New Years Eve has always posed a problem for me. I'd like to go out with people and celebrate. I'd like to cheer and yell when the clock strikes midnight as if it were the first time that had ever happened. I'd like to randomly grab the person next to me and kiss them like a sailor back from war. But here's the thing: I don't like peop... crowds. I don't like crowds. Don't like them with a passion.Most of that has to do with the fact that I don't want you touching me. (That's a generalized "you," not you personally. That being said, the same applies to you too.) Personal space, as described by experts, is a radius of four feet to a foot and a half. Personal space, as described by me, is at least three times that size if not as far away as the horizon line. Personal space, as described by the drunken masses at the Blank Club's New Years Eve party last year? 1.5 centimeters. Not cool.
To avoid a repeat of last year's almost crippling panic attack, I'll be staying home come December 31st. This may solve the personal boundary issue, but it creates a whole new problem: what countdown program do you watch?
Somehow I always end up watching "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest." This show bothers me on a number of levels. First, the word "rockin'" is placed awkwardly in that phrase. Secondly, they use the word "rockin'" which I hear in my head as "rrrrrrhhakun" and that's annoying on top of being not proper English. Thirdly, Ryan Seacrest's perfect teeth and dead-eyed smile scare me. I fear he is trying to eat my soul. And he has perpetual George Michael stubble to boot.
On NBC you can watch Carson Daly try to out host an 80-year-old stroke victim on his Dick Clark knockoff show. And you'll watch him fail at that. You may not know this, but Daly use to be a local radio DJ in San Jose. Then MTV took him to New York to subject him to years of full-gale pre-teen screaming on Total Request Live (if you are unaware of what TRL was, that is all the better for your life). Should you put those shows in some sort of chronological time-lapse sequence, you can actually watch his spirit drain from him. True story. He currently appears to be a humanistic robot mired in the uncanny valley. Let this be a cautionary tale to those who do not believe the destructive force of teenage enthusiasm or MTV's diabolical nature.
On second thought, seeing as all those choices are equally depressing, I may just try my luck with the personal space encroaching hug monsters at a party. Panic attacks don't seem so bad in comparison.
posted by jw
