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"  Since it&amp;#039;s far too depressing to assess our national debt, perhaps a better idea is to assess our national debt... to John Cusack. Unimaginative suitors everywhere should be sending the 43-year-old Chicago native a couple bucks every time they don a trench and hoist a boom box (or iPod dock) under their lass&amp;#039;s window, \u00E0 la Lloyd Dobler, Cusack&amp;#039;s breakout role in Say Anything. How would Anthony Michael Hall&amp;#039;s Sixteen Candles geek have gotten the idea to procure Molly Ringwald&amp;#039;s panties had Cusack&amp;#039;s Bryce not challenged him to produce evidence of an assignation? Finally, let&amp;#039;s not even put a price tag on what Cusack taught us as High Fidelity&amp;#039;s Rob Gordon about the subtle art of the mixtape. Never, our hangdog hero tells us, include &amp;quot;the same artist twice... except if some subtle point or lesson or theme [is] involved.&amp;quot; There is certainly nothing subtle in Cusack&amp;#039;s latest project, director Roland Emmerich&amp;#039;s end-times disaster flick 2012, but considering all we owe the guy, 11 bucks to sit in a theater and watch the world blow up seems a small price to pay.   ELLE:  Tell me a story of adolescent humiliation involving a woman.JOHN CUSACK: Sophomore year of high school, a girl who will go nameless, but who I was pretty sure I was going out with, spent a Friday night making out with a well-known school bad boy after drinking a whole bunch of Bacardi. The next week at school was not very pleasant.   ELLE: Did you at least get to fly into a satisfying rage and dump a Slurpee on her?JC: No. All I experienced was crushing puppy heartbreak.   ELLE: If you could be granted a do-over with any event involving a woman, what would you try again?JC: I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn&amp;#039;t be acting like Don Juan. I should have been contrite\u2014and apologized for exposing her to the angry pimple.   ELLE: You once told NPR&amp;#039;s Terry Gross that you got no attention in high school until you did a couple of movies, and then suddenly you had the ability to steal the quarterback&amp;#039;s girlfriend. What did this do to your head at such a young age?JC: Movie stars are usually treated like surreal royalty in this country, so I&amp;#039;ve developed a pretty good bullshit detector. If you&amp;#039;re a movie star, there&amp;#039;s a cycle you go through: adoration, adulation, you&amp;#039;re used, and then you&amp;#039;re discarded. And it happens again and again, always in that sequence.   ELLE: Is this why actors so often go out with actresses\u2013because they&amp;#039;re the only ones familiar with this cycle?JC: No, actors go out with actresses as a form of self-flagellation.   ELLE: What&amp;#039;s the most violent act perpetrated upon you by a woman?JC: I was in Almer\u00EDa, Spain, on the set of this movie Straight to Hell. This great female singer, who I won&amp;#039;t name\u2014but who was going out with Elvis Costello at the time\u2014 came over to me. I think she may have been trying to make him jealous, because she said to me, &amp;quot;Give me a kiss.&amp;quot; I looked over at Elvis Costello, who&amp;#039;s one of my idols, and said to her, &amp;quot;Not a good idea.&amp;quot; And then she roundhoused me to the jaw.   ELLE: She punched you?JC: Yeah. And I said, &amp;quot;I still don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s a good idea.&amp;quot; So she hit me again! &amp;quot;You can hit me all you want,&amp;quot; I told her, &amp;quot;but I still don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s a good idea.&amp;quot; At that point, she looked at me, smiled, and staggered off.*   ELLE: This sounds like a tough broad.JC: Tough and drunk. I just remember after that first hit, thinking, Oh my God, this is going to be a great story. I don&amp;#039;t think she was punching to kill. She was just doing it for effect.   ELLE: Have you come across any women that feisty since?JC:  I have a good friend who&amp;#039;s a Texas girl; Texas girls are a whole different breed.   ELLE: Tell me about it. I married one.JC: So you know. Texas women have an amazing sense of purpose when they lose it. They&amp;#039;re the best girls in the world\u2014 they&amp;#039;re loyal and fun, but when they get mad, they&amp;#039;ll try to kill you.   ELLE: Huh. I&amp;#039;ve not yet had the pleasure of getting the snot beaten out of me by my wife, but I&amp;#039;m confident it&amp;#039;ll happen. If I told you that you were about to develop a disorder wherein every time you made love, music would start broadcasting audibly from your pores, which song might you choose?JC: Tchaikovsky&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;1812 Overture&amp;quot; or anything by John Philip Sousa.  ELLE: If you learned that all the love songs in the world except one would be eradicated and you were entrusted with saving that song, which would you pick?JC: &amp;quot;Search &amp;amp;amp; Destroy&amp;quot; by Iggy Pop.  ELLE: Yeah?JC: That was a joke.  ELLE: Oh, sorry. Heh heh. What one item could you find in a woman&amp;#039;s house that would convince you you&amp;#039;re not compatible?JC: Any book by Rush Limbaugh.  ELLE:  You&amp;#039;ve never been shy about your politics, but let&amp;#039;s say hypothetically, you&amp;#039;re in a hotel and Sarah Palin knocks on your door dressed only in lingerie. She looks great, and you&amp;#039;re getting the go sign. What do you do?JC: I would invite her in. I&amp;#039;d go to the minibar, open it up, pour us a drink. And then I&amp;#039;d study her.  ELLE: Study her?JC: Yes, so that future generations might learn about these strange, winking, beautypageant- strutting, elite-bashing creatures.  ELLE: In five words or fewer, tell me why you&amp;#039;ve never married.JC: I can do it in seven: &amp;quot;Society doesn&amp;#039;t tell me what to do.&amp;quot; * The onetime girlfriend of Elvis Costello denies she ever hit Cusack on the Straight to Hell set, but she does admit that she nicknamed Cusack &amp;quot;Molly&amp;quot; in honor of the luxuriantly maned Ringwald, since he had been cast as a GI but wouldn&amp;#039;t cut his hair. 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<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a10685/being-john-cusack-386404/>