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Summer is here, and your shoe game is, to put it mildly, slightly lacking.

It’s hot so hiding your outdated, scuffed-up kicks under the cuffs of your jeans is out of the question — unless you want to be the awkwardly sweaty, feverish guy at the party.

It’s time for an upgrade, but some ordinary sneakers won’t do.

Thankfully, there’s Generic Surplus.

There’s a time and a place for everything.

I would never be caught dead seeing one of those oh-so-angsty “Twilight” movies in the theaters, but I can think of worse ways to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon if they’re on cable.

I would never pass up a meal at some hip new restaurant promising locally sourced ingredients prepared by some up-and-coming chef, but sometimes nothing beats a couple of dirty water hot dogs.

When it’s all said and done, I’ll be able to tell my children, once they’re of age, that I was there when Americans stopped drinking watered-down, mass-produced beer in favor of something better.

This week is American Craft Beer Week, a celebration of the tasty concoctions created by innovative brewmasters and beer-lovers across this great country of ours. A celebration of something better.

Mothers, fathers, secretaries and shrimp all have their own days on the calendar — and with good reason.

Without our parents’ tireless effort and unconditional love, our lives as we know them would cease to be. Ditto for our offices. And our scampis.

But a quick glance at the calendar reveals a glaring omission.

When it comes to days where we buy our loved ones greeting cards and treat them to overpriced and bland-tasting hotel brunches, it seems one group has been inexplicably overlooked — our friends.

Weeknight cooking can be a total drag.

You come home from a long day of work to find the evening’s dining options limited to the occasionally wonderful brinner (breakfast for dinner), reheating something frozen that bears little resemblance to actual food or getting takeout or fast food, which will likely send you into a shame spiral for the rest of the night.

It’s the kind of personal evolution we’ve seen far too infrequently in the world of music.

The crass, hard-drinking party boy manages the kind of sudden, inescapable fame that so often ruins people and matures into a kind, thoughtful man with philanthropic and cultural interests while managing to curate a career that spans generations and bridges racial divides.

We’ve been told commercially successful artists often are not humble, caring or well-adjusted.

Generous and intellectually curious people are taken advantage of, preyed upon and swallowed whole by the music industry.

It might seem counterintuitive, but there is some fun to be had sitting through movies such as “Australia,” “Year One” or really anything directed by Roland Emmerich.

Once past the initial outrage one feels knowing those responsible for these melodramatic, trite and often laughably improbable films were actually paid for their efforts — grossly overpaid — all that remains is to surrender to the experience, guffawing at gaping plot holes and laughing at characters for reasons and at moments the directors and writers of said tripe likely never intended.

This is only part of the fun to be had reading “The Good, the Bad and the Godawful,” a recently released collection of movie reviews from former Rolling Stone writer and MTV newsman and icon Kurt Loder.

We’ve all been there.

You pull up to a stoplight on a picturesque day in late spring, the weather warm enough to make being inside feel like a crime against nature, yet cool enough to prevent the crankiness that often accompanies the suffocating humidity of a Lowcountry summer.

You roll down the windows and reach for the knob of your stereo when you hear the stereo of the car behind you blaring some interminable dross at decibel levels. The sound is guaranteed to deafen the unfortunate souls trapped inside and annoy anyone within earshot — in this case, you.

Few things are as ubiquitous in modern life as advertising.

When we flip on the television, open a newspaper or magazine or turn on the radio, we are inundated with messages, images and iconography intended to make us feel something and, in turn, buy something.

One throwaway reference to a John Mayer song and the challenge before myself and two colleagues was clear.

We dubbed it “John Mayer Day,” an entire workday where we would open each and every conversation between one another with a line from the John Mayer song catalogue.

Have something to say? Drop a few verses from “Your Body is a Wonderland” or sit in silence.

These rules were tougher to adhere to than any of us expected but did produce a few gems, namely when lyrics from “The Heart of Life” were used to unleash a frustrated verbal assault upon the office voicemail system.