It's About Time

Hello World, Happy March! In the local area, it can't be denied that the month certainly came roaring in like the fearsome lion it is often compared with, including more snow, thanks not, and ever more frigid temperatures, which it goes without saying, even more thanks so much not. During the week, we were slammed with what they are referring to as Winter Storm Thor, which made enough of a mess around here that I just gave up on it altogether and stayed home from work. Of course, it's bad enough on the roads in the cold and snow, when everything is so slippery, and even worse when you get new snow on top of the ice that's already there, so you don't even know what dangers are lurking underneath. But often the bigger problem is when the streets are clear, and you're faced with the prospect of what appears to be the surface of the moon, which in reality is a treacherous network of potholes, held together loosely by crumbling asphalt, where an actual thoroughfare used to be. In the city, David Letterman recently quipped: “There is a pothole so big on 8th Avenue it has its own Starbucks in it.” But this is an epidemic of mythic proportions, and not confined to the five boroughs by any means, and not by a long shot, believe me. Bill says that across town where he works, the potholes are so deep that you can clearly hear the unmistakable sounds of Chinese community singing coming from the other side, and I have no reason to doubt it for one minute. At this point, I'm thinking all we can hope is that the month will hopefully leave more like a lamb than it came in, and I don't mind saying, not a moment too soon, by golly. And speaking of the opening of the new month, I'm sure I can speak for all of the purists, old-timers, and hide-bound traditionalists, who were no doubt surprised to find what are now laughingly referred to as St. Patrick's Day parades beginning almost 3 weeks before the saint's actual feast day on March 17th. Yes, the local newspaper started showing pictures of marchers and bagpipe bands while it was still February, for Pat's sake, and Mayor De Blasio with his City Hall cohorts braved the elements at the new media darling, the St. Pat's For All Parade in Queens on Sunday March 1st. Since it was snowing and probably 5 degrees at the time, this was more of an endurance test than an easy way to win votes, and I'm thinking, no amount of green beer would be an adequate insulator for that, try as it might. I have no doubt that Hizzoner eschewed any suggestion of Irish anti-freeze at the event, because the way things are going, the paparazzi probably would have discovered him drinking green beer through a straw, and it would have been the "pizza-with-a-knife-and-fork" fiasco all over again. But it occurs to me that since the all-inclusive Queens parade is the one that the politicians march in when they're boycotting the traditional parade in Manhattan, they may as well hold them on the same day, because apparently nobody would dare to march in both of them, that would defeat the whole purpose. Well, if the purpose of your parade was political machinations, that is. Also at the beginning of the month, we celebrated 32 years of wedded bliss on Tuesday, and as the old vaudeville joke goes, happily married for 10 of them, haha. And while we're on the subject of old stuff, it was last year when we were enjoying a night out at the cinema, and saw a trailer for the movie "Horns," starring Daniel Radcliffe (much better known to one and all as the plucky wizard Harry Potter from that franchise of films) and I couldn't help but notice that his character in the story was driving a vintage AMC Gremlin, of all things. There's probably some sort of symbolic message in there somewhere, but as a devoted (some might say, demented) Gremlin owner for the past 4 decades and counting, I'll be darned if I know what it is. "Horns" is a sort of Gothic thriller, and not a comedy, so I've just about ruled out any kind of funny business - although truth to tell, it must be said that it's almost impossible to take a Gremlin seriously, and you certainly can't scare anybody with one, that's for sure. Although come to think of it, it is a bit of a scary thought that when I first started driving my purple passion in 1973, gasoline was 25 cents a gallon (and that's leaded, mind you) and people would drive all the way out into Suffolk County to get it for 23 cents instead. Ah, those were the days, indeed. And speaking of scary stuff, we've come again to that time of year, often when we least expect it, that Daylight Saving Time once again rears its ugly head, and we're stuck with running around changing clocks all over the place, and thanks so very much not. That happens again this weekend, only to be confronted with the harsh reality of it being dark when we expect it to be light, and light when we expect it to be dark, and losing an hour of sleep in the process, which strikes me as a lose-lose-lose proposition all around. If Daylight Saving Time were a beauty pageant contestant, it wouldn't take long for all of the other participants to just band together and throw it out a window, and the Miss Congeniality award be danged. Taken on its own merits (without the tawdry trappings of wrong-headed tradition trailing after it, like a re-animated mummy, desperately trying to somehow lend an air of respectability to it) if anyone proposed Daylight Saving Time to people nowadays, they would be laughed out of government offices from one end of civilization to the other - like the metric system, Equal Rights Amendment, or mandatory warning signs for grouchy Christians who have given up chocolate for Lent. (Although personally, I'm still holding out hope on that last one, and that's not just the talking M&M's talking, believe me.) I know they say that time is relative, but frankly, this is one relative that has long since worn out its welcome with me, and no amount of tick-tock-hickory-dock is going to bring it back into favor, that's for sure. And as long as we're on the topic of things where, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, "the time is out of joint," I ran across a couple of surprising examples at work, where I was least expecting them, compounded by the fact that I stumbled upon them one right after the other. First there was a letter to an insurance company that was dated December 24, 2014, informing them that their client failed to show for his medical examination on January 15, 2015. Frankly, how they knew that the client did not go to the appointment 3 weeks ahead of time is not only confusing, but has some rather disturbing connotations that I don't even want to think about. After that was one of those automatically generated "out-of-office" reply emails from December 29, 2014 that stated: "I am currently out of the office. I will return to the office on Tuesday, September 2, 2014." I think not! I'm guessing he would need to get in his Way-Back Machine in order for that to work, and even then, he would still end up eventually back at December 29 thinking he was out of the office. Finally there was a curious message that was posted in our database comments about a doctor's office that was planning to be closed for vacation, as they put it, "from 12/18/15 - 12/16/14." Now, that would have been one heck of a vacation, even if they had the years in the right sequence, but as it is, they would not only need their own Way-Back Machine, but would also have to completely warp the time-space continuum to have any hope of making that happen. Personally, I'd love to tag along and see what we discover along the way, but if it turns out to be Mayor De Blasio drinking green beer through a straw, you'll never hear it from me. Elle