December 30, 2004

• 1. Seeing Cassandra Wilson at the Blue Note. 2. Busting down police barricades on New Year's Eve, 2000 (accidentally, of course). 3. Last year, having all my going-out suggestions vetoed, and ending up being the seventh wheel in an apartment full of three couples, waiting for tourtiere to thaw. 4. See Cassandra Wilson, above.
• 1. going to a hip hop, soul, funk and breaks night 2. 'sneaking' into a dance party on beautiful sydney harbour with about 500 others who stormed the fence and crushed it beneath them 3. half falling, half sliding off the roof last year thanks to a bottle of champagne and a slippery, dew wet corrugated iron surface. cue skinned knees uncalled for tears 4. i'll be keeping my tongue in cheek for this NYE, 2004 was all aboujt cultivating crankiness and trust issues.
• 1. Don't know yet 2. Last year, riding around back roads aimlessly with friends, completly lost, with single friends. 3. Last year, pre-riding around, sitting in a friends living room with several happy couples. 4. BF of six months.
• 1. I'm keeping it low key this year - I'm sick as a dog and flying out new years day to do field work for the month of January. So far plans are to check out some fireworks and have some drinks with friends. 2. Seeing the Sun Ra Arkestra at the Painted Bride in Philadelphia in 2001. 3. The last time I was sick on New Years (1998) 4. Considering the germ level I'll be keeping my tongue to myself this year.
• 1,2,3 Every new year is spent at one or another friend's house drinking too much. They've all been pretty mediocre and indistinguishable. (The parties, not the friends.) 4. Provided I've had enough to drink, all I ask is two X chromosomes, body temperature around 37C and own teeth.
• 1. Having a bonfire, cooking gumbo and black-eyed peas. Fireworks later. 2. Seeing a fireworks war between facing apartment buildings as a kid. 3. Working offshore and missing the New Year's meal. 4. My crazed Cajun girl!
• 1- Did you know that you can fly really cheap if you go late on NYE? I'm flying to CA on Friday night for peanuts, and if the plane isn't delayed at all, I'll make it there by 11 or so and hang out downtown watching fireworks. 2- I never had a really spectacular NYE. I prefer the holidays that involve eating lots of good food over the ones that involve drinking lots of shitty liquor. So based on that, the best NYE ever was the one I didn't celebrate- last year I spent the whole night (and afternoon, and the next day) volunteering with a rescue group who was looking for a kid who got lost in the woods. 3- Worst NYE ever was 2001, which I spent freezing my fucking ass off in NYC. If you don't like pop music, and you're not an eskimo, then I recommend that you don't go. 4- I'm not telling. I'd recommend getting tickets with a date and/or few friends to a concert/party with a local band at a small casual club, if you're into that sort of thing and if it's not too late to make plans.
• 1. Not sure yet. Probably the dinner & a movie thing. 2. NYE 99, a concert extravaganza with 3 of my favorite bands. 3. NYE 94, accepted a invitation to a "party" which I later learned was in the backwoods of South Carolina, watching people burn large piles of Christmas trees and shoot rifles at midnight. Also, there was venison barbeque for dinner. It was too late to drive back to "town" so we crashed on sleeping bags on the floor of someone's double-wide. I woke up at 4 am to sounds of roosters crowing. I am not making this up. 4. Is it inappropriate to "tongue-pash" your husband, especially if you've only been married 3 weeks?
• 1. Going down to DC to meet up with some friends. Having dinner at The Capital Grill steakhouse. Mmm, steak.... 2. Last year I went to the Harvard club in NYC with 3 others. We were the only 4 people there who a) didn't go to Harvard and b) were under the age of 45. Lots of fun drinking and dancing. 3. NYE 2001 - I was sick with mono. Could barely stay awake to watch the ball drop on TV. 4. Hopefully a certain ex-girlfriend who'll be joining me tomorrow evening. Hopefully.
• 1) Friends are having a $20 open bar, buffet, and live music event in their enormous apt right in the center of our neighborhood here in Chicago 2) Phish, Big Cyprus. 8 hrs of solid nonstop music to ring in 2000 in the everglades. 3) Falling in my very own apt and attaining a gash in my head requiring 11 staples to ring in 2001 in West Hartford CT. 4) My lovely fiancee. And then maybe baby new year as played by my friend Dan Devito. (really his name, I just love having a friend named Dan Devito.)
