The kitchen/dining room area in our family's house on Ideal Avenue was empty and the lights were off which meant the coast was clear. Either a) Moms and Pops went out that particular evening and my sister's friend Tessy was babysitting us, or b) They had people over and were in the living room or basement entertaining (I can't recall). I unplugged the portable black & white TV on the kitchen counter top and for the next 3 hours held it hostage in my bedroom to watch Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve. As far as I was concerned, all that existed in the world that night were me, a 16oz glass bottle of Pepsi, and that TV. I put the TV on my bed so I could lay down like a king and watch the New Year ring in beneath the comfort of my Mom-made quilt. It was about to become 1982.
One thing I did a lot when I was a kid was watch TV shows with a perpetual and insatiable hope that KISS was going to be on. Unfortunately for me that was never the case... but for some reason I didn't ever let that stop me until I was 10 or 11 and wised up. It kind of happened with Scooby Doo and CHiPs when there were KISS-like guests worked into an episode, but never the real KISS. This was back when you had to actually watch shows of this type in order to know who was on them - there was no magical innernets back then that you could run to at any given minute for such info. There were the TV listings in the paper of course, but usually for shows like this it only said SPECIAL GUESTS. At any rate, due to this disadvantageous television intake ritual of mine I was prepared to be Rocked by this Rockin' New Years Eve special that KISS would inevitably not appear on.
Although there was no KISS, there were a lot of other great performers. I vividly remember Dick Clark saying "Please welcome 1981's queen of rock and roll, PAT! BENETARRrrrrr!" I briefly wondered who made her the Queen and pictured her with a crown on her head. She was wearing a crown, I guess - it was just in the form of a headband. Pat Benatar and her band commenced with a severely ass kicking performance of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Much like Joan Jett, 8-year-old-Me was slightly afraid of her - to me she looked like a tough chick at the mall who you'd go out of your way to avoid making eye contact with lest you want to be beaten to a 
pulp or knifed. The Village People were on as well. Back then to me 5 dudes in costumes, two of which were scary to me in a good pseudo-Gene Simmons kind of way were better than no KISS at all (the biker and the Indian... and I guess the construction worker was pretty badass to me as well due to him having a lightning bolt on his hat and a screwdriver in his mouth). I want to say that Christopher Cross performed on this particular Rockin' New Years Eve, but that and other details have evaporated over time.I had a great time watching the show and waiting for KISS to not appear. That New Years turned out to be the benchmark of New Years Eves to come; likely due to a) Having the TV in my room for one night, b) It's the first one that I somewhat clearly remember... and c) It was my first exposure to the anticipation of a gigantic ball dropping on top of a building located on a faraway planet called "Times Square". Having only downtown St. Paul on the way to Grandma Gertie's as a reference point of what cities were supposed to be, when the camera first panned over the crowd and the buildings and the lights it looked like the most massive thing in the world - a place that I surely would never visit in this lifetime. I'm not sure if it was that year that I made the connection that Times Square = New York, but it happened eventually. And I knew that KISS were from New York (yeah, here we go with the KISS thing again). Back then, to lil kids like me they were the biggest monsters in the world. In my mind they were 10 feet tall.
Combine that, the hugeness of the Times Square footage, and maybe some misconstrued perspective of buildings courtesy of my Spider Man album cover, and from that point on I assumed New York City was hands down the most gigantic fucking place in the world. Not necessarily in a buildings per square mile sense, more so in overall height and massiveness of the buildings sense. Everything looked double in size to me. In New York Groove Ace Frehley sang To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky which is something I always took quite literally... right up until the first time we walked through Times Square in 2007 and I thought "Huh. It looks a lot more compact than it does in books and on TV." It really does. It is indeed huge - but not as huge as TV makes it look. Same goes for the Statue of Liberty. It's big... but not as big as I thought it would be.Every single year since then I've made a point of it to watch that dang ball drop and would always think Man, if I ever lived there (this was long before I had any idea that I someday would) I would TOTALLY go to Times Square on New Years Eve. I didn't watch it one New Years in 94 or 95 - the one night I went out to some dive sports bar in the Cottage Grove mall and got blurry off of drinks with my friends and thought about the ball dropping when 11:59 came - but other than that I NEVER missed it.
