Belinda Carlisle's MAD ABOUT YOU video...the very essence of southern California

I stopped dead in my tracks about 7:55pm when this video came on VH1 Classics tonight, a video I haven't seen in YEARS, but has always been ingrained in my head as symbolizing sunny SoCal. Her debut single from her debut solo album. Summer, 1986. And do you know where I was that July? You got it. Southern California. Coming up on 20 years...a fact not lost on me in my ongoing love of symmetry. This video, though...as evocative as I remember. You FEEL like you're in Marina Del Ray...late evening, the sun blinding and fierce, casting shadows, ever closer to disappearing over the Pacific...waves crashing...endless towering palm trees...Belinda, impossibly youthful, blonde & playful, hair blowing in her face in the passenger seat of a convertible, which zips along next to sand and ocean. It is an absolutely transfixing vision. Dreamy and optimistic. The promise of youth. Iconic. That song and video means more to me than to most, i'd guess, because of what I want now, and because of where I was when that song was rising on the charts. Because of the absolutely crystal clear memories it evokes -- of that summer, of that trip, of HEARING that song while in a liquor store with my father in Norwalk, CA. And because I am FLOORED that 20 years has gone by...so fast, it seems. So damn fast.