The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Palin camp may get SNL time to respond to Fey sketches. Wahlberg camp still mum on their demands. Plus: Dexter, Brothers and Sisters and Gwen Ifill reacts to Queen Latifah.
1. Summer is the New Year's Eve of seasons. There's intense pressure to have a plan and make capital-F fun, and it winds up being kind of overrated. Give me a brisk fifty-one-degree day in October any time. Mmmmmm. See, you can walk down the street without sweating. And look — I have a really cool coat on!
2. I can take the beach for forty-five minutes to an hour. Maybe an hour and a half, if it's slightly hazy and you've brought Kadima.
3. Nothing says summer more than being asked to share an uncomfortable glass of sangria in the apartment of your friendly yet overly sweaty next-door neighbor.
4. Are you one of those people who goes to the beach and stands there with a beer in one hand, talking really loudly to your friends, so that I can hear every word about what crazy things you did the night before? If so: I hate you.
5. I'm pro-swimming. Pool, lake or ocean — I like it all.
6. I don't get the deal with convertibles.
7. Actually, nothing says summer more than eating an overpriced chicken Caesar salad at an outdoor table on a dirty city sidewalk. Yum.
8. Yes, I'll go to your rooftop party. But you don't have to excitedly schedule it to the annual fireworks. What am I, five?
9. I'm waiting until my next life to walk around shirtless in the summer. And I'm just talking about the walk between the bedroom and the bathroom.
10. Skinny dipping? C'mon. That's for people on Road Rules.
11. Ladies, take it easy on the tanning. Too much, and we laugh at you when you walk past us.
12. I bet if you're a woman, you can spend a good amount of time on a summer day laughing at men's legs. Roughly ninety-seven percent of us look like malnourished chickens. And you didn't have to grow up on a farm to know that you don't put a malnourished chicken in Old Navy cargo shorts.
13. It looks like "Wait (The Whisper Song)" is going to be the big song of the summer. Now I'm not one to join up with the conservative demagogues, but when you have twelve-year-old kids singing, "Wait til you see my dick," I do believe the conservative demagogues might be on to something.
14. It's still a great song, though.
15. God, it's only the first week in July and The Black Eyed Peas are already bugging the hell out of me.
16. I'll go to the baseball game, I'll cheer the home runs, I'll eat a hot dog and drink a beer, but I draw the line at running onto the field and tackling the first base coach. That I flat-out refuse to do.
17. "Hey, do you want to play tennis?" No.
18. Did you ever hear that Joyce Carol Oates was briefly a Hawaiian Tropic girl? Neither did I, until someone lied and told me that.
19. I don't mind a summer beach party but don't ask me to be the Fire Guy. I'll be Sit Next to the Fire Guy. Or Bail When The Smoke Burns My Eyes Guy.
20. Ever notice how everyone has an opinion about how to build the beach party fire? And then everyone has to have an opinion on where to bury the townie you backed over in the Cherokee.
21. Have I ever made out at a drive-in movie? That's like asking me how I enjoyed being the Prime Minister of Finland.
22. Seriously, no song comes closer to describing the summers of my childhood than "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang." It was like Dre and Snoop were reading from my diary.
23. My editor wants this column to have a lot of "sexy summer fun." Easy for him to say. He spends his days surrounded by half-nude, bi-curious models and sexed-up photographers buzzing in from Antwerp with cubes of hash stuffed in their lens caps. I spend my days wondering how many Tofutti Cuties I can eat without developing an intestinal disorder. (Answer: five.)
24. Is it okay to tell people I'm ambivalent about krumping?
25. And did I see Spider-Man or Spider-Man 2?
26. Boy, I can't wait to hear one more Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants joke. C'mon, tell me!
27. Actually, nothing says summer more than a flabby man who thinks he's good at boogie boarding.
28. Don't get me wrong, there's lots I like about summer. I like being able to go outside without wanting to run inside, I like barbecue, I like thunderstorms right at dusk, I like drive-ins, corn on the cob and . . . Jesus Christ, this is turning into a bad John Cougar Mellencamp song.
