly in all her '80s glory. My favorite parts are the Facts of Life clips and Breakfast Club dancing scenes. How is it possible that I still covet Molly/Claire's brown boots after 23 years?

Please note as well the brief glimpse of Andrew McCarthy's mug in Pretty in Pink. I never got the appeal of the bland Blane, especially with James Spader's sleazy bad boy and Jon Cryer's geek-adorable Duckie hanging around. Nonetheless, I was excited to see Blane all salt-and-pepper-haired and charming on the Lipstick Jungle pilot recently. He's playing a bazillionaire sweeping the Linsday Price character off her feet. I found Brooke Shields pretty insufferable, but Nico, the magazine editor played by Kim Raver, was likable. I've only watched the first episode so far, but would rank it higher than Cashmere Mafia, its fellow Sex and the City clone, which was ten kinds of awful. Jungle had a better sense of humor, a more sympathetic character in Nico, and Andrew McCarthy, after all.

The Breakfast Club was the first movie I sat through twice. That's two times in a row. In the same theater. Watched it once and stayed to watch it yet again. I think it may be the only movie for which I've ever done this. There's something about being a teenager, and seeing a story of your world (or kinda your world, with a bit more "typing" going on than might be the case in daily life) beaming out from a screen. Unfortunately, I've yet to have the same kind of experience as a thirtysomething. Lipstick Jungle? Cashmere Mafia? Not my world. Maybe we become less susceptible to the fantasy that our lives are worth screening as we get older, so we're less likely to believe that an on-screen world resembles our own. Or maybe the media industries have little interest in capturing the lives of real-feeling adult women. It's moments like this when I miss Lorelei Gilmore, a real-feeling adult woman, a TV friend, existing in an unreal world I wanted to visit every week.