What We're Bringing Back in Summer 2024

 Back around the holidays I wrote up a guide for the 5 hats to add to your Christmas list. If you heeded my advice, you've undoubtedly been strutting around with the confidence of a lone male savanna baboon within a pack of 10-15 prospective mates. 

I don't look for "thank you's" or $10 appreciation Venmos. I'm just trying to keep toeing the edge of fashion and pop culture in a world full of conformist lemmings. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

That said, there are a few things from back in the day that I'd like to Bring Back this summer. We're a handful of weeks out from Memorial Day Weekend so it's time to get in the gym and prepare for what Summer 2024 has in store.

1. Pants that Zip into Shorts

This is a fad that has been slowly cooking like a blue-ribbon Austin brisket but it's time to bust that beef breast out and serve it to the masses.

Saturday morning, June 2004. The thermometers still aren't touching 70 before 11AM so when you're heading out for a pick-up run at the park, the air will still be a bit nippy. You don't want to wear a hoodie, that's a bit too warm, but you don't want to get cold while warming up. Boom, Zipper Shants.

Hit some layup lines, jack a few stepback threes off the side of the rim, then take a quick breath before tip-off and unzip your MF pants into MF shorts.

There are cooler basketball warm-up pants out there. A pair of shiny adidas with buttons down the side, fire. But that's too much for playground pick-up. You're not gonna be early 2000s Andrei Kirilienko out there so don't attract so much unnecessary attention by flinging your pants off after thrusting side to side back and forth trying to unclip the last fucking button on your left ankle, risking a hyper extended knee before even logging a minute played.

It's been long enough. I want the versatility of wearing shorts when walking around the outdoor outlet mall while still maintaining the personal security of knowing I won't get calf goosebumps upon entering Nordstrom Rack's 63 degree air conditioning. And after two long decades we're gonna take that back, dammit.

2. Skip-it

Hopscotch? LAME. Skip-it? Freakin sweet. Take jump rope, hula hooping, the foxtrot, and Wii Sports 2014 Olympic Ski Jumping, twist 'em all up, and you get a whirling dervish device that was named by Time magazine as one of the Top 100 toys of all-time.

Back on the schoolyard the boys and I would play cool sports during recess because we were dudes. Kickball. Dodgeball. Capture the Flag. Touch Football. No gossip, no dolls, no bickering over what shade of green best compliments the speckles in our kitchen granite even though we're painting a second floor bedroom.

But before school started we would line up in that same schoolyard, except there wasn't enough time or room or organization to get a kickball game going. Most days those 15-20 minutes were filled with Pokemon card battles, throwing eraser chunks in the 6th grade science teacher's puffy haircut that she got in 1988, and learning the newest curse word from Johnny's older brother.

Sometimes, though, someone would bust out the mothafreakin Skip-it and the challenge was on. The Skip-it leveled the athletic playing field. Personally I went from the class's Bo Jackson to looking like Joe Biden trying to escape a room full of microphone cords. But the quiet girl who drew horses all day looked like Nastia Liukin when she tossed the Skip-it around her ankle.

My days in the schoolyard are long past numbered, but I think the Skip-it can be utilized as a piece of effective workout equipment. There are articles about the health benefits of jump roping itself, but compound movements make the joints and muscles strengthen together and that's where the ankle to hip/IT band twirl transfer of the Skip-it enters the chat. I think that for every 1 Skip-it movement, you'd be exercising the equivalent of 4 jumps of a jump rope and in a world where so many people are trying to save time, I think we could look into this hypothesis.*

*-I'm not a kinesiologist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

3. "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUP"

Long overdue. Long, LONG overdue. Hey, I don't dislike Sketch the streamer, I find him pretty funny. But we've got professional athletes greeting each other by knocking their fists together like they're cracking pepper and testing the wind with a finger in the air. 

That's not Guys Being Dudes. What's Guys Being Dudes? Buzzing into your homie's apartment while keeping it calm on the intercom then busting through the door Kramer-style and yelling "WAAAAAAAZZZZUUUUUUUUUPPPPP" to your 4 best friends suckling on light beers.

