Want to know a secret?
I kinda hate July.
Not that some very fine things haven’t happened in July historically –my birthday for example– but I live in Texas, and living in Texas in July sucks.
I am essentially a hollow shell of despair and misery, shuffling though the daytime hours trying to make it through without stepping on fire ants or bursting into spontaneous flame. Isn’t August worse? It’s hotter, but there’s the psychological comfort of knowing next month is September, and September means autumn. Of course September is almost always JUST as broiling as August and it only gets cool on Halloween –which is fantastic because that means all the girls who are dressed as slutty whatevers freeze and look miserable in their hooker heels and corsets– but in July? July you’ve got many a mile before you rest, and those miles are HOT.
So what does that have to do with music?
Stay with me.
Last Friday was particularly miserable for me. Not that I was having a bad day, but it had been raining for the past week and yet the temperature stayed around 90 degrees and feeling like you’re living inside the sweating gusset of Bangkok’s festering underpants is not pleasant, at least not for me. The only thing that could possibly make me feel better: I wanted a cupcake.
Now, I don’t have a huge sweet tooth (I much prefer savory fatty things to sugarbombs) so I decided if I was going to go out of my way to get a cupcake I was going to do it right, Make an event out of it and that event would be my microvacation.
After much deliberation I decided I wanted a white cupcake with an enormous pillow of chocolate buttercream frosting, and not only did I want that cupcake, I wanted to eat it in bed, naked, with the air conditioning set to Emotionally Unavailable Penguin and I wanted to listen to The Cure. The Cure part was essential. It wouldn’t be a microvacation without the music.
The right song –particularly a good pop song– can be like a little escape and what better way to start The Worst Month Ever than with a series of little microbreaks? I mean other than having that FIFA ref who failed to call the England goal (and who, if you’ll recall, is a wanker) dipped in an 80 gallon barrel of Marmite and then set upon by a pack of ravenous England-supporting badgers. That would be WAY better.
Anyhoo, let’s kick off Music Month with the song that started it all: The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love from their crucial album Wish. Unfortunately, Polydor has disabled embedding so you’ll have to click the link below for the video, but here’s a great live version (even if the intro IS in German, ptui ptui):
Watch the original video here
Download the single here
Buy the album (as if you don’t already have it) here.
1. I don’t want to watch ushers dance. I just don’t.
2. I’m sitting here wondering why I have never dressed as Robert Smith for Halloween, and then I remembered: I spent most of 1984 dressed as Robert Smith.
Comment by Jezebella — July 6, 2010 @ 3:43 pm
Not going to date myself by mentioning that while I quite like The Cure, I was introduced to them by my daughter. But more importantly, did you get your GD cupcake?
Comment by Kyra — July 6, 2010 @ 4:34 pm
I share your pain. By August I’ve worn out all my summer fashion combos, I’m sick of hanging out at Book People, I’ve seen all the movies and I just want it to end. My people were intended to live on the moors. Google Summer Season Depression. It won’t help much but at least you know you aren’t alone in the land of the people who want to bask in the heat like a lizard on a hot rock.
Comment by Thea — July 6, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
Plumcake, as an English bird, I love you. I’d propose if I weren’t engaged already. And you should accept, ‘cos I’m a catch, honest. I’ll buy you as many cupcakes as you want with analogies like those.
Comment by Jo — July 6, 2010 @ 5:35 pm
@Jo: I’ve never had ’em called “analogies” before.
Comment by Plumcake — July 6, 2010 @ 5:41 pm
OK, this phrase, “feeling like you’re living inside the sweating gusset of Bangkok’s festering underpants” is absolute magic. I lived and worked in New York City in the mid-1970s and I can tell you that this phrase exactly describes what it feels like at 11 p.m., on an August night, after three cold showers, with the elevated subway train roaring by your open windows because there is not breeze whatsoever..just unremitting, sweatiness and misery.
Comment by Toby Wollin — July 6, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
I am totally stealing your line about setting the AC on Emotionally Unavailable Penguin. Hell, I think I dated that guy.
Comment by Jane — July 6, 2010 @ 8:15 pm
Yup, I too hate hot summer days. I live in a San Francisco bay area suburb that get’s hot. So, we go to San Francisco for cooler, cloudy weather, but lately it’s been quite warm and sunny there as well PLUS every single sales person says “isn’t this weather sooooo great?”
I have very pale skin, my EXPENSIVE red hair fades in the sun. I’m okay with being vampiric (except for the “Twilight” films). I like winter clothes. Last summer I read “The Magic Mountain.” I’m looking for a similar epic to enjoy with my sofa, shades drawn & avoiding the outside until Fall.
