WHALE

Mr. Johnson recently proclaimed his affinity for Amy Grant's "Baby, Baby" and asked his readers to name their guilty pleasure songs.  Mine, as my close friends know, is "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright.  It's a Wayne's World thing, I guess.  But I had totally forgotten about this song:

                       

I first saw this video on Beavis & Butt-Head, way back when.  It was stuck in my head for a whole summer.  The video made me think that its contents were those of an acid trip, which deterred me from dabbling in that drug throughout my junior high career.  D.A.R.E. should have been all over this.  It seems pretty tame, now.

Here's ironic for you.  Rachel Velez and myself won the D.A.R.E. essay contest in fifth grade.  They had a first place for girls and boys.  The prize included the following: reading the essay in front of the school and getting to sit in the D.A.R.E. car at the Fourth of July parade.  We had to say what we liked about the program and list reasons as to how drugs would stop us from achieving our goals.  Rachel skipped the parade, and I decided to walk with the football team (yeah, Golden Eagles!) instead.  Had we gone to the parade, there may have been hope for us.

My essay was bullshit.  I wanted to become a rock star, and I'm quite certain that a steady drug regiment is a prerequisite for such dreams.  Needless to say, the ideals and teachings of the D.A.R.E program didn't stick.  But I do wish I had gotten the ride in that car.  It was a '49 Mercury convertible, as I remember.  Though my memory has been influenced to suggest otherwise.