I wake up from a nap to see everyone on my tl complaining about the Lakers playing on opening night

Random...

Good morning, and happy new year! I didn't make it last night to see the ball drop on TV, was pretty much assed out with the dogs around 10:30. To be fair, it's always been somewhat of a disappointment. Years ago, probably when we were old enough as kids to stay up to ring in the new year, my grandma Fran told us about how they drop this ball in Times Square. From the top of a tall building. And between the way she described it, and the places my brain went, I envisioned this massive solid steel ball being pushed off the top of a building, smashing at all speed into the ground and flattening cars, mailboxes, whatever was unfortunate enough to be there.

See, it's New York, a place I've never been, but had of course built up in my head. And it's only one time a year, and if you could get away with that sort of thing anywhere, it would be New York.

So there I am, mind-blown that I am about to witness such a spectacle. I have no idea what year it was, at least 30 or more ago, so Dick Clark would have still been alive and hosting, not that I knew or cared what a Dick Clark was. Couldn't even tell you who the corporate sponsor was back then. But oh my goodness, it's 11:59, here we go...

... and this shiny sparkly wire frame thing SLOWLY begins a descent on a pole well above Times Square. Now I mean, the ball is an impressive feat of engineering, and I think it's been redone like three times in my lifetime to become even more grand, but based on what I've worked myself up to in my head, catastrophic disappointment. I mean damn. I was expecting carnage, I was expecting this massive ball to leave a crater in the pavement, flatten a couple cars, maybe come to a rest in a storefront, just absolutely wreck up the place. Because again, it's New York. They spend the next couple months rebuilding, everything's back to normal, it's just collateral damage for something that the entire nation, and probably the entire world watches.

And understand, I am all about tradition. That ball has been dropped in Times Square for over 100 years. And if you're gathered with friends and ringing in the new year, it would be kind of weird to not have the TV at least on in the background, so you could count down along with an entire city and nation. But the whole thing still does seem rather flaky to me.

I don't know what sort of tradition Dick Clark started, I've never thought to look back to the '70s and '80s to see how it went but at least in my memories of the last 15 years or so, you've had everyone wearing the stupid swag, the giant foam glasses that say Nivea on them, or the big foam purple top hats with Planet Fitness emblazoned on them, and trust me I'm all about capitalism, but that level of consumerism is obnoxious. Like, there are very few brands that I consider parading about with their name to be a fashion statement. Oh boy, I got big plastic Nivea glasses. Yeah, I'm going to wear those again in my lifetime. They might be a good skin lotion brand, I don't really know, but I'm certainly not that invested in them.

Then there's the "music", and I use the term loosely. You either have the female artist singing about what an unabraded whore she is, and that's really a Sophie's choice because it's typically in the mid thirties this time of year, so they desperately want to show off as much skin as legally possible, but also keep from getting hypothermia. For the gents, it's almost always going to be that one song where you hold the microphone sideways, and the lyrics go: uh, uh, uh, yeah, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh...

If you're into all that, you do you. But I'm just not. I don't care who the corporate sponsors are, I don't care about hearing the same song, doesn't matter who's singing it, or what it is, it all sounds the same, and I think one of the biggest things that happens to you when you grow up is that when you are tired, you go to sleep. When you're a kid, you're sitting there imagining this time, I'm going to stay up so late, I'm going to stay up past midnight every night, yeah wait till you get here. Last night, I became tired, so I turned everything off and went to bed.

So I missed the ball drop. I literally didn't lose sleep over it, and I'm not that invested to look it up on the you tube. I actually watched the replay of Russia ringing in the new year as I was drifting off to sleep. President Putin finishes up his speech, they zoom in on the spasskya tower, the clock chimes down, and they play the anthem while the cameras pan to different shots around the Kremlin. I'm not Russian, but I totally have a thing for tradition, history, architecture, old clocks, and I don't care what political spectrum you're on, Alexandrov wrote one hell of an anthem; it's an orchestral masterpiece.

I don't know how other English speaking countries do it, but like, it would be nice if after Auld Lang syne, maybe we did hear the Star Spangled Banner. I could give a fuck less what mushbrain Biden would wander out of the day room and attempt to read off the teleprompter in his fake oval office set, but I would rather enter the new year with our national anthem than some singer which is apparently called 'jelly-roll'. Like seriously, and this is not a bad thing, I was looking up some history, came across the list of headliners for last night, and the only singer from last night's revelry that I recognized is LL Cool J, who was big in the '90s. I have no idea what a jelly roll is, or a megan thee stallion, or any of the rest. And again, that's not a bad thing.

I don't know about resolutions, seems to be less important the older you get, at least in my experience. But last year, we made a concerted effort to try to more productively spend our time. Instead of sitting on our ass and watching reruns, we were working out in the garden. If the weather was temperate, we grilled and enjoyed a fire in the backyard instead of sitting glued to the couch. That was a big part of it, just getting away from the idiot box. And as part of that, I have been deliberately disconnecting myself and avoiding 'Hollywood royalty', 'influencers', 'YouTube sensations', and all the rest. Not sticking my head in the sand, and no, I'm not going monastic or amish, I still enjoy a bit of TV time every now and again, and the YouTube black hole remains a guilty pleasure, but it's amazing how much better, how much more productively you can spend your time.

Last year was a good year, and whether I quantify that as a resolution, or just continue on the path I've started, I'm looking forward to 2024. A lot of good things happened last year, and plenty of bad, but that's life. And all we can do is move forward. I'm no self-help guru or anything, I'm an imperfect broken sinner same as anyone else, but more and more, I am taking things that just don't work or fit in my life, and I'm divesting them. You can't be happy all the time, but if something is not only not bringing you joy, but is in fact bringing you downright misery, then why the hell are you doing that?

I wish everyone who reads this a very happy and prosperous new year. Make it a good one. Seek joy, keep what works, distance yourself from what doesn't. In the immortal words of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: every shiny dream that fades and dies, generates the steam for two more tries! Always look forward, keep trying, and fight the good fight! In the words of Steve Deace, fear God, tell the truth, make money... Good advice!

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