Optimal New Year’s Eve

Here’s how we spent our New Year’s. Since we didn’t visit my family for XMas, we went to Augusta. There we ate, hung out, played with our niece and nephew, saw the evening showing of Walk the Line (great movie!!), ate some more. We got to the hotel and turned the TV on at 11:57 PM, watched the ball drop while Wanda Sykes made her hilariously acerbic commentary such as (quoted from memory):

Carson, in 1965 they wouldn’t have let me cohost with you. In 1965, I wouldn’t have been the host I’d have been the ball. “Every year on New Years Eve, we drop a negro in Times Square”.

After watching that, we experienced the simultaneously happy and sad moment of seeing Dick Clark on TV but only a shell of himself. I kind of wonder if they wouldn’t have done better to have had him on the telecast, but in a less central role. On the one hand, it was a triumph for him to get back on the air after his severe stroke, for which one can only admire him to the utmost. However, seeing and hearing him in his state made it impossible to think anything but “he sounds bad” to the point where it detracted from the show itself. As a consummate broadcaster, it’s hard to think he wants to alter the experience of the show that way.

For some time, I’ve hated New Years Eve as a holiday. It sucks in general, and most gatherings are just not much fun. The absolute worst was the inaugural “First Night Atlanta”, which was perhaps the worst time I’ve ever had at any public shindig in my life. Seeing a movie was better than almost any celebration we have ever attended. Only last year’s party with a bunch of the local computer nerds was even a good time on New Years Eve in the last decade, and sadly they didn’t invite us back this year. We must not have been good guests.

Hope everyone has a good 2006. 2005 sucked for pretty much everyone, all around the world. Let’s begin to improve that, one day at a time.