Hazy Shade Of Winter

In my hazy shade of recovering from Friday's concert, I didn't do my usual post on Saturday of what I am reading, listening to, watching.

The title of this post should actually be...The Summer I Revisted All That Is Bret Easton Ellis. It all started with re-reading, Lunar Park and then reading his newest, Imperial Bedrooms. Both books really started my quest to revisit his first book, Less Than Zero. That is what I spent my past week reading. A step back to 1983 (when it was written, it didn't debut until 1985) and a step back to my old stomping grounds (I moved to Los Angeles in 1987) and a revisit with the characters that I couldn't get out of my mind when the book debuted in 1985. So, I decided to go back to the beginning and start reading his books, all again, in order. I have to admit that I will be skipping, American Psycho. It was a great book but so disturbing. I think I will leave Patrick Bateman where he belongs.

It was great fun to go back and read, Less Than Zero, all these years, later. The first time I read it, I was the same age as the characters in the book. Reading it then, was great. Reading it, again, now, was even better. The darkness is better understood, the people, the places. Having lived in the same city, I felt like I was taking a trip down each drive of each street, lived in the same places, listened to the same music. It is fun to look back at the person I was in that time frame. It is odd to read of a time with no cell phones, video arcades ruled, parents were totally in the background, kids played cassettes in thier car stereo and listened to and purchased albums. Tab was the drink of choice, for soft drinks. The book was a sign of the times, at the time. It visited the dark times of the disillusioned youth of the time.




This was the original cover of the book...if you read it or are going to read it, you will understand the sunglasses.


And then there is the movie. I embrace the movie as just a movie. I do not embrace it as a movie about the book. It was nothing like the book. In 1987, in Westwood, at a movie theatre, I sat totally disappointed in the much anticipated movie.










Revisting the book made me pull out my cd from the movie soundtrack. It's a good and yet confusing soundtrack. The song choices are good but on a few of the songs, I personally feel that they could have/should have stuck with the originals. Anyway, my favorite song on the soundtrack is the title of this blog post. It sums up a lot of the book/movie and it makes me remember driving the same streets, in Los Angeles, in the late night hours.