Forever Your Girl

For years I have argued that Paula Abdul was the greatest female songstress of the late 80s and early 90s. Yesterday, I was hyperventilating on the treadmill (because my elliptical was broken) and "Blowin' Kisses in the Wind" came on my iPod. For those brief minutes, I wasn't an out of shape sweaty dude on a moving walkway; I was a brilliant striding demigod ambling through an ethereal garden of ecstasy.

Paula can do that to you. She does it to me every time.

I would argue that Paula Abdul was the biggest star over a period of a couple of years that music saw in the 90s. When she was hot, she burned like herpes. Did you know that she had six number one singles IN A ROW! That's ridiculous. Not even Thor could do that, and he has a huge hammer! And we all know that there is very little that a big enough dude with a big enough hammer can't do.

Take John Henry. Didn't he eat a train or something? Either way, he was another example of a big dude with a big hammer doing a great thing: eating a train. Big dudes with big hammers are always doing cool shit like eating trains and busting stuff up and wearing people out over anything. Or nothing, they don't even care.

I wonder sometimes, as I lie in bed, looking out at the stars, if there were people on that train that John Henry ate. Just kidding; I live in the basement, I can't see any stars.

When you live in a house with three other 20-something-year-old dudes and you live in the basement, you can get away with sleeping in until like 4:30 on any given Saturday or Sunday. You can do this because no one's going to wake you up and you can't tell midnight from noon in a room with no real windows. With this kind of darkness, though, it makes the potential to be eaten by ghosts very high. Because ghosts eat people and they live in the dark.

I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably get eaten by ghosts. It doesn't bother me that much anymore. I've probably eaten dozens of ghosts in my life, but mostly in marshmallow form around Halloween. A good analogous situation of a person eating ghosts their whole life and then, eventually, getting eaten by a ghost is Pacman. He munched on ghosts all day, supplemented his diet with cherries and yellow dots and did fine for himself... until he got eaten by Inky, Pinky, Blinky or Sue, I don't remember which.

Pacman was cool. He had life figured out. Eating, running around, making "momp momp" sounds... he was a visionary. He was one of the most amazing dudes without a hammer that I can think of. He was probably the biggest deal of the 80s until Paula Abdul came out with "Straight Up."

"Straight up now tell me is it gonna be you and me together? Oh oh oh. Or are you just having fun?"

Always, Paula. I'm always having fun when you're involved.