Well, Maybe Somethin' Beats It

Nothin' beats kickin' back and listening to the Braves ...

That's the ad they play on the radio. And I have to say I'm inclined to agree, at least in the spirit of the sentiment.

I enjoy listening to Chipper Jones doing in the San Francisco Giants with a 9th inning game-winning single, while I'm drinking a few beers and looking through the grill smoke at the night sky with the off-vertical pairing of Jupiter and the red Scorpius star Antares putting their celestial signature on the Summer of '07.

That's nice. You might even say that "nothin' beats it."

But I'm just not so sure.

Not entirely, because I can think of something that can beat that.

Mainly ...

Driving from the damp, lush windward side of Oahu beneath the volcanic range and thorugh to the leeward side where the sun is always shining, in a 1968 Ford pickup that doesn't get great gas mileage but feels so right with the push-button radio playing Ben Harper's "Picture of Jesus" (the "There Will Be A Light" version) through analog speakers and no A/C but you don't need it, heading to the North Shore to swim among the majestic waves of the Pacific before you get on a plane and head to Glendale, Ariz., where the University of South Carolina Gamecocks are playing in the national title game and winning handily in a sublime moment of long-suffering vindication, followed by a return home where your rejuvenated leg muscles find it within themselves to tap the top of the backboard, after which you go into work and tell your masters to go fuck themselves with the exhaust pipes of their tricked out, Baby- Boomer Harley motorcycle fantasy penis enlargers, from where you then head down to the nearby river and tell kids that life is beautiful (even though the water is polluted) because they are the future and they realize it and you feel like you've done something good, then you drive a ways out into the country and eat a big old plate of barbeque from the only vinegar-based guy in your multi-county radius, who also has a view of the Blue Ridge mountains and a stone fireplace for when it actually does get cold again, and you watch "Philadelphia Story" and "Punch Drunk Love" and the "Star Wars" trilogy, along with all the other stuff you think rocks ass, somehow in one sitting that doesn't feel overly indulgent, because you deserve it for some reason and it was raining outside anyway, and then you know you've been promised through a groundbreaking "Total Recall" technology a guaranteed, authentic aesthetic journey to the first time you realized you were 17 and the ocean was nearby and there was the faint smell of mold in the guest house you camped in and the seawater breeze was nearby as Led Zepplin's "Song Remains The Same" played on the clock radio, and then you travel down to Florida and catch a Ladyfish and crack open coconuts and teleport to La Jolla and jump off the rocks into the high tide and eat authentic Mexican food, and return to find that all that's good is going to be good, and all that you want is free, and that you'll feel fulfilled with that because you're not a greedy bastard and you want to do other things for people and those people will feel better because nobody will be taken advantage of them, and then a scientist from a super-secret government agency picks you as the test subject of a new drug that allows you to do ... whatever it is you want to do that you think you want to do but didn't earn but that's OK because ...

Actually, I'm not quite sure that beats listening to Braves baseball as the fireflies still flash and defy the decline of summer.

Because that really is a pretty good thing.

And it's certainly simpler.