How to Trick Your Friends—and Neil Olshey—Into Helping You Beat the Portland Heat

It’s probably cold in church and they can’t kick you out, because it’s church!

Street Style 06.23.21 (Chris Nesseth)

I don’t know if you’ve been looking at the news but it’s going to be pretty damn hot this weekend!

We’re talking 104 on Saturday, one-hundred and eleven on Sunday, then back to a fairly standard 104 on Monday. Pretty damn hot, by which I mean it will be so hot that upon stepping outside you will feel damned, as if cast into hell for your sins and roasted on a spit by the devil at his poolside barbecue. The pool is filled with burning oil.

I know what you’re thinking: The heat is my enemy and I wish to defeat him in combat but I don’t know how. I wish someone would tell me in an article! Never fear, brave reader: Corbin is here to help. Here are some suggestions on how to “beat the heat” this weekend!

Don’t have air conditioning but have friends that do? It’s time to abuse their friendship as much as you possibly can! Go to their house. Knock on the door. Say, “Oh hey, I was in the neighborhood and I brought you this ice cream!” Give them the ice cream. While they are taking in this act of kindness, slip past them. Like a vampire, you are inside now. Sit on the couch, like a giant, unmovable, warm stone. They will accept you for a while. Once this runs out, keep sitting. Do not move. You are a rock. Nighttime comes. It’s still hot outside. Sleep on the couch. No one can stop you. You have a craving for cold and an iron will, and nothing can remove you. Your “friends” will accept this.

Do have air conditioning, but you have nothing to do and no imagination? Try “bingeing” a TV show in the comfort of your chilly palace! I personally recommend The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a serialized show about a delightful moose and his squirrel friend. The middle part of the show is a completely different show!

Go to Neil Olshey’s house! Portland Trail Blazers general manager Neil Olshey put together a really pathetic roster this year and openly refuses to take any of the blame for the team’s lack of success, but he still makes a lot of money even as he makes your life marginally worse. Make him pay by going to his house, eating his food, and chilling in the swimming pool I assume he owns. When he runs out to object, throw a cream pie in his face, then point to a nearby ska band, which will play a rebellious anthem to celebrate this middle-aged former soap opera actor’s embarrassment. Summer fun, baby!

Go to church! It’s probably cold in church and they can’t kick you out, because it’s church! They’d probably be happy, just because mostly people are trying to get out of church! You’re basically doing church a favor!

Smoke a “chilly” strain of cannabis! I had to stop smoking weed a while back because I started to get “insanely bad anxiety all the time,” but seeing as you are reading a Portland alt-weekly it’s safe to assume that you do partake. They make a weed strain for anything these days: I wanna be sleepy, I wanna be horny, I wanna be taller. Whatever your ambition, there’s a strain of hydroponic bud that will make your dreams come true. It stands to reason that, somewhere in this menagerie of reefer options, the wizards who breed weed have figured out how to make you cold! Here’s one called Igloo! Or Ice—ice is pretty cold! Alaskan Thunder Fuck? Alaska is the coldest state, folks!

Bury yourself under a fro-yo nozzle! There’s an unspoken rule whenever you enter a self-serve frozen yogurt palace tucked away in a suburban strip mall. If you walk in all calm and slap a fifty on the counter, the single employee who is operating the scale will walk into the back room for five minutes, leaving you alone to stick your entire head under the nozzle and bury your head in the luxurious, creamy chill of a frozen yogurt bath. Just place your head in the gentle caress of the grate, close your eyes, and yank the lever until your brain submits to the pure pleasure of ice and takes you away from the apocalyptic seeming summer heat.

Go to Ted Wheeler’s house! Same as the Olshey one, but the stakes are higher. Little-known fact: If you tell Ted Wheeler you’re a cop, he has to let you inside.

Just let the sun take you! Spoiler alert, for life: You are made of matter, and someday that matter will inevitably be reunited with the exploding sun. Your life is just a lengthy act of resistance against the truth: From the sun we are born and to the sun we return. This weekend, you will have the opportunity to end your arrogant quest: Just lie down in a field, open your eyes, and feel the power of the sun permeate every molecular crevice of your existence, breaking you apart into your fundamental atoms and claiming you for itself like it inevitably will. Why fight the sun, which is larger and more powerful than you? Offer yourself to the god of creation!

Or find that friend with air conditioning.

Editor’s note: But seriously, folks, here’s information on where to find cooling shelters this weekend.

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