September 5, 2008: Mercy Rule

The gray clouds have been hovering over me for days now, a chilly reminder of the reality that I refuse to face: I'm in Michigan and not Southern California. The 80 and Sunny weather description challenge is suffering because I didn't let it go after a year like originally planned. What was once a die-hard display of writerly discipline is now just a testament to what a bad idea it is to hang on to something that has run its course.

So 80 and Sunny: 2007-2008 Edition is going to be archived here and on a special edition hard copy zine type thing that will be sent to all my guest writers and anyone that sends me an email complimenting my hair or my hard work.

I'm letting SoCal rest for the time being. I'll let Lynch do the LA weather reports. I'm starting fresh RIGHT NOW.

Labor Days Aug 30 - Sept 1 2008

When it's hot in Michigan, hot over eighty degrees, it is as comfortable as trying on wet jeans. People like to pretend it's beautiful out. My mom says to me "you couldn't ask for anything more, it's a beautiful day."

I guess it's just my LA nature but I could think of five quick jumping-off points that would have made the day better starting with a temp reduction of ten degrees and ending with an extended sunset.

August 28, 008

Soggy and seventy like the early entry wing of an old folks home. When the weather begins to remind you of the inside of the chuck taylors you've been wearing sans socks for eight years it really is time to evaluate your geographic placement.

August 27, 2008

If today was a celebrity it would have been Don Most.

August 26, 2008

Late summer sun in Michigan is like a candle centerpiece on a wooden picnic table. It's like a folk song. It's like the marriage of a snickerdoodle and oatmeal cookie. It's like a two-tone tan and cream El Dorado. It's like a bag of lays or a can of pringles or a bucket of popcorn or a bowl of pasta - whatever you can't get enough of.

August 25, 2008

It's fifty degrees here in mid-Mich, meaning that I'd have to actually double down on degrees to equal just one day in the Southwest. I'm made about having to wear a cardigan before labor day but I shouldn't judge. They like to keep things moist here in the mitten and there's only one way to do that: lay off the burner for a while.

August 24, 2008

Travis Bickle used to say that some day a great rain was going to come and wash away all the filth. Last night a great rain came in the mid Michigan country and washed away some pretty filthy heat.

August 23, 2008

Think of a greasy spoon diner on a Saturday morning, you are sitting by a window and the sun is heating up the side of your face, there’s a ceiling fan kind of close to your seat but the coffee you can’t help but drink is making your forehead sweat. The waitress brings your short stack and you douse it in syrup, you pick up your fork to take a bite and feel the stickiness on the handle of your fork. You mis-poured and now your hand is full of syrup and your forehead is sweaty and you still want pancakes and a napkin won’t do a thing but tear away and live forever in the stickiness. That is what humidity is. Say Yes! To Michigan.

August 22, 2008

The reverse hose-down: The more it rains here the hotter it gets.

August 20, 2008

Oh I heard it seven times today. "It's so nice out, get outside if you can!" Grocery store clerks, radio announcers, priests, parents, football coaches - all of them aware of the beauty of this rare day. Low seventies with an autumn-preview sun. It is more of a crime to stay inside on one of Michigan's 100 yearly sunny days than it is to throw a pop can in the garbage.

August 15-18, 2008

Here in the Great Lakes State you don't have to sweat in 80 degrees because the air does it for you.

Most people get really sweaty anyway.

August 14, 2008

Locusts and lightening bugs! The entire day went by with nary a cloud passing. I dare say it was actually 80 and Sunny in Michigan. The difference in aesthetic being in the clouds and the second growth trees. I wish we all wore shoes made of dehumidifiers.

August 13, 2008

Michigan weather is like a scoop of ice cream. It is never the same consistency twice and it makes you feel guilty if you don’t appreciate it. Wait, that is kind of like a mother. Michigan weather is like a mother. It is never the same consistency twice and will totally understand if you need your space. Wait, that is actually like a cat. Michigan weather is like a cat, it is never satisfied and only craps in the sand.

Ice cream, mothers, and cats: this weather report brought to you by the Chick Lit Association

August 8, 2008

I've crossed three time zones and several climates. I have yet to decide what will become of 80 and Sunny. Maybe it will be a cute nickname for all the lightning bugs outside across the field out here in the Michigan country. Maybe it will be a dream mantra, a sun dance chant. All that I know is that constant sunshiny weather will probably be rare come fall around here. I will have to start a new blog, "Windchill Factor" if I stay north.

Tonight is a chilly sixty and damp, damp like your legs in shorts against a vinyl booth seat that a waitress just cleared off with a wet rag.

End of July

Since 80 and Sunny accomplished the goal of creatively describing the weather everyday for a full year, I have been taking a break. A break to pack up my bags and find another weatherly place to report about. Check back soon for temp and atmosphere reports from the road.

For now, I am still in LA, and the weather is indeed, 80 and Sunny.

July 10, 2008

365 days of creatively, and oftentimes dully, describing the weather.

The things I learned:

1) It is actually only 80 and Sunny around here about 60% of the time.
2) My 2007-2008 weather season was relatively grey but quite often sunny.
3) Sometimes the weather calls for a metaphor, sometimes a simile, but never a knock-knock joke.
4) Metaphor days are beautiful, simile days can be difficult.
5) Smog is its own weather.

