DJ Discussions: DJ Val-ium

I would like everyone to welcome to the studio, DJ Val-ium, who will be steering us in the right direction towards where she believes the danger zone is located (hint: in your pants).

"Highway to the Danger Zone" - Kenny Loggins

Microphone: check.  Guyliner: check.

This is Val Kilmer.  He is an actor and the subject of The Kilmer Cure, provenance of today’s guest DJ Val-ium.  

Also pictured: Tom Skerritt’s mustache.

Gotta love a good ‘stache. 

This is Iceman.  He is a fighter pilot and subject of the 1986 film Top Gun.  Top Gun had three stars: Mr. Kilmer, Tom Cruise, and Kenny Loggins’ classic love anthem, "Highway to the Danger Zone."

Nothin’ like an ’80s song to rev you up. 

"Revvin' up your engine

Listen to her howlin' roar"

There is a grand tradition in rock and roll of comparing women to cars—see Buddy Holly’s "Not Fade Away," AC/DC’s "You Shook Me All Night Long," Joss Stone’s "Don't Cha Wanna Ride?," etc.—but this is the only song I know comparing a woman to an airplane, which has thus far saved us from jokes about taxiing to the runway. 

Machines do seem to be the perfect metaphor for women. Rihanna likes to compare herself to a car all the time in her songs. She likes to shift into what we call “whore-wheel drive.”

"Metal under tension

Beggin' you to touch and go"

Touch and go—clearly this is an in and out operation, what frat guys call a “quickie” and Iceman might call “infiltration and extraction.” 

Iceman was a better mechanic than Maverick eh?

The man knows how to get a lady's engine revving.  That's all I'll say.

"Highway to the Danger Zone

Ride into the Danger Zone"

Uh-oh.  The Danger Zone sounds like the kind of place I want to avoid during romantic encounters . . . is there an off-ramp somewhere soon?

So when they say highway, they really mean....landing strip?

"Headin' into twilight

Spreadin' out her wings tonight"

I warned you about the plane thing.  I never feel sexier than when a guy compares me to a five thousand pound hunk of metal. 

Do you think they chose this song just because they used the word wings and there are pilots in the movie?

I don’t know whether this is a blessing or a curse, but “Danger Zone” was actually written for the film.  On the one hand, it’s good that no one spontaneously equated women with aircraft; on the other, we now have Top Gun to blame for more than one of cinema’s most LOL-arious sex scenes. 

"She got you jumpin' off the track

And shovin' into overdrive

Highway to the Danger Zone

I'll take you

Right into the Danger Zone"

Again—and I cannot stress this enough—I would like to avoid the Danger Zone in my pants.

Which is faster: taking the highway to the danger zone or the interstate?  

"Out along the edges

Always where I burn to be

The further on the edge

The hotter the intensity"

Wait.  Burning?  Now there’s burning?  No wonder he’s “begging to touch and go;” he gave me a frickin’ STD!  Now I know why they call it the Danger Zone . . . 

Hotter and intense just aren’t enough description for me. For redundancy’s sake, give me some more adjectives!

Like "tingling" and "syphillis-y?"

Yes.

I knew I didn’t want to be on this stupid Route 66 to the Danger Zone.

Giggity.