hazy, hot, humid -or- hip, hip, hurray

The heat is oppressive. That's the only word I'll accept. A few weeks ago when this disturbing trend began, Jeff Verszyla, local attractive young weatherman whom my aunt believes is positively dreamy, was kind enough to supply us with a list of possible descriptors for this sort of weather. His favorite, he explained in a troubling editorial interjection, is "sultry." "Sultry" doesn't cut it, Jeff. That makes this miserable nonsense sound . . . sexy. Wait at my house for me after work tomorrow and meet me when I get home from my bike ride of a mere 3 miles or so. See how very sexy I am. There's nothing sexy about this. The term "oppressive," on the other hand, connotes a great deal of unhappiness on the part of us slaving climate proletarians. Nothing we can change about this, no sense of temperature empowerment. It conjures up the image of the Heatmeiser, swapping our weather with that of Southtown in another shady deal with his bastard brother.

One implicit plus in the bedraggled above paragraph is that I am indeed back on my bike, which is exciting to me in that, when I'm feeling up to it, and not so oppressed, I can go places like Squirrel Hill and Wilkinsburg with a minimum of effort. Also, for the most part, I will be getting to work on time again. This won't matter so much in a month or so when I lose my job, but perhaps I will have worked out a new one by then, and I'll be able to get to that one on time as well.

Another plus for today is the positive experience of last night's show. Housequake brought out some bodies, and said bodies stuck around for the whole show, which ruled hard. All three touring bands were excellent. Goodbye Ohio headed back to NYC immediately after the show (why did they schedule a Pittsburgh date between two NYC dates? The world may never know). But that allowed me to get to know The Close and Slingshot Dakota a little better, which was a good thing, because all of the individuals comprising these bands are top-notch. Buy their records. Make them your Myspace friends (the Slingshot kids were selling bead bracelets and were kind enough to give me the one they made to say "I <3 Myspace," because, well, I fucking hate Myspace. Irony is, indeed, the new irony.

Furthermore, we returned to the house for vegan sloppy jo and pasta salad that I made that was so-so, and discussion of a range of topics including the music business, Paul McCartney getting blow jobs during the two days during his marriage to Linda in which they were apart, peeing our pants in school, The Highly Sensitive Person (I recommend this book to everyone, no joke), horse racing, gang wars, and walking on your knees. The whole experience tempered the feelings I've been having lately about the weird nature of diy culture and the phenomenon of diy celebrity, which, as noted, I'm starting to write about hopefully for my zine.

Three cheers! The Close should be back in October. Come see them then. You'll hear about it here.