Welcome to the REAL dog days

Nobody ever said summer would be easy.

Remember back when you were a kid, and summer was this magical, mythical time of year? The air felt different, smelled different. Everything seemed more real, life more alive.

Now those feelings seem to be gone, caught up in an endless barrage of premature presidential speculation and war, war, war. Hell, "American Idol" isn't even on anymore. What a shame.

But there is hope. Oh yes, hope is here. Summer means concerts, and this year Cape is actually getting some.

The drought has lasted a long time, but this very month three summer concerts are coming to the Show Me Center: one for the myriad fans of modern country, one for us rock 'n' roll rebels who grew up despising authority and one for those same rebels, and their older, more countryfied counterparts.

Yes, a good month indeed, coming right on the heels of the holiday that kicks off the season. With so much news on the concert front, it seems easy to forget that there's actually other stuff going on, too.

Independence Day is coming (Martina McBride reference not intended). It doesn't get much better than charring some meat, getting tipsy and blowing stuff up, now does it?

Then there's the swimming, the camping, and vacations. All inserted in between the misery of sitting at work while you could be outside like a kid in the summer, sipping on gigantic fountain sodas, eating ice cream and playing baseball.

Now the closest you can get is busting out of work early and bringing some beer on the patio at Bel-Air. Suddenly being an adult doesn't sound quite as bad, does it?

Well, of course it does. But no matter what the season, we always have an escape -- some live music to listen to, a festival where we can pig out on artery-clogging junk we really, really don't need.

Personally, I'm going on vacation this month. My chosen escape is four days in a cabin by a lake, fishing, hiking, swimming and getting drunk and watching the sun go down.

Maybe we can relive those days again. I guess it's just that, back when we were kids, it was our parents who had to worry about bringing the money in that would fund our annual escapes.

Now it's all on our own shoulders. Maybe that means our escapes are now more satisfying.

Or maybe it means we just have to work our butts off to get them, when before all we had to do was endure our teachers. So it goes.

May your June be full of escapes. Now here's OFF.