 |
|
|
|
|
Say goodbye, but make it quick
By Jon Hoornstra
Once again the world around us is racing toward year's end, but this time there is a special urgency to it all. The usual suspects, the denizens of the media-marketing complex, have us on a high-speed bullet train racing to the ultimate moment of our lives: the end of the year, the decade, the century all wrapped up in a millennium moment.
With no effort to camouflage their avarice, the forces of commerce and culture now push us at warp speed to the new millennium to make cash registers sing the merchants' version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus: "Ca-ching."
I first sensed a hyper-push in late September. Through the window I saw summer. But on TV someone was making Christmas sounds. The voice was telling me how to buy the greatest collection of holiday music ever assembled.
"They've gotta be kidding," I said aloud to an empty room. I wasn't thinking even Halloween or Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas. Someone was pushing for a quantum leap.
Whenever the world's wiring appears to be short-circuiting, I recommend a trip to a hardware or stationery store, places where sensible people rule. I clicked off the TV and headed straight for McWhorter's and Minton hardware.
But I walked into McWhorter's and what before my wondering eyes did appear but two employees pleased at what they'd built. They stood before a tall stack of red-suited, hip-swiveling electric Santa Clauses gyrating to "Jingle Bell Rock."
"You've gotta' be kidding," I said, this time to a real person in a place filled with people.
"Not at all, absolutely, it's time--definitely time," said the man with the conviction of a ninth century monk.
I don't argue with monks. So I shrugged, bought a ballpoint pen, and headed to the recovery room at Minton's. What a relief it was.
So here we are, just 17 days from Christmas, 23 days from year's end and the warp-speed train just may be losing steam.
Consider San Francisco's prominent French restaurant, the Fleur de Lys. Two weeks ago the owner said no to New Year's Eve.
"We just can't meet people's millennium expectations," the owner said. He granted that the mobs expected in Union Square are another factor that helped decide to be closed this Dec. 31.
American Airlines, an NBC report said, canceled some 23 percent of its year-end flights. Sure enough, travel to New York and Europe seems to be off. My Big Apple friends tell me top Manhattan restaurants are trying to get up to $2,500 a person for New Year's Eve, but bookings are down. The prices are so inflated, and the hassles of getting around big cities so great, that people don't want to go.
In London, advance bookings are "way down," according to travel agents. Even a stunning "River of Fire" for miles along the River Thames isn't enough to overcome sticker shock. The Queen herself will host an invitation-only gathering for an intimate group of 10,000 to open the just completed Millennium Dome, said to be the largest such structure in the world. But my British friends tell me police are advising people to stay out of central London.
And, yes, perhaps the darkest force of all is lingering doubt about our computers.
My advice: stay close to family and friends wherever you are. They don't operate on chips.
Finally, expect that someone is all set to remind you that the new millennium is still a year away. Yawn if you must, but smile nicely as you flip the page of your calendar to the Year 2000 and say goodbye to the 1900s forever. But be quick about, it's coming fast.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
