Reading: Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's

Moving: biked 5 miles

30 July 2001: Hot

It is so blasted hot. Saturday was hot. I biked to Cook Park (five miles? six?), swam 1.8k, biked from Cook to Confluence (eight miles?) and thence homeward. After that much exercise and that much sun, I was weary. Sunday I didn't want to be in the sun that much again and didn't even drive even just to Congress to swim. Today it is blastingly hot. I ambled to the library to meet BLAP, which is how Haitch abbreviates her sister's family (perhaps only for my benefit). I ambled very slowly. Staggering back to work, I could only work up an appetite, this being lunchtime, for a mocha frap, which does not, I told myself sternly, count as lunch. As does seldom happen back at the ranch, though, there were noshables left from a meeting. I took a turkey sandwich.

This morning when I got up, a little before sunrise, the thermometer under the nectarine tree showed high 60s. I opened the front door and moved a fan from the study door (where it had been pulling swamp cooler air from the study to the dining room all night) to the door. The thermostat showed 77, and the house is only tolerable under 80. I closed the bedroom windows facing north and east and lowered their shades, debating whether they could stay open for a little longer. A few minutes later I went out to get my bike, and the low morning sun easily could knock me flat. When it gets this hot, we close all the windows, the dining room one by Blake's cage and the kitchen window, trying to keep the heat in. Well, it hasn't been this hot for over four weeks. We can deal.

The basement is still several degrees cooler than the upstairs, but the ground has warmed up enough that it doesn't keep it as cool. This weekend I watered the back yard and the front, and this afternoon I will water the fruit trees. Hot.

Last night after sunset I emerged blinking from the house to water the vegetable garden and extract the latest fruit from my monster zucchini plants. It was hot even then. The waxing moonlight felt hot. And it was buggy--I got three spandy new skeeter bites. They must breed in the vegetable garden, which is the only moist place around. They tried to suck me dry as I unwound bindweed from the raspberry bushes. I can only deal with one parasite at a time, please!

And I really hope I can feed Jessie and Golden Boy and whoever else shows up tomatoes next weekend, but the beefsteak are getting bigger and bigger without turning red yet. It can't be long though. They've got six days to buck up.

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What always occurs to me is Robin Williams as Adrian Kronaeur in "Good Morning, Vietnam!" which came out during college. SEM is hardly a stand-up comedian, but he resembles Robin WIlliams in hairiness and liveliness more than a little. PLT and I had a nickel bet once that I could not keep quiet throughout one entire movie, and we tested my mettle at "Hook." With Robin Williams being so completely off the wall, his resemblance to our friend was even more pronounced than usual, and I nearly ruptured not saying anything. I believe I went "MmmmMMMMmmmmHhmm!" and gesticulated at the screen a lot, but I didn't open my lips. Anyway. Robin Williams as the Saigon deejay does a weather report: "It's hot! Damn hot! Hot and wet! That's nice when you're with a lady, but not so nice when you're in the jungle!"

Of course, the irony of my memorizing SEM-esque Robin Williams movies is that my incessant movie quoting makes him crazy. Or did, when it was all about "Breakfast Club," as it was the first year we knew each other. In college we quoted Monty Python all over the place and when I think of the lumberjack song I still hear SEM's voice, not one of the troupe's.

Today at work Egg asked if I've ever seen "Harold and Maude." It's only my favorite movie in any possible dimension, including across the eighth. We expounded on its many joys and perfections:

• "But Maude, I love you!"
  "That's wonderful, Harold. Go and love some more," and
• how where she puts his present reminds me of The Little Prince, because of the prince's joy in the sky because of the rose and the pilot's joy in it because of the prince and
• "Harold! That was your last date!"

I asked her if she has seen "My Bodyguard." I saw "My Bodyguard" when it came out, in a theatre? I saw so few movies I don't know how that could have been, but so it was. I saw "Pete's Dragon" with REBD, and "Blue Lagoon" with my mother and sister--I remember the ticket-seller asking my mother if she knew it was an R movie--and "1941" on New Year's Eve when my mother and her friends were at "Coal Miner's Daughter," I think. Also we went to drive-ins when I was very young; we stopped long before my parents divorced. Afterward my mother brought us to necessary movies like "Star Wars" and "Empire Strikes Back"--my sister broke the news to me by telling me we were going to "The Kingdom Hits Again"--and "E.T.," but I can't think how "Bodyguard" counted as important. Anyway, I saw "Bodyguard" and had an eight-grade crush on Chris Makepeace, and then in high school sometime I saw "Harold and Maude." It wasn't until much later--after I saw "Rosemary's Baby" and was horrified that Ruth Gordon played a mean character--that I realized the grandmother in "The Bodyguard," whom I had always remembered fondly was also played by my beloved Maude. Actually the two characters are quite a bit alike.

Hey! Joan Cusack was in "My Bodyguard"! I must see that again. Ah, and thank you, IMDb, for reassuring me Adam Baldwin is no relation to Alec et al. Also, anyone who confuses this with another movie ten years later with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner needs to be spanked and sent to a video store.

Egg loved "Bodyguard" too but didn't realize who John Doe Jersey is in "Dogma." Bud Cort hadn't been in much and nothing major since he was Harold, until "Dogma."