Bug, and Heat

It's hot! But not too hot to go see "Bug" at SF Playhouse. You can read the SF Theater Blog Review here, but be prepared to be scratching yourself for a few days.

Feet are baking. Underarms are sweaty -- stink is in the air. It burns to walk barefoot in the garden. Bicyclists have disappeared. Dogs have disappeared. Street life has disappeared. Poor Saint Plotniko is laboring under the kind of rare weather endured by the rest of Shmalifornia six months a year.

There's a stairway up from Plotnik's office to the kitchen. It's 10 degrees different down to up. He's not that hungry.

The tomatoes are in love, as are the poppies, but the Tuscan kale and arugula have given up the ghost, bolted in two days to yellow and white flowers.



The snow peas didn't sign up for this either and neither did Plotnik, though he thought he did at the time. In 1993 Plottie was used to hot weather, and smog, and temperature inversions, dashboards and seat backs sizzling to the touch; with the smell of apricots rotting on the bare ground, and garbage broadcasting its steaming bacteria, and clothes that you couldn't wear for an entire day, and blisters on top of the big toe joint and the side of the pinkie toe, and sandals that stuck to the pavement and hat hair. Of course, he had more hair then.

Fifteen amazing years later and Plotnik no longer thinks sweating is sexy. He complains about the fog, but welcomes it. He knows July through September will be cold and bleak with little sunshine in his city by the Bay, and he will whine loudly to anyone who will listen; still, the rare broil of April and May bring him little comfort. There will be another two hot weeks in October and that'll be that. Neighbors will still complain when it gets to 70, but they won't mean it. Now, they mean it.

Tea poured over ice in a tall glass with slices of lime, cold purple borscht in a white bowl with a scoop of sour cream, sugar cones of Macapuno ice cream with raspberry sorbet, chilled salads with pomegranate seeds, frozen Snickers bars, ice water.

It must be close to 90. Humidity: zero. In Nashville or Atlanta or, God knows, New Orleans, this is pleasant winter. Miami: fawgeddaboudit. But not in Saint Plotniko. Poor poor Plottie. What a wuss he has become.