In 1972 I saw The Poseidon Adventure in a theater with my parents and brother. I was nine years old and remember being amazed by the big New Year’s Eve party at the beginning. You know, before the whole goddamn boat went upside-down? Everybody was packed together, blowing horns and wearing novelty hats and swinging for the fences. It seemed impossible to me, and I wondered if I’d ever find myself in such a situation.
Well, about 45 years have now passed and it’s never happened. Not once. I was intrigued when I was a kid (everybody seemed to be having such a good time!), but let’s be serious. If I was mashed into a drunken mob like that, I’d probably have a panic attack and start throwing haymakers. And if anybody honked one of those roll-out whistles near my face, or tried to enlist me in some kind of swaying singalong, I’d be pissed beyond belief. And there would probably be a nauseating stew of odors and aromas out there… It’s not for me. I’m not a good candidate for such a concentrated ration of “fun.”
In fact, I can’t remember a single New Year’s Eve when I wasn’t at home, watching it all on TV. Not even during my 20s when I was especially susceptible to stupid shit. No, I’m generally just sitting there with a few beers in me, watching the glass testicle drop in Times Square. Then all the obnoxiousness almost instantly takes its toll, and I turn the channel to Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives or somesuch. It’s a holiday tradition.
I’ve been at concerts that were a mob scene, and probably sporting events. But I’m always trying to get a few steps away from the true craziness. I don’t like being in a seething sea of humanity. The whole Times Square thing seems like hell to me. Are all those people pissing into giant diapers or something? How delightful.
What about you? Have you ever found yourself in a Poseidon Adventure-style party? Do they actually happen in real life? I’m skeptical. I think it might be a Hollywood invention.
Please tell us about your most memorable New Year’s Eves. And, if you’re so inclined, what you did last night. Anything exciting? Please use the comments section.
Before I pull the plug on this one, I have a few random notes:
I’ve been watching the Twilight Zone marathon, off and on. I noticed that Rod Serling seemed somewhat abbreviated in a few of the intros, so I looked up his height. Yep, he was 5’4″. Not sure why that interests me, but it does. In any case, ol’ Sawed-Off Serling was a hell of a writer.
It’s been breathtakingly cold here for days. Our storm door was sealed off this morning, to the point where I had to put my shoulder to it, to get it to open. I’ve had enough, and it’s only January 1. Up here it’s still a questionable situation in March. This is bullshit.
On Saturday I had my first post-Andy muffin, and it was sad. It just wasn’t the same without him sitting at my feet, burning holes straight through me with his unblinking stare. That dog could bend spoons with his stare. I miss Black Lips. There’s a border collie-shaped hole in my heart. <Sigh>
I blew the full ass out of two pairs of jeans last week. Two! The second one was one of those situations where, after it happened, it seemed like some fabric was missing. Where’d it go?? I have plenty of jeans to wear but am very particular about the color. I don’t like the dark ones. It feels like I should be wearing a shirt with pearl buttons down the front (and on the pockets), and maybe a bolo tie. I can’t have that. Apparently, I’m going to be buying some new enormo-jeans soon, which will be so far down the wall at Target I’ll have to lie on the floor.
There was some fully-realized douche passing out nut samples at Sam’s Club on Saturday. He had little cups of them lined up, and I grabbed one. But instantly I realized it was mixed nuts, and he had 100% cashews a few inches away. So, I put the mixed ones back and grabbed the cashews. He didn’t say anything, but as I walked away… he took the cup of mixed nuts that I’d touched and dropped them in the trash. I didn’t care for that.
Finally, there were some fireworks going off in the neighborhood last night, and it made me think of this YouTube classic. It’s got to be one of the greatest things ever, right? Right.
I need to call it a day, my friends.
I’ll be back on Thursday.
Have a great one!
Now playing in the bunker
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First? Holy shit…
I went to bed at ten o’clock, and got up at seven thirty. That was that. Happy New Year, or whatever.
Same when it comes to NYE. We finally admitted to ourselves in the late 90s that we were never going to be the big blowout party-ers after a big New Orleans letdown. We lived 2.5 hours from New Orleans and decided we would head there for a big New Year’s Eve. The minute we got there, we knew the drunken, idiotic crowd was too much for us and immediately decided to turn right around and drive two and a half hours back home. We were home by 9:30 in the evening and celebrated in front of the TV!! Wasted time, wasted gas, but lesson learned!!!
Nice quiet night at home with Husband and Boy. However, outside it was the Fourth of July starting at 9 pm PST until after midnight. Where are these people buying so much fireworks and/or explosives? I’ve always wanted to do the rousing NYE party but we don’t know anybody who would care to join us for the fun. Oh, well. Too late now. Happy New Year Jeff.