July 9, 2008

Oh the weather today. Some people call it overcast, some call it pollution, I call it little particles of industrial afterbirth. JG read in an article that Olympic marathon runners were training in baggy sweats and face masks to condition their bodies to the pollution in China. Our air quality today inspired me to send an open invitation to all Olympic athletes to come train in LA. It’s kind of like Bejing Light.

And a science note take-away for the eve of the 365th day of 80 and Sunny:The sky itself is not full of blue-tinted particles. Instead, light waves are deflected by air molecules, and repeated collisions scatter light in all directions.

July 8, 2008

So many food references come up when thinking about weather metaphors: lemonade, chili cheese Fritos, bacon, eggs, pudding - they all could describe the sun and air. I try to be more creative. I want to tell you how beautiful today was without using foodstuff in a simile but I don't know if it will work out. Today was sunny and pleasant like a spray of a citrus perfume named after a beach walk.

July 7, 2008

Shaking hands with the mid-eighties in a pottery kiln.

July 6, 2008

We are all cut potatoes in a sunshine oil deep fryer: A crispy eighty three and sunny today.

July 5, 2008

A real sizzler, without the buffet. No choices, just sun and a passing cloud if you really wanted it enough.

July 4, 2008

Hot as the inside of a human body. It was a day for napping and a night for explosives. Happy 4th of July.

July 2 & 3, 2008

In the summertime we can put Wednesday and Thursday together like a Saturday and Sunday. Both are days we don't want to work.

It's been hotter than reported as of late. The papers are saying eighty-somethings and our skin is feeling one hundred and ninety something. The factual journalistic truth and the sun are not agreeing and one of them is always right so keep wearing sunscreen.

July 1, 2008

How does one describe a sunny day? In comparison to the day before or the dark night or the long months of hard winter that preceded it? Should we describe it as it is, in the moment, regardless of what came before and what will come after? I’ll describe todays bright eighty-two sunny degrees like this: hot mustard over cold honey.

June 30, 2008

The brightness of the day can best be measured by how dangerous it is to be a pedestrian at dusk.

The longest day has past but we won't know the difference for a while. For now it seems like the sun is hanging out extra long. Not over-staying her welcome or anything, just letting us know it's high summertime.

June 29, 2008

Soft side of serious heat today. My block is the injection site of the sun. Side effects include sweating, squinting, and browning around the edges.

June 28, 2008

A day as perfect as yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

June 26 & 27, 2008

80 and Sunny has been tripped up from it's daily message in the past week plus. It never helps to place blame but it's always easy to blame the weather. Days were lumped in with other days, descriptions have been reduced to "ditto" It's a shame. Hopefully just a brief dark period in this season of summer light. A summer solsctice minireverse hybernation and a heat wave protest rolled into one.

We are back and ready to once again describe a sunny day.

June 23-25, 2008

I came back in with the cool breeze today. No traces of the hot weather my guest writers complained about, until I opened up the door to my place. It had been preheated to 101 degrees for the past ten days.

June 22, 2008

Pretty pink roses are burning brown. Talkative people are mum. Nice people are mean and mean people are too hot to bother. Everyone is walking slowly. The grocery stores have sold out of ice. Whether or not it is really 118 degrees I cannot tell but I can tell you it might as well be 1018 degress because that's what it feels like.

-BT

June 20, 2008

I have been enjoying the breezy, rain-sprinkled weather of Michigan so I could only assume the worst fate for my absent guest writers. The message I received from Bethany today confirmed:

Today has rendered me a human ice cream cone dripping sticky melting onto the sidewalk hot hot sidewalk. Sticky icky eewwy gooey hot.

Stay alive.

June 16 & 17, 2008

Weather reports from the indoors and out and those walking to the movies:

From JG:
Without exaggeration, the only proper description for tonights weather in Los Angeles is perfect. The sun lit moon has showered the trees and rooftops with a beautiful night light. (Feel free to edit this sara....we are walking to the vista to see the hulk as I write this) -JG

editors note: perf as is

From Jamie M:

My house is stuffy. My house is stuffed with warm air. I'm being squashed by hot air. In my own home! It feels like something stole my home away from me and replaced it with a cube of torture. I am uncomfortable at my desk. I am uncomfortable in my bed. i am uncomfortable eating. I just want to shower in cold water and whine and fart and knife fight the person, place or thing that is responsible for this annoying, ominous HEAT HEAT HEAT. I don't know how many degrees it is outside because it doesn't matter because its 5 trillion degrees hotter in my hot cube home. the end. f$%* the heat. the end.

June 15, 2008

Bethany T takes on the task of describing our Father's Day weather:

Today a bright and happy child holding sticks of color has drawn Los Angeles. Fluffy white is dotted all across the clear blue sky. A canary yellow crayon has drawn countless circles filling the day with warmth and light. People are drawn walking in the park smiling under the shade of blooming magnolia trees. Hang this picture on your fridge to remind yourself on the smoggy days how beautiful this city always wants to be.

June 13 & 14, 2008

Gorgeous, sunshiny morning with hot sunshine later that made people collate all of their yard sale goods into tiny little patches of shade.

June 12, 2008

Beautiful day. Today was like selling a shiny burgundy 1981 Mercedes to a couple on their way to a 55 year high school reunion in Colorado. So fitting, so well dressed, so happy. Reunited with a destiny that they had always hoped for.

June 11, 2008

We are on a winning streak here people. Lets not overthink it, overexplain it, and just try to appreciate it for what it is. You are only as sunny as your last hour and today was yet another championship day filled with fourteen sunsmacking sections of sixty minutes.

