Summertime Tidbits #1

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

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.