Even though I’m stuck inside playing a neverending game of Tetris with my possessions, it just got triumphantly sunny and warm after a few too many days of early-onset May Gray. And since I’m packing up for a few months away, I kind of feel like I’m going to camp. And that means one thing: Summer is here!

Long, long ago, before Jabba glamorized the hookah and live frog-eating craze, Star Wars PSAs tried to educate my generation about the evils of smoking and drinking. Carrie Fisher was originally cast in this drinking and driving ad but she showed up on set too drunk to shoot the spot. And just because R2-D2 needs a menthol Kool to soothe his circuits after a long day at work doesn’t mean you should smoke (never mind that C-3PO is operating what sounds like an electronic water bong).

Thanks to Luke Walker. Really.

It’s been a weird few days here in Gelatobabyland. On the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake, I’m sitting here in San Francisco hearing about a 5.2 earthquake in St. Louis this morning from my family and friends. A last-minute quickie trip for work ended up being just the creative shake up I needed, but I’m heading back home to some sad news in LA. And for some reason this week I’m having a few more than the usual amount of groundbreaking epiphanies about the future.

So by request, a reminder that tomorrow will bring a little more sunshine, the company of good friends, or—at the very least—a Saturday.

Waxen empire Crayola announced eight new colors this week. But unlike the last spectrum shift in 2003, the colors themselves didn’t change, just the names did. 20,000 kids were asked to pick new names for the eight colors as Kids’ Choice Colors. If this information is to be believed, kids today have absolutely no idea what colors are actually named:

Screamin’ Green = Giving Tree
Laser Lemon = Super Happy
Wild Watermelon = Awesome
Vivid Tangerine = Fun in the Sun
Turquoise Blue = Happy Ever After
Hot Magenta = Famous
Orchid = Best Friends
Beaver = Bear Hug

Now I know what you’re thinking…they’re trading Beaver for Bear Hugs? But according to Crayola, the kids had very good reasons for doing what they did: “A collection of eight colors was created that draw on everything from kids wanting to play their part in protecting the planet to believing that they can become famous just like the everyday people who achieve stardom on reality shows.” Hey could you pass the Famous? I gotta color in Perez Hilton’s hair.

You, too, can achieve stardom on a reality shows or review the entire Crayola chronology and see where things started to go painfully wrong. Like with Purple Mountain’s Majesty in 1990. Now. I ask you: Do you really think a Bear Hug would have inspired a performance like this one in 1981? I think not. This performance was 100% Raw Umber:

I’ve been waiting to write about outdoor apparel company Patagonia pretty much all my life. My parents packed me in the stuff for my first ski lesson, and ever since, I ‘ve managed to stay extremely faithful to their products. Even on a beer-burrito-bagel budget at college in Boulder where crunchy detractors were more than happy to point out my preference for “Patagucci.”

So when I finally got the choice assignment from Fast Company, you could say I was a little worried about my ability to remain objective. Heck, when I went up to meet with their sustainability team in Ventura, I was wearing a Patagonia shell and carrying a Patagonia backpack. It was like wearing the band’s shirt to the concert.

Patagonia launched the Footprint Chronicles quietly last year, short web videos that track the impact of five of their products. You get introduced to the woman who’s making your polo shirt in at a factory Thailand, and peer into the eyes of the Merino sheep who’ll be sheared for your crew in New Zealand. These videos are just the latest of these epic journeys that Patagonia loves to package for their fans. And the audience loves it. After all, this is a company that provides a guide to climbing schools on their website, a series of online essays detailing a grizzly bear’s migration through Montana, and a multimedia saga of surfer-filmmaker-brothers The Malloys driving a biodiesel truck from Bend, Oregon to the tip of Baja.

The key phrase for the Footprint Chronicles, as with all corporate greening practices lately, is transparency, and Patagonia vowed to show all of their findings, the good and the bad. But there seemed to be very little bad afoot at Patagonia. Employees Jill Dumain and Jen Rapp enthusiastically took me on a tour of an organic cotton factory where we all snapped as many photos as we wanted of the sunny, spotless warehouse blasting rock music. They hosted me for a day in Patagonia’s Ventura headquarters, a series of refurbished buildings where the bathrooms show you where to toss your paper towels for composting, free on-site day care lets employees hang with their kids during breaks, and the kitchen serves homemade, mostly-organic meals like fish tacos and cabbage slaw. If you want me to be objective, you should definitely not serve me homemade, mostly-organic meals like fish tacos and cabbage slaw. With this really awesome spicy mayo.

But after extensive mayo-free research, I decided that Patagonia is probably walking the walk better than any other company out there. Their colleagues I interviewed in the industry agreed.

I guess I’d always known Patagonia was a leader for environmental issues but I don’t buy their products for those reasons. I buy them because I don’t have to buy very many of them at all. My favorite pair of Patagonia long underwear pants—the very first thing I grab when I’m going skiing—are from 1996. And they still work great.