WHY YOU GO, SUMMER?

Well goddamnit, just when you turn your back the summer horsemen start showing up, make you have that last bbq and it's ALL OVER. Now all you have to look forward to MY BIRTHDAY IN OCTOBER, cider and donuts and CIDERDONUTS, and what else? I honestly can't remember what kind of goodness fall brings if you're in a non foliaging area like the city. Eff you Upstate New York (i miss you, secretly).

We seem to be able to draw summer out until it is dead and gone, but I think I've been seeing the signs.

HORSEMEN ARE:

1. End of the Pool Parties - Threw in the Pool towel two weeks ago. It was like summer camp for big kids except with better music, better food, and the same assholes who hogged the dodgeball court. As always, the thing that makes places good is the people, and if I weren't working with such awesome people, I wouldn't have had as good a time as I did. Lessee if I can break the summer camp curse of actually staying in touch with the people I met. Dang. Plus the desperate contrast between this and weekday real world makes me (delicately) hate the real world.

2. Fooball. Sigh. I am a Giants fan, with the especial qualifier that I am a GIRL Giants fan. I like football, but def don't have the attention span or discipline to see all the shit that dudes do. Yo and I'ma give you all wizard hats for becoming Fantasy Football dungeons and dragonmasters. Consider yourself outed, nerds. Combined with the beginning of Entourage's new season, beginning of fall has come to mean beginning of BRO TIME.

3. Seattle/Bumbershoot. Just got back from a week in Seattle and the San Juan islands. While realistically this isn't a horseman and just a vacation gloaty interlude, Bumbershoot is indeed Labor Day weekend, which I'm told his the biggest horseman, ending all Diddy white parties (does he do those anymore? is he called diddy any more?), the summer holiday bookend between veteran respect, and props for workers? Bumbershoot was good, the music not as awesome this year as it was last year (that or I've started to hate music more, or music fans more, which is entirely possible). I did get to see writing hero Sherman Alexie do a reading, and Saul Williams deliver the most honest and earnest poetry reading/conversation with an audience about being artists, and being complacent. Other highlights include Beck, Nada Surf, Man Man, the Weakerthans, Dan Deacon, Sons and Daughters (they fucking CHANGED since 04), Langhorne Slim, Sondre Lerche, and Death Cab.

And OH MY GOD, I saw Stone Temple Pilots play (WHAAA?) and they kind of blew the roof off of my tiny little mind. It was like a throw back to being 9 years old and not understanding what the hell music meant. I decided at the time that they were my favorite band based on knowing Interstate Love Song, but when it came time to buy my first album ever at the record store, the moms wouldn't let me buy STP. I wound up with Automatic for the People as my first purchased album, forever lining me up for melodic nerd rock by people who are kinda (AND SOMETIMES ARE REALLY) just a little gay. Yay! Who knows what would've happened if I went the Scott Weiland route (who by the way is impressive as a front man from far away, but so drugged up that he's just full of his own cliches and demands that we all ROCK). Oh man, the images are too much.

Also spent time in a cabin up in the San Juan islands, watching harbor seals chilling on rocks, harassing hermit crabs, and experiencing extreme whale let down. LET DOWN.

4. Justifiably, there should be a fourth horseman, but I'd like to keep this as an ongoing list, adding additional signs of summapocalypse as I go along. As WE go along, do add in comments if anyone reaches this.

Oh yeah, but a good one is that Astroland is closing today for good. Summer over forever.

I'm not sure if my 9-5 tecnolwizard project managing vegetative state has stunted any creative bone growth I had going on before, but in my best terms, I would like to regain this creativity from you know, OUTLETS. Currently working on it.