But It's a Dry Heat

Dear friends,

Every year, civilization collectively crowns one radio hit as The Song of the Summer. Remember "Baby Got Back" (1992) and "Hot in Herre" (2002)? They reflected the society's obsessions at the time; enormous butts and meteorology, respectively. 

I'm hoping that this year, society is so confused and dystopian that it considers this month's Hard Taco song, "My Grandmother's Grape," for this honor. If it's not anthemic enough to serve as The Song of the Summer, I hope that it can at least be a finalist for the Song of July 1, 2022 Between 9:00-9:04 am.

Speaking of it being Hot in Herre, Lauren and I purposely decided to spend our annual summer getaway in Arizona. Full travel recommendations will follow, but in this digest, we're going to focus on the place we rented a car and got out of as fast as possible, Phoenix.

Welcome to the city where it takes two air conditioning units in every outlet to keep the indoor temperatures below the melting point of human cells. The city's official motto is, "We Know, But It's a Dry Heat," but the lady at the airport information booth just kept saying, "If You're Here in the Summer, You Did This to Your Own Damn Self."  

Photo taken inside the Family Restroom at the Phoenix Airport.

The sun is not a friend in Phoenix. Instead of supporting cellular respiration of plants through photosynthesis, the Phoenix sun is an angry and vindictive star that endeavors to lay waste to all vegetation through the opposite chemical process... photo-annihilation. 

If you think SPF 50 will protect you from the sun's wrath, you probably also believe a cardigan made of beef jerky would safeguard you from grizzly bear bites. (Spoiler alert: It won't. Grizzlies have nimble claws and excel at unbuttoning sweaters.) 

Phoenix offers an expansive sprawl of cookie cutter homes and office parks. That's not just to say they all look alike, which they do, but that they are built from discarded aluminum cookie cutters. This helps reflect the sun's UV radiation, so your corneas can be ravaged from all angles.

Do you like rolling your ankles on an uneven bed of jagged volcanic moon rocks? If so, you'll love walking in Phoenix! Every step makes a jarring crunch that reverberates in your skull as if God was chewing Froot Loops with his mouth open. 

But before you go on that walk, be sure to shake your shoes upside to dislodge that family of scorpions. Don't worry... these scorpions weren't planning to move in permanently. They were just renting them for the night from other scorpions who bought every shoe in the neighborhood and turned them into Airbnbs. Most local scorpions can't afford a shoe. 

You will also need to coax rattlesnakes out of your socks and coyotes out of your formalwear and reading glasses. And before you get into your car, you will need to dig up the flesh-ripping agave bushes that took root on the driver's seat overnight. 

Finally, summer in an even-numbered year is Primary season! Garish red campaign signs cover every square inch of public space. These aren't the modest pillowcase-sized signs you'll find in other cities, but twin sheet-sized cardboard billboards sprouting out of the pumice like saguaros, each promising to out-Republican the others with slogans like "Kari Lake will drink liberal tears." This shows you just how bad things have gotten in Arizona; even the gubernatorial candidates must resort to extreme measures to stay hydrated. 

So our final recommendation for travelers? Phoenix is a 108-degree heap of shit.

But it's a dry heap. 

With warmest regards,

Zach