Summer's Here!

Comedian Jimmy Walker used to have a bit about how he loved watermelon but refused to eat it because if he did someone would be sure to stick a camera in his face and the next day that picture of a black man eating a watermelon would be on the front page of the Daily News with the caption: Summer's Here!

For The Great Plotnik, it's got nothing to do with watermelon. Summer doesn't begin until the Fourth of July, when the Mime Troupe opens at Dolores Park. From the queens (with names like Reina Terror and Tammy Faye Bakersfield) giving goofy dedications at the outset, to the troupe taking its well-deserved bows at the end, this show always brings out Saint Plotniko at its wacky best.



The 2009 show is called "Too Big To Fail."



The songs are funny and good, and the band is terrific, as always, and the show is so topical it hurts. And it's a carnival atmosphere and it's free. Come on. How can anyone live here and not go to see the Mime Troupe?

And, of course, what could be more Bay Area than reviling the plutocrats with a story line that suggests we should all refuse to pay back any part of our debts except those we feel we justly owe, i.e. we should keep our hard-earned revolutionary money!...and the next second the troupe holds up the rack of exorbitantly priced Mime Troupe t-shirts and banners and extorts us to buy, buy, buy?

But, hey. Nothing ever makes sense in this city and the Mime Troupe doesn't either, except that they're brilliant and caustic and hysterical. Summer's here!

And so is salmon on the bbq.



And blueberry pie.




And Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful in the Korean-run bagel shop early this morning. Sweet.