So today I get a call from my mom that went like this:

Mom: "You didn't get caught in the panda riots in Williamsburg last night did you?"
Me: "The what?"
Mom: (as if I'm supposed to know what she's talking about) "The panda riots."
Me: "The panda riots? As in panda bears?"
Mom: "Yes, the panda riots."

.....

Me: "what does that mean?!"


Apparently this is what it meant.

Only in New York City. Apparently there was also a "kaleidescope parade" too that day? I missed all the cool secret events yesterday!

So I just found out about this CRAZY thing called Loopt. It's a mobile social networking platform that allows you to literally locate your friends on GPS from your phone. I'm sorry, WHAT?! I don't want people knowing where I am at all times!!!! How creepy is that?! Seems like stalking is becoming easier and easier.

There's a few of them too - there's also Whrrl and Plazes, although Plazes doesn't seem quite as creepy from what I read. The thing that I think disturbed me most is that I found about it from someone on facebook who was like "check out this really cool thing!" Why would anybody be excited about this?! I mean, I love cell phones because they make it easy to contact people from anywhere and easier for people to get ahold of you. And I love facebook because it makes it easier to keep in touch with people. But this is getting a little bit extreme... I don't want people knowing where I am at all hours of the day and being able to track me down without my knowledge.

I guess my initial reaction was a little bit extreme though. You do have to sign up for the service and choose to broadcast your whereabouts in order for other people to see them. But I'm sure hackers could use these types of things to find people really easily. I mean, who saw Dark Knight and what he did with cell phones? Granted, he used it for good. But still. And look at poor Miley Cyrus whose cell phone got hacked into and now her private pictures are all over the internet.

I'm getting increasingly uneasy with the level of information available about people. Not to mention what the government could very easily do with it (and the phone companies, as happened recently, are just immune from any consequences). Does this make anyone else as uneasy as it makes me?

So, yesterday Datingish posted a clip from the classic John Cusack 80s teen romance flick "Say Anything," and it got me thinking... How good were 80s teen movies? Teen movies now pale in comparison. Think about. As sappy as some of those movies were, 80s teen movies were also filled with so much more angst. Some examples:

The Breakfast Club - between dancing on tables, lusting after each other and smoking up in the library, the kids bare their souls to each other in heart-wrenchingly uncomfortable scenes. Everyone has problems - the princess is expected of too much, the geek has too much pressure, the weird girl is a klepto and feels invisible, the rebel is abused, the jock has self-loathing and anger management issues (and too much pressure). Yes, in their own way they're all stereotypes and teen movies now try to copy them often. But they were the originals. And they were not one-dimensional like teen characters now.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - A happy movie about kids ditching school their senior year and having fun? Wrong! What about those intense scenes with Cameron when his dad's car gets wrecked? Yikes. Those are some of the most intense scenes of any movie I remember.

Say Anything - While this is one of the cutest of cute 80s love stories, Diane Court's dad is a con man. Her mother is obnoxious. She has a lot of pressure on her to do amazing things. And John Cusack's character (who, if you added a college education, is pretty much my dream man) is being raised by his uptight sister who doesn't have time for him because she has a child of her own while receiving pressure from his absentee father to join the military. That's some tough stuff. And let's not forget angsty Lily Taylor who tried to kill herself when the asshole love of her life cheats on her and writes 60 some angry songs about him. And then there's the classic John Cusack boombox in the backyard moment.

Heathers - Um, holy crap, you don't get any angstier than that (for those of you who haven't seen it, it's a film starring Winona Ryder and Shannen Doherty about suicide, murder and social heirarchy. It also coined some classic phrases such as "that's so very," and "what's your damage?")

I haven't even seen some of the other classic 80s flicks like 16 Candles and I only vaguely remember Pretty In Pink because it's been so long. But I'll be they're just as good and angsty. The only one I've seen that I recall not liking was St. Elmo's Fire. What's your favorite 80s teen movie (EDIT: and/or scene from an 80s teen movie)?