Summer’s almost here, kids, and you know what that means: Crap jobs at the mall, insane gas prices, sweltering heat, Lindsay Lohan’s 21st birthday (thank, god, that poor girl can finally have a drink) and, oh yeah … a weekly batch of toxic waste sputtered forth from the day-glo plastic sphincter that is Hollywood.

That’s right — summer movies! Hooray! For those of you who haven’t been paying attention for the past 30 years, summer movies are the ones that get special effects instead of a script and a director who didn’t get his start in commercials.

They’re also the ones that tend to be dominated by sequels, most of which remind you that when you were a kid, “Number Two” meant something else altogether. (On second thought, no it didn’t.)

In short, summer movies are absolutely worthy of having an entire Spudcast devoted to them!

For this very special podcast, Wes and I were joined in the studio by Tampa Tribune Food Writer Jeff Houck.

Yeah, the food writer.

Hey, our movie critic was “downsized” and Jeff happened to be walking by at the right time. What do you want?

Anyway, the three of us ran through the list of this summer’s box office hopefuls so you’ll know what to expect in the coming months. Mostly, you can expect crap.

But then, you knew that already, didn’t you?

Download it here:

Couch Potatoes, Episode 9 [link]

Highlights include: “Spider-Man 3,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “28 Weeks Later,” “Shrek the Third,” “Oceans Thirteen,” “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and, ummm, “Transformers.” Wes made me include that last one.

Don’t forget, you can also subscribe via iTunes by clicking on the button to the left of this post.