Sand Wars
(or how to melt your cd player without really trying)
by Rich Robinson

As the calendar so undeniably dictates, we're now knee deep in sun tan lotion time, when a whole lot of incredibly white people try desperately hard to bake, burn or bronze themselves, melanoma be damned.

Beach choices are so personal. Here at the Jersey Shore, you can venture to the usual beaches, where you're apt to trip over the invaders from NY, and where the fashion statements and haircuts are more important than the actual beach or weather. You could try your luck at the less traveled sandy shores, where bathrooms are portajohns, and hygiene has been replaced with one roll of slightly damp toilet paper.

Regardless of where you finally lay your blanket down, the next important decision is: how to drown out (possibly the wrong choice of words when talking about the beach) the battle that rages on every beach in America. That's right, I'm talking about dueling boom boxes.

We've all been there, haven't we? You settle down, lay out the blanket, hide your wallet and watch in your shoe (no one ever thinks to look in there) and just as you get your butt situated in that special beach contour, the guy three blankets away decides that now would be the perfect time to turn the beach into Studio 54 revisited. You want to listen to the new Steve Wynn cd, he wants to listen to P. Diddy.

Its a no-Wynn situation.

(By the way, how could it be that absolutely no one in the Puff Daddy camp has the least bit of spine needed to tell Sean, "Ya know, that 'P. Diddy' thing sounds really stupid"?)

Back to the beach. Maybe the noise that's ruining your day at the seashore isn't somebody who's expressing penis envy with the size of his driver. It could be some lovely little toddler, whose volume control has been set on high. Permanently. You've seen them everywhere. At the movies, at restaurants, and especially on the beach. They're the kids who's mother or father thinks its really cute how they run in the sand, diapers sagging, voices shrieking.

Face it. You cannot win. When you're surrounded by Coppertone and the aroma of coconut oil, there's no chance in hell that everyone on that piece of wanna-be glass has your sense of good taste when it comes to music; nor will they have the courtesy of shutting up. Therefore, since there's laws against forcing your good taste on others by way of inserting their boom boxes in certain areas of their bodies, there's only one choice to make:

STAY HOME.

Sit in your backyard, away from people, their so-called musical taste and their annoying kids. There you can listen to what you want to hear, at the volume you need to listen to it at, and enjoy an adult beverage without being arrested. And after all, do you really need to see a bunch of fat, peeling out-of-towners, stuffed into bathing suits that didn't fit them right 10 years ago?

©2001 Rich Robinson