Last night the ole Alma matar hosted a screening of Back to the Future with introduction and Q&A session with writer / producer Bob Gale,…. who… happens to also be a native St. Louisian.

There was a pissy wine and cheese reception beforehand just for alumni which we didn’t make it to… but it was nice to sit in the “privileged” alumni roped off seating toward the front of the auditorium…. I asked the usher if there was super-special seating for the alumni who’ve paid off their student loans… The 19 year-old didn’t get it.

I hadn’t seen the movie in about fifteen years – it was a nostalgia trip. (They also got two DMC-12s and parked them out in front of Webster Hall complete with smoke machines.)

The “real” trip was watching this movie about the comic contrast between 1985 and 1955,… in 2005,…. nearly the same contrast as the plot premise of the movie.

Then I looked around the the back half of the auditorium which was filled with students and was really struck with how young they all looked. Of course… The underclassmen in the room were BORN when this movie came out.

We all have an “internal age” – the age you see yourself as regardless of your biological age… For me – I’m internally about 20 to 22…. Walking through campus felt like I was just there last week going to classes.

The time period contrasts of the movie, noticing the students who I thought looked to just have all gotten their drivers licenses and healthy doses of nostalgia walking through campus put me in a weird, (but not unpleasant), head-space for the rest of the night.

Q&A was interesting and discovered some Easter-Egg St. Louis references in the flick – although Gale’s recurrent plugging of the three-DVD box-set lent a sleazy, whore-like aire to what would otherwise be a semi-snooty academic discussion.

But come on – you can only deconstruct a movie like Back to the Future so much.

It was (is) bubble-gum.

Meanwhile this is (was) never a blog.