More Thoughts on Flex Time
Mark this down on your calendar (though I’m not sure where): This week’s Wednesday Morning Club luncheon featuring Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) will be held Friday, of all days. If you can’t make that, the Wednesday Morning Club’s next event will be Thursday, Dec. 9.
Which I guess makes as much sense as holding the Hollywood Christmas Parade in November.
IF YOU THINK JANUARY IS LONG NOW . . . : This brings us back to the idea of a metric calendar, which was proposed here by Bob Rogers of Burbank. His plan would call for a year consisting of 10 months (each of 100 days), thereby eliminating November and December.
I’m not sure whether the Hollywood Christmas Parade would then be in September or October.
And Carlo Panno of Tarzana objects to November and December being eliminated, anyway.
“If we’re really going to go to a metric calendar,” he said, “the months that should get dumped are those Roman Empire interlopers July and August. This would restore September, October, November and December to their rightful places, as they are named for the Latin words for seven (septem), eight (octo), nine (novem) and 10 (decem).”
And we could all look forward to some great Fourth of September fireworks shows.
GOODBYE, BLUE MONDAYS: Talk of eliminating two months of the year is silly, of course. David Johannsen of Torrance recommends that we eliminate two days of the week instead.
“My goal in calendar reform is to eliminate that extra day that results each year from 52 weeks having only 364 days,” he said. “It turns out that the only way to factor 365 is 5 times 73. So all we have to do is eliminate Monday and Tuesday and a year will have exactly 73 weeks of 5 days each. Honestly, how many people do you know who would miss Monday and Tuesday?”
Possibly some members of the Wednesday Morning Club.
NO SEVERENCE NOTICE: It’s an old advertising trick of movie studios to showcase blurbs from reviews that seem adulatory only because they’ve been taken out of context.
Gary Schwartz of Brentwood noticed an extreme case involving the Paramount movie “Sleepy Hollow.”
A seemingly gushy Newsweek blurb was actually missing a sardonic reference to movies “about multiple decapitations” (see accompanying).
Newsweek’s Jeff Giles, who wrote the clever review, phoned a Paramount representative to protest. And the headless blurb has since disappeared from the ads.
ROLE OF A LIFETIME: In the new book “Dutch,” author Edmund Morris mentions the time that Ronald Reagan told screenwriter Malvin Wald he would like to play the part of President Theodore Roosevelt in a production.
What Morris doesn’t record is the rest of the conversation, which Wald recounted in American Heritage magazine.
“You’re too good-looking and young to play the part,” Wald told Reagan.
Which caused Reagan to laugh and say, “Well, I could age.” He added, “Gosh, it would be fun to play a president of the United States.”
Reagan was 35 at the time.
Wald wrote much later: “The rest, as they say, is history.”
miscelLAny:
After L.A. and Orange County freeway junctions were named among the worst in the nation, several solutions for relieving congestion were advanced here, some as radical as making all traffic go one way, toward the north. My colleague Steve Emmons reminds me that Will Rogers had another proposal to thin out the roadways: No one can drive his or her car until it’s paid for.
Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.