While Melt Happens Without You

It’s Friday night and you’re still at the computer. That means Melt didn’t happen this year—no wristband, no mud, no waking up in a tent in Saxony-Anhalt next to someone whose name you’ve already misplaced. Fine. The weekend is still there, and it doesn’t care about your reasons.

Sleep as long as possible. When it still feels too early, take the pillow, put it over your face, and go back under. When the rain comes—and in July it comes—go outside without clothes and sing something badly. Sing it to the street. Bake a cake, eat it in five minutes, and immediately bake the same cake again.

A farting contest with friends—loudest wins, no other metric, no appeals—deserves more respect than it gets as a competitive format. Sweatpants on immediately, off only when physically unavoidable. Watch cartoons without clothes, which is the optimal configuration for watching cartoons. Order a burger with everything at the nearest place that does them; if it doesn’t look like the photograph they used to sell it to you, take that up with the person responsible. Some battles are worth having.

The ugly regular at the corner bar—been there every weekend all summer, nursing the same drink, waiting for someone to talk to—could use the company. He’ll be genuinely, almost embarrassingly grateful. That’s not nothing.

Invent terrible names for hypothetical children. Not just bad names but compound catastrophes: Justin Britney Fernando Stephen Krautschkowski. Give this the creative energy it deserves.

And then, finally: throw something in a bag, figure out the trains, call someone who might have a spare ticket, and get to Melt anyway. There’s always a way in if you want it badly enough.