June 10, 2008

Eighty and clear today with a bit of rather arrogant cloud foreshadowing.

June 9, 2008

Sunny. 80. A perfectly perfect day if you were able to ignore the "tomato notices" all over the city.

June 8, 2008

Frizzante sky.

June 7, 2008

Eighty and sunny. Perfectly.

June 6, 2008

D-Day, a day to storm beaches and celebrate my little brother's birthday! Eighty and pleasant while sitting still, a bit too sunny for outdoor, unshaded physical activity. Perfectly fine for an evening baseball game.

June 5, 2008

The temperature today was water and the sun was air like the sky was hot.

June 4, 2008

An unwelcome visit from Ms. June Gloom. If we all bond together we can be as unaccommodating as possible and she can take off with her friend Mr. Sprinkles and head to the bay area where they belong.

June 3, 2008

What a day for a daydream. Sunshiny and pleasant as a foot rub. Pleasant as a white wine spritzer, an episode of "Touched by an Angel," or even as pleasant as Saturn customer service in the 90s.

June 2, 2008

In June, thousands of climate control engineers from all over the world gather in southern California to research what the ideal temperature would be for human happiness. You could see all those pocket-protector nerds roaming around the flower lined streets of Atwater Village sniffing around, holding their faces to the sunshine, wetting their fingers to monitor air direction. Their research is never done.

June 1, 2008

Today I learned that it is always, without fail, seventy four and one half degrees fahrenheit in Pasadena. The city is under a special invisible temperature dome that is funded by the two dollar over night street parking permits. The steady temperature encourages kind attitudes and picnics.

May 30 & 31, 2008

How do you put a perfect pair of days in words? Do you say seventy-five and sunny with a gentle cooling breeze? Do you mention that the breeze felt as if it was brought in from the tops of push-pops from children on carnival cruise boats? No, no you don't.

May 29, 2008

Glory goodness what a day to pack a picnic. Mid-seventies and sunny all the way till Sunday. Finally.

May 28, 2008

If days were people and weather was clothing then today would have been a malnourished short old man with a full head of wiry grey hair dressed in tight seersucker clamdiggers and floating in an XXL Celtics jersey.

May 27, 2008

Can we all wear white now? The mild sunshine and impalpable temperature dipped this day into the pre-summerish side on the pleasantry meter.

May 26, 2008

Five planes flew in formation
over us around noon.
Dark metal knights cutting through
the goldenrod and magnolia sky.
Creating a somber memorial
on this delicate golden day.

May 25, 2008

Still. Cold. Gray. Still cold and gray.

May 24, 2008

Los Angeles has not been a good host to springtime visitors looking for fun and sun. Instead it's become more of a napping zone, a pasta coma, and a sprinkleton. No place for Memorial Day weekend. It's time to bring in the set dressers and throw up the summertime.

May 23, 2008

Flashback to fall and winter and rainy days. This can't be May. The Dodgers game is postponed in the bottom of the ninth with one out. We wait in anticipation of a run tonight and the sun tomorrow.

May 22, 2008

The day started out sunny enough for a nieghborhood stroll. Dark clouds crashed the party by the late afternoon but were forgiven because they brought a guest we hadn't seen in years, maybe even decades around these parts: THUNDER.

May 21, 2008

The wind is changing the shape of things around here. Daisies look like tulips, mohawks look like comb-overs, flags look possessed, and people crossing the street look like they are coming out of mime school. If things weren't business as usual, and if it wasn't mostly sunny and pleasantly seventy something degrees, we'd be staring in the alternate trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's new flick.

May 20, 2008

Oh sweet easy breezy how we love the seventies. Perfect baseball weather, perfect high-fiving light, ideal touring sky, I'd even go so far as to say - indefectible marathon air.

May 19, 2008

The heat hangover continues. Sweat forms any place where skin touches skin or fabric touches skin or skin touches metal or metal touches fabric or one thing touches another. We notice, with great annoyance, how much heat is generated by the things we use everyday; laptops, televisions, windows, staplers, papers, people looking sideways...

May 18, 2008

About nine degrees less than a hundred degrees is still hot. The most dangerous place to be the day after a seriously hot day is indoors in, say, a residence where the occupants were unsuccessful in their heat management. While it was only in the mid eighties outside, several houses and apartments and party stores across LA were still trying to cool down after the oven door shut. It was like heat surrounding a pilot light. Like hot sweat particles lingering in a locker room. Like cholesterol in the air seven hours after the fryers have been turned off. Unless you ice it when you first get it, that burn -- the heat from the day is going to keep cooking long after the sun has done her business.

May 17, 2008

After a late morning walk through the Silverlake hills, Bethany and I decided it is 107 degrees. The hostess at the Eagle Rock restaurant said a guy told her it was 103. Weather dot com says its only 95 in LA proper. You can’t get all of your weather information from the internet. It was, and still almost is, hot enough to cook brains.

May 16, 2008

Nearly a hundo! Today looked and felt like the Carl's Jr Jalapeno Chicken sandwich -- the one in the commercials that looks all food stylist-stylized. They make sloppy look sexy. It's their thing. The sandwich features a thick layer of sliced jalapenos balanced over melted cheese. It's like the smog over the sun. Do you get it?

May 15, 2008

It’s hot today like we all did something terribly wrong. Not the ultimate punishment (boiled skin, eternal damnation, hair on fire, chipped-paint on the hoods of our cars) but a warning of things to come if we don’t straighten up. I think they call this earthquake weather.