• 1- Small party with my SO and her friends. 2- I prefer not to tell as my SO reads this forum from time to time. (Don't worry, it was wayyyy before I met her.) 3- The Millenium celebration. Went to shitty club in Bay Ridge. Got charged $60 to enter. There are about 7 people inside. Get pissed. Get "pissed" (brit style). Don't remember rest of evening. 4- My girlfriend. What ever you do, don't plan too much. I find alot of NYE plans don't live up to the hype, and people get disappointed that it wasn't the "greatest night of the year." Go where the night takes you. As long as you have some good friends around, it'll be fun. Oh and watch out for the B&T n00bs in the Village. My mom lives a few blocks away from the Blue Note, and I made the mistake of hanging out at Off the Wagon one NYE. Almost got into 6 fights in 2 hours. Jerks. Though the Blue Note does cater to a higher sensibility.
• 1. This year, seeing October Project at a loft concert in Manhattan. It's our first NYE date in years--we normally host. 2. Quite possibly our party last year, which was very bittersweet; we announced we were moving out-of-state and two engagements were announced. 3. The NYE after I split from my ex, where my date got drunk and spent midnight in the men's room tossing cookies (3 big bottles of Taunton's Blackthorn, and yes, Johnny did jump up!) and an old friend threatened suicide (not to me, but to mutual friends and bystanders, including my husband--who was not my date and had not yet met me) because I didn't want to date him. 4. It's never inappropriate to swap spit with my husband, is it? I started hosting NYE because I didn't want to hunt for a party. Now it's a tradition, and friends back home have taken it over, to the point of emailing me for advice about where to buy specific foods. It's too late to do that this year, but a casual gathering with a few friends is always good. Have a decent bottle of champagne, sing Auld Lang Syne at midnight, and toast. You'll have a great time.
• (just wrote a story about how people hate new year's eve.) best NYE was last year, an 11-course gourmet dinner at the inn at little washington, a five-star B&B outside d.c. woo! this year, we'll be dining and dancing at the big kennedy center soiree.
• I'm flying to CA on Friday night for peanuts wow, smallish, those must be some tasty peanuts to fly across the country for them
• * seriously jealous of SideDish dining at the Inn last year * A few of us are headed up to Maggiano's in Tyson's this year, but that sure ain't the Inn at Little Washington.
• but you'll get lots more tasty food at maggiano's!!! it's pretty froufrou at the inn -- cool to look at dishes but not much food, if you get my drift... heh
• (1) Going to my brother-in-law's to spend some time and play with their kids. (2) We closed down our favorite neighborhood bar, which was run out by the evil motherfuckers at Bass Pro. My wife rode home on my lap, pissed out of her mind, singing Def Leppard songs at the top of her lungs. (3) The night I lost my virginity. I wound up babysitting a buddy of mine who couldn't hold his liquor, despite protestations of the "I'm Irish" variety. After some fumbling with my girlfriend, I went home shrouded in shame. (4) My wife. I suppose I could try for my sister-in-law, but probably my wife and her brother would, you know, punch me.
• Good point. Plus, it's a little less cha-ching at Maggiano's. Don't have to take out that second mortgage (although I would like to try out some of Bob Kinkead's creations--or rather Patrick O'Connell, I believe). Sorry folks. We're done derailing now!
• 1) I don't know 2) NYE 99 3) NYE 02 4) I don't know ---Remember no driving after drinking
• immlass, that's funny I was *just* listening to October Project's first album yesterday and wondering what Mary Fahl and the rest of the band were up to. I looked them up and saw that after she left, they had recently reformed. I saw them open for Sarah McLachlan in '95 and they were great. Hope you have a great time. /derail 1. Cheese fondue, roasted leg of lamb and crab-stuffed filets of sole with my sweetie, who's coming in on the train. Yay! Perhaps a taste of Nicolas Feuillatte Brut, Grand Cru at 0600 GMT or do you say UTC? 2. I miss watching Guy Lombardo with my grandmother as a kid. She always made us feel like we were in just the right place. 3. It can be kind of a loaded (heh) holiday. There is so much pressure to "make it special." I'd have to say the year I was down with mono as a teen and wanted so badly to be out with friends. It's a rotten night to be lonely. 4. See numero uno, and, indeed, I say again, Yay.
• lamearse, if your requirements are last minute, cheap, and easy, you may want to look into a local mid-priced restaurant that has a bar. You don't necessarily need to eat dinner there (especially if you're on a budget), but the bar would be a good place to hang out. It won't be full of hooligans (unless your looking for those types of people), you'll get decent drinks, and any place worth its salt will have party favors, drink specials, etc. Just call around to a few places and ask what they're doing for NYE. Bonus: I know a lot of areas have free taxi rides on NYE.
