About Last Night

You know that old movie set in the mid eighties with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe based on Mamets play Sexual Perversity in Chicago that catalogued that amazing time after college in Chicago when all you had to do was go to work party and find the love of your life. Well I watched it again and like all movies from that era I was amazed at the great times it brought back. My wife and I both lived in Chicago during those years and were actually coming out of a bar across form Mothers on Rush Street when they filmed the New Years Even scene complete with  movie snow.

And a girl I went to high school with appeared in one of the final scenes as her only moment of contextual fame...so close to Rob and Demi and Jim Belushi she could touch them but then she fell into obscurity as did the movie after years passed. But there are movies that bring back a moment in time with the crystal clarity of a clock striking the hour and About Last Night does this very well. Yes it is a brat pack eighties movie but Mamets script anchors the movie and it has moments where it takes flight.

And if you were in Chicago during the eighties. And if you had just graduated from college. And if you lived in old brownstones and went to the bars on Rush Street and if you stayed out all night and walked in the surf of Lake Michigan as dawn broke then you watch this movie as if someone had filmed your life and you end up with a hell of a nostalgia hangover when it ends.

And you wonder for the millionth time...where did all that go? Demi dumped by Ashton. Rob busted for peeping. Still...there was a moment. Ah well...Boats against the current....



www.williamhazelgrove.com

 

Zuccotti Park

Quiet since the protesters were roused from their sleep and the park deserted. The OWS movement still rolls along but there is that feeling that the nexus of the movement was in the damp sleeping bags and sterno stoves and mountain pod tents we saw on the news. People were doing something and this was exciting. My generation rolled along under the quiet blanket of a party headed by Duran Duran/ Talking Heads/U2. Our rebellion was more cerebral, if not artistic. Nothing that couldn't be settled with a snoot full of blow.

But the protesters in Zuccotti Park did not graduate into that world. Theirs was very different. We could hide because the economy while not great was not in the dire straits of the last four years. You could find a job and things started to really boom. Girls Just wanna have fun and so did everyone else. And we did. Wasn't much on the social activism side of the equation. But really, what was there to protest against? Not enough money? Not enough thin ties and pointy shoes to go around?

But I digress. Zuccotti Park required that people risk something. Even if it was just a night sleeping on the cold ground or the danger of getting maced or arrested. It has been a long time since anyone I know risked anything. It just wasn't in our lexicon. What is the big deal might sum it up. Or maybe people just wanna have fun. Until they can't.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one mans war against suburbia