Happy New Year

Hello 2024

It was 1968, I was thirteen and I couldn’t bear another New Year’s Eve watching Dick Clark on the black and white Magnavox with my boring parents in our boring ranch home.

It was as boring as watching Bob Hope stumble through his lame jokes on his cue cards when he hosted the Oscars year after year after year. I couldn’t bear another year sitting in the dark watching boring Dick Clark, the squarest square on TV, counting down the seconds until the disco ball dropped. If I had to hear Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians play “Auld Lang Syne” the same syrupy saccharine way they had played it since 1947 my middle school rock and roll head would explode.

I begged my dad to drive us to see the cool fireworks downtown where all the cool people were going to be. I didn’t tell him I’d heard from the middle school grapevine they blasted rock and roll on giant speakers downtown. Rock and roll! We were born to be wild. Come on, dad. Come on, mom, convince dad.

The Master Sergeant, mesmerized by the nightly news, barely looked up to scoff. “You want to see the fireworks? Find my binoculars. Hop up on the roof. Your mother and I will be sound asleep. Safe from all your cool drunk drivers and stoned hippies. Happy New Year.” And then the old man gave me some advice I’ll never forget. “Don’t fall off the ladder and break your neck.”

Half a century later I still follow his advice about using ladders with caution. And I have inherited the old crank’s indifference to this clock watching carnival.

I’ll watch the distant fireworks flashing over the resorts in the foothills from our porch and then I’ll head to bed long before midnight so I can complain to Ellen about the firecrackers popping and cracking down the street and she’ll say “What can you do? Happy New Year, sweetheart.”

And that’s how I’ll end a joyful day spent complaining about the annual peddling of resolutions for us all to do better. I hereby resolve to be resolute in my rejection of resolutions. The fruitless list making of goals by the self help self improvement culture that gave us the motivational speaker and the positive affirmation and the better you.

You’re listing ten things about yourself you want to change? I only came up with one thing on my list. Dumping my fruitless obsession with making lists of things I want to change about myself.

What’s that you say, Mr. Sunny Side Up? You’re going to start each day with a positive affirmation? Good for you. I already start each day with a positive and cheerful outlook because I believe in the power of delusional thinking.

Live each day like it’s your last. Treat each person as if it were the last time you’d see them. Life is a long goodbye. Let your appreciation of life be enriched by clinging to an abiding awareness of your mortality. And then delude yourself into cheerfully savoring the fleeting moments you have.

Back to the glorious new year that is upon us: 2024. This is the year we learn who we are on election day. Pawns or patriots. The year our collective blood pressure skyrockets to 1776 over 1984.

Desperate Erratum

May your sanity in the New Year be assured and encouraged by my corrected version of “Desiderata”.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. Or as my mom would tell my dad, “Shut the Hell up and let someone else talk for once.”

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. And if you can’t just nod and smile and make sure it looks like an accident and you have a good alibi and.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Except for Fox viewers. Life is too short to listen to their bullshit.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. I’m still bitter about wasting a dollar on the X-Ray Specs I saw in a Batman comic I bought in 1963. Bastards.

Be yourself. Who else could you be? What genius wrote this tripe?

Do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. For more on this see “Splendor in the Grass” with Warren Beatty, and Natalie Wood.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Know when it’s time to give up the Botox, the bubble boobs and the blubber lips.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But just to play it safe buy hundreds of dollars worth of jackpot lottery tickets every Friday.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself but don’t let your mom ever catch you being gentle with yourself. Lock the door! Some things you can never live down.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. Enjoy that right until the Republicans take that one away, too.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should, because like the great bumper stickers says, “Shit happens.”

Whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul, a bounce in your step, a song in your heart and condoms in your wallet.

According to the great philosopher Louis Armstrong, with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. Take your meds. And remember the message in “Auld Lang Syne”

The phrase "Auld Lang Syne" means "old long since" which makes less sense than pairing Anderson Cooper up with Andy Cohen, two shot glasses and a quart of of Jägermeister once a year. So the lesson is don’t expect years past or the year ahead to make sense.

The best you can do is stay up late and when everyone starts singing "Auld Lang Syne" at midnight run three blocks across town to find your beloved and say, “I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

You might get as lucky as Harry did with Sally. He was cheerfully delusional and it worked. Happy new year. Ever onward.