Tuesday’s date the source of celebration and fear

Monday, June 5, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

Depending on whom you ask, tomorrow will be a good night to go clubbing, a bad day to have a baby, a positive day for numerologists, a logical day to launch a horror movie or a lucky day for gamblers who wagered the world will end.

Oh yeah, it might also be the apocalypse. Or it might mean nothing at all.

Tomorrow, the sixth day in the six month in the sixth year since the millennium - 06/06/06 - is for some a date that bears the mark of Satan: 666.

Prophecies about the ominous calendar date are scattered throughout the Internet, where various sites suggest June 6 marks anything from just another day to the rapture, when evangelical Christians expect to be lifted from Earth into heaven.

In England, some expectant mothers are worried that giving birth on "Armageddon day" is a bad omen, according to an article in the UK Times. The newspaper cited a woman who booked a doctor's visit hopeful that he could ensure her baby would come on any other day.

In Colorado, police authorities told the Denver Post they planned to keep an eye trained Tuesday for any signs that people, whether fearful or excited by the date, aren't spurred into demonstrations or violent activity.

In Las Vegas, Ghostbar, a club at the Palms, is hosting a "06-06-06" party, described on the invitation as "a Devil of a good time." Club representatives, however, say the event has no earnest "evil tie-in."

Other promoters are eager to capitalize on the date.

Marketing directors at 20th Century Fox decided the date was ideal for launching "The Omen," a remake of a 1970s horror film about a child named Damien, who just happens to be the spawn of Satan. In the days leading up to the movie launch, promotional advertisements with the warning "6 6 06 Heed the Omen" were plastered in cities across the country.

Predicting the apocalypse is no harder than balancing a checkbook for Mona Von Joseph, a Las Vegas psychic who did the math on doomsday and decided it's not going to happen.

Von Joseph, host of the local AM radio call-in show, "Midnights with Mystic Mona," says numerology calculations prove 6/6/06 isn't the apocalypse through a simple equation: 2006 is equal to eight because 2+6 = 8; then, adding 8 to the sixth month and the sixth day brings the total to 20, and 20 really reduces back down to 2, which, in the world of numerology, is a very positive number.

So positive, in fact, that 6/6/06 is actually probably going to be a good day for most people, she says: "There is nothing to worry about this Tuesday. It's a day of partnership. A great day."

The Rev. Gard Jameson, chairman of the Southern Nevada Interfaith Council, also says Tuesday isn't the end of the world.

Concerns about June 6 are not unlike fears that emerged before the year 2000, when worries about Y2K roused doomsday prophecy, he says.

"I think people in general tend to look for revelatory messages in the wrong places," Jameson says. "The human condition is such that we carry a lot of fear with us, and we tend to project our fears whenever we are given an opportunity."

To no one's surprise, however, some gamblers think differently.

Analysts for BetUS.com, an online gaming site, have set 1,000-1 odds that June 6 is the end of the world. So far, the site has received more than 200 wagers from bettors who agree.

Christopher Bennett, a spokesman for the online gaming site, claims that a team of oddsmakers spent about two weeks considering a series of factors to determine the margin, including "the increasing frequency of natural disasters, the perceived or acknowledged geopolitical conflicts in the world, the stability of foreign governments, the economy and the Dow Jones."

(He didn't say how his firm planned to pay off any winners.)

"We looked at all these things and decided it would not be unreasonable to say we are definitely in a situation where there's a lot of activity going on in the world right now, maybe a little bit more than usual, and it's possible," Bennett said.

"Sure, it's a long shot, but if you live in Las Vegas, you know all about long shots."

And Las Vegans also know all about hype.