In Which If This Heat Wave Never Breaks It'll Be Too Soon

The Hot List

by REBECCA WIENER

I grew up in a place where the heat was exceptional. To get from house to car, from car to school, from school to Frappuccino necessitated wading through the thick, angry foam of outside. Every first moment of air-conditioned relief was a revelation. Every moment before, anticipation. The heat in New York is remarkable in a different way. Without the reliable sharp edge of central air, the clarity of an unnaturally cold room, days become fuzzy. Thoughts slow, feelings expand and boundaries blur. My body is your body is the grass is this bus seat is this dress. I say more of the things that float into my mind, I sleep much more or much less. New York in the summer has always made me feel nostalgic. Maybe it just turns my brain mushy, but this feels like longing. In the grand This Recording tradition, below is a list of things that make me ache in a good way when it's 104 degrees outside.

Blue Fla-Vor-Ice

Phoebe Washburn

French kissing frenzies by the middle school buses

Allison Krauss and Emmylou Harris in my father's car

The fear that the water slide will steal my bikini top

Arnold Palmers in a too-big styrofoam cup

Weezer

Basketball on the blacktop

Goodbye, Columbus

Sweaty optimistic apartment parties in our freshman year of life

Elizabeth Peyton

AOL chat rooms

Canned peaches in syrup

Sketchers

Driving around on Saturday nights, shrieking when a good song comes on

Drinking iced coffee outside, then inside, then outside

Astroworld vs Great Adventure

Princess Di

Pressing 'record' at the perfect moment to tape your favorite song on the radio

Itchy, dry grass on the backs of my legs; soft, feathery grass on the backs of my legs

Fumbling sex

The Liars Club

Trampolines

Lucian Freud

High school boys

Field trips

Short haircuts

Sitting on our damp towels in the car on the way home from the pool

Christian Slater in Untamed Heart

Naps

Sunny D

Mix tapes before High Fidelity

Folded up notes written in 3 different pens

Chili's

Painting my nails with white out

Fake Plastic Trees

Holding hands at the mall

Bread and Jam for Frances

Badlands

Rebecca Wiener is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer and artist living in Greenpoint. Her website is here.

"The Freshmen" - The Verve Pipe (mp3)

"Summer Girls" - LFO (mp3)

"Fake Plastic Trees" - Radiohead (mp3)

"Island in the Sun" - Weezer (mp3)

In Which The Next Three Months Will Go Exactly As Planned

Your Guide to Summer!

by ALMIE ROSE

There are so many great things to do during the summer. But if you’re tired of going to the beach or making lemonade or other Tennessee Williams activities, here are some things to try that are a little different.

For this one, you have to start a little early, around November. Because this is the year you’re really going to do it: you’re going to give yourself plenty of time to get your ideal summer figure into that bathing suit! You say this every year, but this is really going to be the year. There’s something so magical sounding about “2010.”

January is when you’ll realize that you’ve totally fucked up your once steely resolve to get a beach body; your body is more like a “Hey let’s get some more Gap sweaters” body. Calm down and remind yourself that deadlines are made to be broken, because you are a human, and you are loved. Scream into the shower. Smile like Dick Van Dyke and tell yourself that you still have plenty of time.

For this next activity all you have to do is realize that it’s the first week of June and that since January you’ve been exercising on and off and eating right on and off and drinking on and on and you’ve only got about a month and five days before you go with your boyfriend to his cousin’s wedding and his ex will be there and you don’t want to look like a downgrade and you need to get this shit together, now.

Here are some other fun summer things! Grab a friend, go to Starbucks, wait until the barista asks you what you’d like, then have both of you shout at the same time, “ORANGE MOCHA FRAPPUCINOS!” then maybe high five and freeze. Before you go to Starbucks, rehearse this with your friend. It’s important that you say your lines in unison. Get it together, Darryl; I’m not fucking around. Then get your Orange Mocha Frappucinos, hop in your Jeep, and drive to the beach blasting Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” because something about that song and Jeeps go beautifully together. Once you get to the beach, don’t actually get out of the car. You don’t want to get sand everywhere and you’ll have to get the Jeep back to Hertz anyway, because you’re only renting it.

