Heat, J. Lo, Ben: Enough’s enough

July 2003. Someone scrawls the word “KILL” on my oven door. I have a wisdom tooth extracted. A heat wave arrives. It is not L.A.-in-July heat, it is heat from somewhere else. Heat that refuses to move, like somebody’s couch-bound cat. A few weeks into this heat and an elderly man, as if possessed, careens into the Santa Monica farmers market, killing and maiming. Then Kobe Bryant is accused of felony sexual assault.

By then, the stove with the word “KILL” on it has been sitting on the curb for weeks. The TipSmart people were supposed to come haul it away but haven’t showed, so the thing sits there, a dead appliance, and then someone writes “KILL” on it.

After a few days, the stove begins to take on the aspect of art. Drive-by irony.

July continues. Here comes another movie starring J. Lo. J. Lo and Ben and their rich, happy, happy, rich life here on Earth. They’re like this heat wave, they won’t move.

I find myself willing to meet them halfway, but also annoyed: Is the thing pronounced “Jiggly” or “Giggly?” Because I absolutely refuse to say “Zhee-lee.” It’s too hot to say “Zhee-lee.” I don’t have the energy. Stopped at a red light, staring up at J. Lo and Ben, I have also been toying with “Goggly-Woggly,” “Googly-Woogly,” “Jill St. John,” “Cha-Ching,” “Zha-Zhing,” “Yao Ming” and finally, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping.”

Maybe the problem is this: I don’t have air-conditioning, and so I have spent much of the month of July looped on Vicodin for the tooth, stuck to various parts of my living room. Furniture, mostly. This humidity-at-home has a way of playing with your head.

And meanwhile the “Giggly” movie haunts me at every street corner. I feel quite certain that J. Lo and Ben have magnificent climate-control in their lives. July, December, it’s all a festival of wonder for them. Probably right now, air-conditioning experts are consulting on ways to make Ben and J. Lo even more comfortable and climate-controlled than they already are. For instance: Is it possible that J. Lo’s jeans could have air-conditioning, with a thermostat controlled by the movement of her thighs? Excuse me, am I talking to myself here? Will these jeans just make themselves? Let’s go, I want to see blueprints, mock-ups.

A friend says this heat is all about the dew point. Ah, the dew point. He explains it all over breakfast at the new International House of Pancakes on Wilshire and Hauser, where the kosher Chinese place used to be.

Pancakes, in this July swoon? Am I crazy?

The dew point, my friend says, has to do with the amount of moisture in the air. The dew point temperature is the temperature to which air has to cool in order to become saturated -- and thus produce dew. I guess.

My friend likes science.

“Today’s dew point is a yucky 69 in L.A.,” he e-mails me later that day. It helps to know this, but only to a point.

And yet, who am I to complain? It’s much hotter in other parts of the world, places where they have less food and fewer resources, and bigger problems than the fact that the nearest Target is out of fans. Ah, liberal guilt. The next best thing to doing something about it.

By week three of this awful, heat-choked month, my stove with the word “KILL” on it disappears. I guess the TipSmart people came and got it (or the FBI, for evidence. Aren’t they doing this sort of thing now, in this time of war and terrorism and growing anti-Bush sentiment? Aren’t they confiscating appliances with suspicious graffiti? Why have I not been questioned? Do I want to be questioned?)

The stove leaves but the heat refuses to move. Day in, day out. I watch the farmers market mayhem and the Kobe Bryant mea culpa sexa stuck to my furniture, waiting for the FBI. I have lemonade for them. It’s in the fridge. “Googly-Woogly” opening soon, opening soon, opening soon! Only 11 shopping days left before August.

Now there are fewer.

Paul Brownfield can be reached at paul.brownfield@latimes.com