Ponytail Picks #36 - Heat

Slap on your sunblock, folks. All our picks this week make mercury rise in one way or another.

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LISTEN

Songs for when you’re tired of the heat

I might be in the minority here, but I’ve never been a big fan of hot weather. I’d sooner take a summer vacation to Newfoundland or Copenhagen than Mexico or Barbados. If the recent heatwaves and air-quality warnings are getting you down too, you can find a little sanity by listening to the songs below.

“Who Loves the Sun?” - The Velvet Underground

Who loves the sun?
Who cares that it makes plants grow?
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart?

“Sun in an Empty Room” - The Weakerthans

Take eight minutes and divide
(Sun in an empty room)
By ninety million lonely miles
(Sun in an empty room)
And watch the shadow cross the floor
(Sun in an empty room)
We don't live here anymore
(Sun in an empty room)

“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” - Elton John

Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life
To wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me

“Young Icarus” - Bill Callaghan

Young Icarus flew
At night for years
He flew and flew and flew
Over the maze he was born into
He flew and flew and flew
Until he reached morning

“That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)” - Louis Armstrong

Up in the mornin', out on the job
Work like the devil for my pay
But that lucky old sun has nothin' to do
But roll around Heaven all day

“The Sun Is Bad” - Indigo De Souza

Honey I love you, but I don't need to have you
There's nothing like crawling
Through the dark room
In the rear view
The sun just don't rise up for me, this time
Sun just won't rise up for us tonight

“The Sun” - Aidan Knight

Just what I feared
A knife or a crutch
Caught in the spokes and
Got me all cut up

The sun

“Every Time the Sun Comes Up” - Sharon Van Etten

Hey man, tricks can't wait to hear my emotions
Every time the sun comes up I'm in trouble

“The Sun (Fred Cherry Eclipse)” - Tame Impala

The sun rose on the wrong side of the Earth this morning
Nobody noticed but you
So you winked at the sun
And the sun winked back, and you kept it to yourself

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WATCH

Five films that turn up the heat

Do the Right Thing (1989)

“It’s the hottest day of the summer” in Brooklyn, as the tagline says, and the air temperature is more than matched by the racial tension, pizza ovens, and ice-cube-melting sexy times.

Mudbound (2017)

Here the sweat of brutal farm work under the blazing sun mixes with various storylines marked by blood and tears to form a very poignant muddy mood.

The Towering Inferno (1974)

This one’s a little more on the nose, but it’s not just the fire that makes you sweat in this claustrophobic and tense thriller.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

Heated monologues and fiery performances (on screen and on the mic) burst forth from a cramped, stage-like setting in this excellent drama.

Shiva Baby (2020)

Surely nothing would make you want to loosen your collar, air out your armpits, and splash your face with water in the bathroom more than bumping into both your ex and your sugar daddy at a cramped house gathering filled to the brim with prying and judgemental aunts.

-JB

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READ

Alternative summer reads

Normally, when people use the term “summer read” they’re referring to fluff. You won’t find any of that here. Below are five books, each with their own connection to the hottest time of the year.

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

Baldwin’s famous two-letter book is most famous for describing—with searing clarity—the plight of Black people in 1963. Reading it now, it’s not the progress of the civil rights movement that stands out but the horrific similarities between then and now.

But Baldwin tackles plenty of other hot topics throughout short book. Sin, sex, shame, religion, masculinity—he has something to say about them all and links them in a way that makes this book as relevant as ever.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

Franzen’s 2010 novel covers a lot of ground and time, but it’s always felt like a summer book to me. As always, his focus on complex and contradictory characters reveals the often hidden hypocrisies of modern life, regardless of age, sex, or political allegiance. Not a feel-good story, but one worth reading.

Miriam Toews’ The Flying Troutmans

A road-trip that starts in June: sounds like the perfect beginning for a summer read, no? But Toews puts her spin on the subgenre in a way that only she could. By the end, you’ll love every member of this dysfunctional family and know once and for all which side of the journey:destination debate you sit on.

Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar

This is the closest the “light reading” on the list so far. Not that the pop-song-inspiring novella is fluff. It just offers a reality so off-kilter from our own that you end up feeling reprieve rather than convicted. It’s a perfect introduction to absurdism, if you ask me—as sunny and approachable as absurdism gets.

Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs

Start the rest of your summer days with a poem from this book. It will have you feeling more open and compassionate toward the world than you could arrive at on your own, I guarantee it.

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Hold on to that sunscreen but grab your raincoat. The weather’s going to be unpredictable next time when we set our media ship off into

the sea.