Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Too darn hot

It's always the same here (Washington, DC)--the temperature shoots up anytime between May and October and we shake our heads in disbelief and claim that it never does this usually...

We've had heat indexes of over 100 for three days running. Yikes. The heat has made me very aware of my body in the worst sort of way--parts of me sweat that normally don't.

But there are also the small pleasures of dealing with the heat, too, the sort of experiences that you want to store away in your mind to use later when you're writing: the delicious sensation of fresh cotton sheets on your skin and the textures of linen and silk; drinking cold water from a bottle of melting ice and letting it spill down your neck; the first few minutes of a cool shower after you've peeled off your sweaty clothes; wonderful drinks and watermelon and other summer treats.

What do you like about the heat?

What summer experiences do you enjoy?

Or, as Cole Porter put it, do you find it just too darn hot?

4 comments:

Pam Rosenthal said...

Cole Porter: one of the sexiest writers of all time.

Ira Gershwin and Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls): two of the most romantic.

JRMullany said...

I'd agree--and the words of "Too darn hot" are so witty. I particularly the internal rhymes.

I saw a terrific production of Guys and Dolls by the National Theatre in London about ten years ago--with impeccable American accents, too. It's funny how hard it seems to be for Brit actors to sound American--Hugh Laurie is very convincing. But I can think of any number of American actors who can sound Brit--even doing regional dialects--and I wonder why.

Pam Rosenthal said...

I agree about the internal rhymes -- a pity that they bowdlerized/hollywoodized them in your clip --

Here's a great one, also from Kiss Me Kate

Mr. Harris Plutocrat/
Wants to give my cheek a pat/
If a Harris pat means a Paris hat/
Okay!/
But I'm always true to you, darlin', in my fashion/
Yes I'm always true to you, darlin', in my way/

Pam Rosenthal said...

While as for Brits doing convincing American accents and vice versa, I'm always more impressed by the Brits -- especially (here comes another superlative) most-beautiful-man-who-ever-lived Idris Elba, who played Stringer Bell on The Wire