• I can't believe there are people who don't love New Years!? Its the one holiday that you aren't pressured to see anyone you don't like, don't have to spend outrageous amounts of money on gifts, are given free reign to enjoy yourself - and for once adults get to have more fun than the kids. My friends and I have pledged to spend New Years in a different place every year (my trip and illness flubbed this year). Last year when we were all doing well financially we rented a condo in NH, went skiing and cooked up a storm including paella and homemade breads. Years we haven't been so well off we've picked one of our hometowns, packed up a bunch of sleeping bags, had dinner in and went to whatever cheap live music we could find. It is always a great time and is the one holiday I look forward to every year.
• (1) My wife and I are babysitting for the kids that she is a nanny for. It's a bunch of money (which we can surely use), the kids'll be in bed by 7:30 or so and then we get the run of the swanky upper west side apartment, and she hates NYE anyway. I'd rather be going to a party but oh well. We are having a nice New Years Day potluck back at our house in Brooklyn Saturday though, complete with backyard snow-b-q. Except it's going to be warm. Anyway. (2) 2001. I don't know if it is really my favorite, but it was funny. The first and only time I've been to the Times Square madness. I think it was the result of some sort of misguided "if we can't stumble around drunk, crowded and freezing then the terrorists have already won!" thing. Watched the ball from afar, went back to Queens, ended up watching the sun rise up on the roof in INSANELY cold high winds, totally bent, wearing a sombrero. Managed to stay awake long enough to go to make pancakes and attend the first showing of Fellowship of the Ring on New Years Day. Fell asleep as soon as my butt hit the seat. My real favorites are probably most of the others. The more mellow, subdued affairs. (3) I've liked them all. Truly. I'm with you, a22lamia. I don't understand why people hate New Years eve. ANYTHING is going to suck if you worry about it too much. Get together with people you love and like, put on some good records, do a little tiny bit of looking back and looking forward (but not too much) and just enjoy yourself in whatever way you see fit. Easy. (4) My lovely wife.
• My family has seen too many people die in drunk driving accidents on New Year's. So we spend it at home, together, and have since I was little. I'm 20 now - they actually came to florida for this New Year's and we're continuing the tradition. The way we do it is to make it so full of fun and good food and champagne that no one WANTS to go out. We have shrimp and good steaks and lobster tails and scallops, and spinach salads with hot bacon dressing, and all kinds of yummy appetizers. And a whole lot of champagne.
• I'm one of the people who hate it. I always try to put on a brave face and plan something fun though, sometimes I even end up enjoying myself. 1. I don't have plans yet, maybe a movie and then just walking around on the street where the bars are, listening to the celebrations from a pleasant and sober distance. 2. Best would be the trip I took a few years ago to visit friends who'd moved to Tucson. Saw Calexico on the 30th, went to Vegas and saw 'O' on the eve, then watched fireworks with the rest of the crowds. 3. All the times I've gone out drinking with friends and ended up babysitting them and feeling alone and lonely in the crowd are tied for worst. 4. Nobody, as usual. I'll hug my friends if they're around.
• 1. No idea yet. I have no invites, don't want to hang out in bar with a bunch of amateur drunks, feeling a bit listless and cranky, so I'll probably stay home. 2. 12/31/2000, when I partied like it was 1999, because of: 3. 12/31/1999, when I spent the night of the century with a bunch of my cow-orkers waiting for the world to end even after we'd already fixed it. 4. See #1 above.
• 1. Quiet wine-tasting with friends, followed by reserved opening of champagne bottles and poetry readings 2. 3. The past is in the past. I'm always looking to the future. 4. Your husbands.
• meanwhile, in mount olive, the pickle is about to drop.
• 1. Going to see The Incredibles at 8 with #2, then home for a quiet night listening to music and such, most likely. 2. Probably 2000, camping out up a valley near Kaikoura. We did end up sleeping in the back of a friend's car, but up till then it was a great night. Got up at 5am and walked to the beach to sit and watch the first sunrise of the millennium, cheese cheese. I'm not a New Year's person because I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. 3. Worst: most likely all my teenaged years when I spent every New Year's Eve babysitting for next to nothing. 4. I think that goes without saying.
• teenaged years when I spent every New Year's Eve babysitting for next to nothing oh, man, monkeybashi, THAT brings back years of memories. guess that's a rite of passage for adolescent girls worldwide.