May 14, 2008

Nearly 80 and certainly sunny. Shut up and shine you freak hot orange ball. We love it. You highlight the trees, the sidewalks, and the floating particles of our natural resources in their chipped-up cracked-off car-dusting death state.

May 13, 2008

Mid seventies with a hopscotch sun and a kite friendly breeze today.

May 12, 2008

What is there to post but we are getting June Gloom when we should be getting May Gray? I mean the world has gone topsy turvy. It's cold and fall like in the late spring. The reason Los Angeles is such a car town is because we sometimes, not often, but sometimes have to drive to the sunshine. It's an entirely huntable resource - you can just dig and drive and drive and dig until you find it. And you will find it, it may be fifty or a hundred and fifty miles east but it's there, hovering, radiating, baking, and bossing dirt around out there in the desert. That crazy sun can't sublet to the clouds forever.

May 10 & 11, 2008

Sure as the sun shines in southern California, the Salton Sea still smells like fish.

May 9 & 10, 2008

Hiatus due to visit from Detroit resident. Like the toxic winds of a firestorm, the visitor has brought with her several omens of strong(hesitant to say bad) luck; closure of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, cold gray days, and an embarrassing loss to the Astros.

May 7, 2008

Chills to pay the bills. A real inside-the-park cloud-ridden cold-ass day. Come on people, we have visitors coming. This is th ekind of thing you'd come to expect from Santa Cruz, not the land of movie stars and swimming pools.

May 6, 2008

The January weather reprise continued today like the third telling of the same joke.

May 5, 2008

A completely unreasonable unseasonable day. Weather and wind and grayness that flip-flopped our flip-flops for boots and wool socks. Is this May or is this the end? If only today would have offered a receipt. The kind with the extra long prints out with the call-in survey instructions. At least then we'd all be entered in a drawing to win $5,000 or maybe a 10% temperature increase on our next visit.

Happy B-Day Karl Marx.

May 3 & 4, 2008

Light sun and an easy exchange of breeze and bustle made us do a double take and ask Saturday and Sunday, 'Are you guys twins?"

May 2, 2008

Listen up rest of the summer, today was perfect, high seventies, sunny, with a breeze completely absent of brush fire. This is how we are going to roll out from now on. Please follow in a single file line.

May 1, 2008

May day! Flowers and ribbons and lilies of the valley and international workers parties.

April 30, 2008

Fires from the north, the east, from everywhere. Fires are part of our summertime climate as much as the temperature, the sun rays, the wind, and the smell of honesuckle. And now a found words weather poem:

Color library forcasting
Polar disasters
The thin envelope of air
Where droughts often occur
Prevailing winds meet up
With the Earths rotation in
A kind of frost called rime
Cushioned to stop them
sinking into loose sand.

April 29, 2008

A day with a difference of ten degrees than the last is truly special. Any more than that and it's just showing off. And showing off is a little too LA, doncha think?

April 28, 2008

Today the outdoors is the enemy. The fires are back tossing toxic ash all over the foothills. Everything is ten degrees hotter than ninety. People with respiratory problems are advised to stay inside. By tomorrow that will be everybody.

April 27, 2008

Hot on the rooftops, hot on the street, wear something light to cover your feet.

April 26, 2008

We were all sweating in the shade but it was the kind of heat with meaning: warming a Saturday all our own to fill up with whatever we chose. Clear skies above and ten car lengths of room infront; a magical LA day.

April 25, 2008

The 25th hour.
The 13th inning.
The low to mid eighties today and again tomorrow.

Sun it out.

April 24, 2008

Sunshine like orange juice splashing slow motion into a glass.

April 23, 2008

According to popular weather reports, temps are dipping a little lower than normal lately. According to this weather report, Los Angeles hasn't been anywhere near normal for decades. We'll take the high sixties, low seventies, and anything else you can stand up and walk on Hollywood Blvd.

April 22, 2008

Earth Day is every day.

April 21, 2008

A beautiful late spring day will treat you like a new pair of sneakers. The kind with air bubbles or pockets or coils in the heel. The air is fresh and the weight of your life has not yet compacted everything. It’s a sole full of possibilities.

April 20, 2008

Parti su.

April 19, 2008

Today I said to myself, talk about the weather without mentioning clothing, work, gardening, or the sun. The only thing left is magnolia blossoms. I see one out the window and it's shiny, symmetrical, and signalling everyone to get outside.

April 18, 2008

Sunny with end of the work week heat. Parasol needed if you were at a flea market or performing crossing guard duties. Underarm deodorant needed if you were working at all. Hopefully not aerosol because there was enough smog today, thanks.

April 17, 2008

If you looked "perfect day" up in the dictionary it would say something like:

Stop using "if you looked blankity blank up in the dictionary..." to do your describing work. If you mean to say that such item, event, or emotion is a perfect specimen for defining such item, event, or emotion than just show us."

Seriously though today was perfect. Perfect for all outdoor sporting activities that require sun and warmth. Perfect for skipping out on work or sitting near a window if you couldn't skip out. Perfect for a picnic. Perfect for driving. Perfect for not doing laundry or hanging it outside if you did. Perfect for seeing how much dirt is on your car. And perfect for killing ants with a magnifying glass.

