The Sunday Memory Drawer - New Year's Eves Present and Past

This is me at a very early age celebrating the new year of 19__.  Oh, you didn't think I was going to give that information up readily, did you?

Well, the New Year's holiday is at hand again this week and it brings to mine memories both good and bad.  Getting the latter out of the way first, my mother went into cardiac arrest and lapsed into a coma just before midnight one year and passed away a week later.  That year, I got my lowest point of the twelve month period done by January 15.  It could only get better after that.

Years ago, some friend had told me that the way you spend New Year's Eve pretty much dictates the type of year you will have.  For some inexplicable reason, I have subscribed to this theory, although I can easily refute it with a number of salient examples.

Take, for instance, the year 2010.  It's been rough for some of my good friends, but, pour moi, not so bad.  But, if you judged the year by my experience last December the 31st, you would be thinking this would be my worst year ever.  New Year's Eve 2009 was just that bad.

There had been no definitive plans made.  Frankly, the night is very overrated.  I'm content to have dinner with some good chums at a nice restaurant.  A friend and college pal out here picked up the gauntlet.  He'd arrange a gathering at Jar, one of my favorite Los Angeles eateries.  We had been there the year before and it was a delicious time on all sides of the plate. 

But, that year, most of my dining mates were out-of-town friends.  In 2009, the pickings were slimmer.  No worries, said my ambitious college buddy. 

"I'll just put a net out with a global e-mail and see who's available."

As it turns out, he managed to catch some fish.  Except I was not aware of most of the species.  And, by the end of the evening, I would have opted to throw them back into the ocean.

Putting together a fun dinner party at a restaurant does require some scientific precision.  None was used that night as my trying-to-be-helpful friend threw together a table of mismatched socks.   All these losers were available on New Year's Eve for a reason.  We covered possibly every unlikable human trait in the book.  Obnoxious.  Phony.  Boring.  Pretentious.  Yep, when you got that e-mail at 5:30PM, it was no surprise that none of you had any plans for New Year's Eve.

Surveying the dinner crowd hunkered around table that night, I had a sickening thought.

Oh, my God, am I a loser just like them????  Maybe I'm obnoxious.  Phony.  Boring.  Pretentious.

Nah.  Impossible.     

It took forever for the clock to strike twelve.  And, as I waited patiently for this holocaust with martinis to conclude, I recalled other New Year's Eves where things had gone better.  Or not as badly.

Oh, sure, there was one where my fractured shoulder was in a sling and I could barely reach for the dice playing Trivial Pursuit with some neighbors.

There was the year when a bunch of completely bored and over-served college sophomores played hockey in an elevator bank, using somebody's crutches as a hockey stick.  

There were those family gatherings when I was a kid when the goal was to stay as far away from the one food item on the table that made me gag.

Vita Herring in sour cream sauce. 

The odor was nauseating. It permeated the entire buffet. The ham smelled like herring. The pickles smelled like herring. I started to smell like herring. And I have no idea who the fuck was eating this shit. I think my grandfather did. As a result, there might have been some years where I avoided him until July or August.

While these family New Year's Eves sometimes lasted till 2 or 3AM, I usually didn't. I'd get bored and head up to bed, carefully tiptoeing around some oversexed cousin who was crawling on top of some date on the stairs. I vowed that the next New Year's Eve would be better for me.

Except 2009 at Jar dining with a pack of wolves/strangers wasn't.  As some asshole across the table kept talking about his Buckwheat Zydeco record collection, my mind wandered even further from the restaurant.

To my best New Year's Eve ever.  Yep, I've told the tale here before.  But, given all my newer readers, it's worth sharing again.  For some of you, it's new information.

December 31, 1984. I had wavered on definitive plans when a good friend called with a bright idea. He and his wife were going downtown to an oldies club called Shout. In the truest spirit of marketing, the place played the song several nights that night. My friends even had another girl going, so we could easily divide the drink bill equally four ways.

To be honest, I don't remember who they brought along, because I danced with so many people that night. The evening was electric. One big hit from the 50s and 60s after another. At several points out on the dance floor, we toasted catcher Gary Carter, who the Mets had just obtained in a trade. At midnight, they dragged out "Shout" one more time. And we did. I kissed a few of the patrons around me. I had no clue who they were. I didn't give a shit. It was that free. And easy. And spontaneous.

We had so much fun that, by January 2, I was already making plans to duplicate it the following year. And we kept spreading the word around amongst other friends as if we were sharing a secret handshake. By the time December, 1985 had rolled around, most of the names in my Filofax had been invited. And I had a girlfriend, to boot. A non-stranger to kiss at the stroke of 12. This was going to be super-electric.

It was horrible.

What had been spontaneous the year before was now over-planned to the hilt. And the cast of thousands of my friends didn't exactly mesh. It was the Hindenburg of celebrations. To make the gloom even more pronounced, we got word in the middle of the evening that Ricky Nelson had been killed in a plane crash.

To this day, I still don't know what happened from one year to another. I'm not even sure the club stayed open much longer. New Year's Eve eventually returned to "crapshoot" status as far as I was concerned.

Last year, the "crapshoot" completely bankrupted me.  I vowed never to let that happen again.  This year, I planned ahead.  I'll be at Disney Hall with some good friends enjoying Kristen Chenowith singing Broadway show tunes with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 

If a net is cast out at 530PM, I will be officially swimming in calmer waters.

Dinner last night: The traditional Christmas ham dinner.