Ode to Summer

The greatest season on earth is making its arrival this weekend and I haven't done anything outrageously adventurous, spontaneous or noteworthy thus far.

Highlight of my summer? Getting a roll of pennies and discreetly spreading them across the sands of some beach only to watch some guy with a metal detector uncover the biggest buzz kill treasure ever.

No not really, but I'm also holding to the fact that summer hasn't even started yet.

Unlike most people, I really enjoy summer's heat and the discomfort that being outside may create. Whether that means constantly pulling away sweaty pants clinging to your thighs, generating Olympic size pools of underarm sweat, or grazing some waterhole with the synergy level of a pregnant cow and a slow moving rod of lightning during a lazy summer shower.

I love summer.

Every day is like taking a walk down Lollypop Lane, only more dope. With attractive girls in sun dresses abound how can you go wrong? Everyone looks impossibly tanned, and a lot of time will be spent on patios and lawn chairs. Life is simple, the way I like it. Austin summers even smell awesome.

Unlike one summer in Mexico City several years ago. That's one smell I'm still working to forget. There's nothing like stepping outside to the smell of bum urine that's been baked in the stagnant summer air.

Today smells a lot like the first of March, which also smells like your mom stepping out of the shower. Douche! [bag] comment ... on a Summer's Eve ... ZING. Wow! Why am I so dope?

In the spirit of summer, I want to continue compiling the experiences that will be wired straight to the memory bank. Not some offshore account, where I'll forget in a drunken haze. I mean, real time summer adventure.

That said here are some realistic and tentative goals I plan to achieve this summer:

1) Throw darts at a spinning globe and head to that place ... and then realize I can't afford going to Argentina to ride a mule into the countryside just yet, so I throw a dart somewhere in Texas ... MARFA, TX!

2) Marvel at the rich diversity of ass during at the next 'Mom Jeans' convention ... arguably viewable at your local Whole Foods.

3) Take a pale moonlight paddle on Town Lake by myself. Wearing a snorkel and fins.

4) Go to a family reunion and feel strange and stirring feelings towards your third cousin from Arkansas who convinced you that you're not related. KIDDING.

5) Attend a friend's wedding. I'm attending more and more of these and they're scary, because it's just a reminder I'm getting older.

6) Park my car in the sun and turn off the engine. Sit silently with the windows rolled up until the visions come.

7) Skinny dip with morbidly obese people and then vomit profusely.

8) Stay for an entire set of a live music show. Until the very last song. I just realized I've never done that.

9) Run the Margarita 5K and get so slosh faced that I attempt to run it backwards and call it a day after I stagger into a ditch half-way through the run.

10) Wear a suit to the grocery store and chat it up with some attractive lady at the produce aisle. Only if I'm able to grow an unruly mustache though. A sweet alternative, drink water from a yard hose in that suit. I've always wanted to do that.

11) Create a devastatingly funny T-shirt. One that involves literal and figurative speech, coupled with duo-meaning and Nintendo references.

12) I have just over one month to decide and plan my life out. That's no joke. My lease ends and I'm getting bored with my job. Changes are coming. Exciting.

13) Seek the advice from a grizzled Tom Waits look-alike who's bloated from Lone Star and BBQ and talks in a syrupy southern drawl. I have questions.

14) Slay a school of salmon with the ferocity of a native Ameircan and/or a black bear ... I need to go camping or fishing, in other words. I'm thinking when I go to Marfa, TX I'll do these two.

15) Eat ice cream in the dark. What the fuck JJ? Thanks for comin' out.

16) Write something very prolific that is very unlike me.

17) Think heavy and hard about a plan to make Argentina work.

18) Have a really bad, ill-advised conversation with my news director about being real.

19) Make more money, without having to whore myself out in the process.

20) Get back to the basics. It's the little things in life and in summer more specifically that make it so memorable for me. It's just the little things. Reducing shit to the most common denominator.