Summer is also the perfect time to catch up on those popular shows everyone loves that you don’t watch. Netflix is the site to visit for getting the hottest television programs sent directly to your home, like Frasier. How many times are you at a party and everything is going smoothly and people are laughing at your jokes until someone brings up a classic episode of Frasier that you just haven’t seen? It’s happened at least once, for me. You have to nod and smile and pretend that you know what they’re talking about when they exclaim, “And then Niles just GIVES HIM THE BOTTLE OF PINOT GRIGIO!” and howl with laughter. It’s rough. It’s maybe one of the hardest moments anyone will ever have to go through in life. Don’t let this happen to you. Scrambled eggs all over my face!

Take that vacation you’ve always wanted to; the one where you’re crying at three in the morning wondering what went wrong and why you’re not the successful person you thought you would be and how you just want to pack up one suitcase of necessary items and disappear to the French countryside or Joshua Tree and live where no one can find you. Experience that moment of clarity in between swallowing xanax where, yes, this is a great idea. Virgin America, here you come!

Remember, all you need is yourself. And money. Once your money runs out, you’ll have to find something to do to make money. You can try to hole up in your cottage but at some point you’ll need water, and possibly food. Try selling your pottery! If you don’t know how to make pottery, now might be the time to learn. People love buying pottery, especially when they’re told it came from a recluse in the middle of nowhere.

Anything goes: it’s summer! Run away! Hide! Don’t let people find you! Stay off of the Internet! Change your face! Create your own language! Bottle your urine! Get scurvy! Have a great summer!

Almie Rose is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find her website here and her twitter here.

"Neapolitan Dreams" - Lisa Mitchell (mp3)

"Heavy in Your Arms" - Florence and the Machine (mp3)

"Heart to Tell" - The Love Language (mp3)

"Any Way You Want It" - Journey (mp3)

In Which The Summer Wind Came Blowin' In From Across The Sea

Summer Here Kids

by MOLLY LAMBERT

What happened to Summer? Not that betch who dumped Joseph Gordon Levitt and made him enroll in fictional military utopian school to become Cobra Commander. I mean the actual season. Where did it go? Was it not so long ago I first broke out my SPF 10000 moonscreen (4 gingers, you couldn't understand) and tiki umbrella?

Is it really so soon that I feel the wispy cold leaves of autumn a rap rap rapping at my cab cab cabinet. Were it not for my birthday and the impending return of Mad Men I would dread the arrival of September. Vestigial dread of high school starting back up.

Where were the summer jams? Instead all we got was the death of the eighties, as personified by Michael Jackson and John Hughes. Where is the justice? Who'll stop the rain? How about four year old Zachary Clouter of Ipswich, Suffolk? 

Yes this genius found a potato that looks like a goddamn duck. How fucking cute is that. Would that we could all go back to the days when we reveled in the simple pleasures, pleasures like finding potatoes that look like ducks, instead of focusing on the inevitable day of reckoning when ducks and potatoes alike will be slaughtered and roasted and sold for their delicious hides. 

Which one is which? Will a potato duck float? Or maybe you've been wasting your life looking for duck shaped potatoes when you should have been out winning Ernest Hemingway lookalike competitions. 

It's enough to make a person develop courtship disorder. In a rare bit of good news, Yahw-h has chosen to fulfill all of Alex's fantasies with the news that Disney has acquired screen rights to a new rendition of The Diary of Anne Frank, to be written and helmed by David Mamet. I can't wait to hear what Anne sounds like with Mamet's wordistry. "Fuck! I'm stuck in the motherfucking attic! Fuck those fucking nazi cunts."

                          and I pray, oh my god do I pray

Fall is a good season, perhaps the best season, even in Los Angeles. But it is a contemplative season. When you feel the need to pull on sweaters and listen to Red House Painters or Smog or some other band that gives you feelingz.

But I'm not done with you yet, summer. I wanna body surf on a rainbow.  I want to feed dolphins with that gap toothed betch from True Blood. I am but a dreamer. I have so many dreams, world. Why won't you let me dream them. I just want to train elephants.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. She twitters here.

 

"Turn Up The Dial" - Simian Mobile Disco (mp3) highly recommended

"Ambulance" - Simian Mobile Disco (mp3)

"Cream Dream" - Simian Mobile Disco (mp3)