George Washington's Birthday

Imagine having to go through this every time it's your birthday:

George Washington was actually born on February 11, 1731 of the Julian calendar, in use before England's calendar reformation in September 1752. His birthday is equivalent to February 22, 1732 in the Gregorian calendar used since 1752. Later in life, Washington himself considered the 22d to be his birthday.

You'd be like, It's not really my birthday if you're going by the Julian calendar in use by the calendar reformation England had in September 1752. No, what I'm going by it the Gregorian calendar used since 1752, so my birthday is Feb. 22, 1732.

You do too much of that and I start losing interest. How terrible they had to do all that and mess up the guy's life. He's born in 1731 and it ends up 1732. Weird. But the good news is it didn't happen till he was already more or less in his 20s. By then he's grown up and not a confused little kid wondering why his birthday was screwed up.

For some reason they never mentioned any of this when I was in school. We memorized that his birthday was February 22, 1732. How fortunate we didn't have to get that other date in there too. That would have made it unnecessarily complicated.

So ... this leaves us today to maybe wish George Washington a happy birthday, or maybe not. Depending on how you swing with all these calendars.

Happy Birthday, Peter Tork

Happy birthday, Peter Tork. Let's see, born in 1942, so that makes him 67. He was my favorite Monkee in '67 and now he's '67 himself.

By now I'm much too old to have favorite Monkees. Part of it probably comes from having kids, and you can't have favorites there. Or at various jobs, where everyone has to be your favorite, the apple of your eye, to keep the peace.

But back then Peter Tork looked exactly like the free spirited kind of guy that appealed to me, the great hair, cute looks, and the metaphysical, intuitive, spiritual, complex stuff of asking questions and discerning what there is of reality. He was definitely the go-to Monkee for that side of things, like George Harrison. And I really did like the hair, and the belt with the buckle off to the side.

I think it'd be weird to be famous, especially where the arc of widespread fame was as short lived as it was for the Monkees. The worst thing would be to always be associated with a particular year, like 1967, then have people asking you about things you did in that year. In their case, 1966-1968 were the big years. So here it is over 40 years later. You step out in public and someone wants to know why you did so and so back then. To me that would be terrible. Please go away and let me live in peace. But everyone's life is different, so you can't really say you're shortchanged when it comes to life because you were famous in 1967 and continually associated with it through time. It's probably a good thing, because you can still make a living based on the association.

Then one big positive is that complete strangers like me wish you happy birthday! Or maybe that's a negative. I don't think I'd like it. It'd be like complete strangers being your friends on Facebook. What do I care what they're doing? I don't.

Birthdays

My mom's birthday is today, my daughter's is tomorrow, mine is the next day. We have that clump every time of course. It's like running the gauntlet.

I have an uncle whose birthday was yesterday. I don't see him much anymore but it used to be clumped together with mine and my mom's, before the daughter and when we were more local and younger.

My daughter's birthday is her 31st, and I know she's counting off the seconds till it. We take our birthdays seriously. I still like mine. I don't mind getting old. I don't know why anyone would. It's nothing you have any control over.

The only person I ever held it against them how old they were was John McCain. And that was all fake. Except, realistically, you want to have a president who's on top of his or her game. If all he wanted to be was senator, do it as long as you want as far as I'm concerned.