Welcome to X-Entertainment's ill-prepared 2008 Summer Megaparty: Your special hub for all kinds of summery goodness and stuff. THE RULES ARE SIMPLE! I hereby vow to post at least once a day for the entire month of July...possibly longer if I don't hate writing by August.

I honestly have no idea what I'm going to write about this month. Like, no clue at all. I had a few ideas for semi-special blog posts that have been rattling around my head for the past few months, but for the most part, I'm totally gonna wing this. Meaning? I'm probably going to end up living by the letter of the law and not the spirit. All I said was that I would post everyday. I didn't say what I would post. If I sketch a retarded penguin on a bank deposit slip, scan it and publish it, I've technically made good on my promise.

I'll try not to do that, though. Not often, at least.

I guess I didn't do much to pump you up for the month to follow with what's written above, and in a case such as this, I turn to a reliant, rushed graphic to do the hard sell.

Are you excited now? At least a little more? Good. I worked really hard on finding the right picture of a watermelon.

I'm happy to do the Megaparty, because I'm not sure I'd stay conscious of the fact that it's even summertime without it. Summer definitely loses its status as "favorite season" as you grow older, when it becomes indicative of nothing more than a change in climate. That's a far cry from the lost days of having two months to do nothing but play tag and trick your friends into stepping on dog shit.

I don't expect that too many of the Megaparty's posts will be actively seasonal, because if I had to inject sunshine into every entry, I wouldn't just go bananas...I'd turn into one. I would transform into a giant banana, and this isn't good for any of us because bananas cannot write, let alone work a computer. Still, expect a fair share of entries that at least nominally persuade you to make the most of your summer, even if all you're really doing is eating popsicles when they're in season.

I was surprised to find boxes of Otter Pops on sale at a local pharmacy. We've never had Otter Pops around these parts, and my only prior experience with their icy, sugary glories was at my brother's family's former house somewhere in Jersey. They had like seven thousand Otter Pops stacked in a garage freezer with positively no explanation given. I should've investigated this, but I guess I was more about eating Otter Pops than finding out why they had seven thousand of them. It's hard to connect criminal activity to Otter Pops, when you have 7,000 of 'em tucked away in a hidden freezer, the reason likely isn't appropriate for children of all ages.

Though I was quick to grab a box and make the embarrassing stroll up to the pharmacy cashier with nothing but Otter Pops and a pack of Bic pens in my fluorescent handcart, I don't have the nostalgic attachment to these things that so many others probably do. To me, they're just Fla-Vor-Ices with pool dick and kooky characters on the condoms.

As a child, my favorite Fla-Vor-Ice (or any similar brand of icy pop things) colors were red and green. While I indeed preferred red for its actual flavor, it's also true that I liked the way other colors tasted way better than green. Still, I always picked red or green, or both if nobody was looking. Simple reason why:

Red and green Fla-Vor-Ice pops were my own personal Vader and Luke lightsabers, new and improved with edibility. The similarity in color is truly remarkable. There are many shades of red and many shades of green, but somehow, red and green Fla-Vor-Ices are a Photoshop-dropper-match for Vader and Luke's lightsaber colors. In a world full of ugly coincidences, it was nice to find one so beautiful.

PS: Longtime least favorite frozen icy pop color? Pink. Hate pink. Still don't know what in the fuck it's supposed to taste like. My running assumption's been that food conglomerates sought to mimic the color and taste of that horrible liquid cure-all doctors force on children for every possible ailment. I still don't know what it was named. I just called it "pink medicine," typically with a frightened tone.

Tomorrow on X-E's Summer Megaparty:

You might want to do a F5-style refresh on the blog. I did some light graphics tweaks that you may not see if your browser insists on being a cache Nazi. Rest of the graphics and the 2008 edition of X-E's Summer Jukebox coming this week!

Posted by Matt on 07/01/2008. E-mail me!