Ouch. That’s Hot.

After college let out for the last time — and before life lapped up the last few allowable drops of adolescent indulgence — I spent a summer wasting.  Living on Mac ‘n Cheese swashed down with MGDs.  Walking my sand-scratched crack back from a dive called Shagg’s.  Trying to beat the moon to bed and dodge the sun while quoting Donne.  Ah yes, it was time well spent.

The summer was needed.  There was a girl to purge from my mind, some pale pasty parts to drop from my body.  But most of all there was an “I can do it!” ego that needed to fail miserably night after lonesome night as friends returned to more responsible endeavors and the long sweat of an endless summer turned chilly and sad.

There’s a novel in that summer.  Life began one way and turned out another.  There was conflict, there was resolution, there was dénouement as the players drifted on to next things.  Nothing of the sort happened during A Year In Provence.  To be fair, Peter’s publication claims to be filed under “Travel,” and as a bit of long-form journalism it amuses nicely.  However, I’ve seen more contemplation in magazines, more emotion in the newspaper, more reflection on facebook and blogs than I found here.

Inspire me Peter!  Life seemed lovely: Libidinous lunches drenched with young rosé, days spent weaving through vineyards and truffled woods, recovery meted out by the pool and the omnipresent pastis.  Why couldn’t you fall in love with it all?  Why couldn’t you get sick of it all?  Why couldn’t you treat your caring neighbors as more than cartoons with outrageous accents?  Why?

Perhaps he’s fried his heart on too many lovers, frozen his soul from fear of an un-assured salvation.  Perhaps he’s a sort of idiot-savant:  Gifted ear, sharp wit, unassailable palette, but complete confusion when confronted by emotion.   Perhaps we’ll never know.  I won’t be sticking around for Toujours Provence, though I’m tempted to visit.  I have nothing against “Travel” you know.

__________

Someday I’ll write a slim volume about what I found during my lost summer.  It’s a place I revisit with each listen to Belle & Sebastian’s “A Summer Wasting” — a two minute tune that moves more than Peter Mayle’s two hundred pages:

I spent the summer wasting
The time was passed so easily
But if the summers wasted
How come that I could feel so free
I spent the summer wasting
The sky was blue beyond compare
A photograph of myself
Is all I have to show for

Seven weeks of reading papers
Seven weeks of river walkways
Seven weeks of feeling guilty
Seven weeks of staying up all night

[A new feature here at Ouch. That's Hot, "Today In The News" will be my stand-in when I'm feeling stand-offish.  There's been much to write about, but the real stuff isn't fit to print and the frivolous flies in the face of the afflicted.  Am I'm taking myself too seriously?  Maybe.  But if I don't, who will?]

You might think that our Veep would have something better to do this week than hang out with a bunch of Asian chicks.  You might think that with the economic crisis, two wars, and a certain election wrapping up that he’d have his hands full orchestrating the next stage of the vast right-wing conspiracy.  But no, he’s here.  Right here, right now.  In South Dakota.

Not willing to let a little mistake keep him down, Mr. Cheney is here to shoot the state bird:  The Ring-Necked Pheasant.  It’s a tasty dish, imported from China by some nice farmers a hundred years ago.  From the Associated Press:

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in South Dakota Monday for his annual trip to hunt pheasants.

Air Force Two landed at the Pierre Regional Airport around 10:45 a.m.

Cheney has hunted pheasants in South Dakota each year that he’s been vice president. He’s done his hunting at a private lodge north of Pierre.

Pull!