Because It's Always Time For Kenny Loggins

I don't think there was a greater musical period than the 1980s. To illustrate this I submitto you Kenny Loggins's second entry on 1985's Footloose soundtrack or as I like to call it: The Kevin Bacon one, not the Patrick Swayze one. But while the song is great I would like to call your attention to what the fuck is happening in the music video. I mean where is Kenny Loggins supposed to be? This is like what a Milwaukee mom pictures when you say 'Harlem'. Was it necessary to automatically go straight to 'quasi post-apocalyptic non threatening hellscape'? How did they accomplish making this set both not the least bit intimidating and give it the air of 'something fucked up has happened here and you are about to witness it again'?

Also what is with the girl? It's obvious she loves Kenny Loggins I mean who wouldn't love that rocking manicured beard? You can clearly see she's ran away from her parents to be with him. Or so I thought unitl I remember the begining where Kenny is looking for her. So why is he looking for her, is she kidnapped at some point by those broadway backups in leather? Why is she running away with him and ditching her parents, are they worse than living with the guy who wrote 'Highway to the Danger Zone'? Because I seriously doubt that.

Speaking of the leather crew I know no one, and I never will who is willing to stab you in the chest 27 times and defecate on you to leave a message that also had the time to put into eiht years of jazz tap and fosse. They and the fact that the police are deciding that 12 gauge shotguns are an appropriate response to a 'Kenny Loggins Clusterfuck in Progress' are the reasone I am fond of the videos just as much as the songs from the era of my childhood (also known as the era without irony).

My Spirit Guide is a Dick

I met my spirit guide the other night. After much deliberation I decided to go ask it what the fuck is up with me and my shit (semicolon, and what should I do about it)? Very much like someone's masturbation ritual I tend to prepare for meditation by pulling out all the stops. I light incense just like that yoga douche you see trying to pick up limber girls in the new age section of Border's. Smells help. Then I cut off the lights because my mile-a-minute brain can not focus for very long if it has even the minutest secondary object to focus on, in this case it would be the color-shards that light takes on as it tries to project onto your eyelids. Next I lay down, I don't really have an explanation for that one so eat it and beat right there. Sometimes I'll listen to those prerecorded meditation podcasts that tell you what to do, but I regard those the same way I do those color by number books: you can get so make so much more, than a measly old #3 & # 12 chicken if you let your mind loose. You'll also be much more gratified with what you make my your lonesome anyway.

So it's Wednesday night. I got a bitchin' cross breeze going, I got silence and the smell of lavender heavy the air. It's so heavy it has become tangible by this point, full on gray tendrils wafting everywhere. Nephelococcygia on a small scale. I also am laying down. In other words: Time's up; let's do this. Fast forward thirty seconds and I am in this densely over grown forest. It isn't threatening in any way. Just...ancient. So much growth had occurred here that the dirt road I was on was dark and very few sunbeams were able to break through. Oh but when they did, they were warm and golden, like the cunt of Helios if Helios were a girl.

Now I'm walking. To where I have no idea, it's just instinctual at this point. I hear water movement so I step lively past all this viridian and I come right up onto this large river which runs into the largest lake I have ever seen off to the left. It's full on cerulean, I'm talking the bluest you'll ever see. Of in the distance I hear the sound of laughing. It's light and jaunty, it makes me feel as good as the water I scoop out of the lake and drink. Cold. Sweet tits, nothing worse than a warm lake.

I keep moving up the dirt road. Why is there a dirt road in an old seemingly never populated forest anyway? Whatever keep going forward. Then I notice it, this old time wicker garden arch where the path forks off o the right. It's white and got ivy growing all on it. Inside I can see a a mossy clearing, which is enclosed by more trees. It's separated from everything else like one of the party rooms at Discovery Zone or Chuck-e-Cheese. This particular "forest room" isn't overcast, sunlight is just spilling directly into it. Once inside I climbed one of the barrier trees and pop a squat on a branch high up. I notice the most brilliant purple mountains way off in the distance since I am now higher than the rest of the forest.

