Long-time reader/provocateur Vince suggested the other day that I was falling prey to the dog days of summer and lashing out accordingly. This, of course, is nonsense because I lash out all the time, but he is right about the dog days stuff. August just flat-out sucks.
First off, on a personal note, I sweat like a horse. (I used to say that I sweat like a pig, but one of my players, Meredith, shows pigs at the Pima County Fair every year and she told me that pigs don’t sweat. Wow, they don’t sweat and they’re responsible for bacon? They’ve got to be God’s favorite creature.) I sweat so much that I wear two T-shirts at a time to keep from becoming a public nuisance.
Coaching and working out every day prompts several changes of clothing, so I end up having to do my laundry on a very regular basis. I have always eschewed the dryer, opting instead to hang my clothes out on the line so that they will remain spring-time fresh.
But you can’t hang clothes out on the line in August because it rains all the freakin time. It rains in the morning, it rains in the afternoon, it rains at night, but never on any schedule. And you can’t leave clothes on the line when it rains because, for some unknown reason, if clothes get rained on and then dry, they get all stiff and they smell like what you imagine Nicki Minaj smells like after a concert.
The other day, after three straight days of rain, I was running short of T-shirts, so I washed a batch and used hangers to hang them from the rafters in the garage. A couple hours later—at mid-day—I went into the garage to do my Stair-Climber thing and the entire garage smelled like Bikram Yoga. Now, I loves me some Bikram Yoga, but when you first walk into that 110-degree temperature/70 percent humidity yoga room, the funk of a thousand nasty feet rushes up to slap you.
A big part of my problem with August is self-made. It involves the tying of the passage of time in one’s life to sports seasons. As soon as we have the first weekend of college football, life is great. I don’t care if it’s 115 degrees outside; it’s football season. I love high-school and college football, and I put up with the NFL. From that first September weekend until the end of the year, it’s wonderful. There’s that time when football and basketball overlap, then there’s the bowl-games season, then the NFL playoffs (which are better than nothing).
Then it’s the end of the college basketball season, then March Madness (the best sports event of the year). Next we have the end of the NBA season and the NBA playoffs. Then comes the thud. In the middle of June, all of a sudden, there’s nothing but baseball and European soccer highlights. So, nothing.
We’re now nearing the end of that 10-week-or-so dead period when nothing productive gets done, ESPN insults us by reporting from NFL training camps, and it rains.
Another problem is that the aforementioned Time Wheel of Life is Nautilus-shaped. It drags through the long part of the shell (July and August), then, when it turns to the end, it speeds up ridiculously. It’s like we have Labor Day, then, the following week, it’s Halloween. Two days later, it’s Thanksgiving in the morning, Christmas in the afternoon, and New Year’s Eve that night.
It’s like July and August are that long, slow climb to the top of the big hill on the roller coaster, then the rest of the year flies by with ever-increasing speed.
Oh yeah, another thing that drives me nuts about August is the obsession that local TV newscasts have with the weather. I was watching a 10 a.m. newscast the other night and I used a stopwatch to time the amount of coverage given to the weather. It was just under nine minutes!
Now you figure that there are probably 22 minutes available for real stuff (with eight minutes of the half-hour being used for commercials, intros, outros and useless banter by useless banterers). So you’re the program director and you’re going to decide to use 41 percent of your show on the weather?! It’s hot in the daytime and then it rains and there’s some wind and sometimes there’s lightning. That’s worth a minute-and-a-half, max!
Finally, something that makes me mad all the time and in August, especially. Whoever designed Orange Grove between La Cholla Boulevard and Oracle Road needs to be slapped…repeatedly. Heading east, past the Northwest Hospital, it goes down from two eastbound lanes to one. Every single grouping of cars becomes a stupid-ass game of chicken. The people in the (right) butthole lane can see blocks ahead that their lane is disappearing, but they plow ahead and invariably cut in front of somebody, causing hard feelings and near-accidents.
About a half-mile down the road, approaching La Cañada Boulevard, it opens to two lanes again FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER! (It goes right back down to one lane after the intersection.) And to the surprise of no one, the same buttholes pull out into the butthole lane and repeat the process. I seriously hate every single one of those drivers. And not just in August.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2015.
