Too Hot to Jot

Hey, what's more fun than a triple-digit blast of heat and humidity? Writer's Block! That's right, just as the mercury pushed past a hundred degrees, I rushed out and contracted myself a whopping case of lyrical constipation. Thus, I'm sweating buckets by day and staring at an empty computer screen by night. THIS SUCKS! Just how am I supposed to deal with the Biblical stickiness of an unGodly August if I can't at least bitch about it on-line? Sure, nothing's stopping me - but for a guy who's used to blithely transcribing the voices in his head every night, this silence is truly deafening. I can only hope it won't last, for soggy underwear and an arid imagination make for a grumpy lenslinger - and who wants that? Not my wife...

Psychoanalyis aside, I cannot figure out what's go me so ... stuck. Could it be that those droplets of sweat that pour from my brow each contain valuable writer's DNA? Perhaps I've just wrung my brain of every scenario it had to offer. Or maybe - as one co-worker cheerfully suggested yesterday, my blog and I have simply peaked. Ouch! You know, when I think about it, that's a real possibility. Over the past three years I've written on-line just about every night. It's been wonderfully therapeutic and at times downright easy. But lately, my torrent of thought has dried up and I find myself grasping for ways to fill the page. That's happened before, but never to such a maddening degree. And it truly is maddening. Words have become my sword and shield and without them I feel unarmed if not naked. And trust me, no one wants a naked lenslinger. Not in this heat.

Ya know, maybe that's it. The crushing humidity that I so assiduously exxagerate has finally lived up to the hype. How hot is it? Well, every open door feels like an oven blast. Heavy air drapes onto your every pour as your very eyelids slide down your face. Take three steps outside and you feel like you've crossed the Sahara - sand in your mouth, clothes soaked, hazy apparitions in the distance - and that's just in the station parking lot! Heave a TV camera onto one weary shoulder and you'll soon feel like an overburdened packmule stumbling through some sun-bleached gorge and looking for a shady place to die. If that's overselling it, you ain't been outside lately - and dashing to the car during your lunch hour doesn't count. Nope, to truly appreciate this swelter, you gotta stay out in it, just like all those Southeastern news crews who've spent the week crafting Profiles in Sweat.

You know ... those winking, cliche-ridden news reports about your neighbors who have to work in the heat. Next time you watch one, do me a favor and get close to your set. Chances are if you take a big enough whiff, you can smell the photog responsible. I know I left some funk on the past three stories I did: the ninety second opus on a high noon salsa tasting contest, my extended coverage of the truly scary folks camping out for the Hell's Kitchen audition, even yesterday's turgid account of air conditioning repairman scrambling to fix all those neglected, wheezing units. Man, those guys know how to perspire! And that's alot coming from me, for I sweat like a fat man in a too-tight gorilla suit. It ain't pretty, but neither is this blinking cursor that taunts me every night. 'Peaked'. PFFT! I ain't got time to peak. I'm way too busy griping about the weather and secretly wondering when my muse will return from summer vacation. Stay tuned...