Has the dive bar had a sad feel to it lately? Most do. Always. But for 15 seconds everyone there can feel something if you nudge open their slightly ajar, windowless door and give the regulars and their miserable bartender a big ole "WAAAAAAZZZZUUUUUUUUPPPPP" and getting it tossed back at you from 5 guys avoiding their wife and/or kids.

Sea Isle City, Ocean Drive, No Shower Happy Hour. They check your ID at the door, stamp the back of your left hand, and you spot your friends across the outdoor bar putting sand in Jimmy's swim trunk back pocket. Instantly you shout "WAAAAAAZZZZZZZUUUUPPPPP" and your friends look to the entrance and yell "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUUUP" and then you grab two pineapple High Noons from the side bar and make your way over to start up an absolutely leeeggggendary night. Smile, you're in Sea Isle!

How many more pictures can I paint? How many more baskets can I weave? "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUP" is Back baby.

4. Baseball Cards in Bicycle Spokes

clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick

What a lovely sound. The sun is out, the sky is clear, the robins chirp, a lawn mower buzzes in the distance and a boy's bike clicks down the street as its spokes get poked by a 1955 Roberto Clemente rookie card that his dad had preserved as a backup to his 401K.

Nerds Hobbyists at baseball card conventions probably spend hours trying to quantify how many potential thousands of dollars were destroyed by Trek bikes, but there's no price on nostalgia.

This one's going to be a little tougher to Bring Back since me and my friends don't ride bikes around the neighborhood anymore, but there are ways. Ship baseball cards to Amsterdam, ask the Dutch to carry on the legacy. Bring my old Topps and Dunrosses down to Center City and start putting them in the spokes of city bikes. Maybe try to get the motorcycle community involved, I don't know I'm just spitballing.

5. Wallace and Gromit

I'm sick and tired of the narrative around claymations. "Their movements aren't fluid" and "I think its creepy" and "they look all like mushy and stuff." It's a load of bull crap. Claymation is a very difficult and precise art that should be better appreciated by society, a society enthralled by fuckin AI and charcoal paintings on tiktok. 

Emotions aside, I just think it's time we got another Wallace and Gromit movie. It's been almost 20 years since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and 35 years since Wallace's legendary "it's like no cheese I've ever tasted, Gromit" line in their debut A Grand Day Out. This dynamic duo has accomplished some impressive feats together: taking down Preston in A Close Shave, foiling the plans of the evil penguin in The Wrong Trousers, and combatting the horrid Victor & Philip as they try to terrorize the town's vegetable competition in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

They've run quite a gambit of villains but there's always ideas for antagonists out there in this world. Maybe Wallace could invent a water filtration system for Flint, Michigan or Gromit could stop Benjamin Netanyahu from missile striking a Palestinian hospital, I don't know I'm just spitballing.

Honorable Mention

- Tamagotchi: Used to be a blast back in the day and the ladies LOVE when you mention your pets at the bar. "Oh what's that Josh? You're showing her a picture of your labradoodle that's at home sitting by itself in the cage you locked it in? That's cute. Hey Angela, I never leave my pet home alone." *whips Tamagotchi out of pocket* 

You just have to make sure you do your proper upkeep because as easy as it is to seal the deal after pulling this move, it's just as weird and creepy to show a girl a dead Tamagotchi covered in its own shit and piss.

- The Milkman: This country started getting soft when we stopped drinking unadulterated, pure, whole milk...and when the Milkman was banging every businessman's wife so she wasn't a nag when he came home at 6 PM. Oh by the way, he's in a good mood because his secretary gave him the ole Lewinsky. But what the children don't know doesn't hurt them as long as mommy and daddy are happy.

What the Stats Don't Show: Play-In Game vs. Miami

On the 14th of December in the year of the lord 1988, an unsung hero was born in Lisieux, a small city in northwest France that hosted the wedding of King Henry II & Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 and serves as the birthplace to Philly's newest postseason hero, Nicolas Batum.

Nick Foles's Super Bowl, Matt Stairs Sends One Into the Night, Nico Batum Becomes the Anti-Herro. You can usually set your watch to 30 points from Joel Embiid and another 25 from Tyrese Maxey but last night the Sixers' all-stars were held in check so someone else needed to rise from the ashes and put their stamp on this game. 

