Our last time in Las Vegas (yeh, everyone who's anyone goes to Las Vegas at least once from Honolulu), we made it a priority to stop and go dancing at the MGM Grand's albeit watered down version of the famous Studio 54. I must admit right at the beginning that neither of us ever had the opportunity of going to the original in the Big Apple. So, instead we danced our hearts out all evening to Disco '70 music and partied until the wee hours just as if we'd been at the "real" Studio 54 in the 70's and 80's. No silver-gilded, or roller-skating gym-short-wearing "golden boys" (and, of course, no Steve Rubell), but it did give the feeling of a forever party, and that, more than anything else, was at the heart of the real thing. 

What happened to the forever parties of the late 60's and early 70's? They seem to have gone the way of predictible respectability, and with that all the fun seemed to somehow get sucked out. The last attempt at such a party here in Honolulu is a similar commercial version of the Jazz Club. Jazz, liquor and dark corners (thank God, no smoking anymore) -- it's all there...except the essence of what made the Cotton Club, Savoy and Birdland what they were. 

Something's missing in today's world that powered the "real" entertainment of the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's -- entertainment people actually participated and lost themselves in, in the end becoming one with their era. Something far beyond watching.