New Year’s Redux
This long-ago post seemed apropos as I enter the year of our Ford 2011 with a head full of bad snot:
More Songs About Celebrating And Poop
January 5th, 2008
I confess to approaching the advent of a new year warily.
A few years ago (hell, a LONG time ago now – time marches on, eh?) I was at the fearful cusp of my life, or so it seemed that week. I had just been asked to depart my college a few credits shy of my degree for reasons of money and my own lack of academic desire, and I was now faced, at the dawning of another new year, with a long unknown space in front of me, with no employment, prospects or permanent shelter to my name.
Given all of that, I opted to tick away the old year with a pair of my dear friends at one of their apartments. It would be a safe, quiet, insular affair, exactly what I (and my addled psyche) needed.
Except that about forty-five minutes before the baby new year marched the old year-man away, I was seized with tremendous pains in my midsection, as if I had consumed the entire tub of baked beans Roger Daltrey is bathing in on the Who’s Sell Out cover.
What the hell? My diet in the previous week had largely consisted of the blandest and most nutritious foods. Regardless, I sheepishly excused myself to the bathroom where I sat on the porcelain seat of honor, desperately trying to purge myself of whatever evil spirits had entered me and trying (most likely in vain) to stifle the thundering blasts emanating from my nether regions. But, like the bathroom graffito goes, that was all.
I sat there a good while, occasionally feeling good enough that I would stand and begin to raise trou and prepare to rejoin my friends, but then stunning pain in my abdomen would curl my body and guide my bare ass back to the round seat.
It wasn’t so bad. My hostess was a graduate student of English and had stacks of books within reach. From outside, I could hear muffled conversation and the fake-happy voices of the TV announcers offering play-by-play commentary of the revelry.
I looked at my watch. It was only five minutes before the local clocks would mark the beginning of the new day and the new year for my time zone. I strained, let loose an accidentally unmuted trumpet and tried to stand again, only to be forced again to a seated position. Outside my tiled prison, I heard the announcer count down the end of the year with a breathless excitement that suggested that the inevitable passage of time was the most exciting and unexpected occurrence since that unfortunate radio broadcaster delivered what was slated to be a commentary of an uneventful zeppelin docking in New Jersey (“Oh! The humanity!”).
The New Year was here. I had ushered it, in what I judged then (and still do now), in an appropriate manner – straining to accomplish one more task, meaningless to everyone but myself. I liked that.
Oh, but gentle reader! That’s not entirely the end of the story. About ten minutes past the hour, a hard, black-as-tar bolus of evil splashed into the toilet, accompanied by an immediate sense of well-being sweeping through my body.
I stood up, hiked my pants up. And joined my friends and got drunk, quick as I could.
Thankfully, nothing that unfortunate occurred this year. In fact, I had completely forgot that it was New Year’s Eve and I fell into bed and sleep before the witching hour. If this new year’s shit had a color, I’ve been reflecting, it would be grey or maybe beige.
Ho hum.
Decade-End list: My Favorite Decades
In the tradition of the endless and tiresome end-of-year best-of list, I
offer my End-Of-Decade best of list.
1) 1960s – Since I was a toddler, how could I not pick this one?
Mostly I slept, shat and ate as the center of attention in a world that
revolved around me.
2) 1970s – Christmas was still unmitigated joy, Reagan hadn’t become
president yet, cars were huge, gas was cheap and then, at the end of the
decade, we got punk rock!
3) 1990s – I struck out on my own and lived my life, full of
drunkenness, anxiety and heartbreak. It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times. And I got married.
4) 2000s – I grew up (at least a little). Has two excellent children,
bought a house and at last found a job that didn’t drive me crazy.
5) 1980s – Life was definitely beginning to suck as I became more and
aware of the shittiness around me. I graduated from (and sued my) high
school, Reagan was President, there was a lot of sprayed & feathered
hair and I went to college – which picked things up quite bit. Four of
the greatest records known to (this) man were released: “Double
Nickels on The Dime” (The Minutemen), “Zen Arcade” (Hüsker
Dü), Meat Puppets II (Meat Puppets) and “Let It Be” (The
Replacements).
6) 2010s – Not starting out so well, I slept most of New Year’s Dave
2010, sick with some sort of crud filtering down from a compartment in
the middle of my brain into my sinuses and lungs. I hope it gets better.
A Moment
See if you can guess what artist, record and/or song inspired this:
The story starts on the highway.
A June day so humid it feels like you’ve been swimming in the outdoors and you haven’t been clear of a coat of foul sweat in weeks. Driving fast without thinking, the surrounding cars falling away in magic obediance as you aim at the destination like a Zen archer. Everything is effortless and it feels like the car is driving you, making minute course corrections to avoid the flotsam and jetsam of the other motorists.
Yesterdaywas another day, indeed. What seemed interminable in the light of day seems all too short once energy is mustered and inertia overcome to depart for the bar, where the air is as still in as it is out and the barmaid remains motionless, unwilling to move, lest the exertion bring more accursed sweat.
But the beers are cold and the glasses sweat perfect circles of water on the scarred plank of the bar beneath them.
Again, ladies and gentleman…
…a story touching on a fellow alum.
The first was that Air America was not properly funded from the beginning. Even before its launch, it was taken over by a con artist who was later convicted on un-related charges of business fraud. Managers spent money lavishly on talent and studios, while generating little advertising income. At one point, staff went without pay checks while Al Franken hustled money from new investors. New owners took over, but the operation continued to bleed cash until the latest owner finally said: Enough!
I went to school (and even briefly had as a supervisor) said con artist. If you went to school with me, YOU know.
Sorry to see Air America go, but hopefully they’ve made some things in this country get better.
Rush Limbaugh’s Dominican Stag Party
“With all those guys in tow, it is unclear what Limbaugh needed with those 29 100mg Viagra pills”
(The Smoking Gun)
Haiti didn’t have that kind of tourism, I guess. Must have been that pact with the devil.
The Top 10 Things That Would Change Without Index Fingers?
Number 7: “Rock, paper, scissors becomes rock, paper, fuck you.”
– Conor Friedersdorf
Limbaugh
Limbaugh tells reporter to drop dead.
I understand Rush has been hospitalized with chest pains.