Was it going to be the 40 Million Dollar Man Tobias Harris? Nope, he stayed up all of the previous night playing Chess and debating APA vs MLA citations at a dive speakeasy in Fishtown and wasn't even on the court at the close of the game.

In steps Nico Batum, prince des trois et D, to give the Sixers 20 points off the bench, make the most threes (6) in a postseason performance, and send the fellas into a first round matchup with the Nova Knicks.

Philadelphia sports fans are suckers for players that most fanbases overlook. The backup quarterback who didn't get a fair shake, the undersized catcher who's heart is bigger than the strike zone, the goalie who comes back for a second chance and stands on his head for a run to the Stanley Cup Finals. Philadelphia Loves An Underdog.

So when it came to finding a DAWG to take on our former friend Jimmy, to put the clamps on Tyler Herro, to have no fear when it came to catch-and-shoots down the stretch, why wouldn't it be Nico Batum? *FOURTH QUARTER YELLING WHY THE FUCK BATUM INNNNN*

Quite simple. Batum's a Hungry Dog, an Underdog, a guy who got pushed to a bench role by the 23-42 Hornets in 2019-20, someone considered "salary filler" in a trade for a selfish prick with a beard and no morals, a man who witnessed his father collapse and die at the free throw line from an aneurysm while sitting in the crowd with his mother at 2 and a half years old.

That's what the box score doesn't show you. Resilience and fortitude in battling the mental warfare of life. In an October 2022 interview, Batum mentioned crying before most games, feeling anxious that the same was going to happen to him and asking his wife not to attend his games out of the fear that she'd play witness to his own collapse. There's no way to imagine the feeling. But for three hours a night, he's able to push that aside and play balls-to-the-wall in front of a fanbase that often doesn't realize what they're even asking of their athletes.

Years down the line we'll still talk about Nick Foles and Carlos Ruiz and Michael Leighton while sitting at McCrossen's slugging Guinnesses. Was the Batum Game really a Top 5 Philly postseason moment? Probably not even Top 10. And technically the stats from last night will just fall into a black hole, not applicable to regular season or playoff stats. But Nicolas Batum stepped up without fear or hesitation despite having a justified built-in excuse. For the final 10 minutes, the man who is 4 years older than his father was when he died on the court chased around a 24 year old budding star and blocked his three-point attempt with 26 seconds left.

And that should not go under-appreciated.

*Honorable Mention*

Brickin' for Chicken

The Frosty Freezeout walked so Brickin' for Chicken could run.

With 7 minutes left in the third quarter, Caleb Martin stepped up to the line and gave the people what they wanted. Chicken Nuggets Jackie, Chicken Nuggets for allllllll these people. The second missed free throw sent the Wells Fargo faithful into a frenzy which would only grow with the ensuing Batum 3-pointer on the offensive end.

The Sixers were 0-13 this season when trailing by 12 or more at halftime. They were down 11 at the time of the Brickin. And they won by 1. Did the Brickin put up 20 points and 10 rebounds or hit a clutch 3-pointer? No. But the Brickin provided momentum, a wave that the Sixers rode all the way down the stretch and closed out on South Broad.

Kyle Lowry's Hustle

There's a reason Norf Philly Kyle was brought back home. The Cardinal Dougherty product gave his hometown squad 30 intense minutes on defense. It's not easy to keep up with some of the cats in this league at 38 years old but Caked Up Kyle just did not stop. It's like someone put a fresh pair of batteries in the Energizer Bunny...and a 30 mg adderall in his coffee.

Lowry's stat line isn't going to turn any heads but his defensive rotations were pivotal in limiting the Heat's open three-point looks in the second half. He also pressured the shit out of Miami's guards in the half court which led to a massive backcourt violation turnover with less than a minute left.

Lowry also provided the final key play for the Sixers on a sideline inbounds with 19 seconds on the clock. After falling to the hardwood, he was able to get up and find an open spot to receive a bounce pass from Batum. Lowry hit the hardwood again in an attempt to make a diving bounce pass under the basket like something you might see in a Spikeball National Championship game. Somehow he was able to find Kelly Oubre with the pass who iced the game with 2 free throws.

Welcome home Kyle, lets go on a run.