i need to start pretending i don't know the lyrics.

my dad called me yesterday afternoon to blast his new download of Zac Brown's 'Chicken Fried' loud enough so that i could hear it through the phone and get really excited about it.

i, on the other hand and 600 miles away, had just pulled a canoe over to the shoreline bank of the delaware river to crack a cold beer, take a picture, and reflect on the fact that summer days rarely get better than this.

you see, 'Chicken Fried' is his new favorite song. while for the rest if us it peaked the charts something like 2 years ago and has already been overplayed during every beach-front bbq in the history of beach-front bbq's, it's new to him so i'm happy to entertain this found amusement -- which about a week ago included my singing it loud and [not] proud while standing on a chair in front of about 10 other people who all have the same last name as me.

something i immediately wished i wasn't doing as soon as i started doing it.

last year his favorite summer song was Chamillionaire's 'Ridin' Dirty' so this is quite the shake-up and quite the sigh of relief for someone (me) who has a tendency to perform things and jump into sing-a-longs even when she really doesn't need to. and by "favorite" what i mean is he heard it, liked it, requested that i spend the $0.99 it took to download it, and had me play it 17 times before retreating back to the safety of classic rock. just wanted to clarify that before you accused my dad of being wildly out of his mind and demographic.

'Chicken Fried' talks about pea-can pie and sweet tea.

'Ridin' Dirty' has lyrics like "bookin' my phone, tryin' to find a chick i wanna bone . . ."

which one do you think i prefer to recreate for a crowd of cousins and uncles?

that was rhetorical.