March Madness

I really like the month of March. It's the month when things turn around. Sure, there's mud, the clouds roll in, and last fall's trash gets rediscovered, but March is about making the transition from potential to actual. So, yeah, thematically, I'm saying.

March is also the title of Michael Penn's first album. It's uneven as hell, and taken individually, maybe 1/3 of the tracks are skip-worthy. As a whole, though, it's awesome, and it's emblematic of that late-80s, early-90s pop that I grew up on. If you don't like "No Myth," you don't like pop music.

Fun trivia factoid: when you get married in Minnesota, you sign a document that lets you put your name prior, and your name after. In theory, you can name yourself anything you want (i.e., you get a free name change with the fee to file your marriage license).

There was a time, way back when, when I toyed with the idea of making March my last name. My real last name is not exactly hard to say, but for a pretty simple grouping of phonemes, it seems disproportionately hard for people to hear correctly, or spell. If I weren't trying to keep myself a little bit anonymous on here, I'd treat you to some amusing mis-hearings, and maybe you'd agree that it was worth thinking about becoming something else. My ex-spouse from that same late-80s, early-90s period was way into "Little Women," so there was potentially a shot at being Mr. March. Later, I was tempted to use it as a whole starting-over thing. March. One syllable. Conveys strength and directness. Almost impossible to mess up.

But ultimately, I'm glad I didn't. My Scandinavian name has character, and it forces me to slow down and look people in the eye when I say it, so they don't screw it up. Still, sometimes I wonder how different life would have been, if I'd gone through with a name change.

And anyway, at the moment March is feeling like a long-ass month. I'm ready to move on already, and have more of those 80-degree days. Out like a lazy lamb with nothing in particular to do, I tell ya...