Two-Fer-Tuesday: Mixing Things Up

I know. I know. I seem to always preface our little get-togethers on Tuesday by saying we'll do things a little differently this week.

This time, however, we're doing Two-Fer-Tuesday with a pretty significant twist.

As I told you last week, I've become pretty comfortable with Garage Band, the great software program included on most new Macs. If you don't have a Mac yet and you're a music person, you're really missing out.

It's true you can make your own music with loops and the like. Which I will get around to doing more in the coming weeks. But what I really love about it is how I have a mixing board on my computer – one that allows me to put together crazy concoctions like the ones at the bottom of this post.

In preparing for Wednesday morning's radio show, which is dedicated to the best music from John Hughes movies, I decided to do something special with two of my favorite Hughes movies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) and Sixteen Candles (1984) by making mixes that incorporate sound clips from the movies into their signature instrumentals. For Ferris, it's "Oh Yeah" by Yello, seguing into "March of the Swivelheads" by the English Beat. For Sixteen, it's Miss Molly and company interacting with Ira Newborn's "Geek Boogie."

As I'll talk about tomorrow, I'm a little unsure about Sixteen Candles these days – particularly after recently listening to an NPR piece, saying how every Asian high school student during the 80s suffered under the stereotype of being clones of Long Duk Dong, the sex-crazed Chinese exchange student played by the very Japanese Gedde Watanabe. Yet the movie still makes me laugh. As, of course, does Ferris Bueller. An interesting note: My teenaged kids haven't watched Sixteen Candles yet, but they are totally addicted to Ferris Bueller and practically know it by heart. Every once in a while, I freak out my 11-year-old Nicholas by reminding him that Ferris Bueller is played by the same guy who is the adult Simba.

Anyway, here are are my musical tributes to both movies. Load them into your iPod and tell me what you think. Any kind of feedback would be appreciated.

Play Rob's "Sixteen Candles Mix"

Play Rob's "Ferris Bueller Mix"