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January BBQ: Splendor & Terror

1/7/07

I was chillin' at Fly on Friday night downtown, and while I was chatting with my friend Fayette it kind of hit me: the forecast for the next day was sunny and 71°...I had to do something outside.  I ran through a couple of my options in my head quickly but settled on this:

Smokey Joe.

Smokey Joe (click here for a reminder) has had quite a run the last couple of years, and so I sent Gordon "The Professional" Stokes a text to see if he was down with some grillworks the next day.  Responding with something to the effect of "You read my mind!", we decided the next day to just call up some peeps and make it happen.  That's right--a fucking barbecue in early January.

"I get to show off my guns in JANUARY!" exclaimed Tena

When I arrived at Quincy Park in Arlington the next day, it was cool to see that damn near everyone in the area was having the same idea that we were; as crazy as it is to have a day this warm just after New Year's, you have GOT to take advantage because who knows how close we are to the year's first snowstorm?  (One knows we'll never get lucky enough to get like two feet of snow like they're seeing outside of Denver each week, but a man can dream, you know?)  Parents had their kids on the jungle gym without any jackets.  Men and women were playing ultimate, basketball, tennis, volleyball (on a sand court, no less), and flag football...many of them had completely lost their minds, wearing shorts and no shirts and loving every second of it.  It reminded me of one of my favorite college memories at THE University of Virginia, that first warm day every second semester when the lovely lady co-eds completely lost their noggin and "forgot" to wear enough clothing while sunbathing on the Lawn, or in front of the colonnades near Lambeth, or wherever.  Sure, it might have only been like 55°, but a semi-warm day was enough to trigger such silly behavior back in Charlottesville.

This January business was altogether different.  We're talking a justifiably warm day at the exact opposite time of year when people are supposed to be able to stroll outside.  The front page of The Washington Post this past Sunday had pictures--no, I'm not making this up--of senior citizens sunbathing here in Bethesda at the local YMCA.

In January!  In freakin' January!!!

The collective group--which included Jellybean Grant, Colleen, their son Braeden, Tena, Derwin, Ross, Taryn, Fayette and Kelly--spent much of the afternoon discussing just how crazy this was, all the while Grillmaster Stokes lit up Smokey Joe like a Christmas tree and we broke out BBQ favorites like the Cheeseburger, the Hamburger, the Hot Dog and the Lean Italian Sausage.  I'm sitting there in cargo pants and a t-shirt, thinking

"I'm eating chips out of a bag right now, outside...and I'm not cold at all!  Is this what Heaven is like?"

Hot dogs and cheese dogs...coming together as one

Around this exact moment--I believe this was 1:45-ish in the afternoon--I thought of Al Gore.  You see, after I saw the global warming horror film "An Inconvenient Truth" last year, I walked out of the theater with very mixed emotions; the film was well done, and it was also apocalyptic.  Unless we as a race made significant changes in the short term, there was going to be major trouble, according to the Gore arguments of the film...and, after going home to see what the scientific community had to say about the arguments raised in the film, I was shocked to see that almost none of them had any qualms with the truths raised in the documentary.

This meant that the majority of what I had just seen was true.  And that meant that it was no real surprise that like ten of the most recent thirteen or fourteen years are the warmest years on record, by far.  And that meant that if last January was the warmest year on record in the history of Washington, DC (which I believe it was), the fact that we're already seeing 70° days is even more foundation for the fact that we are all going to be burned to a crisp by the end of the century.

Or something.

Braeden gives Mom and Dad his signature move, "The Tongue"

Jellybean made the comment later in the day--"You know, even if this global warming thing is a legit threat, you have to admit this much--at least the weather will be nice."  My buddy Dave Lee: "It's all well and good now...until it hits 135° in August."  My friend Moon:  "Yeah, we'll all be dead in twenty years anyway." (She only appeared to be half-joking.)

It is alarming, isn't it?  Maybe this is just a phase and in 10-20 years, we'll be back to what we know of as winter in the Northeast.  But, as cool as it is to have this warm of a day this early in the year--I had to literally open the "summer" suitcase because I didn't have any clothes to wear to the barbecue Saturday--it's also an absolute fucking nightmare.  I remember how how it was last May; we had a couple of 100° days, from my recollection, and that was BEFORE Memorial Day.  Not a good situation; if I wanted to live in Africa, I could just move there!

Strangely, I have been much happier the last few days, as the temperatures have fallen back off the table and down to reality; it was like 38° here today, and I was loving every bone-chilling minute of it...THIS is what January is supposed to be like, and I can only hope that this will lead to some snowfall eventually.

But, why do I get the feeling that we'll be meeting again in February for another barbecue?

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Getting an $83 million "bonus" check for peddling toilet humor and other forms of depravity for a national audience:  Opening Weekend

• Being more informed:  $9.50 Show

• The Cowboys losing...and then realizing that you will have to watch at least one more Seahawks game:  Matinee

• 10" televisions:  Rental

• New stadium, reasonably new coach, new unis, new starting lineup...same last-minute disappointing loss at the hands of a so-so team coached by maybe the ugliest guy in hoops coach history:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com