You Make Me Wanna la la!

carnivale

Fuck all this indian summer talk... as far as I'm concerned, the summer is half over. The end of may and beginning of june are kinda like free days for you to unwind from everything that happened the throughout the year (also choice time to finally read the yearbook if you subscribe to delayed satisfaction, as I do). Hopefully there are a lot of parties, and most people are still around (before leaving on their summer trips to switzerland, or honduras, or bakersfield)... Joie de vivre, the entire summer is ahead of you, and whatever comes after is not even a consideration.

The next few weeks are a bit different. Some people have departed, maybe you've taken up a summer job, maybe you just spend every afternoon sitting by the pool, followed by a few hours of laying on top of your sheets, watching bad movies and wondering why the fan / ac doesn't work better. You're still going out most nights, but with a smaller group. You feel like solid gold because the sun doesn't set until nine, which means you can have a mild after-dinner buzz going as you watch the sun set... hopefully with your best friend(s). This is the sweet spot.

Fourth of july is supposedly the midpoint of summer, but in all of my experience, it's more like a swan song... Like graduation night and new years eve, you spend most of the night worrying that it will escape you. The time you spend with your family in the afternoon is occupied by hectic phone calls planning the perfect evening, but as with graduation and new years eve, eventually everything falls into place - you meet up with the people you love, and you're safe... safe to began anew and excited to celebrate, but more honestly, safe from being alone. You pass out with the musty combination of charcoal, gunpowder, and cheap, cheap beer, and when you wake up everything's a lil different. You spent the entire summer looking forward to that point, but the next milestone is the end of summer (save bastille's day), which forces you to do something you've been avoiding for a month and a half - think ahead. Think about the future, and about what you should be doing...

Time fast forwards after the fourth of july - the rest of the month melts away in an ear-popping limbo, and in what seems like days, august has arrived. There may be a few weeks left, but the summer is really over. If you're in high school, the next two weeks are spend visiting family you don't care about in places you hate, buying school clothes that will lose their charm after a single wearing, thinking about college and classes and athletics... who or what is going to be cool this year, who's changed for the better or worse? you planned to spend the summer with that girl or boy of your dreams, but since you never got the nerve to talk to them (much less tell him or her about your lust) all summer, you're planning some gesture of words for that final back to school party, just so you can convince yourself that you gave it a chance and have no regret.

If you're in college, the end of summer is like cramming for a final. You have to sort out your housing situation that you put off all summer, try to get the classes that you need to graduate, hope that you'll find an internship - or at least a work study job - that has anything to do with your major, all from hundreds of miles away, from your bedroom at home (as your parents will remind you, your REAL home). You spent all summer trying to readjust to your home friends, telling them elevated stories of grandeur, sharing drinking games and inside jokes that they'll just never understand, seeing how different everyone has become and then wondering how much you've changed without noticing. As you call up all of your new friends to compare summers - conquests, parties, little sisters, how square your parents are - you realize that you're closer to these people you met eleven months ago than you are to your own family and your friends from kindergarten... You gain some relaxed comfort from living with your friends 24 hours a day - an acceptance that no one is perfect and you don't have to be "on" all of the time - one of those revelations that defines who you are, and who you will be. This time is also like the septuagenerian stage of your young life - there is an overwhelming fear of mortality - since you were three or four years old, you've been in school. You've followed a structure and a linear progression - leaving mid-school was sad, but you knew you had high school to look forward to - leaving high school was traumatic, but you were excited for college. Eventually you realize that soon you're not going to have a new classes every semester and the opportunity to meet dozens of new people. You no longer have a like-minded pool of peers and possibilities - in the real world, friends come fewer and with more effort. The lines, "aren't we in the same class?" and "what's your major?" no longer exist, and the dream of fucking an innocent lil freshman girl is exceedingly less realistic.

And then you realize that there are no more summers. You could try to chase after your lost memories - maybe even try to re-live a careless summer - but it will never be the same, because in the real world you don't get to start over just because it's august.

I've always been afraid of change, so summer did for me what i could never do myself - it tied up all of the previous year's loose ends, and assuringly provided me with a new adventure at its end. Why Not was my last summer, and without hesitation the best summer of my life.

This summer I haven't done a single fucking thing. I've never been so aware of my age, nor assured of my childhood suspicion that, yes, indeed, summers as a grown up do suck!

The crux in Clueless comes far before Cher realizes that she loves Josh - it comes when she's robbed at Circus Liquor in the Valley. She is vulnerable for the first time, but it opens her to a new sense of confidence and maturity that allows for her transformation in the second act. As I sat below this icon on a hundred degree north hollywood afternoon, sipping an icy diet coke as I watched pornstars battle their way through friday afternoon gridlock, this post apocalyptic summer unraveled before me... Who's the real clown steazie?... Who's the real clown?