School House Rock
School Ties: “I had a really good experience in high school. I went to a huge public school. My graduating class was about 800 and actually, it was very [Producer/Director/Writer] John Hughes. All of his movies were based on the North Suburban public high schools. In fact, some of them were even shot in my town, so it was like a ’90s version of the John Hughes setting, exactly like that. I know all those high schools where they were shot. All of his movies really make a point of showing all the different types of students, like the super nerds, the idiot jocks and, like, the super brains. When I look back on it, I liked being exposed to really different types of kids from different financial backgrounds. We had kids with crazy Marilyn Manson eye makeup and mohawks and dog collars, and then we had people with sweaters tied around their neck. We had everything. It was really cool. It was like a zoo, but it was fun.”Friends Till The End: “All my best friends are from high school. When I graduated high school, I had about four best friends. I refer to those friends as my groomsmen because I just know that they will be. One of them lives [in L.A.], and the other two are in Chicago and San Francisco, and one of them is actually in Iraq. He’s a Marine. So we go to [Las] Vegas all the time or we’ll meet in Chicago. I’ll be friends with them the rest of my life. That was like the biggest thing I took away from high school — these great, best friends.”
Looking Back: “I had long hair back then, and I’d be blasting like some Pearl Jam in my Jeep. It was so mid-’90s, so great. I would wear a hat, but with the front of my hair coming out the front of the hat, so the hat was kind of back on my head. When I look at myself from freshman year, I still marvel at the clothes that I wore. I wore a lot of black jeans.”Peer Mentoring: “When I was a senior, I had a group of freshmen and I would explain to them how to use study hall and tell them not to smoke and things like that. It was actually pretty fun because I always liked working with kids. These were bright-eyed 14 year olds and then they would all come to the football games and things like that.”Here Comes Trouble? “I didn’t get in trouble. I think the only time I went to Saturday school was when we had senior ditch day, so everybody goes then. It’s great. It’s the Monday after prom and nobody goes to school that day; you just don’t show up. Then everybody has to go to Saturday school. We all went as a group.”
Conversation
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