Brand New Year, Same Old Fun

The original idea here was to reflect on some of the finer moments of Old New Year's Eveses, and I will get to that in a bit. But this most recent of New Year's Eves, I saw something frightening and comment-worthy, so it will be covered first. I hadn't seen any televised New Year's Everie celebrations in at least 6 years, but this year I did. I saw Dick Clark and his Rocking New Year's Eve. I heard him explain, in a broken voice with slurring not caused by proper New Year's Eve intoxication levels, how he'd had a stroke the previous year, had needed to relearn how to walk and talk, and now he was happy to be back hosting the celebration again at Times Square. I respect that the man is an entertainer, and I believe he probably did want to spend New Year's Eve doing the countdown like he had on so many Evi before.

Because the alternative to that belief would be to accept that stage hands had propped him up behind a desk and studio exectives were controlling his facial movements with a series of electric shocks administered from off camera while lip synching his cadaver to a computer-synthesized voice. It was horrifying to watch.

So anyway, here's a few of my own favorite memories from Old Year's Eves we've already had:

5 years in a row in the hottub. Sometimes there were so many people in it, when they all got out there wasn't enough water left to get your ankles wet.

"You don't kiss someone at midnight, you kiss everyone at midnight!"

Squeaking under the wire to avoid a completely celibate year.

Waking up at 1:30 PM after a night of video games, promptly mixing myself the best Long Island Iced Tea that I've ever mixed.

Shaking hands with Arch-Enemy Kip, and the mutual looks of horror as we realize we'd just actually touched each other.