I know it's supposed to be great for farmers, getting extra daylight in the morning. And hookers certainly benefit from another hour of night time. But for most of us it's just bleak.
How many of you go to work in the morning and by the time you leave for home it's dark already? Doesn't it give you the feeling that you lost an entire day?
For me the dread goes back to when I was a kid. Daylight Saving meant I could go out and play AFTER dinner. That was always glorious. Come November I was in the house for the night, usually with homework staring me in the face. Thank you rotation of the earth.
This may be more acute in Southern California because the seasons don't really change. So the weather stays relatively the same while the big difference is the clock.
But I will be testing that theory next week when I travel to Minneapolis to attend a staged reading of my new holiday play, ON THE FARCE DAY OF CHRISTMAS. Folks in the Midwest are all invited. Here's where you go for details and tickets. I'll be doing a Q&A after and you can ask why I'm still wearing a parka when we're inside and it's 72 degrees? But I'm excited to see the reading even if I freeze and it gets dark at 3:30.
24 comments :
I write for an east coast based publication but live on the west coast, so I start my day at 5 a.m. Very "Time To Make the Doughnuts."
Standard time is normal time, so I prefer it to DST. That has become even more the case now that I have a kid. Try getting a kid to sleep when it's still light out at 9 p.m
Friday question:
Hi Ken,
You've often mentioned Executive Producer credits in the blog but I wonder if you'd clairify if more?
On the Jack Ryan show there are so many Executive Producers it's stunning. Including one who is dead (though I think it's probably his estate).
I assume it's about prestige more than money, or else people would just get money, right? For whom is this prestige meaningful, because it means nothing to me. Sort of like when I lived in Boston there were people who really felt it was a status symbol to have a low number license plate! Who cares about that, but them. And they cared alot about that plate.
Does it matter if the Executive Producer is listed alone, since some are singular and some have two people listed at once. Does the order matter, is the first one (or the last one) the REAL Executive Producer and the rest are just low number license plates? If everyone knows it's a joke then why has it held on? If they all have some influence I would assume some have more power than others, who (or what) determines the power and decision making structure?
There must be a producer's guild of some sort, how do they feel about having 15 Executive Producers for a tv show or movie?
Maybe I'm the only one perplexed by this, but I'd really love to hear more. Maybe it would explain the license plate thing a bit as well, and I got really, really angry stares when I asked people why it meant so much to them. Sort of scary, sort of funny!
Thanks.
I live on the western edge of the Eastern timezone. Louisville Ky. Before the fall time change, the sun comes up past 8 AM. Conversely, in June, the sun sets after 9PM. As much as I hate turning the clocks back, and generally like Daylight Savings Time, I hate switching the clock. It seems this area would best be served if it remained on standard tie year round.
The thing that gets me about returning to Standard Time is what it does to traffic. There should be the same number of cars on the road, going from and to the same places they're going during Daylight Savings Time. So, logically, things shouldn't be any different. Yet, for some reason things get so much worse. One should add AT LEAST a half hour to their commute; probably more. There's the old joke that Californians can't drive in the rain. Well, apparently we can't drive in the dark either. However, things usually smooth out once people get used to the time change. But until then, watch out. So, if you are visiting Los Angeles this week prepare for significant delays. As your mommy always told you, "pee before you leave."
I won't even get into the nightmare you'll encounter if you're flying into LAX. That's the subject for another rant.
Best wishes for your play, Ken. Just be careful. Midwesterners love Christmas. (I'll refrain from any political statements here including references to the so called "flyover states")
Brake an legg!
M.B.
Nice Chambers Brothers reference! Did you ever get to play the 11-minute version on the radio?
Hey Ken!
Very excited to come to your staged reading in a couple of weeks. Don't know if you remember me, but I attended the Sitcom Room many years ago. What a blast! I'm in Saint Paul, so if you need anything while you're here, food, transportation, clothing (we have extra parkas so you won't have to buy one) just let me know. It's the least I can do after you brought us Twizzlers at some very early hour of the morning.
I actually would love such a change. In my country it's always the same with daylight.
6 to 6, give or take an hour.
Getting dark at noon or even 4:30 looks exciting to me.
I have seen a few American movies, where the sun never sets or it is dark throughout for months. I would love to spend some time in those places.
I also read that it snows a lot in some places, so you don't need to go outside - school or office. That sounds fun. I have never seen snow in my life :(
Like I have said many times, Americans are the luckiest people :)
- in this case, with respect to their climate.
This is the time of year when you have to fight the sun glare during the evening commute.
You worked in Seattle- so you would know that if we had year-round daylight savings time the sunrise in Seattle wouldn't come until after 8AM.
When I was a kid, there was this soap opera "The Edge of Night" that aired in the late afternoon. The opening had the announcer dramatically proclaim "This is.... THE EDGE OF NIGHT!!" I interpreted it as a public service announcement.