April 16, 2008

What do you think? You can just smog out the tourists? We have to live here too, us city lovers with our sinuses, our leathery pollutant-ridden sinuses. Soon your clouds will have to be full of mucinex and the blue in your sky, water from a neti-pot.

April 15, 2008

Hot and cold and partially and fully sunny therapy all day long.

April 14, 2008

Less hot today. That is what the weather report said when I checked this morning. "Less hot today," it said in this way that assumes we all know what the heck we are supposed to be comparing it too. It's a not really a new way of describing things this abstract comparison and indeed today was less hot, but it was really more hot than we'd like it.

April 13, 2008

Blazed out all day. Whitewashed bare blasted overexposed sunshine forced us all to run around from one air conditioned place to another like we were dodging for cover in a giant lazer tag game.

April 12, 2008

Sizzlin Saturday. The sweat factor was 70% t-shirt soakage.

Today in the LA Times there was an article about an atom smasher being built in Geneva. They are nearly certain that it probably won't create a black hole that will suck in the earth and end life as we know it. The onset of summer sun is like a black hole that will leave the rest of the earth alone. The city has begun to turn itself inside-out. It is only a matter of time before the hot smell of repetitive sun-baking on manmade surfaces and the cracked dashes and sunburns and black-outs begin.

April 11, 2008

The only thing that could have made the weather more perfect for baseball would have been the subtle miracle breeze of a walk off grand slam. It did not happen tonight but the stage has been set. It's the season for sunshine and slammin.

April 10, 2008

This is what a perfect day feels like and if it weren’t for the smog mucking up my view of the mountains, it would be what a perfect day looks like as well. If you just concentrate on your immediate area, and observe the effects of the distinct illuminative qualities of the southern California sun on your surroundings, you’ll get an idea of how things should be. 75 and sunny.

April 9, 2008

If you were a flower you would have looked your best today.

If you were a cloud you would have looked your worst. Because, well, or maybe you would have looked your most invisible.

April 8, 2008

Low seventies. It was smoky in the morning, smoky looking due to cloud coverage, but by mid day it was smoky as in tightly gathered particles of burnt organic and inorganic materials off the 210. Who says a collision can't muss up the weather?

April 7, 2008

It's cold up in the shadows of the hills of La Canada. The 2 is the last highway of Los Angeles to have any room for anything, totally underused in my opinion. Just like sunshine on the dark side of a hill. What is this post?

April 6, 2008

The slow spring sun took it's time to come out today, but it did eventually.

April 4 & 5, 2008

We are lumping the grey days together like good modern people trained to take a little bad and mix it with worse and call it a loss.

Really though, Friday had bouts of believability. It helped if you were able to catch the intermittent sun passing over expansive fields of California poppies. The fire flower really knows how to shine and make the most of lil bits of light.

April 2 + 3, 2008

It may have been freezing and grey most of the day today but I;m sure there were other places that were more freezing and way greyer.

April 1, 2008

It rained, no it poured, buckets and pails and washbasins of rain for hours. So much water the county of Los Angeles declared a mandate for oars or inflatable rafts on all vehicles entering highways traveling east and west where there was no water run off. Schools were closed due to pruned fingers and lack of galoshes and water balloon fights. It was madness. Trust me.

March 31, 2008

You ever hear if you sit in a dim room long enough you will start to think it is light? You ever settle for dingy days thinking that is all you are going to get? Tell yourself things like: “well at least it was sunny for a little while.”

Anytime you are just ‘getting by’ is wasted time. Toilet flushed time. Crumpled paper time. Bogus time. Time. Time. Time known as the off season. And it wasn’t until stepping out into the dangerously high top deck this afternoon, that I realized it hasn’t been sunny at all. For a long time really.

Until today.

It is a newfound brightness, like getting your sunglasses ripped off your face while staring at the sun, and I am going to write about it.

March 30, 2008

The sun didn't come out for a long time today. But when it did, it shone (as in Shone Figgins from the Angels) like a star in the hollywood walk of fame.

March 29, 2008

Overcast and cold dark night with rain sprinkle visitors.

March 28, 2008

This weekend is sunshine practice for opening day. If this evening was being graded it would be a 2C for too cold!!

March 27, 2008

It's bright in the city. Bright as the peripheral auras of a migraine headache. Sunlight and horizons fighting for attention in zigzags etched in eyelids and wind and silence buzzing in limbs.

March 25, 2008

Left a cold windy place around noon. Had a window seat in the sky. Kept the plastic 'shade' down the whole time and didn't crack it until the pilot said we were over 29 Palms. The first inch of light was enough to blind a thousand mice. Super sunny in LA today with a little breeze, coolness in the shade, and smog on the move.

March 24, 2008

B.T. Writes in:

Despite it's heat, the California sun isn't what burned me today - god save us from boyfriend's and all their exes.

Sounds like there's been a regular dust-up in my absence.

March 23, 2008

Jamie Masters sends this gentle easter weather update:

MY FRIEND BEN SAID THAT TODAY IS A HUNDRED DEGREE DAY. I DONT KNOW IF HE'S FULL OF SHIT OR NOT BUT THE SWEAT RIVER POOLING IN MY LOW BACK BELIEVES EVERY WORD HESAID. ITS FRIGGIN HOT TODAY!

March 22, 2008

The fabulous Miss Jamie Masters writes in:

Divine in the shade. Intense like your mom's menopause flashes in the direct sun. Summer says, PEEK A BOO, SUCKAS!!

