June Gloom

Right now in L.A. we are having gloomy weather. This happens every spring, it’s got something to do with the marine layer. It is so regular that we even have a name for it. It’s called the June Gloom (yes, yes, I know it's only May but the June Gloom cares not for such things!) and it is decidedly gloomy. Today as I was driving to work, the bleak sky reminded me of my favorite weatherman ever. Well…I always imagined he was a man…

When I shared an apartment in New Jersey with my BFF, we had alternate schedules. I worked from 8 am to 4 pm and she worked from 4 pm to midnight. (This was a condition of our living together since we also worked for the same company and we didn’t want to end up killing one another). But we still liked to spend time together, so I would take a bit of a nap when I came home from work and then I would hang out with her for an hour or two when she came home. It was during those times that we discovered the most emo weatherman ever.

Every night I would turn on the local cable channel before she came home. It was usually around 12 am. After a few days I started to notice something interesting. The weather reports all had a decidedly gothic slant to them. “Dark and menacing clouds with a chance of all-consuming rain” or “Painfully bright sun only relieved by the embrace of sunset and the lingering gloom of evening clouds”…it was good stuff. I think I fell a little bit in love with the weatherman. I suppose it could have been a weatherwoman but I always thought of some college-age dude with black eyeliner and a too-big black turtleneck sweater, sitting alone in the cable offices, listening to Bauhaus and wishing he looked more like Robert Smith. It went on like this for most of the year. Quirky, funny and dark weather reports, but only late at night. Surely it was some intern just trying to keep awake during the long hours. Every once in a while there would be a really good one “Night followed by a 85% chance of early morning” kind of stuff. And then, one day…nothing. No more goth, no more humor. Just plain old weather. I still turned on the local channel, searching in vain for my poor, sad little forecaster, but he (possibly she) was gone. Maybe he fell in love and suddenly everything was bright and sunny, or maybe the internship was over. I don’t know, but I really missed my goth weather report.

This morning I couldn’t help but think how much he (or possibly she) would enjoy the June gloom.