My Little Book of Days (Day 1)
August 30, 2012
School started this week to clear blue skies and warmer temperatures. I didn’t care for it one bit. A major reason I moved away from Orange County was to escape the sun. The sun and I have not been on speaking terms in many a year.
I used to have a ritual (my friends & I, really). Every Sunday of every summer we would go to Huntington Beach State Beach. We usually parked out on Brookhurst and hiked the half mile to the sand, to avoid paying for parking. We always set up “Base Camp” between Lifeguard Towers 5 and 6.
I never had a ‘beach body’, but I was far thinner then. I wore my hair long (it was the eighties). Those summers bleached my long straight hair to nearly white.
We would body surf, and play Frisbee, and, if we had enough bodies, we would play beach football. I discovered something remarkable about myself during those football games. I could run on sand.
And I mean I could run fast. I gots me some big ole’ feet. Size thirteen. And my feet are wide, with a wicked arch. I played sports in high school, but never excelled. On the sand, I ran like the wind. My friends were shocked. Especially when I tackled them.
But, in the intervening years, my relationship with the beach and the sun in particular, has soured. I can’t take the heat anymore. And I lived in fuckin’ Bakersfield for two summers (another story for another time).
I suffer in anything over 75 degrees. I spent the last 7 years living in Garden Grove, California, in an apartment that defied physics with its lack of air movement. We purchased HUGE fans and set them in the windows and the front door, and still had nary a breeze in there. As the temperature broke into the triple digits, it was like part of my brain would stop working.
In September of 2010, I was cast in a stage production of “Night of the Living Dead” at The Maverick Theater in Fullerton, California. I was “The Big Zombie”. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage. The first rehearsal I attended was a fight rehearsal. In my big scene I was supposed to break down a door, knocking down the hero, pick him up by his belt and bodily hurl him across the stage. That’s just how it started. Great fun. But, that first night, it was about 95 degrees in the theater. Rehearsal ran until midnight and it never got any cooler.
I have this wonderful little thing we, in the business, call “Flop Sweat”. It doesn’t trickle down my brow. It runs. In rivulets. I leave quarter sized drops on the stage floor. Under those hot lights, I DARE you to not sweat. Everybody does. It’s just that with me, it is ridiculous.
While I was rehearsing NOTLD, I was also working as a carpenter on the build for Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt AKA Knott’s Scary Farm. We would work 5am to 1pm. All the work was outdoors in the brutal heat of a Buena Park summer. I would drink 2 gallons of water everyday in that 8 hour shift. And that doesn’t include the Gatorade-like drinks they provided for us. At least I wasn’t alone in my suffering there. There was another big, bald, fat guy there they had nicknamed “Puddles”. I managed to keep the nickname I came in with “SMASH!” (Another story for another day).
In those hot OC summers I would daydream about moving somewhere cooler. Maybe somewhere with snow. I’ve had very little experience with snow. Maybe I’d love it. Maybe I’d hate it. Life is funny.
Well, here I am. Sitting at my computer in my San Francisco apartment. I glance slightly to the left of the monitor and I can see Lake Merced, less than half a mile from here. On a clear day I can see the Pacific beyond Merced. But, not today. Today is what I would call “normal San Francisco foggy”. I can see the campus of SFSU to the South, and Lake Merced directly to the West. We measure the fog by what we lose. Some days we lose the Lake. On the really heavy days, the campus disappears into the gloom.
I love it.
Give me the fog and the gloom and the rain. Oh! The rain! The first month we were here it rained like Hell. It was amazing. Watching the lightning over Fort Funston through our floor to ceiling living room windows was amazing. I would turn off all the light and just watch the show.
Thank you, San Francisco. Thank you for welcoming a former child of the sun into your gloomy arms.
School started this week to clear blue skies and warmer temperatures. I didn’t care for it one bit. A major reason I moved away from Orange County was to escape the sun. The sun and I have not been on speaking terms in many a year.
I used to have a ritual (my friends & I, really). Every Sunday of every summer we would go to Huntington Beach State Beach. We usually parked out on Brookhurst and hiked the half mile to the sand, to avoid paying for parking. We always set up “Base Camp” between Lifeguard Towers 5 and 6.
I never had a ‘beach body’, but I was far thinner then. I wore my hair long (it was the eighties). Those summers bleached my long straight hair to nearly white.
We would body surf, and play Frisbee, and, if we had enough bodies, we would play beach football. I discovered something remarkable about myself during those football games. I could run on sand.
And I mean I could run fast. I gots me some big ole’ feet. Size thirteen. And my feet are wide, with a wicked arch. I played sports in high school, but never excelled. On the sand, I ran like the wind. My friends were shocked. Especially when I tackled them.
But, in the intervening years, my relationship with the beach and the sun in particular, has soured. I can’t take the heat anymore. And I lived in fuckin’ Bakersfield for two summers (another story for another time).
I suffer in anything over 75 degrees. I spent the last 7 years living in Garden Grove, California, in an apartment that defied physics with its lack of air movement. We purchased HUGE fans and set them in the windows and the front door, and still had nary a breeze in there. As the temperature broke into the triple digits, it was like part of my brain would stop working.
In September of 2010, I was cast in a stage production of “Night of the Living Dead” at The Maverick Theater in Fullerton, California. I was “The Big Zombie”. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage. The first rehearsal I attended was a fight rehearsal. In my big scene I was supposed to break down a door, knocking down the hero, pick him up by his belt and bodily hurl him across the stage. That’s just how it started. Great fun. But, that first night, it was about 95 degrees in the theater. Rehearsal ran until midnight and it never got any cooler.
I have this wonderful little thing we, in the business, call “Flop Sweat”. It doesn’t trickle down my brow. It runs. In rivulets. I leave quarter sized drops on the stage floor. Under those hot lights, I DARE you to not sweat. Everybody does. It’s just that with me, it is ridiculous.
While I was rehearsing NOTLD, I was also working as a carpenter on the build for Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt AKA Knott’s Scary Farm. We would work 5am to 1pm. All the work was outdoors in the brutal heat of a Buena Park summer. I would drink 2 gallons of water everyday in that 8 hour shift. And that doesn’t include the Gatorade-like drinks they provided for us. At least I wasn’t alone in my suffering there. There was another big, bald, fat guy there they had nicknamed “Puddles”. I managed to keep the nickname I came in with “SMASH!” (Another story for another day).
In those hot OC summers I would daydream about moving somewhere cooler. Maybe somewhere with snow. I’ve had very little experience with snow. Maybe I’d love it. Maybe I’d hate it. Life is funny.
Well, here I am. Sitting at my computer in my San Francisco apartment. I glance slightly to the left of the monitor and I can see Lake Merced, less than half a mile from here. On a clear day I can see the Pacific beyond Merced. But, not today. Today is what I would call “normal San Francisco foggy”. I can see the campus of SFSU to the South, and Lake Merced directly to the West. We measure the fog by what we lose. Some days we lose the Lake. On the really heavy days, the campus disappears into the gloom.
I love it.
Give me the fog and the gloom and the rain. Oh! The rain! The first month we were here it rained like Hell. It was amazing. Watching the lightning over Fort Funston through our floor to ceiling living room windows was amazing. I would turn off all the light and just watch the show.
Thank you, San Francisco. Thank you for welcoming a former child of the sun into your gloomy arms.
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