For some unknown reason it is humid and 75 degress today in Chicago. So I went for a run and down at the end of my block, I spied a parking lot full of people partying amidst the Grand Cherokees, VW EuroVans and shitty Hondas.

The UIC Pavillion is across the street so I surmised there must be a concert this evening. I paused my iPod (A Ghost Is Born—yes, I am still trying to get up the stones to tell the world what I think about it) and asked a teenage white guy with silly dreadlocks who was playing that night.

He sizes me up, figures I am old enough to have no idea who this band is, and says, “The String Cheese Incident, you know, like, have you ever heard of Phish?”

“Yeah, a jam band,” I reply, too out of breath to betray my contempt for the genre.

“Hey, you should check it out,” he says, but as there was no offer of a bong hit attached, I just nodded my head and mumbled, “Yeah, thanks,” and went back to my Wilco and my vain attempt to retard the growth of my beer belly, amused that Phish has apparently supplanted the Dead as the new genre-defining jam band.

Yet despite my lack of interest in this awful music, I wished I didn’t have work to do back at home. I would have liked to hang out in that parking lot. It looked like those kids were having a hell of a lot of fun.