YouTube Roundup: Summer Edition

Spring, you coy mistress, leading me around by the temptation to wear flip flops even if it means flip-flopping cold mud splatters up my skirt so my ass cheeks look like a Jackson Pollock painting. If you want the weather to commit to warmth as much as I do, here are some of my favorite musical reminders from the interwebs that summer is coming. Movies based on ‘the young people’ of Retro America promote summer as that idealized child’s utopia, forgetting about the rampant racism, sexism and all that good stuff of the mid 60s. Spielberg-style adventures await, and parents and internships lie dormant, out of mind in a sticky cloud of DDT. While I know all the turbulent issues of the day are just out of reach for these incredibly naive movies, it is that blissful ignorance that allows me to feel truly patriotic. And summer is a time for patriots. Sweaty, grilling, angry, ignorant patriots. SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER, GUYS!

1. Goin’ Up Country (Canned Heat)

Ok, I am starting this list off on more chilled out note, or more accurately, the most chilled out note there could possibly be. Indulge your inner paisley-swaddled sway dancer and groove along to this track from the Woodstock. You’ll feel like you’re experiencing the Summer of Love all over again, or for those of you who are not time travelers like me, for the first time. Plus, everybody loves a good flute solo. Everybody. At 2:06- Some really kick ass nuns take their Sunday schoolers on the best field trip ever, and reminding conservative naysayers that “Even God Loves America!” And at 2:39- For some reason, this silhouetted acid ballet sums up the liberation, joy and freedom expressed both in many hallucinogens as well as in these hippie gatherings–the ability to “dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free” as Bob Dylan would put it, and it makes me want to time travel there more than anything. However, the strange beauty for me expressed in this chunk of life does drown out the fact that I’m sure if I was at Woodstock I would be hyperventilating in the corner of the Sunday school bus about the number of people and germs, peeking my head out of the emergency exit to hear The Who play.

2. Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love (Jane Russell)

I found myself watching Gentleman Prefer Blondes one lazy day, hoping to drool over Marilyn Monroe’s dresses and complain about the sexist jokes, which I did. However, I also found much, much more. In what some fake movie critic I follow on twitter called “her busty heyday in one of Hollywood’s gayest dance numbers ever,” Russell (the brunnette, less crazy Monroe) goes in search for a sex partner (that’s what they call it, right?) on her sex cruise. Plus, if her bathing/jumpsuit and heels thing she’s got going on doesn’t make you think about summer swimsuit season, you are clearly wearing the wrong outfits to the beach/olympic cruise training pool. This video clearly makes the mens’ bathing suits look like they are buck naked (although we all know no one would do naked gymnastics–too jiggly) to appeal to their target audience of sexually repressed women. Look at them crane those sweatered necks at 0:31! Oof there are more banana hammocks than at Shock Your Mom….and that’s saying something.

3. The Sandlot Night Game

Nothing says summer like the smell of burning flesh (from burgers and fireworks mishaps) on July 4th! While many sports fans will surely cringe at this admission, I hate sports movies and am positive that The Sandlot (Or Remember the Titans, let’s be honest) tells me more about athletics than any scoring-in-the-last-minute-slow-motion-shot-with-the-trophy type drama. This 4th of July scene makes me understand the drive some people have to compete, and those who are just along for the ride. Plus, it’s got Ray Charles in the background. No questions asked.

4. Now and Then

Now and Then is basically the gurlz version of The Sandlot, but with murder and boobs. I use this movie to live vicariously through the high-waisted shorts of this adorable group of bosom pals, imagining all the fun I would have had as a young one outside the prison of newfangled involved parenting trends that forced me to have constructive summers at the Ashland Nature Center, or Wilmington Drama Club in the ghetto. This scene has got all things summery: glass bottles of Coke, sunny bike rides, Dad music and the constant battle between swimsuits and puberty. It also has a helpful warning about French kissing for those of you thinking about starting a new summer relationship.

5. We Go Together from Grease

If you don’t know all the words to “We Go Together” you a) have not been to enough terrible high school productions of Grease or b) you live in Siberia where there is no such thing as summer or sunlight. If you are from Siberia, the penguin dancing at 1:38 is basically our national dance move, and is required at parties, just so you know. This is one piece of graduation media that does not touch on ‘what to do with the rest of your life–’ almost refreshingly so. Watch jealously as Danny and Sandy ride away on that shiny red car of American optimism into the burgeoning job market! Nowadays, Danny would be working as a mechanic while Sandy slaved away at Starbucks, moonlighting as a children’s tutor trying to make ends meet. “A wop ba-ba lu-mop a wop bam boom!”

Bonus: Any beach party movie with the recently passed Annette Funicello. Pointy boob bikinis and pretend surfing for all!