Having His Day--or Millennium--in Cyber Court

While most of the world spent this time last year going crazy celebrating a new millennium, Dick Marston was trying to tell them they were just nuts.

Last New Year’s Eve didn’t signal the end of a 1,000-year cycle but simply the turn of the cosmic odometer to 2000, the Glendale resident argues on his Media Millennium Mischief Web site.

“Three zeros may confuse computers, sell newspapers and excite TV producers, event promoters and advertisers, but they do NOT start a millennium,” Marston writes on his page, found at both https://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/1638/millennium.html and https://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dickmarston/millennium.html.

The retired attorney presents his case that the third millennium won’t start until Jan. 1, 2001--or Monday. After all, he reasons, “a person is not 100 years old until the end of the 100th year,” and in Sydney the 100-meter Olympic dashes weren’t ended at the 99th meter.

“I wasn’t against the party,” Marston said. “What I objected to was calling it the start of the new millennium. To me that was just a bald-faced misrepresentation. I’m not a kook. I’m just obsessed with accuracy. To tell ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ is a good rule to live by.”

His page links to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the nation’s official timekeeper, which weighs in on the issue, as well as dozens of other sites that give explanations on why the real party ought to be this year.

Marston said he believed that the attention he and others brought to the issue of the true millennium would enlighten people and quiet some of the hype. That was his first mistake, he said. In 1999 millennium parties exploded worldwide, and references to the first Olympics, the first election, the first everything of the 21st century peppered 2000.

But he uses his Web site to show that disputes over such milestones are nothing new. Marston quotes the London Times of Dec. 26, 1799, which informed misguided readers that the new century would begin Jan. 1, 1801: “We are astonished to find it has been the subject of so much dispute, since it appears plain. . . . It is a silly, childish discussion, and only exposes the want of brains of those who maintain a contrary position.”

Marston launched his Web site April 27, 1999, after reading one too many pronouncements that the end of the year would be the end of the millennium. “That just boggled my mind because I knew it wasn’t right,” he said.

Since then, he’s gotten more than 5,500 visitors to the site that he coded himself in HTML. He learned Web design four years ago when creating a page on his primary passion, genealogy.

He started with free sites on Geocities, but when his genealogy pages outgrew the space allowed, he moved to Rootsweb.com and also duplicated his Millennium Mischief page on that service.

“As I think of more logical arguments and approaches, I add those,” said the former Glendale and Beverly Hills city attorney. “I’m trying to be funny and spoofing people and poking fun and at the same time chiding. Get it right, and I’ll go my way, and you can party all you want.”

Even though he’s waited a year longer than many to celebrate the dawning of a new millennium, Marston said he and his family aren’t planning a wild celebration for Sunday night. Instead, they’ll enter the 21st century quietly with four or five friends at his Glendale home.

“We’re not big on parties or big crowds,” he said. “We’ll drink our California wine and champagne and be kissy-kissy at midnight and be safe and sound at home.”

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Steve Carney is a freelance writer.