The boyfriend and I have absolutely nothing special planned for tonight, other than some homemade chicken burritos, a glass of champagne (a Christmas gift from a co-worker), and a perusal of what's on cable. I used to do New Year's Eve up huge; that was before I spent lots of money on Christmas gifts, entertainment, and travel. Now all it takes is a glance at my checkbook (as it lies in my purse still whimpering and battered from my shopping sprees), and suddenly staying in becomes much more attractive than spending any cash to go out.
Knowing me, I'll spend a lot of time online:
In Port Clinton, Ohio, they drop a 600-pound fiberglass fish at midnight. Webcam available for those of you who won't be there.
Fark reports: "Coward Congressman urges people to avoid Times Square. Mayor Bloomberg says grow a pair."
From the I-don't-know-how-easy-I-have-it department: Some Britons are staying in tonight too, thanks to jacked-up club prices. If I read this correctly, it's over 140 pounds, or around 280 dollars, to go out on New Year's Eve in England. Good grief. And here I am staying home because I don't feel like paying 10 dollars for parking or 35 for entry to a club.
CNN has a roundup of New Year's Eve on the Net.
James Lileks has a great discussion of the symbolism of New Year's Eve (i.e., there isn't any) and discusses his favorite New Year's Eve:
I will say this – probably said it last year, and the year before, too - he New Year’s Eve I’ll always remember is Dec. 31, 2001, when Times Square was packed with about 326 million people who screamed “yeah well Al Qaeda THIS, yo” and Rudy swore in Nurse Bloomberg before the cheering crowds. I watched that moment through the back door window – I’d gone outside for the first cigar of 02, and the neighbors were setting off fireworks. I felt better at that moment than I’d felt since September 10.
Update: Oh, my. If you're anywhere near Brasstown, NC, don't miss the Possum Drop. Yeah, it's a real possum they lower in a cage (these critters exist in huge whomping numbers in that state; I used to help my roommate rehabilitate orphan possoms who ended up at her shelter).
Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, at the exact same moment that hundreds of thousands of people holler in the New Year at Times Square in New York, and millions more tip back champagne flutes and watch it on television, a few hundred people will huddle together at a Citgo station in this little town in Appalachia, wearing hunting jackets and those hats with the dangly ear straps, cheering the descent of one confused marsupial.
Talk about parallel universes.
It all started 13 years ago, when someone said to Clay Logan, owner of Brasstown's only gas station and vendor of kitschy possum products, "If New York City can drop a ball, why can't we drop a possum?"
Logan agreed.
At midnight, as he lets a rope slip between his fingers, lowering a possum in a Plexiglas cage from the roof of his gas station, Logan will yell out, as he has every New Year's Eve since 1990, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1!"
And then, as the crowd starts going bananas, "The possum has landed!" The possum is alive, of course, and will be released at the end of the night unharmed, though a little shaken.
Oh, man. A "Miss Possum" contest, a "cross-dressing affair in which bearded truck drivers wear eye shadow and strut across stage with hands like oven mitts swinging at the sides of bursting lace dresses"? If I was anywhere near, I'd be there.
Posted by kswygert at December 31, 2003 11:39 AM