Carry Your Sunshine With You

(January 01, 2008)

It's New Year's Day. I've cooked up some waffles and chai tea. Joe's playing one of his elaborate civilization-based games on his Mac and also watching a hockey game. I just heard the lamest thing from one of the hockey announcers. Something like "if you're from a working class with backyard rinks, you carry the sunshine with you, you don't get it from the sky." 'the fuck? I guess it's an outdoor hockey game, which makes it some sort of big deal. Winter Classic. And it's snowing out so everyone's all amped up. It's Buffalo, of course it's snowing. Looks like they've filled in a football stadium with ice.

You carry your sunshine with you. Good lord.

So it's New Year's Day, and I slept really late. I should say, I slept kinda late, but then stayed in bed really late -- I lolled lazily snuggling the teddy bear listening to Joe make all the Happy New Year phone calls. His mom and dad REALLY like the WII. They went out to dinner last night, then came home and bowled until 11:45, when they turned on Dick Clark for the ball drop.

We stayed in, too, switching between Boston and New York, because I wanted to see The Downbeat 5 perform on TV for Boston's First Night. I could hear Jen D'angora's voice in the background while the announcers were talking so I kept it on Boston until they zoomed to a shot of the band. DB5 looked great, Jen's so awesome.

We always stay in on New Year's. I have zero desire to "go out there" as it's come to be known. Where we live on Comm Ave is like, as neighbor/local rocker Leah Callahan puts it, a "student ghetto." So we hear enough "woooooo!" on ordinary nights, let alone the ratcheted-up "woo!" level that is New Year's Eve. So with no plans to leave the apartment, I'd spent the day cleaning and organizing, finding room for Christmas gifts -- a new set of glasses, a new grill/slow cooker. Come dinner time we gave some thought to going out to Zocalo, but opted to order in. We had a bottle of champagne and some weed, and we put on Ocean's 13. After the movie we turned on the requisite staying-in New Year's Eve programming.

Seeing Dick Clark is sobering. That guy IS New Year's Eve for my generation. He's an icon. He was doing the whole ball drop thing when we were little tykes, and his reign over this night took us all the way to adulthood. I can even remember several different balls. Wasn't it an apple at one time? After his stroke it got painful to watch him the way he has to struggle to speak clearly, his physical deterioration representing the passage of time in a particularly cruel way. Here is the world's oldest teenager turned frail at last. It's like when you see an old dog try to leap like she did in puppyhood, only to take off creakily and land awkwardly.

I just Wikipedia'd Dick Clark...the Wiki said "buck up, little Gen X'er." Well it didn't exactly say that, but it said that Dick Clark is SEVENTY-EIGHT. That did buck me up, because seeing him come on at the last few minutes last night, I was a little bit down. But good god man, for SEVENTY-EIGHT and post-stroke, he looks amazing.

I really need to call my friends now. Is it bad that I don't feel like it? I know, it is. Especially since the only resolution I've made is to make more time for friends.

Already failing in the early afternoon of DAY ONE.

I already need more champagne and weed. Could be a tough year...