Swelter and Stew

We were somewhere into our third stand-up attempt when the realization kicked in. Summer had officially arrived. I knew it by the way the perspiration coming of my forehead made the viewfinder look like a windshield going through a car wash. Jeff Varner knew it too. Why else would he keep substituting ‘FFA’ for ‘FAA’? The guys wearing matching denim jackets back in high school might forgive the slip, but the aviation wonks standing just off screen surely would protest. They didn’t have to; Jeff caught the flub and started over, after running a few fingers through his carefully coiffed do. Perhaps the heat waves bouncing off the tarmac were baking his brain. They certainly were mine.

And so begins the season of my discontent. For as long as I’ve squinted through station-owned lenses, I’ve mopped sweat from my brow for three miserable months of each year. And boy, do I sweat. I sweat like an escaped convict trying to blend in at a prison guard social. Luckily, I work alone a lot, allowing me to hide my shame behind a revolving collection of unfortunate tropical shirts. But it isn’t easy. How could it be - when the sweltering humidity of a Carolina summer wraps around you like a force field. I know I’m not the only suffering from the heat, but when its 90 degrees at ten in the morning and you’ve just been assigned the construction worker beat…well, it’s enough to make anyone complain - especially a sticky lenslinger with a penchant for epistles and a nasty web habit.

So look for the beleaguered ramblings of a sweat-soaked madman to be a running theme here at Viewfinder BLUES until...oh, about mid-September. By then I'll have found another force of nature to bitch about - like those pesky hurricanes that terrorize our coast in the early fall. Have you ever tried to get a half dozen pizzas delivered to a satellite truck in the middle of an evacuated beach resort? I'm tellin' ya - it ain't easy. Why, there was this one time...