Closing In On New Years

Christmas has come and gone, Chanukah is a distant memory, and about seven people know that Kwanzaa started on Tuesday, making New Year’s Eve our next major holiday. New Year’s Eve is a funky little holiday that’s ridiculously close to Christmas but totally different in every conceivable way. Christmas is all about giving and family and love while New Year’s Eve is all about drinking and acting as stupid as humanly possible all in the name of putting up a new calendar and the screwing up of the writing of the year on all of our first of the month checks. That being said there are some definite rules to live by when it comes to celebrating New Year’s Eve correctly, here are mine.

Stay Away From NYC – It’s a freaking ball people. If you really want to see it drop check it out on TV as Dick Clark attempts to rock your New Year’s Eve for an 875th consecutive year. As someone who’s lived in and around NYC for nearly my entire life I can tell you two things about the city on New Year’s Eve, it’s crowded and it’s fucking cold. See NYC’s sights some other time, spend New Year’s Eve indoors.

Find A Friend – New Year’s Eve is by far the worst time to go to a bar or a club. Most drinking establishments will have high cover charges to get in or some sort of “pay X amount of dollars for open bar” where the X would equal enough alcohol to fell a lumberjack. It’s not worth it. If you’re going to head out on New Year’s Eve find a friend who is having a party at their house.

House Rules – If you’re going to a house party don’t be the schmuck that shows up empty handed, you’re entering someone’s home, bring something. This should be common sense as the more drinks people bring the longer the party can last. Your friend is doing you a service by hosting a party for your loony ass, the least you can do is bring a six pack. Also, respect the house, don’t miss the toilet seat!

At Midnight – For some reason there’s a tradition of finding someone to kiss at midnight. Here’s where everyone who lucked out by not having to get gifts for a significant other for Christmas gets a panic attack. Yeah, all that bragging about not having to shop has turned into not wanting to be the person kissing his or her own beer bottle when the clock strikes twelve (if you really want to torture yourself play the time zone game and try to find someone to kiss at EVERY midnight). There is zero cure for this other than finding a drunken member of the opposite sex who seems to be in the same boat as you are, or convincing yourself that the St. Pauli Girl really is the only woman you want to make out with.

Drunken Hook Ups – It’s bound to happen. You got drunk, someone else got drunk, you hooked up. There are a myriad of possible scenarios in this event, the most likely being you have no idea who the other person is. You will hastily jot down your first New Year’s Resolution to “never drink that much again,” which will be quickly broken within two weeks.

Resolutions – A lot of people use the changing of the year as a time to find ways to better themselves. They make resolutions that, on the outset, seem reasonable, or at least admirable. As a gym rat I see the reolutionites (my own word) invade my workout space every January. They usually peter out within the first two weeks leaving us with our normal crowd plus one or two newbies who find a way to actually stick to their guns and do what they planned. Now, I’m not one to talk with my half finished novel sitting here that I still keep saying I’m going to finish “this year,” but I will say I’ve stuck to more resolutions than I’ve broken. If you’re going to make a resolution don’t do it on a snap judgment, like the aforementioned “I’ll never drink that much again,” but rather focus on something that’s a feasible goal that you might actually have a shot at accomplishing within a year’s time.

The Next Day – New Year’s Day used to be reserved for watching college football bowl games. Thanks to advertising and the BCS, however, we now barely have enough games to fill the day. I can remember waking up by 10AM on New Year’s Day just so I could flip through all the major channels that had bowl games, almost never catching an ad. Now it’s not that simple. You are still required by law to watch football on New Year’s Day, but this year there are only six games for our viewing pleasure (I can distinctly remember a time when we had four games going on at the same time only a decade or so ago). My bet is Georgia Tech – West Virginia will be the best game. Tune in or risk deportation.

So there you have it, my official guide to enjoying New Year’s Eve. Take heed and be like our old pals Wayne and Garth and “party on.” Oh yeah, and don’t be a douchebag, don’t drink and drive. DUH!