March 21, 2008

Los Angeles today was 82 degrees with such seriousness, such ferver, I blew the pilot light out on my heater. To hell with the chilly LA spring evenings! Even the little blue flame tucked away behind a metal grate in my hallway was too hot in combination with the western sun.

Detroit, MI got several inches of snow. I know because I just landed here. Seems to be a temperature difference of about fifty degrees.

In other statistical information the emergency exit door on an Airbus 320 weighs 33 pounds.

March 20, 2008

Sunshine like a Belini mimosa. Peachy, pleasing, and not cheap.

March 19, 2008

The Santa Anas haven't been around here for a week or so but whenever a strong wind rolls in we like to call them Santa Anas, especially us newbies. The concept of a mythical wind is too fabulous to store away in our brains for proper usage. The past couple days have had the kind of night winds that sound like the million militia guards in "Commando" in your backyard. Except they aren't trying to break in, they are just torturing you via windchime.

"It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles's deepest image of itself. Nathaniel West perceived that, in The Day of the Locust, and at the time of the 1965 Watts riots what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. For days one could drive the Harbor Freeway and see the city on fire, just as we had always known it would be in the end. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are." - Joan Didion from the Los Angeles Notebook/ The Santa Ana

March 18, 2008

Pretty enough to write home about. Southern California knows how to use an extra hour of daylight: fill it up with sunshine and don't let up until the last sliver of golden pink drops behind our horizon. And we do own the horizon because this, the edge of it all, the last corner of the free world, is where it all ends.

March 17, 2008

My friend Beth likes to talk about where the gold at. Too bad she moved back to Baltimore or she could have seen all the leprechauns dancing around on the streets of Los Angeles hunting for rainbows by the golden light of St. Patrick's day sunshine.

March 16, 2008

How beautiful and cold and clear and sunny can a day be?

It was windy, bright, and crisp featuring those kinds of clouds that let the sun rays beam down like the set design from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Rays of light simulating the peaceful, illuminating wings of angels. It was everywhere today if you just looked up.

March 15, 2008

The ides of March (Idus Martiae).

Dark clouds came and went and came and went like curtains opening and closing over the life of a great king. Like hands in a game of peek-a-boo. Like a nightlight with an unsure sensor.

Was the day winter or spring or grey or sunny? Sunny when we left for the beach and grey when we got there. Still when we made the turn into the parking lot and windy when we walked. Today we lived in the ambiguity of spring and suffered (as much as Californians can) in the humor of nature.

March 13, 2008

There was no weather report yesterday because I didn't like what I had to report. It was kind of grey. Nobody wants to hear about that and now we have to start from the very beginning. Starting today, and it was a good day to start with, I predict we will have 100 sunshiny days in a row!

March 11, 2008

My prediction yesterday holds true. Of course the real test will be a time-spanning one.

Today's sunshine was like a five-layer wax on a white mercedes.

March 10, 2008

Seriously seventysomething and severely sunny today. I predict this is when the sun stretch begins. Days and days after days of shining monotony.

80 and sunny til next November.

March 9, 2008

LA smells like flowers on most streets. I'm glad to be home.

March 8, 2008

San Antonio 72 and sunny, Austin 74 and sunny, Los Angeles 78 and sunny.

Many degrees of similarity but only one Alamo.

Think about it.

March 7, 2008

As for the weather, the sun was especially bright today and driving all day with a dirty windshield was downright dangerous. It's time to buy new wipers or move to Portland.

Nobody wants to move to Portland but thanks for the report Bethany!

March 6, 2008

Exciting news from B in LA:

The boys were working on cars out back all day. Working men and all that shiny metal made the day feel especially hot.

March 5, 2008

Dang dog, I don't know what the scene is in Los Angeles but it is nice as a revival church choir here in Austin.

Bethany T writes in:

The weather today was affected by the strangeness of auditioning for a country music video. Daisy dukes made it feel colder than it was. At least my cowboy boots kept my toes warm.

March 4, 2008

Bethany said yesterday that:
LA is as beautiful as the french girl who won the Oscar

March 2 and 3, 2008

It's been rather unpredictable weatherwise, grey and chilly one minute, blasting happy sunrays the next, so I thought I would mix things up by skipping a day. Time to call upon some guest writers. Mt weather meter is getting stale.

March 1, 2008

March, as you may very well know, rolls in like a lion and out like a lamb. Lion is code for super cold and grey day.

Like today.

February 28, 2008

Seventy degrees can be interpreted in a number of ways. It can mean 'finally shorts' or 'ant free picnic' or 'blooming poppies' - just for starters.

February 27, 2008

I feel like I've been neglecting the weather. It certainly hasn't been neglecting me but I've become so busy that I lost sight of the observational purpose of this 80 and Sunny exercise. You have to pay attention to observe. You have to observe to notice. And you have to notice to um... Find something interesting to write about.

I recently had a quick travel writing lesson from Jeff Biggers and the one (although I am sure there were more) thing I took away from him was to shut up and not ask questions. Tomorrow, I swear I will wake up and not think of ways to describe the sunshine (and oh man has it been showing off lately) but I will let it tell me something. Because I'll be listening.

In Vegas.

February 26, 2008

What is is about the daylight that makes us crazy in cars?

February 25, 2008

If it's sunny on a Monday than you are either lucky or you just live in LA but you can't be both.

February 24, 2008

Loosing it in the rain and the wind and the dust.

