What's left of Mac calendar app sadly broken

It's bad enough that Apple decided to strip most of the usefulness out of what used to be iCal, but what's still there doesn't even work. I've spent hours trying to simply get my alerts to pop up on my desktop Mac running 10.8.2, but, alas, I can't get a single alert to pop up. I've gone through HELP, double-checked my notification setting in SysPrefs, checked prefs in Calendar, etc., etc. all without success. Is it too much too ask for a simple popup window with an alert and the ability to have it re-appear at the interval of my choosing? Apparently so.

If I'm lucky, one or two of my alerts will pop up either on my iPhone 5 or my MacBook Pro, but those are the exception. It seems that in recent OS "upgrades"--for every magical new element we get--we end up with two or three classic components that are broken if they work at all. It makes me long for the days of practicality wrapped in elegance that was what defined Apple. Sigh.....