Constructive Summer

So I've taken to hanging out with an Oxford crowd again and by that I mean Liz Cimino and whoever she is with (usually Hope and Em, sometimes Kelly) lose a little bit of sense and drive thirty minutes north on Route One to my house. This has happened exactly twice in the last 5 days and both occasions have garnered an A+ for fun and possibility.

I need to start doing push-ups again because my arms are flabby. I want to film that.

What's Hot:
Roman Polanski
Summer
Wawa Milkshakes

What's Not:
Total lack of Q-tips in the bathroom drawer
Graduation party stress
Lacking another driver for extreme camping June 16-23 in North Carolina (all interested parties please apply as soon as possible)

I noticed something. We have these neighbors, we'll call them the Vees, that don't wave back at us. The Gallagher clan are a friendly bunch and we often take to waving at whomever we pass on the street and the Vees are nearly always out walking their dog at twilight. They never reciprocate. But I noticed something recently when I was biking to work. Mr. Vee was walking his dog alone, at midday, and after I waved at him he waved back. There were several more occasions where the Vees were walking together, not bothering to wave, but today, Mr. Vee was playing with his dog in the yard. Just he and his dog. And he waved. At my dad and I. Just thought that you should know.

Also, the new Hold Steady is absolutely awesome. It's not really funny to think that two or three years ago my summer soundtrack was pretty much Saves the Day and Lifetime. There's nothing wrong with Saves the Day and especially Lifetime but I'm using them to illustrate a point: summer used to equal pop-punk. But there's so much more than that. I'm trying to think of a way to describe... well, look: somehow, No Age, Cap'n Jazz and Jawbreaker all overlap. Jawbreaker, Latterman and Lifetime certainly overlap. The Hold Steady aren't doing anything drastically different than any of these bands, except they're older and grew up with Paul Westerberg and Bruce Springstein instead of Ian Mackaye. Pirouette, well, goes without saying and Failed Attempts need to put out a full-length. That was my late-night musing about my summer listening, I guess, but what I really want to say is this, this chorus from the first track off the excellent new Hold Steady album, Stay Positive. It's called "Constructive Summer" and it goes:

" We're gonna build something this summer/
Summer grant us all the power/
to drink on top of water towers/
with love and trust that shows all summer/
Let this be my annual reminder/
that we can all be something bigger."

'Night