Sitting in the couch last night, watching the rain pour down outside the window, listening to my daughter’s before-sleep-ramblings and my sons snoring, my wife turned on the tv. She zaps away and we take a stop at this inexplicably horrid movie. I was not seeing the plot for all the trees.

My wife: “Is that Alicia Silverstone?”
Me: I guess so, yes”
My wife: “That’s so sad. Loved her in Clueless”
Me: “Yeah, she was good in Clueless”
My wife: “Seems she was worth a better fate than this crap. And all the writing about her being fat, what was that about?”
Me: “Uhuhm”

And I start a memory chain noded to the career of Alicia Silverstone. I remember the first time I saw that Aerosmith music video “Crazy”, where I was at the time and what I did. I remember watching Clueless with some friends expressing loud opinions over the anatomy of Silverstone, clueless over the fact that it’s based on Austen’s Emma, which I later, much thanks to my wife, have come to love. And I remember finding out that the director of Clueless, Amy Heckerling, is also the director of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

And then I start thinking about Phoebe Cates. Oh please brother, don’t get me started on Phoebe Cates. What the hell happened to her? And then I lean over the laptop standing at the small table by the couch and I IMDB Phoebe Cates to find that she hasn’t acted in a movie since 2001. Why is that? Has she switched careers? Is she now an orthodontologist? See, I could easily find out by googling her but I don’t want to.

And then my daughter starts snoring and I position my left arm around my wife and kiss her tenderly on her temple.