Monday, May 3, 2010

Remembering...

Dunno why… of all things, a Facebook question got me to remembering this morning…

I remember sitting in a movie theater in the summer of 1985. I was waiting for a movie called Top Gun to start. The theater half-darkened, the previews of coming attractions rolled, and then the popcorn ad appeared.

After the popcorn ad finished, the theater went black. Paramount’s mountainous logo appeared and a trail of stars went silently flowing onto the screen to surround it. An echoey drum beat began. Low rhythmic strains of piano, bells and something else joined in. A shadowy scene materialized: the red-brown mist of an ocean dawn.

Men and jets crawled slowly around a carrier deck, maneuvering and lining up for take-off. The music began to build. The intensity grew... and grew... and grew - for almost three minutes.

Then some guy in goggles and a yellow vest standing on the flight deck came to attention, cocked his left wrist shoulder-high, and pointed forward. With that little move everybody ducked, the catapult exploded, and the first jet was off like it was shot from a gun.

That crazy-wild guitar started playin', Kenny Loggins started singin’, I wet my pants, and the rest is movie history.

Watch this and see if you can remember what the first four minutes of history felt like.

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