Traffic studies prove that more traffic moves through if you wait to merge until you need to. So the people in the right lane are behaving correctly for the greater good and it’s the people in the left who are being buttholes by not letting them in.
Sooo Danehick, I heard you on the radio last Saturday with Emeril (or is it Amail, or Anal, or whatever his name is) for the first time in several years.
I listened for just a few minutes before I had to reach for a vomit bag … that was all it took before you began the typical, patented “Danehick Reach Around” (i.e., breaking your arm to pat yourself on the back), informing listeners what a wonderful “Final 4” girls basketball coach you are, as well as your coach of the year honors.
[Note: BTW, I can tell you exactly why you were fired from that particular prestigious coaching job: The athletic director MUST have read a few of your columns.]
Thankfully, you were only on the air for just part of the show (Franzee probably remembered why he dumped you years ago and pulled the plug on you again).
Either that or he finally realized how you sound exactly like Homer Simpson’s drunk cousin whenever you attempt to speak.
And now for your reading pleasure, yet another “Ode To Danehick”:
Once there was a clown named Tom
Who clung to this writing gig way too long
As a left wing nut, he sat on his butt,
Spewing forth like a bird in song.
Um, no, bslap. In your fantasy world of moving traffic through intersections, the cars would merge in an orderly fashion without that idiot speeding up and cutting in at the last minute, trying desperately to steal one more car length from the group. THEN, when everybody reached the next spot where the road opens up again to two lanes, those who had originally been in the left lane would pull out to the right while those who had merged previously would stay in the left lane, allowing for safe and fair merging. But that’s not the way it works in the real world, where the same buttholes pull out to the right, over and over again, trying to show everybody that their car is faster, that their nerves are more steely, and, ultimately, that their destination is more important than everybody else’s.
You left out the Stanley Cup championships. Probably because it was me who got you interested and you wouldn’t want to be associated with the # 1, most hated commenter in Danehyland.
Watch the dislikes pile up with this one.
Tom’s description sounds eerily like illegal activity at the border. You know there is a line that’s formed, but you ignore in a selfish kind of way. Thereby punishing all the law abiding citizens and hopeful entrants that comply and play by the rules.
It’s great to see the Weekly hire somebody that is opposed to amnesty and illegal immigration. Butt we don’t need the name calling.
Did I get a job I’m not aware of ? Picture me working at the Geekly. Now that would amusing regardless of your political views.
Didn’t Psomas work on La Canada? Maybe you should ask someone who works for them why the road adds capacity at the intersections? I understand you’re just maligning traffic engineers to get to the meat of your whinge, bad driver behavior.
Danehy is right about the merge lanes. I avoid roads with merge lanes because I hate getting angry at people who race by in the right lane even when there is no room between cars in front of them in the left lane. More cars don’t get through if there is bumper to bumper traffic in the left lane. If driver’s in the right lane want to take a chance that there will be room for them in the left, then they need to be ready to stop when there is not and wait for the right of way to open up. Right lane traffic is suppose to wait until it can merge safely. Most of the selfish morons who try to pass people waiting their turn behind slow traffic in the left lane think it is their right to merge. Morally and spiritually, they are dead wrong. They are just being rude.
Wanna have fun merging…try the frewways around san Francisco.
No signals…just 70 mph and here I come so you better not be in the lane I’m heading for as I enter the freeway. It’s nuts. I’m surprised more people dont get killed.
Tucson traffic may be a mess but we are much better off than many metro areas in this country.
Oh, and half the time, the San Fran feeways look like parking lots….insane….
james25ua, so, how do you get around town if you don’t drive on any roads that have merge (drop) or trap lanes? do you also only ever make right turns so you don’t have to ever make a left turn?
It sounds like it is YOUR problem, not theirs. YOU get angry, YOU can’t stand that they act morally and spiritually wrong and rudely too. but that’s YOUR problem, because legally, they’re right.
breathe dude. drop it down a notch, leave 15 (45 since you don’t make lefts) minutes earlier, and you’ll find your stress levels go way down and you’ll, hopefully, live longer too.
look up “zipper merge method.”
or go here: http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/the-beauty-of-zipper-merging-or-why-you-should-drive-ruder/
Good comments . Incidentally , if others is interested in merging of PDF files , my secretary discovered a service here altomerge.com.