Fall! The Second Best Season Comes In (With A Rain Storm)

Fall! Oh how I welcome the coming of this season. Winter's my top pick (drink hot coco during a snow storm next to a fire and try to disagree with me), but Fall is always welcome to me. 

Fall is a transitional season, first and foremost. It ends the worst season (Summer) and leads to the best (Winter). Let's start with Summer. Summer is hot, humid and horrible. If you disagree, try going outside in Washington DC in the middle of August. There is nothing charming about your shirt becoming soaked with sweat in under five minutes. And that's not temporary. If you don't like the cold, the air doesn't stick with you once you've gone inside. But sweat does, and absent several daily showers, it doesn't let you forget how hellish the outside it.

Some try to deal with this through fewer yards and fabric and more square inches of skin. Some of us have the gym memberships to pull this off. Most don't (and to be fair that includes me), though that doesn’t stop them. Fall forces us to rediscover our modesty. I don’t pine for a return to a Victorian fashion sensibility, but there is something to be said for leaving some things to the imagination. Someone has to take me out to diner first before they can see where I curve.

And it's not just modesty that returns with the cool weather - fashion over all improves. Jackets, coats, hats and sweaters all make a triumphant return to the streets. Everyone looks better in a coat, that's just a law of physics. Very few people look good in tank tops, but everyone looks good in a sweater. 

Summer also has a dearth of good culture. Maybe it's because the weather draws us outside that there never seems to be anything worth staying inside for. Judging by the domination of reality television shows, every writer in Los Angles must take a vacation from June through September. The quality of the plot lines in Summer movies seems to confirm this theory. The chillier weather of Fall though gives us an excuse to stay inside. Television comes back to life, as do decent movies.

But Fall is more than just a transition out of Summer, it has a spirit of its own and its own unique joys. Thanksgiving! Who doesn't love all that turkey? For you heterosexuals out there, I hear some people really get into Football (the one where you don't generally touch the ball with your feet. The one where you do is for Europeans and those who love them.). And let us not forget the greatest thing about Fall besides the weather - leaves. Before falling to the ground and making a general mess, their swan song of brilliant shades of red, yellow and orange makes the world a more beautiful place to be (Though the prettiest is still a fresh covering of snow). There is more energy in those changing leaves that there is during the summer. That middling season is nothing but monotonous green, but Fall lets nature explore the full color spectrum.

So let's welcome this wonderful season. Break out your coats and sweaters, your novels and scotch, and let your TiVo feast on all the good new choices out there. Summer is the draining middle of the year, but Fall is it’s climax. It has the best of all other seasons – the chill in their air of Winter, and Summer’s lack of frostbite. We get Halloween and Thanksgiving, which welcomes the Pagans, more than Christmas ever can. Us Jews get Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur too (no relevant Charlton Heston movie, but good nonetheless). Being the climax it is also marks the descent phase of the year, as things wind down towards the new year. Winter might technically begin before the end of the year, but the whole period from Thanksgiving till January 1^st is really just a dead period.

So enjoy the Fall! Enjoy the temperatures while they’re crisp, before they turn chilly.