So The Contrarian and his awesome and lovely bride are moving to Washington DC in a week or so and Emily and I wanted a chance to spend some time with them before they hit the road. We had them over for dinner last night and then we went over to their soon-to-be-vacated apartment tonight and watched some amazingly bad 80s high school drama.
The appetizer was an after School Special called Ace Hits the Big Time about a kid who moves into a rough neighborhood in NYC and manages to befriend the local gang, called The Purple Falcons. It includes two amazing (...ly bad) dance numbers by Ace and the Falcons, and the central conflict (between the Falcons and a rival gang, The Piranhas) is solved by [SPOILER ALERT] Ace baking The Piranhas a cake that says "make friends not war" on it. Really.
The main course was the 1985 James Spader vehicle, Tuff Turf. Like Ace, Spader is new to the wrong side of the tracks and has to deal with some local thugs, but wouldn't you know, there's a love chemistry thing going on between Spader and the head thug's girl. No dance numbers in this one, but it's thick with that signature Spader stare -- sleepy-eyed, but stone cold. This is very early Spader, but you can see all the greatness of Less Than Zero, Pretty in Pink and Sex Lies & Videotape just waiting to be unleashed on the 1980s.
Mrs. Contrarian invented a drink called The Spader for the occasion. I didn't catch all of the ingredients but it was neon and a little bit fruity and I'm pretty sure it could kick my ass if I pushed it too far. Sleepy-eyed, but stone cold.
One of the extra cool things about our Contrarian weekend was getting to hang out with some fellow blogger types that I don't see often enough. Both last night and tonight we were joined by Undead Molly (and her man), Eva the Deadbeat and Matty the Greek (eyyyyy...). Exactly one of these bloggy friends has submitted a photo for the collage and it's effing awesome. I'm not saying who it was or what's involved, but I will say the bar has been raised pretty high in the contest, so get creative, people (or don't and just send me any old thing -- remember, like Soylent Green, Candleblog is PEOPLE!).