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Two weekends ago, faced with boiling heat, excessive humidity, and no cash, a friend and I partook in the summertime sensation of 2008: the staycation. It involved relatively little investment: $11 for a blow-up kiddie pool from my neighborhood 99 Cents Store, $10 for a 6-pack of Corona, and a few watts of electricity for the iPod dock. Oh, and 50 cents (!) for a lime. Once we had amassed our items, my friend cut our expensive but juicy lime into bottleneck-friendly wedges while I blew up the pool on the shadeless back patio of my Brooklyn apartment. We then filled it with bucket after bucket of icy-cold water from my kitchen tap, fire brigade-style. Then we broke out some beach towels, popped on some tunes, and sunned our bikini-clad selves, taking turns curling into the 100-cm pool for periodic refreshment. Voila! We were beaching with the best of them. And we didn't get stuck in traffic. What did we listen to? Wonder no more: 1. "The Lower the Sun" - Tom Vek The world has been waiting since 2005 for something more from Mr. Vek. According to his website, he's working on it. He sounds a little like Mellow Gold-era Beck, without the rapping. He even looks like Sir Beck. Beck Vek. Had to say that. 2. "Kiddie Pool" - The Strait A's A punk homage to the kiddie pool, from one of the many bands descended directly from the Ramones. The kids describe their influences as "Trivial Pursuit, Protractors, Textbooks, Automatic Pencils, Revenge Of The Nerds, Graphing Calculators, Carbon Paper, Graduated Cylinders, Bunsen Burners, Cartography, Slide Rules, NASA, NOVA, Discovery Channel, and Pornography." 3. "Rockaway Beach" - The Ramones Lookie here! It's the real deal, the Ramones, with their classic NYC beach song. I like to call it "Leather on the Beach" sometimes, for fun. Rockaway Beach is great and all--just don't do something insane like wade in the ocean. 4. "I'm Chillin" - Kurtis Blow No doubt! This song conjures up 1980s summers, like the one in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, where Turbo, Ozone, and Kelly had to save the community center by breakdancing. (PS: Did anyone seen the strangely both wooden and mean Lucinda Dickey on that hot mess of a show Master of Dance? I think it's canceled now, thank Turbo. It was terrible, as was she.) 5. "Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard" - !!! An oldie but goodie that provides a zany/chill vibe perfect for urban beaching. 6. "Bootie Cooler" - Shuggie Otis Not only is this song a perfect summer-mellow jammy, but it also describes how much of an adult-sized human can fit into a kiddie pool. 7. "Backyard" - Guster I remember seeing these guys playing a bongo, a guitar, and a shakey egg in the Tufts University cafeteria in 1992. Good to see they are still Indigo-Boy-ing it up, and singing about backyards. 8. "Honey, We Can't Afford to Look this Cheap" - The White Stripes The lyric, "We need to make it look like we're high class" pretty much sums up my kiddie pool experience. 9. "Summer In the City" - Regina Spektor I chose Ms. Spektor's track instead of the Lovin' Spoonful's because we've all heard the latter so many times it makes the back of our necks gritty just thinking about it--even though it's far superior. 10. "Private Beach Party" - Gregory Isaacs You have to try really hard not to have fun when listening to some old-school reggae. On a hot summer's day, only the presence of a body of water (especially one adorned with festive fish and smiling seahorses--my actual kiddie pool is pictured above) is the only thing that makes it possible to emerge from an air conditioned interior and be on the receiving end of some Vitamin D. So don't let the tanking economy and dismal job market get you down...have yourself a staycation!