Weather Metal

For whatever reason, most people don't realize that Maryland is a southern state. Yep, it's true, we are. We are the first state directly below the Mason-Dixon Line thus designating us as a part of the south, ya'll. Pass the sweet tea, and bless your heart! I only wish we could experience the same kind of year-round warm weather like Georgia or the Carolina's. But we're subject to four distinct seasons. Which is... whatever. I detest the cold and prefer warm weather, so I'd be happy to skip winter entirely. And this winter is no exception.

Sometimes mother nature gets a little bitchy, and the weather loses it's shit (just ask the dinosaurs... oh wait...). And the weather and news people LOVE that! It almost gets uncomfortable as a viewer, what with all the "weather event boners" on every news channel and website. The talking heads obsess, filling entire news days with (redundant) safety precautions, crazy ass reports from the field, but the best part? Some news genius somewhere gets to NAME these weather events.

Recently a significant portion of the US experienced some abnormally cold weather, which included  Maryland. When I popped on the news early one morning to see what was up, I heard the term "Polar Vortex" being bandied about. Typically it's just that irritating jackass Marty Bass on WJZ making up shit to sound cool and feed his need for constant attention, but other channels were using it to. You can Google that yourself, but basically what it amounted to was - "Hey Marylanders, for about 24 hours you're going to know what it feels like to be an Inuit living in an igloo. Enjoy!" It sucked. I hate the cold, and this was EXTRA cold.

Pipes burst, roads were dangerous, power was lost, the homeless were a major concern, and the local weather people tried to convince us that if we stayed outside for more than 5 minutes, we might die. Or at least, parts not covered by 67 layers would go numb. It was serious business. But I gotta tell ya.... every time I heard (or even saw) "Polar Vortex" the rock chick in me reflexively thought "Where are they playing?"

Because that name? Sounds like a Swedish death metal band.

Think about it. Say you turned on your local rock station and heard this: "On the bill for the 2014 Maryland Deathfest: Hooded Menace! Rotting Out! Polar Vortex! War Master! Tickets on sale, 10am this Friday!"

See? Blends right in doesn't it? To a live music addict (i.e. me), it was distracting, really. More so than the stunningly low temps. Which, I think we can all agree, sucked.

So glad it's over.
 
But I'm still waiting for the announcement for the Polar Vortex tour with El Nino and Snowmageddon.