The Heat is On

"Oh my God!" screams the drunk guy as he gets in the cab. "What is this?"

He is understandably confused and delighted to be greeted by the dulcet tones of The System's "Rock N' Roll Me Again."

"This," I tell him, "is the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack."

"No, this," he tells me as his equally drunk female friend gets in the cab, "is awesome!"

And he is correct. I was thrilled when I got a cab with a tape deck. While moving, I had uncovered the tape my old roommate had given me as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. In the time between now and then, I'd dreamed of the night that I'd be able to listen to it in the cab. After getting the car tonight, I'd rushed home to pick it up and sprinted down the stairs to show my current roommate and his hot friend from out of town. They were doing nitrous in the basement, and in a perfect state to howl with appreciation.

I saved the tape as my ace-in-the-hole all night. The night had started off hot, but been dragged down by bad luck around 1 am. At 2 AM, I figured that the bar rush would be the perfect time to bump such classics as "New Attitude" by Patti La Belle and "The Heat is On" by Glenn Frey, but instead they'd fallen on the wasted ears of a urine sample and a smelly stoner who was possibly mentally disabled.

But these people, they understand. When the drunk man hollers at me to turn it up as we pull away from Mulligan's on Hawthorne, I do. I turn that shit up to 11. And then, as we make a right onto 39th, the moment I've been waiting all night for finally strikes. "Rock 'N Roll Me Again" fades away, there's a split-second of silence, and then the bassline from "Axel F" (the Beverly Hills Cop theme) kicks in.

Howls of delight from the back, and I floor it, everything about my night suddenly perfect again.

You have not lived until the Beverly Hills Cop theme is playing at extremely loud volumes while you take sharp turns at speed in a cop car, two people screaming "Fuck yeah!" in the back seat. You might think you have, but you are wrong. There are two kinds of people in this world: those who have had this experience, and those who are dead without realizing it.

Trust me, for now I (and two lucky drunks) know.