Summertime Tidbits #1

We’ve been dealing with the
feasts of summer concepts and the broad strokes of marinade on the BBQ chicken
in our Summertime Funtime blog posts, but every so often you need those little
bite sized morsels of summertime goodness which we bring to the banquet table
in our segment… MEANWHILE! Oops. I mean in our segment Summertime Tidbits. Not
as impressive.

Reading Nathan’s posts has helped
to jog some memories, very few of them involving jogging… well, there was Summer Project ’94, which involved jogging and jog shuttle editing.

One of the things about shooting
Summer Project ’94 was driving around with the windows down, because I didn’t
have a working AC in my car and Miguel’s AC was in serious need of Freon. I
remember one time riding in his car when it was just hot enough that his AC
wasn’t working. I started getting a little queasy. The other thing was that
with Summer Project ‘94 being a chase scene, Miguel and I had to do a ton of
short burst running, and we wanted to make it seem like he was really being
chased, so we really ran. By the end of shooting, we both felt like we were in
great shape. I don’t think we could have run a marathon, or anything. Probably
not even a half marathon, if I’m being honest. Maybe like a 1/104th marathon.

When we started this, Nathan and
I discussed that we should find songs with a summer theme. He had already
alluded to one of his favourites in his introduction to the summer theme blog
post:

The Cars – Magic

The first The Cars song I ever
heard was “Since You’re Gone,” and I don’t know why but at the time I didn’t
like it very much, so “Magic” was a pleasant surprise for me. Since then, I’ve never
disliked a song by The Cars. I even think “Since You’re Gone” is ok now.

Another song Nathan alluded to in
his introduction post was this classic by Marilyn Manson’s dad… this just in
Alice Cooper has no relation to Marilyn Manson. Still no confirmation about a
possible Alice Cooper relationship with Gloria Vanderbilt. (Don’t worry about that if you
didn’t get it. It’s not even that good of a joke.)

Alice Cooper – School’s Out

I had an idea for a “Twilight
Zone” style short story when I was in seventh grade. It involved a kid who
decided to bomb his school in the middle of the night. I never wrote it. I think
the plot I had in mind was too big for me at the time. It was based on a
conversation I had at school, because the kids I was talking to seemed to have
missed the antisocial anarchy theme that permeated “School’s Out.” In
retrospect, it’s likely that they didn’t miss it. It’s more likely they just
hadn’t heard the song as many times as I had, or that they were only aware of
it from clips. It’s still a short story that I think would be worth writing,
and maybe now I could make it work.

One of my immediate thoughts for
a summer song was “Summertime Rolls” by Jane’s Addiction, because what says
summer like nude mannequins with their heads on fire. Actually, there’s something about the music of this track that’s just sort of bright and happy
while not being a blatant pop song.

Jane’s Addiction – Summertime Rolls

I’ll leave it that for today’s
post. I’ll be back with even more summertime tidbits and plenty more songs.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who
had a friend in high school who didn’t wear no shoes… but her favourite Jane’s
Addiction song was “Classic Girl,” and that doesn’t have a specific summer
theme.