You Are Listening to Los Angeles

I’ve noticed an abundance of autumn-related imagery and sentiment among webloggers and clothing outlets lately, tributes to “the favorite season of the year” or “the perfect excuse to break out the otherwise useless and fashionably-offensive Ugg Boots.” Fall is in the air, as it were, and the rest of the country outside of Los Angeles, California, is reenacting coffee commercials in celebration.

I remember fondly the fruit-looped countryside of Tennessee in October, where as a child I built forts of dried leaves and pinecones, unconciously striving even then to make Martha Stewart proud. I’ve known the chilly nip of winters looming behind cold fronts, the excitement of watching a packet of Swiss Miss hot chocolate dissolve into the hissing breath of boiling water. I understand the horrible necessity of wearing pantyhose and closed-toe shoes at least two seasons out of the year.

But when I moved to LA almost three years ago, I gave up the entire notion of “seasons” (and, frankly, the entire notion of “natural hair color”). I’m sure a geography professor could detail the science behind the abundantly�nay, the interminably�warm weather of Southern California, but all you really need to know is this:

I can wear flip flops and tube tops every single day of the year. And thanks to Tori Spelling, I am not alone.

To those skeptics who deem this phenomenon unnatural, I say, don’t come crying to me when your hands become cryogenically frozen to your car door in February. Don’t utter a single grumpy mumble when your thermal underwear bonds to your butt crack as you bend over to shovel snow from your porch. I’ve come to like my seasons indecipherably warm and anomalous. You’ve got a runny nose, I’ve got fantastically tan toes!