Sunday, July 17, 2005

Seafood Social

This photo shows my chow position at the sawhorse and plywood table.
We are way out here where the June Bugs sing, the locusts drone and the humidity has won.
Give it up y'all, looking calm cool & collected
just ain't gonna happen tonight.

This is my corner of the table:

click on them to name those bugs!

As the Czechs in Bohemia say, it's "cucumber season",
with all the double entendre a hot summer deserves.

Shed your addiction to comfort, it's making you soft.
Release the pretense, be so sans souci,
do without dippity do for a day. Feel a bead from your own cooling system trickle down your scalp.
Just leave it and get elemental.
Drop any effort in an outdoors of consumption, sweat & talk.
We socialize by melting together.

Ladies: any makeup, disco war paint, or Kabuki mask will not work out here in this steamed Eden.
Go au naturale or stay miles away in your A/C protected safe zone,
lest your face appears to melt when that face-paint drips and smears.

Uh . . . when I said "go au naturale", um, before you show up nude, dropping into our al fresco neither region, . . .
oh, drop it, it's too darn hot.
Just show up with
baby powder & a smile in your T-shirt & shorts.

Guys: Summer is on us like a load.
Either your sit-up regime has paid off or Dunlap disease has taken over since winter, as in your belly done lapped over your belt.
Let your shirt stick to your back but don't let your posture melt. Smile while telling a light hearted tale when it's your turn to entertain.
Expound on the art of the peel-&-eat. Eat with your hands, play with your food - especially the claws.

Hot & Humid Hints:
A white T does not show perspiration like a color T.
White is this seasons black.
It's OK to bring an extra dry shirt. Some bring hand towels to prevent excess drippage.
Avon Skin-So-Soft for the Ladies and Bait Shop for men is the fragrance du jour.
Nervous or Sour? Stay away, the air is thick enough without attitude. We're surviving this together &
we are having fun (yet) it sure is hot.
(long deep breath, exhale & sigh)

There's more than plenty to eat.
Hang around, slouch, lean, talk, peel shrimp, crack crab, look around, listen to how loud bugs and frogs can be in real life.

Just go slow, take it easy.
The only rush: drink fast to enjoy a cool beverage or two from under the ice. Rationale: liquids return to a luke-warm state real quick 'round here.
We're way down yonder where the wild things are.

For our Eastern European cousins that think
seafood looks like insects, there's sausage-kolbasz, corn du la cob, even potatoes-krumpli. You crazy dry-heat landlocked Euro's, I know you're reading this in Prague, Budapest, Pecs, Krokow: tudod es az nem boi. Sammi boi, ez nyaris most. Boldog Nyar ket-ezer-ot. Vagyok kes delis, delirious, delicious. [Spelling corrections welcome]

+ 92 degrees, + 95% humidity.
Stay in the shade & detox through steambath dining.
A mid-summer purification ritual!

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Steamy weather

click photo to enlarge

Sky is overcast from the category 4 Hurricane in the Gulf.

The new Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge towers are
758 feet above Charleston Harbor.

Chucktown's new bridge

Walked the new Cooper River Bridge:


click photo to enlarge
The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.
Towers are 572 feet above the roadway.
Roadway is 186 feet above Charleston Harbor.

The little bridgetop on the left is the old
John P. Grace Bridge,
built way back in 1929. Still in use!
It's the "old Cooper River bridge" and is a
two lane - too narrow - too scary bridge
with metal grates on the roadway at the top that make a loud tire noise like the bottom fell out just as you got to the top and the car is plunging.

If you have the nerve you can look through the
metal grate roadway down to the water.
Way Down!

Monday, July 04, 2005

Mammoth Sunflower


U-Shuck Corn 10 cents an ear.
102F heat index.
Rain & thunder from 1 am to 4 am.
Spent Saturday drifting downstream in tea colored water.
Spent Sunday scratching whelps on my legs from mosquito bites or maybe I have fleas. Doesn't matter, it's been a wonderful 4th.

Happy Fourth Of July 2005


PS:
end of summer 2005:
This photo won an award
SFGate Culture Blog:Summer 2005
(scroll down to the sunflower)

If you came here through the SFGate link, try also this other July 4th Post.
and don't forget the
Main Page