February sucks. This local reporter keeps going viral for breaking that news

[cinematicdiversions]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/13/february-sucks-st-louis-local-tv-news-reporter-viral

April may be the cruelest month, but February straight up sucks. This is the “news” that was broken by local reporter Kevin Killeen of St Louis’s KMOX, in a 2016 video segment declaring February “an honest month” because it is one that “doesn’t hold up life any better than it really is”.

The segment mixes Killeen’s straight-faced, deadpan local news delivery with an almost avant garde absurdity. At one point, Killeen stands atop a parking garage in St Louis, gesturing at the dark office buildings behind him and says, “Something great happened here but it’s over with.” In a voiceover describing images of the city’s downtown, he declares, “This looks like a place where people who are being punished are sent.”

When the camera cuts to a shot of bare trees against a gray sky, things get a bit weird – and existential. “The trees that once cheered us, they’re hard to look at this month,” he intones. “It’s as if there is some awful truth out there in the trees. It’s hiding in the branches. Look at them. Something that’s been bothering you for a long time is out there. What is it? You can almost see the shape of it when all the color is gone and life is stripped down to the starkness of February.

In the video, the busted green and pink floral umbrella that has been abandoned, still opened, atop a garbage bin in the parking garage, becomes a totem for February. “This says it all,” Killeen remarks to the camera. “Somebody on this February day has abandoned it with its broken shaft like a desperate flinging off of something that’s not true any more. The expedition is getting desperate. People are throwing things aside.”

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1489404104375869441%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2022%2Ffeb%2F13%2Ffebruary-sucks-st-louis-local-tv-news-reporter-viral


________________________________________________________________________________________________

He points out at the end that his dad used to say if you can make it through February you will live another year. I lost both my dad and wife in this month. Perhaps a bit of truth.

[randr]

1. Of all the months we could add leap day to February is the worse choice.

[deRien]

2. We chose

February to get married because the only thing happening was Valentine's Day!

[Walleye]

3. I was born one day in February at suppertime, I've been screwed up ever since

[teach1st]

4. He reminds me of Tom Robbins' essay on February

Tom Robbins, from his book, "Jitterbug Perfume"

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.

Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.

However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.

February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.

Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay.

If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

[Strelnikov_]

5. Whoa

Both my parents died in February.

[babydollhead]

6. I am sorry for your loss.

i saw a little puff of warm air come out of a bird in my yard this morning. It was so earnest.

[scipan]

7. We need more of this.

Philosophical reporters.

[Ishoutandscream2]

8. Yes, February sucks

A brilliant description.