Like, dude, we totally live here now
Fast forward to 2009. After all those years of watching the ball drop on TV we actually live where it happens now. As mentioned in other blawgs, I now walk through Times Square nearly every day on my lunch hour. I still compare the image of it embedded in my head at a young age vs. what it really is - a gigantic, dirty pinball machine crammed with buildings that are slightly more compact than I thought they would be. Some of them do indeed tower to the sky, though. And it is out of sight, in the dead of night.
One of the most frequently axed questions that people had for us (and understandably so) was "You going to watch the ball drop?" Nope, we didn't. It definitely crossed my mind, but after going to watch fireworks when we were here as tourists last year on Pier 11 I'm not sure that it would be all that and a bag of chips. One thing they don't show on televised major public events is everyone standing in one spot for 3 hours so they don't lose it, and then everyone trying to leave at once when the event is over. Everyone's been drinking, everyone has to pee, and most places after events like that do not offer up public restroom accommodations. A smart move on their part, but when we were waiting in line for restrooms at a nearby Burger King for 20 minutes and longing to just get back to the hotel to sit down, yeah... it's not the big party it's all cracked up to be on TV. I think the trick is to get so inebriated that you're oblivious that you're "trapped" within such circumstances. I prefer to have memories of going to such events, so that's not really an option. Plus at $6-8 a beer that would be a pretty expensive buzz to maintain for an entire night.
Ultimately we ended up attending a party at a photographer's studio in SOHO that we were invited to by our dear friend JB (thanks, JB!) Never really having access to such events back in MN, I don't think that either Bryn or I really had any idea what we were in store for. Alls I knew is if we spent our first New Years Eve in New York watching the ball drop on TV when it was happening a mere 2 miles away from us, that would feel just plain old wrong. As some things can be when you don't see 'em coming, it was amazing. It turns out that this photographer's clients include Billy Joel, Sting, Miles Davis, and countless others. His walls were plastered with decades worth of work (one of my favorites being an Innoncent Man-era Billy Joel promo shot that I recall seeing at Great American Music when that album came out). His main floor gallery had photos of Fast Times-era Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh. This picture of Miles Davis which I've seen countless times while standing at in the music biography section at Barnes and Noble. I spotted a few familiar photos of John Lennon. DAMN. There were only 2 dozen or so people there if that and a potluck spread right smack dab in his basement which is half studio/half kitchen - it was pretty surreal thinking about all of the famous people (talented ones that I admire, no less) that have set foot in that studio.
Good times were had, midnight arrived, we all did the HAPPY NEW YEAR deal, and shortly thereafter I had a brief out of body experience for about 10 seconds experiencing the following thoughts pert near simultaneously:
- Holy shit
- We're in New York
- It's New Years Eve
- We're at a party in New York on New Years Eve
- Said party is hosted by an extremely talented and successful photographer
- This is like something out of a movie
- Actually, this is something that happens in movies
- Thank goodness Jennifer Aniston isn't here making one of her dumb pouty heartbroken faces
- Is this life imitating art or does art imitate life?
- I love the music that he's playing and that it's kept at a conversation-friendly volume
- Do I have one more beer left? I'm really kind of tired of beer but if I have one left I guess I'll drink it
- Should there be movie cameras in the room or is this just what life is like for some people here?
- Seriously.. we're really here and doing this?
Who knows what next New Years Eve will bring or where we'll be. The 2009-2010 transition was definitely right up there on the Most Awesome list next to that fateful New Years Eve of 1981 watching a much younger and fully functional Dick Clark, the Queen of Rock & Roll, and the gayest boy band in the world. I hear Dick isn't doing so well and was planning on appearing on the show on New Years Eve but wasn't sure if it was going to pan out for him which is kinda sad. All I know is that I learned that I can still have a really good time on New Years Eve without Dick Clark - and we certainly did on Thursday night.
I guess that means I can tell people that I was Dickless on New Years Eve and it was one of the best times I've had since we've moved here. That would sure get some interesting reactions at work on Monday morning.
Happy Freakin' New Year.
