Zorbing.

It's 5 a.m. on a Saturday. Two movies, three slushies, and a pack of Oreos later, last night bled into this morning. Thanks to a wholly engrossing crossword puzzle that kept four of us slumped around my friend's kitchen table in varying states of wakefulness and denial far longer than we'll admit, it was lighter outside when we left than when we arrived. The sunrise drive home through otherwise quiet streets, singing along to "Anna Sun," came straight out of a John Hughes movie -- at least, even if the lighting was a bit dim and casting atypical (for movies that inspire so many slumber parties, the Brat Pack movies feature surprisingly few interactions between female friends), I like to think we got the feeling right.

"Zorbing" is a song that should have appeared on my summer playlist, had I discovered it in time. I'm at least two years late, considering it was originally released as a single in June 2009, then re-released on Stornoway's debut album in May last year, but cut me some slack; not even this Anglophile can keep up to date on British bands in addition to American ones. The song comes off as quintessentially English, not only with regards to the obviously un-American pronunciations, but the actual vocabulary of the lyrics, e.g. what are conkers and where is Cowley? (horse chestnut seeds, here more commonly known as buckeyes; about 58 miles northwest of London in Oxfordshire) Most importantly, is zorbing an actual thing? Is it some kind of veiled drug reference or regional sexual euphemism? Happily enough, zorbing is pretty much exactly what it sounds like if you stop to imagine your own definition for it, disregarding the absurdity of the thought: "Zorbing (globe-riding, sphereing, orbing) is the recreation of rolling downhill in an orb, generally made of transparent plastic." Think hamster ball, think Jake Gyllenhaal in Bubble Boy, think the real-life incarnation of your greatest childhood fantasy...unless maybe that was just me. Whatever. Basically, zorbing sounds like the best thing to come out of New Zealand since Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, and an awesome pastime that the United States should adopt posthaste. It's also a really great song that I've had on repeat for a week.

Zorbing - Stornoway [lyrics]

Lying in your attic
I can feel the static
The storm has broken, Heaven's open
So electrifying, oh, I'm nearly flying
Lost my heart between the sheets of lightning