If this week had a theme, it melted a few days back. In fact, damn near everything’s starting to dissipate now that the most dreaded month of the year is here…August. Were it up to me I’d rip two pages off the calendar tonight and time-skip right over to September. Come to think of it, September’s pretty brutal too! It isn’t until October - when the crippling stickiness mercifully dissolves into a titillating breeeze - that my home state becomes bearable for upright walking man. I know, I know: folks lived in the South without AC for many a sweltering moon, but they also tolerated open-air clogging, that don’t make it right! How people of the past handled the heat without any relief simply staggers the imagination. It also makes me wonder just how bad The Waltons must have stunk, but that’s just one of those delirious notions that seeps through your skull when seconds after walking outside in the morning, you feel as if you’re wearing a unitard made of soggy burlap. Add thirty pounds of gear and an apathetic desk and you have a pretty good idea of why I fantasize about being an 911 operator these days. Sure, there’s a ton of stress and people lives are on the line, but think how chilly they must have to keep it in there with all those computers, coffee cups and brushy cop moustaches! C’mon - I’ll even wear the Jim Dangle short-shorts!
Hmm? A letter from a reader? Read it out loud? Okay. ‘Ahem…Dear Son, Don’t ever put that awful image in my head again. Ever! -- Mom.’ Wow, that’s really… harsh. Still, a man of my standing can’t afford any vanities this time of year. Nor can he afford to travel without a few toiletries and a complete change of Garanimals. Why, just this morning I dropped at least three pounds during a fifteen minute shoot just a few miles from my home. Perched on a bouncing wooden walkway, I slithered around my sticks and zoomed in the Natural Science Center’s newest attraction a few hundred yards away, Uri lumbered out of his cage in that displaced Anteater way; by the time it made it across the grassy knoll, I’m pretty sure I out-reeked the Vermilingua, if ya know what I’m sayin'... If you don’t, just know this: It’s damn hot in the Carolinas and elsewhere in this wonderful land. If you schlep a lens for a living, remember: milk really can be a poor choice. Stash some surplus deodorant and perhaps some Boudreaux’s in your news unit and your journalism will improve tenfold If you’re a reporter - or worse yet, a producer - please don’t remark to your photog friend just how sweaty you got when running out to your car during your lunch.
After all, most of us carry Leathermans and are reputed to be unstable. Just sayin'.
4 comments:
So...does this mean I'm not the only photog-person to give serious consideration to the damage that could be caused by a leatherman and a photog on a bad day? Sounds like it.
As for the unstable part...I crossed that rickety footbridge back in junior high. Maybe sooner. Does that make me a bad person? My therapist says..."no."
glad to see another shooter singing the praises of boudreaux's. lemme know if you run out.
Come on up north in Jan & Feb when it is - 20C/ 0F, much colder in many parts of Canada, days in a row and your finger tips, nose and ear lobes are changing colour.
Agreed sweltering oppressive heat/humitidy is no fun but I'll take it any day over freezing temperatures and icy sidewalks.
You can however keep the hurricanes and we'll take the blizzards.
I just have this idea of the aardvark talking to the ant about how you're soaked with sweat. I can't come up with a line, but know that it's funny.
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