This is when shit gets real. Suddenly this blinding glint of light winks into my field of vision on one of the snow capped mountains. Then it starts floating closer to me. It get closer and closer, bigger and bigger. It doesn't make a sound, yet. Suddenly it's behind me so I climb down the tree as fast as I can and back into my clearing. These white moths are everywhere now, and fluffy white pollen balls. Sunlight still going strong. Then the light descends into the middle of this clearing in front of me. It's buzzing now, deafening. A boulder rises out of the green ground and meets the white light. Which has morphed into a crystalline plant bud. The it sounds as if the Earth itself is cracking open as the bud opens and out comes my spirit guide.

Now you see the woman in the picture up there? That is the form my spirit guide chose. I don't know why, I have not seen this person face to face in quite literally years. To be honest it bugged me a little, because as rad as this girl is I was expecting a badass giant hawk or a cobra made entirely out of fire. Not this girl in a white summer dress. Spirit Guide steps out of the light bud and sits on the rock. It seems nonplussed about being here, almost as if I have bothered it. It had the body language of someone you would be paying to sit somewhere and keep you entertained. Like a birthday clown dealing with a child requesting balloon animals after the flask of potato mash whiskey came out and the heat stroke began to take hold.

Typically in these scenarios I have read that you should inquire as to what your spirit guide's name is. Upon doing this it laughed at me. Not the pleasant light and gay laughter I overhead earlier. No this was deep and dismissive. Wait, what? This shouldn't be happening. I asked it if it knew who I was. It had a deep baritone voice, in fact it sounded exactly like Dennis Haysbert from 24 and The Unit (You may also have seen him in the Allstate commercials). It inferred that it did but that it didn't give two shits or a sandwich that I actually was there. I told it that I was coming to see it and that maybe it should be nicer. It's eyes widened, and it laughed that amused laugh again. Shaking the white plant dandruff from it's shaggy black hair.

"I'm not a genie you know. You can't just stop on by with your three questions then be on your way. I'm doing important things in places that would make you pee yourself in abject wonder." He said.

"Look. Jerk. I just want to know what I should be doing with my life! You'd could at least give me some cryptic hints or some shit!" I shouted back. I had no idea why I was shouting. Why was I shouting?

It started mumbling the way you would when you pretended to be going into a tunnel to ditch an unwanted phone call. It's never really made eye contact with me until now, cutting it's big blue eyes at me. Lips curling into a smirk.

"That helpful enough?" It asked impatiently.

I was ready to fight this...whatever it was now. Why was he such a douche? Just because you come from space and take the form of a lady doesn't mean I won't take a slug at you in the spirit world.

"I'm not about to be gang-raped by a gang of one! I parted the Red Sea to get to you, now don't piss on the sand. So tell me something and make it something good." There I was shouting again.

It seemed to like my loss of composure because it's pale skin grew flushed. And those eyes, always elsewhere and half open widened and locked back onto mine. Up until this point it had been languidly sitting on that large rock, resting it's weight and keeping aloft on that one arm. But now it stood up, walked to me, got inches away from me and whistled. Did it just sniff me? It appeared to size me up, for what I was hoping I wouldn't find out.

"Test over. You passed." It said. The over you attitude it previously had was gone.

"I-huh?" I couldn't reply. I was dumbfounded. Test? What was it, and why didn't it tell me there would be one?

"Yeah, test. Most of you are weak willed and can't handle harsh truths. I have devised this as a way to weed out the yoga group who only want me to circle jerk them celestially to feel good about themselves."

Quite dumbfounded I suddenly felt the need to look elsewhere myself.

"So what now?" I asked him becoming fixated on that rock It was previously seated on.

It leaned back as far as It could go on It's heels.

"Come find me in a week." It said.

It rushed at me heel-toe, arms outstretched and pushing me backwards. I feel for all of a second before I snapped my eyes back open and sat up. Yeah, that happened. Writing this now it seems to make sense, cruel to be kind and the like, but I still found out something. I found out that I am way too old to be dealing with tests and mind games, spirit guide dick or otherwise. It'd better not pull this shit again next Wednesday or I swear to God...