Nothing this year; just stayed home. Some years I’ve gone to a New Year’s Eve party, but it will be at someone’s house – with prior arrangements to sleep there – not some hellish Times Square or similar event. I seriously can’t imagine that being any fun.
This year a friend hosted a get-together on New Year’s Day (today). Maybe 10 people, and we all know each other. There was a fair amount of drinking and a great deal of food. Inspired by Jeff’s post from a couple of weeks ago, I made white beans and ham for this event. It was well-received.
Well, this is weird. On New Year’s Eve I found Poseidon Adventure in progress while channel surfing and we watched that till the end. Later on, it was Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, after we tired of watching the festivities and griping about how horrible and vacuous music has gotten. Also, those Planet Fitness hats are really annoying. We did see some of Austin City Limits with Chris Isaac, Elvis Costello and a bunch of others – that was pretty good.
By the way, didn’t Poseidon Adventure originally end with “There’s Got To Be A Morning After” playing triumphantly over the credits? I remember kinda rolling my eyes at that when I saw it in the theater. I kept singing it in anticipation as the end was approaching, but then it never played; instead it had more appropriate orchestral stuff by John Williams.
I could have sworn they played the song as they were being lifted out of the ship and onto the helicopter.
All the people who I didn’t want to die, died and the annoying pains in the asses all lived. They could have had Nonnie and the little brother die a long, painful death as far as I was concerned. Nonnie needed a lobotomy and the kid needed a knuckle sandwich.
Sung by Maureen McGovern. She had a few hits back then.
I only party with professional drunks. Every amateur drunk in the world is behind the wheel on New Year’s Eve and I don’t particularly want to die in an accident with one of them. In addition, I am highly allergic to crowds of people and would probably go into anaphylactic shock and slap someone and get my ass kicked.
I stayed at home last night. Had I been in the mood to party, I would have bought myself a fifth of tequila and a bag of Doritos. But I did not and I’m a happier person today because of that fact.
Daughter is home from college and was ticked off because she didn’t have anyone to go out with. Old mom that I am, I pulled up a story for her. “I dressed up nice because the new boyfriend told me we were going to a big party at his friends house” I found the picture as proof. There I was all dressed in ’80s mauve with that big bow tie around my neck, sitting on an old ripped up couch in an unfinished basement with the boyfriend playing pool on a crappy pool table.
Once I was the guest of a band member for a c+ country singer. During dinner the old steal guitar player was drunk and telling a story. He got a bit excited in the telling and his upper plate shot out his mouth. He caught the teeth, shoved them back in and kept on talking. I think that was the first time I peed myself laughing.
Did nothing for NYE which is the norm for me. Only good New years party I recall was while vacationing in Australia – it probably was only good because I vacationing. You want to talk cold? I even did an imperial translation for my American friends, it was -47 F here the other day – it hurt.
Thanks, that makes our 20° days seem tropical.
Forty-three and sunny in the Great Pacific Northwest, even at night. It’s God’s country fer crying out loud. That’s something like 80 degrees C, but I might have added 32 instead of subtracting and reported the temperature of the Sun. Too many systems of measurement. Less ambiguously, it’s warm enough to urinate outside if you don’t have prostate problems. Which reminds me of my brainstorm to, now that Jerry has left the studio, run a telethon for Shrinkage-related disorders featuring David Crosby, Bob Dylan, and other too-old-to-have-fun performers.
Live and be well.
John
Thanks JTB – I also have a place in the Pacific Northwest – I just need to make some sacrifices to afford it.
Not a fan of NYE or any other mandatory fun. I’m more than OK to party, but when I actually want to. Times Square looks like hell to me – a million morons, 10F temp, no bathrooms, a nice view of the M&M store and Bubba Gump’s – bunch of lemmings.
We got home from vacation on NYE and were asleep with jetlag by 9PM. I recorded the Mariah Carey thing in case it was funny again, but apparently it wasn’t. Happy New Year 🙂
I saw the Dick Clark’s Rockin’ NYE show advertised earlier this week. That show is the benchmark for shallow, meaningless celebration….Dick passed away 5 years ago but the mediocrity momentum appears to maintain.
I’ve attended more NYE party trainwrecks than I would care to admit. They all seemed like $30pp, Amish keg parties. You desperately try to have a good time with people you don’t know, you watch with disconnected interest as the amateur drinkers get blotto (their scenes may vary), then your genuinely fake it at midnight and get on the road as soon after as possible while vowing to stay home next year.