• nye some friends very nearby are having a party. it will be fairly small, just close friends, we will dress up, play poker, be silly, have a white elephant gift exchange and probably drink too much. saturday night I am going to see the 5,6,7,8's at the Bottom of the Hill in San Fran. woohoo! I hope all have a nice weekend, mellow or festive, definitely safe. best nye? there have been a few that stand out....generally a really fun party with all of my close and dear friends
• 1. dinner and a movie with my husband -- it's our tradition, as New Years Day is our anniversary (married 1/1/00) 2. senior year in high school, and the first time I got drunk 3. none were very bad 4. nobody I prefer small gatherings at a friend's house to going out on the town. Crowds, especially drunken ones, make me panic.
• saturday night I am going to see the 5,6,7,8's at the Bottom of the Hill in San Fran. Now that is something I would brave the crowds for. Great band, and a great place to see them.
• 1. not entirely sure, possibly hiding out in a nation of two (or three) 2. not entirely sure, as it would involve recall. A possible toss up between high spirited party hopping, drug induced cheer and a fond blur. 3. not entirely sure, as per above, but i'm sure being hit on and assaulted by drunken racist wanna be politicos in DC is up there. 4. if i was planning on being inappropriate, i'd have to make plans. hmm... i'm not one for ranking and listing
• wait, i think i should add a deathly flu and gunshots after the suspicious disappearance of a three foot street roaming rooster somewhere in there and dim accounts of basement parties and tour buses and something involving human remains from the civil war-- wow, now i might consider remembering
• 1. We're spending the day baking and cooking, as my son and his fiance and my nephew and his husband are coming over for dinner. They all wound up at our house last year after a party they were going to go to was cancelled at the last minute, and the six of us had a great time. So, we've decided to repeat it. I'm making a couple of pans of lasagne, bread and a chocolate cake. 2. The first NYE I spent with my wife (then girlfriend). We escaped a gathering early and went for a walk that took about five hours but felt like fifteen minutes. 3. Arresting a man and his wife for beating their teenage daughter into a coma (she later died) because she spilled a drink. 4. If I'm not kissing my wife, the only other options are my son, my nephew and their significant others. I don't think I have a hard decision.
• 1. Same thing for years, designated driver. But it's really fun! This year I'm in my BF friend's Escalade with a cooler full of club soda. I get to tool around blasting the Pretenders and dodging drunks on the road. 2. the best NYE I had was when I was a young punk and watched my friends freak out over a sunburst sherbet because they were on LSD. 3. The worst? The year I couldn't remember how old I was, so I couldn't remember what resolution to make. But who to kiss this year? Depends on traffic.
• 1. Finishing a conference submission that is due on Jan 5. No New Year's celebration for me. I have little to celebrate, anyway. 2004 was the worst year ever, and 2005 might be worse still. 2. The best NYE was Y2K. We managed to find a non-Y2K compliant Apple UNIX box (iirc), and projected its display on the conference room screen we were having the party in. It was fun to see the year change from 99 to 0. Also for many weeks we had fun sending email using a broken client that recorded the year as '100'. 3. Don't really remember too many past NYEs to pick a worst. 4. 'Pashing'? What's that? Oh. Nope, no pashing for me as I'm a bit past my teenage years.
• 1.) After doing one too many gigs as a sound tech where I had to stay totally sober on New Years while everyone got shitfaced & acted like animals, now I hardly celebrate the festivities, as it lost its fun. However, I still value the new year transition much more highly than most other rituals. Tonite, in roughly an hour from posting, I'm starting a big bonfire in me' back yard, constructed of the detritus of three huge gum trees that never stop dropping crap all over. Here's hoping I don't start a massive house fire, but with the drunken hooligans doing crazy shit all over Perth, I think I can get away with not attracting any attention. I'm drinking brewskis as I type, but I'm not anywhere near shitfaced yet. Get back to me at 3 am. 2.) Best New Years Eve? Can't remember. 3.) Worst? On me' own 1990, trying to find a party or crowd to join & failing. 4.) There will be no inappropriate tongue-pashing. I am married, plus I am so utterly sexy & dripping with male potency that I owe it to human civilization and the relationships of millions not to expose my powers to women (or men). With great power comes great responsibility. But not until the partner comes first, ya get me?
• my best new years was, hands down, nye 2002 - the phish reunion show at Madison Square Garden. The story surrounding that night is completely absurd, I posted it to a phish newsgroup so interested parties can read it here. It's a ridiculously long story, but I guarantee worth the read. Haven't worked out my plans for tonight yet, although I'll be at a concert that starts around 1 am. Happy New Years everybody.
