Jan
2
Welcome to another edition of Puntabulous Guest Debates! Joining us today is the always fabulous and chic Suburban Kamikaze from the blog Suburban Kamikaze. As she says on her blog: Her address says suburbs, but her shoes scream “get me out of here…”
Her idea for a debate is something I feel very passionately about. One might even say I get all hot and bothered.
Summer vs Winter: Let’s get this party started!

Suburban Kamikaze: Don’t fall for what you see on the postcards Craig; winter is dirty, nasty and cold, and I don’t mean dirty and nasty in a good way. Do you know who came up with the idea of hell as a high-temperature kind of place? Well neither do I, but I can tell you who didn’t: anyone who ever lived through February in Chicago.

Craig: So you admit that Hell being a high temperature place proves the amazingness of Winter? Are you sure you’re not on my side of this debate? And while we’re on the subject of Hell, why don’t we bring up Heaven as well? (RHYME!) You know heaven, right? That place where all good people, I mean Christians, go when they die? That place way up in the sky? (RHYME AGAIN!) Do high altitudes mean anything to you? Well they do to me! Nice, brisk, refreshing, cold weather! It’s like winter all year round! There’s no better way to be rewarded in the afterlife than skiing with Jesus.

Suburban Kamikaze: I think maybe the altitude is a little too high in the Puntabulous corporate offices. There is absolutely no way that you will be doing any skiing with Jesus in the afterlife. For one thing, as any parochial school kid could tell you, the guy sports an all-over tan and hair down to his shoulders. He’s definitely a surfer. Speaking of sports, let me just throw out some statistics: I have been hit in the face with a lump of frozen water three times today already. That is an accuracy rate of 100 percent for my 12-year-old son, who only pretends that he is not aiming for my head. If I complain about the fact that my Wonderbra is now filled with snow melt and the side of my face is sporting a welt the size of a baseball, I am called a “bad sport”. When did hitting your mother in the face become a sport? I’ll tell you when: winter.
Craig: Don’t blame me for your son being straight. Maybe you should have raised him a little gayer and you wouldn’t have to worry about dodging anything. The way I throw, the snowball would surely have melted in the warm spring air by the time it reached you. Us gay kids always liked making snow angels and snazzily dressed snowmen instead. What can you make in the summer? A grass angel? Be careful of grass stains! A sandman? Good luck with that! Speaking of sand, it’s pretty much the worst substance on the face of the planet. But what’s worse than sand? Water THEN sand. And when does that happen? Oh right, the big summer hang out! The beach!

Suburban Kamikaze: Craig, I’m sure your snowmen were fabulous. But I am starting to wonder if maybe back indoors, in the closet perhaps, you were secretly studying the box scores and teaching yourself to make fart noises with your armpits. What else could explain the fact that you somehow failed to notice that in addition to sand and water, the beach is crawling with hard-bodied men wearing very little clothing?
Craig: Please. Who needs to go to the beach to see hard-bodied men wearing very little clothing when I already have them in the comfort of my own home on my computer screen? And at the beach none of the hard-bodied men say: “Hey dude, nice surfboard” “Thanks, but I’d rather be riding you instead” and then start making out. Speaking of getting naked in public. Outside of porn, it is socially unacceptable. In the summer, if it gets hot, you can’t just keep taking off clothes. So you’re stuck in sticky clothes being hot and miserable. But in the winter, if you’re cold, you can just keep adding clothes and get nice and cozy and warm!

Suburban Kamikaze: “If it gets hot you can’t just keep taking off clothes?” That would be news to the folks in South Beach, Craig, or even Fort Lauderdale, popular destinations for scads of actually gay men, as opposed to fans of the video game. I can sum up summer’s superiority in one word: “circulation”. It’s a good thing Craig, responsible for much of what makes life pleasurable, and like rum, it’s also better in the Bahamas. Do you know why your fingers start to burn and go numb when the temperature drops? It’s the beginning of what is known as “death”, Craig. But that doesn’t sell a lot of Currier & Ives prints, does it? Winter, on the other hand, is responsible for countless cases annually of what is now known as “seasonal affective disorder”. Which used to be known as the “winter blues” until Winter’s sleazy, high-priced, Washington lobbyists had it changed. They can call it what they want, Craig; nobody was ever depressed drinking mojitos under a palm tree.
Craig: Don’t even get me started on mojitos! Whoever’s idea it was to take perfectly good alcohol and add mint to it should be shot. If I wanted mint, I’d brush my teeth! And you act as if nobody ever suffers in the summer. Ever hear of heatstroke? If I look in my handy dandy home medical dictionary, it says heatstroke is “characterized by cessation of sweating, severe headache, high fever, hot dry skin, and, in serious cases, collapse and coma”. That’s right! A coma! Suddenly the winter blues don’t sound so bad! It’s like a fun jazz song! Shoobity shoobity shoo! My girl left me in the winter, I’ve got the winter bluuuueees! Yeah!

Suburban Kamikaze: You know what is also like a fun jazz song Craig? An actual fun jazz song. Maybe you have heard this one?
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
Oh yo’ daddy’s rich an’ yo’ ma is good lookin’
But Craig would prefer that the cotton all die….”
I don’t know what you have against fish and cotton Craig, but I can tell you this: If you are brushing your teeth with rum and sugar water, you are doing it all wrong.
Craig: Um, yeah, maybe I hate cotton. Maybe I hate cotton because it reminds me of 1800’s plantations. Maybe I hate 1800’s plantations because they remind me of slavery. But you know, if you like slavery, then yeah, by all means, cotton is awesome. I guess I just have a higher respect for humanity than you do. You know where they never had plantations? In the north. Where it isn’t hot and summer-like all year round. Just sayin! And yeah, fish is gross, because, well, you know.

Suburban Kamikaze: And who do you suppose was buying all that slave-produced cotton Craig? (Hint: blankets do not exactly fly off the shelves in Miami…) But your respect for humanity aside, Craig, I think we have gone a little off track. A discussion of the cotton trade would be relevant in a debate called “North vs. South, circa 1860,” but our assignment is “Winter vs. Summer.” Remember? (Maybe you should put a sweater on. Try to get your circulation going.) Along those lines, I will conclude with a few literary points. When novelist Edith Wharton produced her breezy tale of a young woman’s sexual awakening, she did not title it “Winter”. Can you guess what she called it Craig? When winter-logged Russian writer Leo Tolstoy took up the theme, the result was “Dreary, Vodka-Soaked Russian Woman Throws Herself Under the Train”. Now I am not saying that I am ready to throw myself under a train exactly. But it is no coincidence that the website and corresponding book of short stories I began in Miami, (“Suburban Happiness: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tupperware”) evolved along somewhat darker themes. It’s cold here, Craig. That’s all I’m saying.
Craig: Yes. It is cold. But it’s a clean cold. It’s a refreshing cold. You come in from the snow, you pull off all your wet clothes and you enjoy a nice big mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows. And you’re happy. Summer makes you gross. You come in from the heat, you are a sweaty mess. You make lots of noises that sound like “Uuughghhhghhh” and you plop down on the couch until your body temperature levels itself out again. If you ask me, a snowball in the face every once in a while is well worth not having to make the “Uuughghhhghhh” noise ever again.
So who do you guys think won? Her pictures are incredible! The high heels in the snow are so chic! Be sure to head over to her blog: Suburban Kamikaze!
Think you could do better? Send me an e-mail with a topic you’d like to debate with me! If you’ve previously sent me a topic, and I never got back to you, or if we haven’t started the debating process yet, send me a reminder! I’m very forgetful! For more Puntabulous Debates CLICK HERE!








