Comment by Debs — July 6, 2010 @ 8:17 pm
@Debs I just read the Most Wonderful book: A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. I’m in a fury that my prose will never be that good.
Oh my angsty nights of listening to the Cure. Nobody understood me. Turns out, many years later, that nobody understands me, still, but it’s not nearly as interesting as I thought back then. Alas, but the music was still nice.
Comment by Lisa — July 6, 2010 @ 8:47 pm
“it had been raining for the past week and yet the temperature stayed around 90 degrees and feeling like you’re living inside the sweating gusset of Bangkok’s festering underpants is not pleasant”
And THIS, Ladies, is why I moved away from Houston back to California despite all the weirdos my lovely state attracts (and I’m not talkin’ Gonzo, cause he rocks.)
And I love “Friday, I’m in Love” with a strange and disturbing fervor, not unlike my crush on Robert Smith, which I still can’t really explain. It’s just one of my top happy songs in life…and it’s by the Cure. Not really sure what this says about me….
Comment by Eilish — July 6, 2010 @ 9:54 pm
It just makes me want to splash in a cool fountain and jump in fresh puddles. And drink champagne.
Comment by Melissa — July 6, 2010 @ 11:32 pm
Sorry if this is too specific. Lisa, I did buy (online) “A Tale of Love and Darkness” by Amos Oz. Oddly, my family are Ashkenazi Jews (paternal). So, if not understood, very much appreciated. (thank you).
Comment by Debs — July 7, 2010 @ 12:10 am
Hell, I hate summer. It has finally arrived in Seattle this week and everyone is sooooo happy, everyone except me. I’m keeping my big mouth shut for a change.
Ah, guyliner. It always reminds me of boys in high school. I am old, yo, old enough to remember when U2 and the Police were cool new bands.
Hope you found a cupcake, and that is not an analogy.
Comment by Abby — July 7, 2010 @ 12:17 am
Add in the sweet (sweat)ness of being in the throes of menopausal temperature meltdowns. I can’t tell if the waterfall dripping on my couture is heat or hormonally induced or a cruel combo of both. And the next person that implies it is a result of my weight is going to finally prove that an organism can be induced to consume itself. Anywhoddle! Tomorrow tomorrow will be over 100 with a code red ozone alert. So, I will not only be trapped in the Bangkok undie gusset, but I will be the bow on top of it’s crotch…
Comment by Jennie — July 7, 2010 @ 12:43 am
@Debs–that’s the exact book. I was absolutely transported by it, viewing the world through the incredulous eyes of an intelligent Jewish boy in the new nation of Israel.
I have another friend who is reading Anna Karenina right now for the first time. A Russian mais alliance.
Reading really is the only good use of July.
Comment by Lisa — July 7, 2010 @ 2:29 am
Plumcake, I love your blog, I do, but please get over your German bashing already. I’m not saying the wars weren’t bad, they were. I’m not saying the Holocaust wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened, because it was.
But many things have happened since then, we have a nice democracy now, a female president and we even managed the reunification without shedding blood, which, as I might add, is no small feat.
The German bashing joke, it’s old, if not 65 years old, it’s at least Fawlty-Towers old. You’re too fresh for that.
Comment by Cara — July 7, 2010 @ 4:52 am
So is that football game!
Comment by Violet — July 7, 2010 @ 10:58 am
I have to squint pretty hard to see any German-bashing in this post. On the other hand, who cares if Merkel is a woman–the better part is that you guys elected a physicist rather than yet another lawyer!
Comment by Astra — July 7, 2010 @ 2:26 pm
Aw Cara. Wir haben so viele schöne Dinge, können wir ein paar Beleidigungen. Wir haben wunderbare Gebäck und hervorragenden öffentlichen Nahverkehr. Und den besten Kaffee! Und wir haben gut gespielt in den Fußball!
This is the best thing ever ever ever (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126975756)
Comment by Lisa — July 7, 2010 @ 7:42 pm
Most of Maryland has been a virtual firecrotch this week with 100 degree temps. We’ll be getting relief in the form of mid-90’s temperatures starting tomorrow. Gotta love summer.
Comment by Bree — July 7, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
My favorite Cure video/song is “Just Like Heaven.” Oddly enough , it reminds me of “Annabelle Lee.”
Final comment, I loved Anna Karenina, which I read over the holidays. Not so much “War & Peace.” If anyone knows of a great virtual book club, I’m there.
Comment by Debs — July 7, 2010 @ 11:02 pm
@Lisa: I’ll take your Pimm’s Cup and go back to apply more eyeliner to do some more brooding ;) Nothing to “ptooie, ptooie” about nice cold drinks at all.
Comment by Cara — July 8, 2010 @ 6:14 am