Is there any time more dreadful than the summer, with its heat and sun and tans and people demanding that you go outdoors and get into water and stuff? I’m shuddering with complex feelings of self-loathing and fear just thinking about it as I type this. I mean, beaches. Beaches filled with people. People from New York. People from New York with too-tight shorts and gold chains tangled in their chest hair. Talking. Loudly. On cell phones. While swimming in the ocean.

Someone hold me.

It gets even worse when you begin to think about that other grand tradition of the summer: The family vacation.

Oh, gee, yay. Let’s pack a bunch of crap into the car and drive for 18 goddamn hours so we can stand in line for another two hours toget on a 30-second ride that’s no different from the one at the old amusement park 10 minutes from home, only this one has a guy dressed as a giant, perpetually-smiling fucking mouse. Crap-on-a-stick, who invented this tradition, anyway? Would it be wrong to find that person and toss them into a dump truck filled with fish hooks? There is nothing less relaxing than spending a week in close quarters with your family. Doing that every year is a surefire way to ensure you’re dead of a heart attack before you’re old enough to collect Social Security.

Sadly, I’m alone in this. Even our very staff is against me. Staff writer John Felix, for instance, is spending a Year In Disneyland for reasons only he and the baby seals he keeps locked in his basement know. The staff is conspiring to give me a full-blown heart attack. You see, next week, DVD In My Pants is going to shine a spotlight on summer movies and vacation films. I’ll be damned if I know why we want to put ourselves through that (which is to say, why our writers hate me), but we are. We’ll be taking a look at films like One Crazy Summer and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (it’s a vacation film, right?), and with families everywhere driving across the country for a sure-to-be disappointing vacation even as I write this, we’ll pay special attention to the National Lampoon’s Vacation series.

Because we suck like that.

You folks out there can dig our summer vacation themed reviews and enjoy your summer. Me? I’ll be locked in the wonderfully dimly lit house, conspiring your downfall and shaking my fist angrily at the sun.