February 23, 2008

GLAM

February 22, 2008

Bethany tells me late last night:

Today the day was gray, but I was surrounded by the colors of music in the studio. Save for the rhythm of the falling rain, I forgot all about the weather outside. But I will tell you when I reemerged to see the LA skyline sparkling and wet, I was reminded that it isn't always 80 and sunny here, but it is always lovely.

February 21 and 22, 2008

There has been too much controversy lately. John Mccain, Tavis Smiley, the oscars, project runway, etc... Who needs it?

We need it like the desert needs the rain. And that's just what has been going on around here.

Here meaning Phoenix. I'm here for a couple days. But I suspect the weather here is a taste of LA's leftovers.

February 19, 2008

When clouds get too close to the ground they call it moistdawn or wetsweatshirt or glisteningcarhood.

February 18, 2008

Seventy three and mostly sunny. Intermittent overcast and lots of moisture. All in all the kind of glorious day that the natives take for granted and makes the transplants call home.

February 17, 2008

Sore throat sunshine, hazy as the memory of June 16, 1997.

February 16, 2008

Gorgeous, slick, soft, sunny, breezy, and seventy.

February 15, 2008

There is a name for days that are bright and sunny and breezy enough to chose between a jacket and a cardigan, but I can't think of it.

February 14, 2008

The day started off chilly. The clouds formed giant heart shapes first and then seprated into tiny puffy cloud kisses to reveal a sunny afternoon prelude to a perfect Valentine sunset.

February 13, 2008

So it got a little chilly today, a could shoulder kind of overcast too. Hard not to take it personally. Better warm up to greet the hot hearts of tomorrow.

February 12, 2008

It is easy to feel grateful on a sunny day rather than a grey day.as long as one doesn't look at their skin in the harsh daylight, everything else will appear to be blessed. When it's seventy six degrees and sunny you walk around feeling like you have a little buddy at your side. You feel a little luckier. A little cleaner and a whole mess cheerier.

February 11, 2008

Seventy-five, sickly sunny,
sweat rings on a crimson shirt
at the California Car Wash.

February 10, 2008

Seventies. Sunny. It's getting hot in herre and it's just February. Now is the time I remember a year ago having to walk around with a parasol at the Pasadena Flea Market because of the February flesh-burning sun. You can't tell what it's going to be like in LA in February. But if i remember correctly once winter is mostly over, it's over for the most part. Ambiguously speaking, of course.

February 9, 2008

Oh what? Seventy-five and sunny as your mothers love.

February 8, 2008

80 and Sunny couldn't post yesterday or today because two of it's best correspondants are 225 feet below sea level in the Badwater Basin of Death Valley National Park.

February 6, 2008

It was a little cold today, temps are still hovering in the lower sixties, but it was sunny like the sun had something to say. As a professional sunspeak interpreter, I believe it was trying to say, "Wait until you see me tomorrow." And then it was saying, "oh and you will see me tomorrow."

February 5, 2008

A cold doesn't always equal a clear day but today the equation worked. Low sixties and crisp, bright, and clear. You could count the goats on the Seirras all the way from La Canada. Maybe it's because all of the smog and grime came down from the sky to fill us up with badness in time for fat Tuesday.

February 4, 2008

In honor of February Fourth starting with F's I will quote Faulkner from the only story he ever wrote that took place in Southern Cali:

...It was still high, still afternoon; the mountains stood serene and drab against it; the city, the land, lay sprawled and myraid beneath it - the land, the earth which spawned a thousand new faiths, nostrums and cures each year but no disease to even disprove them on - beneath the golden days unmarred by rain or weather, the changeless monotonous beautiful days without end countless out of the halcyon past and endless into the halycon future.
"I will stay here forever," she said to herself.

February 3, 2008

Too cold to type, to warm to complain.

The sky experienced a non-violent cyanosis after a morning of cold rainy drizzle. After-the-rain sun is unbeatable for its brightness and contrast. It didn't arrive until late this afternoon, specifically around Superbowl Kickoff time, but it is welcome at anytime.

February 2, 2008

Bareley sixties degrees with intermitent sunshine. When it was out boy did we see some shadows today. Shadows of a lonely chimney off the Pear Blossom Highway. Strange and cold like the second day of February.

Febuary 1, 2008

Sunny and a month closer to baseball season.

January 31, 2008

If yesterday was nice, today was three degrees nicer. Sunshine, snowcaps, and the Santa Anita Park.

January 30, 2008

Nice.

January 29, 2008

Warmer and sunnier than any given Tuesday across America.

We are so deep in January it's almost gone. The days can't possibly, scientifically, be getting any shorter but they are.

January 28, 2008

I fear that the project is slipping through my fingers. The unimaginable has happened: SADD in LA.

January has thus far, been like a senior citizen in a bathtub: 80% grey, 75% wet.

Please send money and sun.

January 27, 2008

The Big Words daily calendar that my mother got me for Christmas combines the dates on the weekends like this: January 26/27.

Apparently one big word per weekend is enough for everybody. Just like one decent description of rain per weekend is enough. It's raining again.

January 26, 2008

The gift of a sunny day after a bout of rain should not be underestimated. To all of us it was like we were handed bulldog puppies underneath a rainbow: cute and magical.

Theres some kind of storm on the way so we all, friends, strangers, countrymen, and clerks, spent up our conversation with the weather topic. Just like home!

January 25, 2008

What does it feel like to be the mostly rainy day after two days of macho downpours and hailstorms? Probably feels a little like third place. If it wasn't for the fact that the rain was washing away the last bits of the work week, well it would have been a third place day.

