A New Year’s Day’s Night Meditation

One of the remarkable things about New Year’s Day is that it is precisely one week out from Christmas. Now think back to Christmas. Seems a lot longer than a week ago, doesn’t it? Like it isn’t even part of the normal time stream. 

Indeed, I’ve noticed that, in most cases, Christmas stops being Christmas at around 10 a.m. Christmas Day or when the last present is opened, whichever comes first. A topic for a proper rant, but not now. For now, just a thought exercise. We’re one week out from Christmas. And now New Year’s Day is over. How about that? Anyone got any holiday spirit left?

Of course, if you work retail, I imagine you’re glad to see it all go. Another rant, another day.

This is one of those years we’ve left the tree up, and though it does seem somewhat awkward and out of place now and ready to come down, I’ve been prevented from going out to the shed to get the boxes due to the unusually heavy snow today. 

At least it was clear last night for the fireworks fired from the top of Pikes Peak, visible from the back patio of my modest bungalow on the north side of Colorado Springs. My wife, bless her, has a tendency to talk and talk and talk while things are going on, and this time it wasn’t during a TV show or a movie, but while I’m watching the snowpack of Pikes Peak light up red and blue and green beneath the distant fireworks exploding above the summit. Of all the subjects she has to bring up is what folk in South Carolina, where we hope to be this time next year, do for New Years.

“Nothing,” I say. “Drink and shoot off their backyard fireworks, if they have any.”

“Well, don’t they have something in Irmo, a chitlin thing, a—?”

“An Okra Strut,” I say, my face falling as I realize I’ve seen the last firework explode over Pikes Peak, probably forever, and here’s my wife prattling about summer festivals 1,800 miles away. At once I was struck by the cruel irony—or fair tradeoff, depending on your mood—that a return to South Carolina means more than an escape from these horrible deep freezes the Pikes Peak region is prone to. We’ll probably never see a decent fireworks show again on New Year’s Eve. Not if we’re living out in the country, which is indeed the plan.  

No, we’ll likely be at home, and despite the fact that the primary reason for the move is proximity to friends and family, we’re likely not going to get together to drink in the New Year. New Year’s Eve will basically be me on the back porch with a beer in the dark, and nothing more. No fireworks off of 14,000-foot mountains.

As I’ll have the rest of the year to enjoy my family and friends when we are out and about, with no one I care about more than two hours away by car, I’ll call it a tradeoff.

It looks to be a busy year ahead, and for that I am grateful. As I am for you, my unseen and largely unspoken audience. If you’ve read this far, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2015. Whatever’s bringing us down, holding us back—let’s send that back with the Ghost of Christmas Past. This is another month, another year, another day. The Ghost of Right Now is all we need concern ourselves with. The Spectre of Yet to Come will take care of himself

Old Dead Man’s New Year’s Suckin’ Eve

I wish I could find a shot of Jenny McCarthy lying on the pavement with a life-size cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber. I suppose I could find one if I looked hard enough. As it is the image of the 1990-something Playboy Playmate of the Year looking very much like an inflatable sex doll complete with grotesque eyes and huge red mouth is burned into my brain. No sense in burning yours. 

Why did we even have this thing on? Oh, yeah, so we could listen for the Big Ball in Times Square coming down while we stood outside waiting for midnight. That’s pretty much the only thing Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve has ever been for, so far as I know. I’ll watch a little of it while I’m pouring drinks. It’s always the former year’s Sorta Big Thing lip-synching in front of a dance squad. I normally don’t think much about it.

It really bugged me this year, though, So forced. So fake. So old. Even Ryan Seacrest is starting to look haggard. He kept name-checking the late Dick Clark for his “influence” and it got really annoying, especially alongside the more-played-to-death-than-usual Names and Faces of Those Showbiz Kids We Lost This Year. (Seriously, who gave a thought for Whitney Houston’s coked-out carcass before she died?) The show was well on its way to becoming a sick joke these last few years with Dick Clark’s barely animated corpse-to-be slurring through his stroke. It’s just as well he died because he apparently didn’t have the good sense to simply retire.

My wife, noting that Dick Clark’s name was still in the title of the show, asked rhetorically, “So when Ryan Seacrest finally dies, are they gonna call this Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Seacrest’s Replacement?” Yeah, probably.

Call me old-fashioned, but I remember when rock was about youth and energy, not old people who can barely speak and squawking has-been B-listers. New Year’s Rockin’ Eve is now this age’s New Year’s Eve with Guy Lombardo, with infinitely more ticky-tacky. 

Except I honestly never watched Lombardo’s shows—they were for the grandparents, even my own generation’s parents didn’t watch it—so I really can’t compare. It’s a fair guess, though. There was something extra-special sad seeing all that blue schwag in the audience—blue top hats, blue noisemakers, etc.—with the Nivea logo stamped all over it. All corporate, all the same, so many obedient sheep doing what they’re told. Rock used to rebel against that. 

And while we name-check the dead old guy we go from one has-been and not-quite-ever-was to another. Jenny McCarthy, with that weird, angular-faced witchy look former beauties sport in middle-age.  A chunky Jessica Simpson flogging Weight Watchers (a major  sponsor for the show—I can remember when this would have been embarrassing). Fergie, looking like she was puked out of a time machine set for 1986 with her big-shouldered ugly dress and bloodshot eyes. And—you’ve gotta be kidding me—MC Hammer. That’s right. Taco Bell’s and White America’s Former Favorite Rapper, The King of All Has-Beens.

This image, which I found this morning, is morbidly hilarious when you think about it:

From left to right, The Summer Thing of 1990 and the Summer Thing of 2012. Dancing into oblivion (and for Pete’s sake, STAY THERE). Photo credited to Michael Stewart/WireImage.

I dunno about you, but I’m looking forward to a year in which Psy and Carly Rae Jepsen are So Last Year. Yes, there is much promise for 2013.

Seriously, though, I’m going to have to find something else to track midnight with. A show about popular music named for an old dead man, featuring people who might as well be dead themselves—this was just too much. Add this one to the list of New Year’s resolutions. No more New Year’s Suckin’ Eve.