The I-Man's Blog: Punxsutawney Fool

Stunning that we’re still actually required to go through this asinine “Groundhog” nonsense.  I know it’s just one day out of the year.  That’s one day too many.

In the great pantheon of idiotic activities, Groundhog Day has got to occupy a special space – somewhere between cow-tipping and state of the union addresses. And especially the Groundhog Day celebration as observed by the town that spawned the inanity, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

 If, like me, you’re looking for where to fix the blame, you have to go back to a group of European immigrants who brought some weird customs with them to the Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania area back in the 1800s…and, apparently, enough alcohol to inebriate everything from Punxsutawney to Pittsburgh. Yes, drink enough and you actually think that you can predict the end of winter weather by brutalizing a woodchuck.  Which they did.  And still do.

Believe it or not, each year 30,000 people have so little to do of any consequence, that they actually travel to Punxsutawney to freeze to death and watch a half dozen ‘drunk Punxsutawney town fathers in stovepipe hats weave their way onto a raised platform and drag a drug-addled marmot out of a crate to judge whether the thing is able to “see its shadow.”  The projected “remaining length of winter weather” is somehow based on the results of this exercise.  I know…lunatics.  Nevertheless, that’s the deal.

The administrators of Punxsutawney’s Groundhog Day observance would take exception to me suggesting that they’d stuffed a horse tranquilizer down their exploited animal’s throat before displaying it to the television cameras.  They deny, vehemently and indignantly, that the abused animal is in any way, well, “abused.”  The thing’s not drugged, they insist, to make it compliant nor is it banged over the head Sarah Palin “whack-the-halibut” style just before they yank it out of its cage.  That doesn’t square, though, with my admittedly “thin knowledge” of marmot behavior.  But if you Google the damn thing you get the idea that if somebody stuck their hand into the cage of a groundhog that had all its faculties they’d draw back a bloody stub.  In fact, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got a little lesson in marmot behavior when “Staten Island Chuck” – that’s New York’s rip-off of “Punxsutawney Phil” – took a chunk out of one of the mayor’s fingers in 2009.  Advice to City Hall:  Next time, “use the drugs.”

Anyway, a quick definition of Groundhog Day?  “A stultifyingly stupid event conducted for, and by, embarrassingly lame losers.” 

There are a couple of things I notice that have an annoying way of periodically recurring, and each is about as welcome as the other:  Groundhog Day – and herpes.  As far as I can see, the only meaningful difference between the two is that the latter doesn’t predict much…with the possible exception of having to compose a really challenging “personals ad.”