Though everyone will claim to have their personal preferences, it’s pretty much unanimous consent that summer, out of all the seasons, is top dog. Sure winter may have Christmas, and spring may have its tradition of assassinations, but summer wins precisely because it never loses. Baseball, the best sport, has its season during the summer. 100 out of 100 schoolchildren agree that summer is like really the best vacation EVER! Summer hits are the catchiest; summer movies are the most enjoyable. Summer romances only involve unfairly hot girls and are completely drama-free. Shakespeare’s most famous play is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the most interesting female character’s name in “The O.C.” was Summer. Seasonal affective disorder only goes one way. Yeah, no one works and no one has any problems. Why can’t it just be summer all year?

Oh, that’s right. If we had summer the whole year, then the entire country would turn into the Greater Los Angeles Area (*audible shudder*), and if I understand climate change science correctly, then that might actually happen. And since I am most definitely NOT trying to have the next version of “The Hills” set in Columbus, Ohio, I think it might be time to work out our issues with summer.

First, summer, you need to stop talking about how easy you make living, when you can be just as extreme as winter when it comes to weather. Music industry, you largely take the blame for this one. Ever since Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess,” summertime, you’ve been tooting your own horn about how “the livin’s easy” and repeatedly exhorting a scared child not to cry as a result. Your pernicious reach even caused the most emo band I listened to throughout all of high school, Lostprophets, to construct an “Ode to Summer” where they declare that “the last good times of summer / are the last few minutes of warmth.” Jesus, summer. Cognitive dissonance much?

After all, the original idea for summer break–and you can thank the Midwest for this one–came from schools needing to shut down for some months so that the chillun’ could help out with the farm. Nowadays, since there is far less tilling and hoeing to do in the average American household, we just sit around and watch news reports about how freakin’ hot it is outside. Hey Gershwin, why don’t you ask all the heat stroke victims in New York if they agree that summertime is so goddamn easy? These stories happen every year, and yet they always surprise the news media. Maybe if you and your musical cohorts would write more songs about how boring and drippy summer is, then maybe society could not be so flabbergasted when it turns out that summertime living can actually be hard.

Movies and TV, you’re not off the hook for propagating this rose-colored Ray-Bans view of summer, either. Hey Hollywood, last time I checked summer takes up one fourth of the year, and throughout the course of a year most people tend to have at least four problems. Why you guys got to dump all your problem stories into Oscar season and sweeps? Summer is only for superficial enjoyment. Just once can’t we have a funeral or a break-up or a lesson about the importance of family happen on a beautiful day in July? Even worse is your constant ignoring, with the exception of Spike Lee’s masterful “Do the Right Thing,” of the summer heat wave, even though Very Reliable Sociology Studies indicate that sharp increases in temperature, like ones that take place during the summer, are correlated with increases in crime. Why isn’t the Freedom Summer as well documented as the Summer of Love? It’s quite possible that if you guys stressed that narrative as much as the carefree summer one, people might remember to chill out in an effort to help them chill out more frequently.

Vapidity, undocumented crime, disregard for other people’s problems–these are as much the legacy of summer as fried food, habitual weed smoking, acoustic guitar circles and feel-good hits are. Dear God, summer really is Greater Los Angeles for a season. Who can we turn to for hope then? Just like always, leave it to the brave visionaries of “South Park” to say what nobody else will, but every one suspects might be true. Chiefly, it just might be possible that “Summer Sucks” (episode 208, easily locatable online), you know, as least as much as winter does.

Want to defend the summertime? Make your case at [email protected].