Nurse the Hate: Beach Country

I'm not exactly sure when this happened, but I am alarmed. When did the unholy marriage of beach culture and popular country music happen? As if Jimmy Buffet wasn't bad enough, now I have to endure pre-fab rubes in jeans and cowboy boots singing light-rock-with-a-twang on the beach? I am assuming everyone reading this has been to the beach at least once in their lives. Question...Did you ever consider wearing a pair of jeans and cowboy boots on that outing? Nothing like wading trough the surf and building sand castles with a pair of Wranglers and snakeskin boots, eh?

I think this whole thing started with Jimmy Buffet. Now, I hate Jimmy Buffet, and you should too. Is my position too strong? Well, please consider...

1) His music is awful. There is no debate necessary on that point.

2) That whole "wink of an eye, let's sweet talk the leathery gals smoking the Marlboro's and drinking the Miller Lites at the Sand Bar" culture is without any redeeming qualities.

3) Nothing is more depressing than the 45+ suburban Parrothead crowd that pretends to be "crazy" on their annual outing to the 20,000+ capacity Music Shed. Like sheep in their matching "wacky" Hawaiian shirts, they'll drink a gutful of $9.00 Coors Light drafts until they pass out with their chunky wives in the back of their rented limos on the way home to pay the babysitter before her midnight cutoff time. News flash...Walking around a corporate sanctioned event with a light beer buzz doesn't make you "crazy". It makes you a typical American consumer.

As if that situation wasn't bad enough, this whole Kenny Chesney thing has exploded. Clearly some experts did their market research and discovered that the same jackasses that went to the Buffet shows would probably go to a different version of it, and if you gift wrapped it in a slight twang and dumbed it down even further (although you would think that was impossible), you could make even more dough.

Just when things looked like they couldn't get any worse, the sewer lines break at Browns Stadium during last week's Kenny Chesney Lame-O-Rama. 50,000 fans of this horrific music were forced to wade through their own excrement in their party flip flops as all the sewage drains overflowed. And you thought there was no Supreme Being?

Random Notes: That Sierra Nevada Summerfest sure is tasty...I've got to hand it to the people that put together Ottofest, a public party in rural Western NY. Plenty of good live music, food, beer, and the freedom to do what you want to do. People have come to this party for years, and compete with each other on costumes and intricate campsites. It's great to see people being creative and participating just for the sheer joy of doing so. Mark it on your calendar for next year. You'll thank me for it.