Blog: Heat Wave

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Burt Ross

The recent heat wave that hit Malibu producing triple digit temperatures had absolutely nothing to do with climate change, no matter what scientific facts indicate. I know exactly what caused this heat wave. Our suffering happened for one simple reason–because, as Jackie Gleason used to say when playing Ralph Kramden in “The Honeymooners”–“I’ve got a BIG mouth.”

Let me try to explain what I’m talking about. You see, the East Coast, where I come from, had a more prolonged heat wave just a week or two before we had ours. Most of my friends still live back there in the “old country,” as do my two kids. Shame on all of them! How could they live in such a hot place?–or so I asked them almost every day during their sweltering weather, especially when they could follow me, a genius if there ever were one, who had come to paradise.

I distinctly remember telling my daughter Kate that we had not had a single day this year in Malibu where the temperature had risen above 80 degrees.

“We haven’t turned on the ac all year,” I boasted to my next of kin.

And now perhaps you understand why I am singularly responsible for our heat wave. You see, whenever I take a bow I, more often than not, get taken down a peg. For some reason, the Higher Power does not like it when I gloat at another’s misfortune and brag about how brilliant I was to move here.

Every time I engage in this self-congratulatory behavior, I get kicked in the buttocks as Tom Hanks said in “Forrest Gump,” and occasionally in the front buttocks, if you get my drift.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have learned from prior mistakes. Over three years ago I wrote in this very same esteemed The Malibu Times that the drought here in California was caused by my bragging about how perfect the weather is here in Malibu. You would think that I could simply keep my mouth shut about our ideal weather. And so I will from here on in.

I am sorry for any inconvenience or discomfort the heat may have caused any of you, and I promise I will keep mum when it comes to discussing our weather (it really is pretty good) with anybody other than you, my reader. And if we do get hit with another heat wave, it won’t be my fault this time. Just blame it on climate change.