• 1) Tonight I'm going to a party at the home of an ex-co-worker, while my wife is visiting our good frieds in the country. I like parties, she likes the peace of the conutry. Sometimes we spend NYE partying or being quiet outdoors somewhere together. Other times we each go our separate ways, and rejoin early in the new year. Tonight's the latter type, but we'll both have fun, regardless. 2) The 2nd year my wife (then girlfriend) & I lived together, 1999, we hosted a NYE party. After playing the obligatory Prince (Party like it's ....", we put on the Monkees and Badfinger, and the remaining crowd danced and sang along for several hours more. My wife had made rattles from gourds with long handles made from bamboo. They didn't sell, and became party toys until they broke, and we picked beads from the carpet for months afterwards. This party cemented the friendship with the people who she's staying with in the country tonight, so there's some symmetry there. 3) When I was 7, and fell asleep before 10PM. The babysitter woke me and I got PO'd, and stormed off to bed. The next day I woke horrified and saddened that I'd missed celebrating the new year, which may be why I like NYE parties today. 4) As she was leaving, my wife made me promise not to kiss or fall in love with anyone else tonight. Ta Ta, I'm off to a party......
• 1. I'm visiting CA, so I'm hanging out with one of my brothers and a couple of my childhood friends from the neighborhood. Right now we're watching Napoleon Dynamite, and afterwards we'll go to a small bar in the Golden Hill district of San Diego to debauch ourselves. 2. None really come to mind as being spectacular. 3. Kickoff to 1993. I was nineteen. I got drunk enough to get alcohol poisoning, and made out with the girlfriend of one of my best friends, only to have him walk in. I wrote about this in more detail in the sadly defunct daisy_may thread. 4. Probably no one.
• Wow... the daisy_may thread is open again, proving that tracicle loves me! The aforementioned tale of my youthful New Year's inebriational adventure can be found here and here.
• 1. Solo, at home with tea and the cats and the piano, being a bit under the weather. The wife has departed to party on my behalf. 2. A gourmand blowout in the late 90s where my oenophile host cracked a bottle of 1988 d'Yquem, just for the hell of it, and the hostess assigned everybody a recipe of their own to assemble from the first Charlie Trotter coffee-table cookbook. (I have no idea what I might have tried to make. Crispy Squid Anus Marinated in 300-year-old Islamic Vinegar? Whatever.) Man, those were the days.... 3. Some time between 1989 and 1991, one of those pass out in a drunken mash in the host's attic parties, where I woke up the next morning entangled with my evening's quasi date, then proceeded to hound dog her for the next two months, just because of one evening's drunken fumbling in the attic. While I wasn't complaining at the time, I cringe now when I recall. 4. The cats can run, but they can't hide.
• *waves to goetter*
• *flashes gang-sign back at teh_bone*
• *flashes gang sign back*
• by the way, even though nothing worked out sucessfully for me this year, romantcally speaking, but that may be a good thing. Happy 2005 all!
• I have no idea what this means, but: on the way to our night of good food and better wine and debauchery, we ended up driving behind a Chiquita Banana truck. And, of course, no one else laughed but me. Happy New Years, you Monkey bastards. I dig you all.
• 1. playing mini golf, watching Look Around You, and playing Katamari Damacy with friends. got a bottle of Veuve Cliquot :) 2. 1990, the year I called Ken Kesey (collect, and he accepted the charge). 3. 1993, when I spent the day driving a nearly dead car to Cape Cod and passed out before midnight, only to realize I'd missed it completely. 4. My husband and one parrot.
• Happy New Year Monkeys.
• I'm feeling curmudgeonly. Also late. We already have one holiday dedicated to making single people feel like shit; do we really need two? Within a six-week span, no less? I hate the US version of NYE. Other cultures seem to have interesting customs, or at least some focus on renewal or optimism, but noooo, all we have is making out in public and shooting guns in the air. It's not about a fresh start, it's not about the new year, it's not about optimism or what lies ahead; it's about getting smashed and sucking on somebody's tonsils in front of a crowd. What's more, you're considered worthless if you don't do this. So count me out.
• Wurwilf - I think we all have holidays we love and some we don't. Maybe the most important thing, if you want to celebrate a holday in some fashion, is to develop your own traditions, either on your own, or in conjunction with friends. I've never found NY compelling, but do think Nostrildamus's suggestion of contemplating the transition has some merit. A different sort of birthday? The Roman god Janus looked forward and back. A little perspective of that sort can be a good thing. Or, just take it as another day off work and don't worry about the significance. Do you really care that much what others do? Dionysians and Apollonians have long agreed to disagree.