Ready to Spring Into March Madness
It’s March, and in case you didn’t spot her, some kid is dressed like a Girl Scout cookie and dancing along the boulevard, trying to drum up sales of Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Samoas. The dancing Samoa waves to passing cars, a lesson in marketing and America, all in one cookie.
It’s March, and in case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t rained in L.A. for about 40 days and 40 nights, and there’s a fine layer of dirt in the inlays of your front door and window panes, another sign of global dusting.
It’s March, and the apple trees have blossomed a month too soon.
It’s March, and in case you haven’t noticed, they’re holding tomato classes down at the gardening center, where the topics of the hour are compost and gypsum.
“Is this the tomato class?” asks my friend Shaughnessy, who wanders in late, like a leprechaun headed for algebra class.
“Well, it ain’t the Super Bowl,” I tell him.
It’s March, and in case you didn’t see him, my friend Paul was pricing baseball gloves the other day and ran across a deerskin model, soft as clover. The price: $229. Which ought to buy you Bambi.
“I could afford that,” Paul says, “if we just went without food for a couple of weeks.”
“Eating is overrated,” I assure him.
It’s March, and the rains will resume soon, probably on Opening Day.
It’s March, and as you might’ve heard, they had the Grammys recently, reminding us that the music world is increasingly inhabited by one-hit wonders and that those Alicia Keys CDs will probably wind up on the bargain rack in two years, along with the Lauryn Hill and Fiona Apple ones no one buys.
It’s March, and L.A. sometimes seems like a singles’ club with 15 million members, all waiting to meet that special someone, preferably with a special car and a special sitcom deal.
It’s March, and Britney Spears has a new movie out, further reason to stay out in the sun and break in your new baseball glove.
The deerskin one, 229 bucks.
It’s March, and in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t had a fire in the fireplace in about a month, and the only thing burning late into the night is the kids’ homework, which gets harder every week.
So I sit on the couch going over the battle of Lexington and Concord with some kid who doesn’t seem as enthralled with this historic gem as she should be.
“But you’ve got Paul Revere,” I remind the little girl.
“So?”
“You’ve got ‘One if by land,’” I say.
“So?”
“Wasn’t that a Sandra Bullock movie?” her mother says.
“Your mother really knows her history,” I say.
It’s March, and while you were sleeping, your teenager grew 3 inches taller, 10 pounds heavier and now has three stomachs, one each for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It’s March, and no one has the time to look anyone in the eye anymore, which probably isn’t anything to worry about. Probably not important at all.
It’s March, and for the first time in memory, no one I know is discussing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition or the Los Angeles Dodgers--two lost causes, the naked and the dead.
It’s March, and don’t you wonder what Chick Hearn has to say about Kobe right now, and what is Larry Bird up to these days anyway, and I don’t care if Michael Jordan plays till he’s 80, he’d still be a better draw than some punk rookie two months out of grade school.
It’s March, and “Monday Night Football” has never seemed more promising, with Al Michaels and John Madden as America’s latest dream team. Do you believe in miracles?
Yes.
It’s March, and in case you haven’t noticed, the full moon last week was the kind they used to write songs about, and even days afterward it still hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.
“I want to go there sometime,” says the little girl.
“Where?”
“The moon,” she says.
“Lotsa luck,” I say.
“I really want to go there, Dad,” she insists.
It’s March, and in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of the children are sounding a little like Jimmy Stewart, optimistic but in a pleasant sort of way. That’s not such an awful thing, a little Capra in a kid.
“Want to play some catch, Dad?” the boy asks, an old baseball glove in his hand, 39 bucks and soft as clover.
“Always,” I say.
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s spring.
Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.
