Tag: sweating

Don’t sweat it. Yeah, right.

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

Not even summer and already I’m sweating like swine. It seemed nice out, about 80 degrees, a soothing breeze, sky marbled with clouds. And then I began my walk and promptly sensed something was off. The atmosphere was thick, dense. Then it was gooey, like clam chowder.

I love clam chowder, but this was just gross. I was getting damp. My hair curled into a Medusa ‘fro. Liquid beads lined my upper lip. For a moment, I felt like an Olympian.

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, goes the old saw, which I wish I never saw. I should have known swamp conditions were rife with a New Orleans exuberance: The day’s forecast showed a lightning bolt shooting out of dark clouds with a temperature of 84. Soup du jour.

I was mid-walk. No turning back, just forge ahead. An ample puddle formed in the small of my back. My brow bubbled with warm dew. My pits were the pits. The nightmare of swamp butt was becoming a wincing reality. 

By the time I got home, I was nearly sodden. And the sweat kept coming. I toweled off, though I wasn’t shower wet, just sticky and irrationally moist. About ten minutes later the body faucets petered out. I stood in front of the fan to finish the job. I’ll probably catch pneumonia.

That’s the trouble with sun, heat, humidity, sweat and all that other summery crap. It’s a prolonged hazard, from sunstroke and sunburn, to day boozing and clammy underwear.

But really — am I right? — it comes down to sweat. That’s the worst of it all, the bane of the season. Of course it’s a necessary evil, our own physiological AC, even if it feels like the opposite. The process of sweating is to help keep the body cool when the perspiration evaporates from the skin. Dogs, cats and birds pant. Humans, so beautifully evolved, perspire in buckets. We get antiperspirants and, if we’re John McEnroe, rocking headbands. 

Sweat isn’t all summer’s fault. Occasionally I’ll wake up in a panicky sweat, courtesy of nightmares about a particular recent felon. When I’m drumming I often break a healthy sweat the way meatheads at the gym do, by sheer physical exertion. That’s the good kind. Then there’s nervous sweat, aka flop sweat, like the time in high school when I gave an oral report about Mozart and a dribble of the wet stuff ran from my forehead down my nose, onto my 3×5 cards. You can tell I’m traumatized because I remember it 100 years later. 

By the way, my opening line was a lie. Swine, like dogs, do not actually sweat; they don’t have sweat glands. Lucky pigs.

More marvelous miscellany

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

1.One of my least favorite things in the world, after e-scooters and ravers, is sweating. Which means I am not a happy fellow. Why? Right. Because I am sweating. And rather a lot, swamp-ass and all. Somehow I thought it’d be a swell idea to take a brisk walk in the 92-degree blech of midsummer. The light sweat I produced outside — a mere film — quickly metastasized into a profuse drenching once inside. Forty minutes later, in powerful AC, it has yet to subside. How bad is it? The dog is licking me avidly, like I’m a giant piece of beef jerky.

2.House of Terror — how kicky is that for the name of a major tourist attraction? It’s real, and it’s not a ride at your local carnival. This daunting museum is in Budapest, where I head this fall, and it isn’t about ghouls and goblins. Or, well, it sort of is. Per its description: “It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist regimes in 20th-century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured or killed in the building.” History writ large. And horrible. I’m so there, with solemn intentions, despite the thrilling name. 

3.Just finished Paul Harding’s newish novel “This Other Eden” on the dazzling strength of his first book, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Tinkers,” which is uniquely mesmerizing. “Eden” limns Black American history in its many facets, including, troublingly, eugenics. Harding is an uncompromising stylist, forging gorgeous, gem-cut prose that’s sometimes too infatuated with itself, yet nevertheless tells a fascinating story. Harding writes like few others — Cormac McCarthy and Faulkner come to mind — but he can stumble on his own lush verbiage. He is a flawed master.

4.The new documentary about massive but short-lived Brit pop duo Wham! — aptly titled “Wham!” — is out on Netflix, and the trailer promises a bubbly, bubblegummy, bing-bang time (“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” anyone?). The movie, a giddy romp directed by crack documentarian Chris Smith, isn’t, alas, as brawny as frontman George Michael’s uncrackable Aqua Net helmet. It’s strictly for googly-eyed fans who can’t be bothered with pop music history, laser-focusing on bandmates’ Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s frolicsome BFF status and their improbable rise from cheesy teen wannabes to slick arena-fillers. Critically missing in this narrow nostalgia trip is cultural context, as if Wham! exploded in an ‘80s vacuum, with little competition and no help from juggernauts like MTV. And it doesn’t even footnote Michael’s untimely, and seismic, death as a solo artist. Wham! Bam! Thud.  

5. Speaking of the dog (see #1), Cubby was recently shorn like a poor gray sheep, which I documented here. The good news: his hair is growing back in the summer swelter. He no longer resembles a fuzzy Pringles can — he’s not so tubular — and he’s stopped nipping the parts that were so short, pink flesh was exposed. He’s returning to his bushy self, and his attitude is boinging back — a little cocky, vain with a scruffy bedhead sheen, and as fierce around the UPS folk as one can be behind a closed door. His yawps and barks still shatter glassware, but that’s OK. Pretty soon he’s going to look like Slash again and the process will start all over. Our little lamb chop.

6.Then there’s this: I was strolling in the summer heat (see #1 again) and some shitty beat-up compact sedan roared past me, easily doing 50 to 60 in a residential  25 zone. Startled (and pissed), I yelled, “Slow down!” The driver flipped me off and I reflexively returned the gesture. He barreled into oblivion. Then I thought: Smart. That’s a good way to get yourself killed. Jackass might have a gun, might want to turn around and use it. Sweating like a madman, I kept walking, ruffled, looking at the world in a slightly different shade.