Daylight’s Last Gleaming, by Mike Gold A Kinder, Gentler Brainiac On Banjo #248

November 7, 2011 Mike Gold 1 Comment

I treat the end of Daylight Saving Time (it’s “saving” not “savings”) the way a condemned man approaches his last meal. I hate Standard Time. I spent seven years of my life doing overnight radio and during Standard Time I’d never see the sun. Of course, the fact that I woke up in time to watch Dark Shadows probably had something to do with it.

Last Saturday personal circumstances turned Standard Time Eve into a wonderful celebration. Like most great events, it was a three-ring circus.

It started off with a 6 PM dinner with Danny Fingeroth, the long-time Marvel Comics writer and editor who has since become a teacher and author of such books as Superman On The Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Society, The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels, and Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero. And a lot of other stuff. For years, Danny has been a convention friend – I guy I’d see regularly at various conventions and after a while we realized we were friends.

We had a great dinner at an Irish pub near my favorite midtown Manhattan area, Bryant Park. We shared stories and tried to straighten out troubling aspects of comics history and talked cultural politics for the better part of three hours. Our waiter, who was nearly pushing 20, kept calling us “kids.” He almost could have been my grandson.

After that I showed up at fellow columnist Martha Thomases’ door in the West Village. We – Martha, her husband John Tebbel and I – have been friends ever since we worked together at Video Action Magazine back in 1979. About a week ago they kindly took me out to dinner at Ben Benson’s Steakhouse, one of the better such places in New York City. Good conversation, and with John and Martha the talk is even better than the meal.

Unfortunately, and the word “unfortunately” here doesn’t cut it, a couple days after the meal Martha had to take John to the hospital for some emergency retooling unrelated to the humongous and succulent steak he consumed. Since by local standards I was more-or-less in the neighborhood (a few blocks away from a subway line that was a few blocks away from their place), I stopped by to chew the fat but, really, to see how they were doing. It’s still mid-crisis, but John looked well – understandably tired, but well, and his mind was as sharp as ever.

Martha’s mind is so sharp and so quick that it’ll be cutting prime rib straight from the cow long after I kick the bucket. But I’ll tell you this: if you’re ever laid up from hospital crap, Martha proves it’s best if you’re laid up with a person who is as funny as she is brilliant.

After that, another short walk to a different subway and a quick jaunt over to the Lower East Side, the land of my forbearers and the Mecca of east coast hippiedom. I went to a club called Motor City; I’ll bet you can guess the theme.

I’ll also bet you’re wondering what a 61 year old geezer like me was doing at a trendy Manhattan club for tattooed reprobates, particularly if you know I am presently void of tattoos. I had the high honor and privilege of being invited to my daughter’s birthday party – actually, it was a two-fer, Adriane having her birthday that very day and her close friend Jamie Kleiber later this week. It’s impolite to reveal Adriane’s age; she’s north of Legal and that’s all that matters. I hung out with friends of hers that I knew and friends of hers I just met (that’s Megan Green on the left in the photo above; Miss Adriane is on the right), and I had an amazing time. We even got the awesomely talented DJ, noted NYC tattoo artist Baz Shailes, to program and co-host a forthcoming Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind show.

Of course as an official “father figure” I was treated with far more respect than I deserve, which is a freaky thing to a guy with serious Peter Pan issues. But after the bouncer refused to card me even though I was in the dark – yep, he said “That’s okay, old man” – the respect thing was fine. Even cute.

I got home just before 2 AM, right in time to turn our clocks back to 1 AM. Then, at 2 AM, I turned the clocks back to 1 AM. Then, at 2 AM I turned the clocks back to 1 AM. Then Adriane texted me “Time Lord” and I went to bed.

So, screw you, Standard Time. This year I got the best of you!

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Mike Gold destroys your very soul with rock’n’roll each week on Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind streaming four times a week at www.getthepointradio.com and available at that same site on demand. He also joins MDWers Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com.