Hell no! I hate DST! I especially hate that G.W. Bush extended it in 2007 for no reason ("to improve trade with other countries," he said, but the only other country that went along with extending it was Canada, because they really had no choice); all these years, I've outright refused to conform to extended DST - I've still been springing forward in April instead of March, and I already fell back last week instead of this week.
It does not get dark at 4:30 in the afternoon when DST is over . . . 6:00 is the earliest, and that only lasts for a couple of weeks anymore, anyway. I'm a night owl, I hate it when the sun's already out by 5:30 in the morning, and hasn't completely set until 10:00 at night: it's unnatural, it's disruptive, and it does nothing for our health. Now that's depressing.
Officials in my state keep threatening to make DST permanent, however, our state has two timezones, so that would be an impractical . . . if anything, we just need to do away with DST altogether: so many other countries across the world have done away with it, and there are very few that still observe it - and even they don't know why. Matter of fact, John Oliver pretty much sums it up well (albeit, satirically, of course):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw
I'm happy as a clam that time is back to normal.
Ken, just tell folks in the Twin Cities you were in the studio audience for the "Chuckles Bites The Dust" episode of the Minnesota-set "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in 1975 (he actually was, BTW), and you'll have them in your power.
We only change the clocks, we don't influence the path of the sun. Farmers don't get an extra hour of daylight out of it. It's the same amount of daylight whether we fall back or not.
It MAY have had a point a few generations back when little Opie was walking to school through 6 foot snow drifts and it was uphill both ways and he didn't have a clock to tell him when to get up and go to bed. You'd want the little tyke to get a break. There is no point to it now, it's just a habit, and politicians hate voting FOR anything because then they have to own it so they do nothing even though this is about as bi-partisan an issue as is ever likely to come down the pike. IOW, we change the clocks because elected officials are lazy and self absorbed.
Please, please, everybody reading this watch the John Oliver segment mentioned above. Daylight Saving Time has NO connection to farmers, this is just a misconception and myth that comes from widespread ignorance. It was developed by German army in WWI for (supposedly) saving fuel during air raids and has no practical purpose or benefit to anyone anymore.
I'll post the link again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw
Joseph Scarbrough, it absolutely DOES start to get dark at 4:30 when DST is over, at least here in Colorado. By 5 p.m. it's totally dark.
I spent the extra hour going around my house and resetting the clock 45 different devices, microwave, cars, stoves, VCR (so it now flashes 11 11 11...), my Zune. Didn't really save much time
The further north or west you are in a time zone, the more you need DST to end so that the sun isn't coming up in the morning around 8:30-9 a.m.
The main thing I notice about it is Arizona goes from being on the same time as California to being on the same time as New Mexico, since they don't observe DST. The southern part of the Mountain Time Zone got about 375 miles wider on Sunday.
I would have thought your hatred of the return to Standard Time was due to the end of location shoots on M*A*S*H for the season.
When I worked at an AM station in my hometown, the beginning of Standard Time was a nightmare because we had to cut power dramatically at dark. This was when the time still shifted in October, and we would end up with a few weeks where we were transmitting at the same power as two lightbulbs by 4:30. Our nighttime transmitter site was across town, so we literally could not pick up our own station in the studio as we were doing the local evening news.
Should we stick the time change where the sun don't shine ?
Cut school + work winter hours from eight to six.
As farmers are on their own clock, they may do as they please.
The joke in the Great North is that they have one month of summer and 11 months of winter. Hope your flight in and out of the Twin Cities is snow-free.
In the spring, I suggest we only "spring forward" only 1/2 an hour and let it be. Split the difference and leave the clocks alone.
Daylight Savings
= lights go on an hour later
= power savings on bill
= good for both my wallet and economy
Case closed your honour
Another reason why standard time is more preferable: listening to Delilah on the radio feels "right" when it's dark outside, as opposed to broad daylight; she has that type of voice, almost kind of like Bob Ross: soothing, comforting, supportive, and could lull you to sleep . . . and it somehow, her voice is a "nighttime" voice. Listening to her voice in the dead of summer when it's still broad daylight outside is like watching Christmas movies in May.
Hey Ken, A few Cheers questions:
1- Besides Paul, were any other bar flies ever in consideration to become series regulars? If not, is there a bar fly you think could have made a successful transition to a more prominent role?
2- Did you prefer one of the two actors who played Gary?
3- In "One Hugs- The Other Doesn't" Who actually wrote the fictitious Nanny G songs? They're shockingly catchy.
4- Thinking about it like a baseball lineup- If you had to choose a two person combination to fill our your main cast lineup which pairing do you choose to win the sitcom World Series:
Diane/Coach
Diane/Woody
Rebecca/Coach
Rebecca/Woody
5- If you could take a character from Taxi and drop them into the Cheers universe- Who do you think would fit in the best?
Thanks for answering if you can. (Have 1,000,000 more Cheers questions to ask.)
Since Daylight time is now in effect for a shorter period than Standard, shouldn't we at least call Daylight Standard? Or better yet, just pick one and stick to it. I'm fine with either.
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