Saving Face

Wolfman Jack: The best summer I can remember was 1965. Three major movements in rock 'n' roll came together: Motown, the British invasion and the summer surf sound. They gave the music charts the most versatility of any period. We haven't had anything before or since like that summer.

Summer is like the soy sauce on the chop suey of life. You might laugh, but I bet there's an old Chinese couple out there saying, "How true, how true."

You know what the big summer song in Fairbanks, Alaska, is? Her Auntie Gave Her Panties 'Cause She Left Her Undies in the Andes. A great summer hit.

Helen Gurley Brown: I love summer in New York. It's charming, sexy, sensuous and quiet. The city streets in summer are so sexy. I can wear just a pair of panties, a dress and sandals. It feels so sexy to get it down to the bare minimum. Summer is the most sensuous time of the year--a good time to have a love affair.

Peter Allen: Sydney, Australia, is the best city, because summer is in the winter and it's nice to lie on the beach after Christmas dinner. Australians are a bunch of white Anglo-Saxons who think they're Polynesians. They have a wonderful time. If they could just learn to samba, it would be the perfect summer city. I'd never leave.

I also like summers in New York. I don't go away on the weekends to Fire Island or the Hamptons, like everyone else, because I like to walk around the empty streets. I remember doing a one man Broadway show in the middle of an absolutely deadly heat three summers ago. There I was, all dressed up in my mirrored jacket, dancing on the piano in the middle of this heat wave. I just got thinner and thinner.

Fran Lebowitz: The worst thing about summer in the city is that people walk around with very few clothes on, which with most people is aesthetically unappealing. You see adult men in shorts, people's feet. All that is offensive. Anyway, I think most people would look better covered head to toe with a sheet.

The best summers were when I was a kid and went to camp. Summer when you're a kid is totally satisfying. From five to ten are the best years of your life, the prime. When you're a kid, even your parents leave you alone in summer. No one thinks you're a lunatic for spending 11 hours alone, lying on your back.

Now I lead the same kind of life as a child, except I'm 31 and inside. I lie on my back looking at the ceiling, which I prefer to the sky.

I don't like hot weather, but I never go out in the daylight anyway if I can help it, so my routine doesn't change much.

The best thing about summer in New York is that a certain element--the quiche element--leaves, which spruces up the city. The only people left in the city are poor people and writers--a much jollier group.

Mr. Blackwell: Anyone who stays in New York during the summer deserves to look terrible. If he has to stay there, my advice to him is to forget fashion; just try to look comfortable.

There are torturous moments of heat in downtown L.A., too, but I have the habit of making believe they don't exist. To me, discussing the weather is a big bore.

One nice thing is that women walk differently in the sun. There's almost an automatic kind of smile in their stride and in their attitude that doesn't exist in the fall.

Irving "Swifty" Lazar: Writers don't produce as much in summer. Everyone goes to his holiday place or his country home on Long Island, in New Hampshire or in the south of France. Productivity goes down, and it's harder to make deals. Everyone is off somewhere. The project must be something irresistible, like The Sound of Music, which we sold in the summer. Otherwise, it's very difficult to get the right combination of people together. Summer is not a time when people in publishing or show business like to work.

Rex Reed: I'm not a summer person. I hate tank tops, jogging shorts, transistor radios, Puerto Rican music, the smell of tortillas frying--all the symbols of summer in New York City. It's not at all charming. I just flee.

Ideally, I steal off to my farm in Connecticut for six weeks every summer. It's cooler. I have a swimming pool. I garden and get away from it all.

As for L.A., it's horrible any time of year, summer or winter.

Buck Henry: I love summer in the city. I live with an Eskimo. It's always cold. There's always refrigeration.