Monday, January 18, 2010

umbrellas are not the new black

When it rains, California melts.

My nose is always runny. But it runs extra when it rains. I am ill-prepared for any weather but the pleasant kind, and I never really can look put together in the rain. Supposedly, everyone has a spirit animal or something like that right? My rain-related spirit animal is definitely a wet, shivering chihuahua with big sad eyes and matted fur.

My roommate was distraught when the idea of going outside in this weather came up. She and I wanted lunch, and making our own food at home was obviously not an option. Our fridge currently has the following items: miracle whip, 3 beers, a tomato, and approximately 6 to-go containers from various dinner instances ranging from 3 days to 3 weeks ago.

When we looked outside, water was hurtling from the sky above the way it does convienently in romantic comedies when the protagonist gets locked out of his fiance's parent's summer home in which a precarious misunderstanding involving superglue, a nudie mag and a spatula ultimately leads to him looking like a major jackass.

Point being, it was raining hard. She looks at me and goes, "Well what would we even wear out there?" I met her question with a blank stare and then some blinking.

She's like, "A hat?"

"I mean, yeah. A hat's a good start."


What's good is how Californians drive in the rain. Myself included. And by 'how californians drive' I mean they drive shitty. They, we...you know what I mean. We drive shitty.

Like depth perception is somehow soluable and when it rains that natural ability washes down the storm drain. Along the side of the freeway, cars are stalled and strewn about...halfway down gravel embankments and pulled over with their emergencies on. Their occupants are just standing alongside the car---drenched, shaking their fists at the sky because damnit, sometimes rain-driving is trickier than text-driving even.

I really prefer the summer. Magazines like Cosmo and Marie Claire are always writing hard-hitting expose articles about how to slough off dull, dry winter skin for the summer, and how to exfoliate dry, dead summer skin for the holidays. The circle of life.

Will Smith wrote hit song "Summertime" as a tribute to this season, and I am confident he would never pen a song with the lyrics "winter, winter, winter time/ time to sit back and unwind"...

Mostly because during winter time, people dont really get to unwind. They get to freak the eff out trying to find the right kind of ice cream maker or nose hair trimmer or boxed dvd set for someone who is probably also at the mall scouring the sale bin for some other craptastic item that sums up the holidays the way only a bald Walmart bigwig would want.
(I dont think that smiley face from the Walmart commercials ever wanted it to be like this when he began rolling back prices. I'm convinced that's not what he envisioned when he set out to create the dirt cheap utopia that is Bargain Storeism.)

In the summer, life is just better. It stays lighter later, clothing colors are brighter, and Ball Park Franks never fails to run the exact same commercial they've been running since the dawn of time... involving a rousing outdoor bbq scene, beach balls and a talking dog. K maybe that's the Busch's baked beans commercial that has a talking dog, actually. Regardless, summer is better.

Since I've written this, my roommate has cracked open one of those beers I mentioned. Fridge beer count: 2.

I think the rain might have also stopped since I started writing this. I haven't looked outside or anything, but the sound of screeching brakes and fist shaking at the sky above has subsided outside. We live by a busy street.

Thank god it has because even if California is experiencing a drought, when faced with the choice of either

[enduring some rain in order to replenish a depleted water supply that causes us to steal remorselessly from neighboring states]

or

[living in a world with rain but without text-driving]

hah, that scenario is a no-brainer and never stood a chance. Any good Californian knows a world without texting is too cruel to even imagine. silly.

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