My Mecca

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

As an Eastcoaster, the minute Labor Day ends, you think summer is finished.  Your mind prepares for siege mentality against the onslaught of that horrible cold and wet.  “Winter is coming,” is the Stark family motto in Game of Thrones.  That sense of doom is, of course, ridiculous if you’re living in Southern California.  We’ll get a light dip in temperature somewhere at the beginning of December, and it will rain a bit, maybe a total of twenty days between then and the end for February.  Winter will never really come.

"I know meth heads," states Jesse Pinkman from "Breaking Bad," played by Aaron Paul.

The LA equivalent of the February Blues, which make the winter-weary on the East Coast and in Europe suicidal with ‘seasonal affective disorder’ (an ailment invented by pharmaceutical companies if there ever was one, just as Valentines Day was conjured by Hallmark), is something called June Gloom, when this city is overcast until it burns off at midday.  I heard one buxom bunny say to another while they were heading into pilates class earlier this summer, “I’m just so totally bummed this morning.  Must be, like, June Gloom or something.”  Then it burns off by, like, 1 p.m., along with your death wish, and there’s just nothing left to be unhappy about.  La-la-la.