January 24, 2008

Greetings from monsoon season in the city of angels.

It hailed today. Ice balls in the Staples parking lot on San Fernando near the 2. Tell that to the dreamers.

January 23, 2008

We are a part of a puddle nation. It was so so rainy today at all the wrong times.

I have professionally determined that traffic is actual part of Los Angeles weather. It is an exclusive part of the urban lifestyle where mechanics meet organics. The cars aren't weather per se, but they could be. I was behind a giant white truck at the 101/10/5 split near downtown and it was my own personal hurricane.

January 22, 2008

Sprinkles. Not just a great cupcake place in Beverly Hills.

January 21, 2008

Barely sixty with simultaneous ran and sunshine. Seepage lighting that seems ten times brighter than the usual, like spotlights on the skyscrapers. Welcome to the show.

January 20, 2008

This weekend was probably the kind of weekend you would ask for if you knew what was good for you or if your doctor or concerned friends told you that you really should do something nice for yourself.

High sixties and sunshine for days. Days, as in three days, of super sun. The guide-you-to-the-mountians sun. Not to be confused with summer sun, propa winter sun makes you want to step out of the shade and not in it.

January 19, 2008

From a window.

January 18, 2008

January 17, 2008

70s and sunny.

Sunshine feels like friendship. It makes traffic and other difficult things like left hand turns on Melrose, easier to deal with.

January 16, 2008

Beautiful winter sunwarmed day.

Difference in temperature between 3pm and 8pm was about twenty degrees. 8pm and 11pm another ten degrees.

January 15, 2008

I keep wanting to type 200SEVEN instead of 200EIGHT.

I keel wanting to write SIXTYdegrees when it is actually SEVENTY degrees.

It's going to take some time but eventually I will accept that someone moved
my cheese.

January 14, 2008

The best part about January in LA is that it is rarely mistaken for being January in Fairbanks.

January 13, 2007

If you measured karma by how much sunshine shines then Los Angeles finally got paid back for all the times a highway exit opened right when a traffic jam was about to start. Nah, that's not good - How about Los Angeles finally got paid back for keeping the pacific dirty enough to discourage sharks from attacking children.

January 12, 2008

Dag-gone.A little visit from Mizz Spring today in Los Angeles. Abundant smooches of glorious sunshine for all!!

January 11, 2008

Sweet day.

January 10, 2008

Today was an aspirational version of 80 and Sunny: Low 60s and a little cloudy.

January 9, 2008

Chills to pay the bills.

January 8, 2008

I got a half-dozen texts today from my weather cohorts in the east.

"It's 68 and sunny in New York!"

"Its 62 in Detroit!"

Yeah yeah, so you stole our weather for a day. Enjoy it. It wasn't so bad around these parts either, low sixties with just a tasteful touch of sun, nothing gauche. Imagine if I had to write people every day it was sunny around here. Oh, I guess you don't have to imagine it.

January 7, 2008

Guess whos back? The sun. Yep, mid sixties and bright. Visibilty a million miles. I could could count the bumps and shrubs on the Pasadena hills from Glendale.

Yeah, it was so good to see the ol' sun. He's looking sharp. Has he had some work done?

January 6, 2007

Barometrically speaking, this is headache weather. It's grey and rainy and the sides of the streets are pooling up with inches and inches of acid rain. Today would have been a great day to practice water skiing behind cars on the 210. It's wet here, so out of place, so out of sorts, all we talk about is the rainy season of 2005. Remember that? It was really rainy.

January 5, 2007

The weather is so comfy, so mid-sixties, that even the grey clouds want to hang out in LA. Not so much rain today, it has been just grey, like a Lord of the Rings movie when they aren't in the shire. We miss you sun, bring the fellowship of the light back to us.

January 4, 2008

Write down the word January and stare at it for a while. Say it out loud. Trip yourself out. It's an odd month, no? I wonder how the Mayans felt about it. This rain is a sign from god. He is saying that the truth rained down in Iowa last night. The great rains that were promised, the rains that are coming to clear the filth from the streets and minds of the people, they are here. And well, crap I can't even make it down to Costa Mesa to see Cari from Seattle.

January 3, 2007

65 and whatever today. No sunglasses needed. Dull and still like a dusty fake flower centerpiece. Glad it's there, kinda.

B tells me that there is a hundred percent chance of precipitation on the way. Grab your buckets and brace yourself, it's the winter wet season in LA. This could last a few days.

January 2, 2008

Just because it's called 80 and Sunny doesn't mean it has always got to be about the day time weather around here.

My favorite part about flying back into Los Angeles is the first bit of information you get is the time, temp, and visibility - 9:49pm, 65 degrees, Visibility 10 miles - everything you need to know to prepare yourself for Michael Mann's LA. When you get off your plane you aren't going to be in Jay Leno's LA. This place is palm trees and falic tube structures illuminated by 80s video lights in colors such as purple and pink and green. Looks a bit like the new Motor City Casino in the city I just left. Fuschia lights look different under two feet of snow though.

Ten miles of visibility? Imagine what you could see if you were me.

January 1, 2008

Tis the new year. I'm still not home but Pasadena looked real sunny on the TV today. Rosey Rose Bowl Weather. I'll wait to hear from guest writer before I determine if it was warm enough for short-sleeves at the tail-gating party or people were just faking it.