I wrote this post about how much I hate summer and how glad I am that September is almost here, and then I sent it to my husband, and what he added was so much funnier, I said "Screw it, I'm putting yours up instead." I am trying not to be jealous that he's funnier than me, but he says he can only be this funny every once in awhile randomly whereas I have to do it several times a week, every week, so I won't hate.
And so begins the hilarious Stephan Cox screed on summer. >>
It’s true, no one moves to New York for the weather. There are about two months out of the year where New York weather is nice, and the rest of the time, it’s like an endurance test. Can you take it? How about now? I can handle winter, for the simple reason that you can always put on more clothes. It gets colder? Put on a sweater under your parka. Throw an extra couple blankets on your bed. You’ll be fine.
Summer, on the other hand, is a separate matter: you can only take off so many clothes (before you get arrested, anyway). And even in the privacy of your home, you can go around nude if you like, but you can’t take off any more than that. You’re as nude as you’re gonna get, and if you’re still hot, tough. It’s like being in prison (…I would imagine). But that’s just one of the reasons I hate summer.
Here, then, are Ten Reasons (and I had to limit them to ten) I Hate Summer:
- Humidity. The old adage that “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” is only true to a certain extent. I’ve been in Vegas in the middle of summer when it was 120 and and a “dry heat,” and I felt death’s approach. As far as I’m concerned, Vegas is a grand experiment to see if we could colonize the planet Mercury someday, should the Earth become uninhabitable. They have no water, no food, nothing grows there, and there are essentially no laws. But I digress. Humidity is still brutal, and still has the ability to make you feel like you are existing in slow motion, all while being pulled helplessly earthward, soon to turn into a wet blob on the sidewalk. You don’t want to work, you don’t want to think, you don’t want to do anything but maybe listen to some music, take off your shirt and drink a lot of beer. When you think about it, this pretty much explains the existence of New Orleans.
- Big, dumb entertainment. Come June, every media source trots out their stupidest crap. Movies get dumber, books get dumber, music gets dumber (witness the cavalcade of artists pumping out inane songs vying to be the Song of Summer 2010—Taio Cruz, Ke$ha, Justin Bieber. Just… WHERE’S THE #$%^ OFF SWITCH?) It’s like the entertainment powers that be think our collect IQ goes down 20 points. And they’re right, it does. Heat makes you stupid. Summer makes you stupid. That’s why they let kids out of school.
- Kids everywhere. Speaking of kids, summer also blows because the streets are full of obnoxious, hormonal kids everywhere: shouting at the top of their lungs at each other on the subway, walking nine abreast on the sidewalk, doing skateboard tricks over and over that none of them seem to master—jump, flip, crash. Jump, flip, crash. Jump, flip, crash. Give it up. Besides, shouldn’t you be in school? Oh wait—it’s summer.
- Frequent colds. Think about it. You walk around outside for an hour or so sweating your ass off, then you go inside a building that’s like a meat locker and freeze your ass off. You do this several times a day until your immune system is, like, Will you just make up your mind? Oh, screw it. Here, have a cold.
- Pressure to go outside. I’m an indoor person myself. I like my creature comforts, I like my sofa, I like my internet, I like my Tivo, I like a good book. And during autumn and winter, you can justify spending entire weeks inside, being comfy cozy in front of a nice fire, feeling not a whit of obligation to go outside as you watch the rain and the snow come down. But not during summer. Nope, you’ve got to get up and get outside. Even when you have a cold, it’s not like you can spend your time convalescing indoors guilt-free. No no no, the sun is shining! It’s blasting through the windows like an irate parent! You’re wasting your life! Get up! Do something! Go outside!
- The smell. And, of course, when you do go outside, the city, which is a big Petri dish of bacteria anyway, is heated up enough to cook, and it smells like a hobo’s @ss crack. That’s okay, though. You have a cold, so you can’t smell it.
- The blandness. Also, there’s no color associated with summer. Spring is green, the glorious color of renewal. Winter is white, crisp and lovely, and autumn is a million dazzling colors and soft breezes. Summer just turns everything sh*t brown. It’s like the Earth is in a bad mood for three months and is totally going to take it out on you.
- Long days. Some people like it when the sun is out until 9 PM. Some people also like Jerry Springer. Some people are stupid.
- Sleeping in is ruined. One of our favorite things to do on Earth is to sleep in. Lori and I like to sleep in until at least 10:30 on the weekends. It feels so indulgent. And then when we wake up and eat cereal in bed and watch Spongebob. It rules. But during summer, for some reason, the two of us have insane dreams from the hours of 8 AM until 10:30 AM. Like, crazy, demented David Lynch dreams. The kind where everyone you know hates you and wants to kill you, where terrorists are trying to make you sing the Syrian national anthem or they’ll kill you, where the dog is talking to you backwards. The kind where phone numbers start with “10” (it’s weird, think about it). Then we wake up, and it’s like, why did we bother to sleep at all? We’re exhausted, but we can’t go back to sleep or the chainsaw-wielding Patton Oswalt will get us. Bottom line, the heat makes our dreams terrifying.
Lori's comment: Oh yes, and you know what else sucks about the crazy dreams? You wake up, and hey! There are one million hours of daylight left in the day for you to be tired. Also, don't hate on us for our child-free weekend plans. We know, we know, we'll end up old and alone. Don't worry, we have a "cool aunt and uncle" contingency/ bribery plan all worked out. Trust me, more than one friend has asked us to adopt them and/ or offered to send us some of their children. We're not barren or anything like that. We just like sleeping in and eating cereal, people.
- Hearing anything at all about the Hamptons. I don’t want to hear about the crowds in the Hamptons, whom you saw in the Hamptons, anything at all about the Hamptons. Take your beach home and shove it, Gatsby.
The only good thing about summer (and it is a good thing indeed) is that New York is home to America’s most attractive women, and they tend to wear a lot less clothes in public. So it’s a trade off. A decent one, I must admit. But if push came to shove, I’d probably prefer to rent an old Baywatch DVD and watch Pam Anderson jiggle as I watch the snow coming down outside. And if it gets too cold? I can put on a sweater.