NYE was bitter cold here. We watched “Dunkirk” on On-Demand, had a couple of glasses of brandy and were in the kip by 11. Old fogeys (fogies?)…..no regrets.
No going out here on NYE or Halloween, as they’re both chock full of the amateur drunks driving deadly missiles of doom. No thanks, I’ll stay home, and did, and was in bed by about 9:30. No artificial joy here, when a comfy bed is full of the real thing. 🙂
I always through the coolest thing about Rod Serling was how he worked. He dictated scripts into a Dictaphone and his secretary transcribed them. I saw a picture of him once, poolside, yammering into some behemoth of a recorder and I thought, “man, that dude has got it made”. Too bad his ticker punked out early.
My NYE this year was on the beach in Mexico in the middle of one of those crazy parties. Bathtub full of iced champagne and a dance floor over the pool. It was a great way to give 2017 the middle finger it deserved.
Dozed off on the couch after a big EYE-talian dinner, and woke up at 11:32. Went to the garage to get some bubbly and spotted a bottle of Moet. SWEET! Thought Beloved picked it up for the occasion. Turns out it was a long forgotten bottle. As soon as we poured it, the color alone looked like ginger ale instead of the pale beige a nice champagne should be. Poured the whole thing down the drain. What a shame. I hope that isn’t some kind of foreboding sign that 2018 will be a bad year.
Watched The Honeymooners marathon until 2:30 AM.
I miss my family having a good party where everyone stays over. Maybe I’ll try that next year or whenever the holiday falls on a weekend again.
Spent NYE at local girlfriends house instead of Lakeland gfs Didn’t want to drive two hours and have to drive back the next day. I was off Monday, so we guzzled a lot of 24 oz Icehouse Edges, with 8.0 content, smoked a lot of stuff and ate steaks cooked in the 60 degree winter air. Stayed there to avoid roadblocks, since I still have a year and a half dui charges that I have not yet been convicted of.
We wanted to drive to downtown Sarasota to watch the pineapple drop, but again, didn’t want to hit a checkpoint. 100000 people show up for that. Been in that crowd before and hated it every time. Spent Monday eating eggs Benedict that my local cooked, watched two bowl games simultaneously and played the original Nintendo games on a new system from Best Buy. Best New Years in awhile.
I think New Year’s Eve is the world’s biggest non-event ever! It’s just a reason for people to get wasted. I hate crowds and I don’t drink, so the whole exercise seems pointless to me. I have never gone to any kind of NYE party, and I’m usually asleep well before midnight. This year, I’ve been fighting a cold, so I took some Nyquil and went to bed before 10:00. I think the most recent NYE I’ve stayed up for was Y2K. I wanted to see if the conspiracy theorists were right…but as usual, they weren’t! 🙂
I actually did a Poseidon Adventure style NYE once on the Queen Mary. Worst NYE I’ve ever had, too, for all the reasons everybody mentioned.
For the last 5 years we’ve headed out to a literal middle-of-nowhere roadhouse in the desert for NYE. There’s always a band, the crowd is moderate and local, and the booze is cheap. The drunks are seasoned, but even if they weren’t there’s nothing around for miles so it’s difficult to screw up too badly on the “roads.” It’s not too bad as NYEs go, you get the best of all worlds.
Quiet around here NYE. Me and my wife ordered a pizza and played Yahtzee.
I lost. Both games. Very rare…
Reekris!
That’ll never get old.
I haven’t partied for New Years in many many years. Prior to baby, the hubs and I would get all dressed up and hit up a swanky restaurant with another couple for an expensive meal, but we’d still be home before midnight. Since baby, we have been in bed by 10.
This year had weird circumstances. We were traveling, with plans to leave Florida at 4am to start the 10 hour drive back to north Alabama on New Years Day. We were in bed by 9:00, however the idiots that live in the in-laws neighborhood set off insane amounts of ridiculously loud fireworks well in the night. Luckily the baby slept through most of it, however the hubs and I were not so lucky and didn’t actually get to sleep until after 1am. I heard cuss words from my exhausted husband I had never heard before in those 4 hours we laid there begging it all to stop. We delayed our departure by 1 hour just so we could clock a little extra sleep before embarking on the journey home.
Live in a neighborhood correctly termed a “hood” midnights can often bring a “rain” of bullets around here on NYE… Almost always tucked in for night before then.
My next door neighbor (I mean RIGHT next door) has hosted a NYE party for years and we used to always attend. But the last two years we just went out for a nice dinner and came home and vegged on the couch, too lazy to even walk the 20 feet to his house. Fortunately, I feel no guilt about that.