“Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday…” Gabriel García Márquez, ‘100 Years of Solitude’
My favorite month, July, just ended. Here’s a The Line Break podcast recorded mere days after I realized July was my favorite month, and in which my beloved Bob castigates my choice of favorite month. I then realize my favorite month is only my favorite month because I live in Chicago.
This is reminding me we need to schedule a recording session for August’s The Line Break.
What were we talking about?
Oh yeah, Chicago.
Listen, it’s summer. My kid’s out of summer school, I’ve probably got paint on my clothes, my feet hurt from going straight from playground-kitchen-bedtime-clean up kitchen, so you know what? I’m doing a silly one this week. Plus, I used to do exceedingly silly lists. Here’s one about the Halloween franchise. Here’s one about the intersection of jazz and hip-hop. Here’s one about stadiums. I got dozens of these, check the archives.
MONTHS!
Should I state here how much leap year bothers me? Nah, that’s another column, play the hits.
JULY
Basically the Saturday of months. Street festivals. Beach days. Reading a book in a hammock on a lazy afternoon. The way it smells at night, or before/during/after rain. Grilling—y’all ever had food cooked over fire? Like some shrimp fajitas? Or chicken drumsticks with Carolina mustard sauce shellacked onto the chicken skin while it’s grilling so it gets sticky and glossy and charred? Oh man, you ever dipped corn in on the cob in a vat of melted butter? They do that at street festivals here! Or least they used to.
OCTOBER
Come on, you knew the horror writer would love spooky season. I have two genres: what I write while listening to Homey, and what I write while listening to Remember That You Will Die. July is the former, October is the latter. Ghosts, skeletons everywhere. Werewolves, biting people. Witches start casting spells and hexing and stuff. Trick-or-treating with a kid who loves sweets as much as mine is a blast. Plus, leaves! The leaves look so cool in October.
SEPTEMBER
Holdover warm weather, gearing up to fall. I used to spend all September dreading the cold. This is the path of an angry man, and a foolish man. Live in the moment. Live summer to the fullest so you can appreciate autumn.
JUNE
Secretly irritating. It’s usually rainy in Chicago, and the two times I’ve been to Los Angeles/San Diego, it’s been gloomy in June. The hotel receptionist in San Diego even said “oh, you’re here for our June gloom.” That said, June is full of promise. You can stop layering socks just to take the trash out, hell, you don’t even have to wear shoes half the time. June’s a good mood month, it’s full of promise. I’m usually making lists of all the stuff I want to do in the summer.
AUGUST
Better than June in terms of beach days, and genuinely a good month as far as I’m concerned. But everyone else is starting to get tired of summer, and most things are only fun if someone else is doing them with you. Anyone who wants to hang out in August, I’ll be at the beach or behind the grill.
DECEMBER
Who doesn’t love the holidays? Such a time of warm feelings and happiness, really. Especially now that I have a kid. My birthday’s also in December, which I’ve recently decided I hated because it’s not grilling weather. Fact remains though: December is the best month, winter/spring division.
NOVEMBER
Halloween hangover, not yet holiday time. It’s the kind of hangover where you eat a plate of corned beef hash with two over easy eggs and hashbrowns, but you’re still nauseous. A replacement-level month.
FEBRUARY
Only better than January because of Black History Month, how short it is, and my wife’s birthday. In some order. One February, we had a polar vortex so bad that my wife and then-infant son left town. I stayed home, kept the faucets running, and made sure the cat didn’t freeze to death. Still not as bad as…
MAY
Non-stop fakeouts. Warm, hot even, then cold, then rainy, then a whole bunch of “hey the beach looks nice from a distance but sure is a nightmare if you’re standing on it” days. Man May pissed me off this year. I’m sick of that Justin Timberlake meme, too, stop doing that or you’re all dead to me.
JANUARY
I am more charitable to January lately since I have a kid who loves playing in the snow. And I do like living in a place that gets snow. I moved away from a place that never gets snow because I do like snow. Maybe Chicago was a bit of an extreme choice.
MARCH
Misery. A month for marks: idiots will start talking about “spring is here” and then Chicago will have like one nice week and everyone loses their minds. Then, before the slush can melt, it rains (and probably freezes) again. Christ I hate March.
APRIL
Everything I already said about March, but add “tax season.”
Couldn’t leave you with April, we needed something cheery. Look how heads up the centerfielder is! Check out the arm on the first baseman! The first time that’s happened since 1884! God, what a world we live in.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris