The heat is on. On the street. Inside your head. On every beat. And the beat’s so loud. Deep inside. The pressure’s high. Just to stay alive. ‘Cause the heat is on.
I dug up the lyrics to the preceding Glenn Frey ’80s classic for two reasons. #1: to pay homage to the first heatwave of the Summer of 2009 for not rearing its hot little head until late August. #2: to attempt to get a new song stuck in my head to replace Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game,” which became lodged in my consciousness last Saturday as I pondered strappy copper glitter patent leather spiked heels in the Marc Jacob’s store in Provincetown. “And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down.” EEEUUUGGHH. Please, someone, put me out of my misery. Lobotomize me.
As Labor Day looms, Bostonians are finally getting the summer that they professed they wanted back in 60-degree rainy June. Are you happy now that it’s 95 degrees with oppressive humidity, you cold-blooded whiners? Are you happy now? No, I look around and I don’t see one happy-looking Bostonian strutting around. I see a beaten, sweaty lot, walking slowly on the sun-blasted concrete and carrying their backpacks on one shoulder so not to incur back-wide sweat stains.
You’re dreaming of fall, aren’t you? The crisp 50 degree afternoons, replete with chilly breezes that make you want to go home, eat soup, and cuddle with your loved ones. And if you get too cold, you can just put on another layer. You see, that strategy doesn’t work when it gets hot, because pretty soon you’ll run out of layers that you can legally shed, and you’re still hot. So obviously… cool weather RULZ.
“and the painted ponies go up and down.” For the LOVE of GOD someone get this song out of my head. I pleaded my case to a co-worker, who suggested that I attempt to replace the demonic Joni Mitchell lyrics by listening to Pearl Jam.
“Pearl Jam? Are you mad?” I demanded. “Nobody gets Pearl Jam stuck in their head because half of what comes our of Eddie Vedder’s mouth is a moan and the other half’s a wail.”
“How can anyone hear ‘don’t call me daugh-ter‘ without getting a mental loop of that lyric? Oh great, now I got it. ‘Don’t call me daugh-ter,” he sings.
“And the painted ponies go up and down,” I sing.
Of course, life in the air-conditioned office isn’t affected by the heatwave, it’s life in our humidity-trapping wooden double-decker house that’s become literally hellish. I sleep with a window air conditioner rattling 12 feet from my head, which does not entirely prevent sleep but keeps me constantly on the cusp of waking, which is provoking a myriad number of vivid dreams with startling conclusions. Like last night, when I dreamed AS and I were roaming my hometown and we encountered a trove of cute punk boys living in the woods and we went with them to get ice cream (which I wouldn’t eat, not even in my dreams). So far, a near-perfect dream… but then they started raping other girls outside of the ice cream shop. “What do we do?!” AS asked as we watched. I awoke, disturbed but pleasantly chilled by the laboring air-conditioned window unit.
Yes, the heat is on. On the street. Across the state. Across the entire Northeast. Inside my house. And inside my head. The heat is … on.
