Page 2 / News, Trends, Gossip and Stuff To Do : The Future Is Now : It’s Heeeere
If you are reading this story, probably the Earth has not sundered, nor the skies rained blood, despite this being a day of weird, millennium-related numerological significance. Sept. 9, 1999, 9/9/99. A once-in-a-century occurrence. (That is true of every date, but hey, the others don’t have all those nines in them.)
According to numerologists, nine represents the final stages approaching completion. But nines are fey. Things could still go wrong--the outcome is not quite guaranteed. In the Tarot, the nine of swords represents an ongoing nightmare, the nine of cups a preponderance of choices. When casting lots to tell the future, a nine portends a marriage or reconciliation.
There are nine months of pregnancy, nine muses, nine ladies dancing, nine players on a baseball team. In golf, a quadruple bogey nine is a really bad thing. Being dressed to the nines and Beethoven’s Ninth, however, are really good things. For the Christians among us, nine is a trinity of trinities, and that’s got to make it a biggie. Technologically, some Y2K alarmists are predicting that computers will misinterpret the date as the symbol for a file’s end and cause computer mayhem (in which case you may not be reading this story).
So how does one mark such a day? Well, you could organize an anti-government uprising, as they did unsuccessfully in Myanmar, but frankly that requires a bit of prep work, a little advance time. How much more fun to make it a patriotic day, to mark it by participating in that all-American pastime: good marketing.
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Sega, for example, has been hawking its Dreamcast system as a 9/9/99 baby for months now. (So you know, those teaser billboards reading “It’s coming 9/9/99” are Sega’s.) Overlook Press is launching “Next: Trends for the Near-Future.” Jean Kasem, chief executive of a baby product company and wife of Mr. Casey “Countdown Continues” Kasem, is mounting a campaign to have Sept. 9 designated as Expectant Mothers Day. And MTV, well, for weeks now it’s been counting down the days and the hours until the annual awards show, which just happens to be scheduled for this memorable date.
“We’ve always had it in early September,” a spokeswoman says. “It just worked out that way. It is an easy date to remember.”
Which is why the network sent out a press release months ago, noting the various incarnations of Sept. 9: In 1950, it marked the first use of the laugh track; six years later, Elvis made his first TV appearance; and in 1987, Gary Hart admitted to cheating on his wife on “Nightline.”
Talk about historic resonance. Maybe we should have taken the day off.
