Last week we decided we would will springtime into being by refusing to wear our winter coat. We were done giving storms dumb names and pretending that we couldn’t make it to work; we could sacrifice these pleasures if it meant feeling the sun’s rays on our pale arms and cheeks. We refused to be daunted by Accuweather.com.
We take this weekend’s temperatures in the balmy 50s as a testament to our success. The important thing, we have found, is setting goals and then achieving them.
Our efforts were richly rewarded. It was full of cheery surprises, this first week of our self-declared spring! Jay-Z hung out at the White House and Beyoncé hung out with Michael Bloomberg. Pavement issued a retrospective compilation and Pitchfork gave it a 10. Our roommate wore shorts-although we ourselves, being colder of calf, did not.
Spring even softened our heart a little. We permitted friends and coworkers to bum cigarettes freely. We read an 8,000-word profile of Rahm Emmanuel in The Times Magazine and did our best to feel sympathy. We heard Gossip Girl was back on and did not immediately rule out watching it. We wondered whether we would participate in the city’s cab-sharing experiment, but what can we say? Even spring-related heart softening has its limits.
But spring did not come just for famous people and media entities; spring came also for Nature, or so we are told. According to the Post, Brooklyn has been transformed into a pastoral wonderland where wild possums frolic and threaten small dogs. Springily enough, possums are even great at having babies. One park ranger told the Post that the possum’s pregnancy is so swift as to be “almost like a bowel movement.”
We hope very badly that this is not the spring we get rabies.
Of course, not everything can change with the seasons. Governor Paterson, for instance, refuses to doff the wintertime garb of his gubernatorial responsibilities. He is fine as he is, thanks. And remarkably, the people seem to agree: A poll found that 66 percent of New Yorkers don’t want him to resign. We suppose that it is nice to know that some things, no matter how incompetent or corrupt, can be relied upon for stability.
Likewise, the Oscars were steadfastly boring. We have pretty much forgotten them already. Surely it is a sign of desperation when the show’s most-talked-about moment (OMG, Redheaded Lady Kanye) is just a rehash of another show’s previously talked-about moment (OMG, Kanye). That said, we were pleased to see Kathryn Bigelow’s success-a triumph of critical consensus over populist bombast never fails to warm our heart. We are embarrassed to say that we have not yet actually seen The Hurt Locker, but we have totally been meaning to since last summer.
(Summer!)
But we won’t get ahead of ourselves. Spring is a time for house-cleaning, stock-taking, self-reflecting, etc. Like Andrew Cuomo and Sandra Bullock, we will muster our forces and decide how to capitalize on the week’s developments. Perhaps we will purchase sandals.
The stock-taking is already going well, and it has required no effort on our part. We were informed of our raison d’être this week, which was exciting and reassuring all at once.
“Lorin Stein going to The Paris Review is basically why the NY Observer was invented,” tweeted Sarah Weinman, a writer with whom we were not previously acquainted.
This is good to know. We are pleased, we think, and we hope Lorin Stein stays busy.
At any rate, it was a good week to be in New York. Wild possums couldn’t drag us away.
mfischer@observer.com
