This time of year is always weird and somewhat confusing for the landed gentry of Fecal Creek: the nights are appropriately Fall-like…with a bit of a chill in the air, but the days are still cruelly summer-like, with highs in the 80s and 90s. People don’t know what the hell to do: it’s clearly too hot during the day to have the heater on or bust out fall clothes, but then they freeze their balls at night. These people haven’t yet figured out California’s climate confusion: while the entire rest of the country enjoys four distinct seasons, California sports only two: Summer, and Not Summer. Which is more like one season with a privation. But never mind that. Summer here is preposterous: this last July, the temperature soared to well over 110F every day, with the nighttime lows only dropping to maybe 85. It’s so brutally hot, people die. Usually the old and infirm, but you never know. Most species of insects have died from the heat and lack of water by August 1. Birds explode mid-flight, making a light “poof” sound, and leaving nothing but a chaotic spray of feathers gently floating down. It’s awful. The only things that seem to thrive in this climate are the lizards and snakes. Fortunately we don’t have scorpions or tarantulas this far north, but give it time: they will be here soon enough.
From Cinco de Mayo until Halloween, yrs. truly generally doesn’t leave the house, preferring instead to spend my waking hours sitting naked on the cool tile floor in front of my open deep-freezer, sipping whiskey and loudly cursing whomever’s stupid idea it was to originally settle in this egregiously inhospitable place. I’ve always assumed that everybody that lives here pretty much operated the same way. But I’m starting to think I’m alone in my suffering.
Fecal Creek, CA is a banal suburbia where the grass is always green on the other side of the septic tank. Sundays here are like Groundhog Day on acid, but instead of a lovable rodent predicting the end of winter, we have gangs of vicious turkeys that roam the neighborhoods like terrorists, menacing anything that isn’t part of their flock. Until, of course, they start high-tailing it for their lives from the local animal control officer who seems perpetually tanked on Sterno.
I’ve never been a big fan of Sundays. But Sundays in Fecal Creek defy logic and sanity, when time seems to dilate, and the absurd becomes the norm. The sun rises reluctantly, casting a jaundiced glow over the town as if even it is too hungover to shine properly. It’s the kind of place where the turkeys’ godawful gobbling is replaced by the tubercular cough and mucous-spitting of Mr. Shitbag (I know that that’s not his real name…but that’s what I call him), the street’s unofficial alarm clock, bellowing from his porch as he sips a questionable brew from a thermos labeled “NOT COFFEE.”
Today happens to be the Fecal Creek Pancake Derby, a chaotic spectacle of culinary and vehicular misadventure. Picture this: a gaggle of local eccentrics armed with spatulas and a suicidal lack of fear, racing on modified lawnmowers while flipping pancakes into the mouths of unsuspecting spectators. The rules are simple—there are none. It’s a syrupy, flour-dusted free-for-all that ends when the last pancake hits the pavement or when someone finally breaks a hip.
By noon, the town shifts gears. The Fecal Creek Farmers’ Market opens its gates, offering an array of goods no sane person would ever need or want. Some hippy chick seems to be selling artisanal mud pies. She sits proudly next to some dude’s collection of slightly sinister garden gnomes. The air is thick with the aroma of deep-fried everything and the faint whiff of existential dread as cash exchanges hands for items destined to clutter garages and provoke marital disputes. I generally try to avoid the Farmers’ Market.
As do most of the folks on my street: Sunday’s are evidently for lawn care.
I awakened this fine (or not so fine, as it were) Sunday morning to the cacophony of church bells and lawnmowers, my head throbbing in time with the frequencies of a thousand dying angels. I stumble to my window, naked as Diogenes but with less philosophical intent, and witness the terrifying tableau below: the air is thick with the aroma of overcooked potatoes and regret as families emerge from their cookie-cutter homes, still dressed in their Walmart-bought pajamas.
I gag and retreat indoors, desperate for solace from this Dantean landscape.
Inside, my sanctuary is no better. The television offers nothing but golf, football re-runs, and “inspirational” biopics starring those Hallmark channel actors who sleep with the light on to avoid their own mediocrity. My so-called “smart” phone, which I might add has a Ph.D. in Failure Studies, only offers me “fun day” suggestions: brunches with saccharine mimosas, hiking trails to nowhere, and worse, fucking arts and crafts!
I try to escape this madness by venturing out into the world, hoping to find safety in numbers. Alas, the streets are littered with the slack-jawed zombies I feared most: families ambling along sidewalks four abreast, oblivious to the anguished honking of cars behind them. Dogs in humiliating costumes trotting obediently behind their mindless masters, their eyes begging for a swift end to this likely feline-conspired nightmare. And the children—oh, the fucking children! Hordes of them, stained with the remnants of their Easy Mac Last Supper, wailing for attention like some horrific game of “Pin the Screaming Brat on the Impatient Uncle.”
As the day already seems to be dragging on like a sloth with a broken metronome, I return to my lair, defeated and demoralized. Trudging back, I see driveways filled with the lifeless husks of automobiles, their owners hypnotized by the alien hum of their infernal lawn implements. The air is thick with the acrid stench of burnt gasoline and freshly mown grass clippings. Back in the house, I check on some marijuana I left in the garage, then go to my window again.
Lunch! The men don their “World’s Greatest Dad” aprons, which last saw use on Father’s Day ’98, and fire up their charcoal grills to prove their manhood to an audience of one: the neighbor’s cat, Dildo. I doubt that that’s the cats actual assigned moniker, but that’s what I call it. Because it fits. That’s a story for another time. Burgers sizzle and beer cans hiss, and soon enough, the smell of charred meat and sweat permeates the air. They desperately cling to the dying vestiges of Summer, before Not Summer starts.
The ladies of the street gather ’round someone’s plastic kiddie pool, discussing the latest gossip about nonsense. Their kids run amok, their shrill laughter competing with the sounds of Blink-182 from one of their idiot kids’ bedroom. As their neighbors peek through their weed-covered blinds, sipping on their cheap Chardonnay and adjusting their polyester drawers, Fecal Creek braces itself for another week of the same old shit – literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.
I have concluded simply that Sundays suck. And like an ageless vampire, they will rise again next week to feast upon our sanity and grace us with their idiotic influence.
Until then, I leave you with this bittersweet advice: stock up on booze and ammo, barricade your doors, and pray for the End Times. For while the sun may rise on another Sunday, at least there’s a 50/50 shot it’s the end of the world as we know it. And I, for one, won’t be mowing my goddamn lawn.
N.P.: “Skin City” – Robert Rodriguez, Rebecca Rodriguez, Rick Del Castillo, Steven Tyler
