Summer Starter Pack 2026

It's a Hot Divorcee Yacht House Potluck Summer y'all! Plus a rom-com to heal your pre-programmed Gen X heart.

Off Campus is Also For You, Gen X.

Let’s start with this: I did not have She’s My Cherry Pie as one of the anthems of this summer, but here we are. If you are karaoke-bound, do not be surprised if you hear a few attempts (good luck with that sustained piiiiieeeeee) by people shooting their shot. Also, I am wrecked by the idea that it’s “classic rock” but ok Gen Z, fine.

Blame love and Off Campus, the runaway hit rom-com on Prime that has everyone swooning for its positive portrayal of masculinity. It is now “the other hockey movie” racking up 36 million viewers just in its first 12 days.

For my part, it revealed just how much unlearning I still need to do.

As a girl formed in part by Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles (hello my son’s name is Jake), it didn’t take Molly Ringwald’s seminal post-MeToo essay about those films for me to recognize we were raised in a different era. Just watching those movies again as an adult (or try watching them with your KIDS) will do it for you.

And yet, as enlightened as I think I’ve become, I was not prepared for how much this show quietly, handily, deftly broke down the rom-com tropes that I didn’t even know were still ingrained in me (some light spoilers ahead.)

I kept waiting for the frat bros to turn rapey. But they didn’t. Instead they were more like the frat guys I was friends with in college who were in it for the brotherhood and the parties. In fact the greek system didn’t devolve into the de-facto villain with vapid mean sorority girls and ‘roided out idiot frat boys who hate everyone not like them, and the show didn’t suffer. Huh.

I kept waiting for the scheme to blow up, the “fake” relationship to be outed publicly and cause hurt. But it didn’t. It didn’t need to go that far and no one needed shame and humiliation to come around to realization. And the show didn’t suffer.

I kept waiting for the women to turn on each other. When would the jealous ex-girlfriend scheme some revenge? When would the edgy hardcore girls tell us who to hate? Instead, the women of the show continually give each other props, with one scene feeling like a revelation: in the women’s bathroom, at the bar, Allie rants against Dean for hooking up with someone in a stall. His hook up is standing at the sink doing her lipstick and Allie stops mid-rant to say something like: But not you girl, you’re great. And they have this sweet knowing winky moment, a main character and a bit-part character, that told me everything about this show. Not only did it not suffer without the mean girls, it was made so much better. If you think boring, just know that there could be a whole essay written about these female characters’ sexual agency. And if you look at the numbers, people are finding that anything but boring.

There are a million other ways it surprised me, and I think it was meant to. Besides giving us a Warrant Cherry Pie recall moment, the shows lean hard into rom-com lore with scenes mimicking She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You, and two specific Sixteen Candles call outs that had me giggling. Maybe they wanted to prove that you can have that sweet yearning of young love, those iconic moments with potential and spark, without the kind of suffering we’ve been taught to expect in order to earn it.

More of that, for y’all, this summer.

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No, it’s a Hot Divorcée Yacht House Summer

Apparently, ladies will be going full Hot Divorcée this summer even if they are still married or never have been. Hearing that it’s more of an aesthetic? Which, isn’t everything these days?

The idea is to live like you are finally free and in your next chapter era. Check.

Basically it’s the midlife glow-up we are channeling, at the beach, by the pool, on the boat, I guess near water somewhere because: flow. Be prepared for this to be monetized by selling you caftans, big hoop earrings, wide brimmed hats, and copious hugo spritz. As if we, the real exes don’t already own such finery (though maybe one more caftan?)

Listen, we are a welcoming bunch. Please suit up and join us on the chaise for lollygagging through the next three months, but know that we do have a playlist: Yacht House.

Yes, baby. Hall and Oates with a drop. Brandy, you’re a fine girl with that beat. Christopher Cross is riding like the wind to be free again, sister, come along for the journey.

If there’s one vibe that goes with zero fucks and a hurricane glass full of frosty joie de vivre it’s this new music genre that takes our yacht rock softy faves from the 70’s and 80’s and turns them into full dance party jams.

Please find me swishing in bright gauzy abandon with this cranked to 11 until Labor Day.

And for the gents, can I interest you in a Jimmy Buffet summer? As a treat?

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Did I mention it’s also a Potluck Summer?

Seriously the lightest lift you can have all summer is letting go of the menu.

Open your deck or backyard or front porch up to your pals, acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors and bring everyone together.

Make no mistake, the potluck is one of the sturdiest threads knitting neighborism into the quilt that covers communities. It’s so very Minnesota for a reason, bringing a dish to share is the small, mundane act that primes the very machine which roared into action last winter.

Potato salad as extension of your heart is real action. My pickle dip is my bond. If you sit and s’mores with me around the fire pit, I know your reach. This is how we build.

This is not as daunting as you think, whether as host or guest. It does not have to be a post or a reel. I am giving you permission to live in the exact air you breathe and nowhere else for a moment.

Maybe you’ll find, like I do, that a small act or acts can change the course of your mood, your luck, your trajectory, or history. I love you MN.

WHAT TO COOK FOR WHEN you need a win. Somehow a black-hearted whammy must have crawled under a cupboard or behind the fridge and cursed your kitchen. Nothing works, things are overcooked, dinner parties are under fed, pesto is soup, pork belly is leather, you have taken refuge in take-out containers and chimkin nugz. What's worse, the curse has obviously spread as no matter how much you beat up the lawn, it comes back, deadlines have no empathy for your dulled wit, and the people you love most refuse to stay unbroken. No matter how hard you try. So like a talisman, you pull out a sure thing: a chicken grilling marinade that has been killing it since those heady days in the mid 90's when you grilled on apartment stoops in Uptown, laughter littered the streets and all was fresh. Simply pile on more fresh. No whammies.
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Curse Breaker Salad
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Mixed greens
Radishes: sliced
Asparagus: blanched, calmed, and chopped
Avocado
Tomatoes
Pumpkin seeds
Chives: enthusiastically flowering
Grilled chicken that's been lolling in marinade
House ranch
The blue cheese
Seedy bread "croutons" that have been skillet fried in You Fancy ramp butter
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Toss. Find grace.
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Stoop Chicken Marinade: Throw four chicken breasts in a big ol Ziploc bag. Plop in about 1/4 c Dijon mustard, maybe a bit more. Add a few healthy glugs of olive oil. Then squeeze in some lemon juice, fresh is nice, bottled is nice too. And easier. Add some garlic powder and dried herbs, like a poultry mix, S + P. Seal that bag and shake that bitch, like you mean it. Let it sit in the fridge while you looks for things you swear you just had in your hands, like tongs. After a few hours, or 20 minutes, pull them out and slap them on the hot grill.

XO SM