…another year, I was here.
- Gold Dust, Scarlett’s Walk (2002)
I sat on the couch last night with Zach, well, actually we sat on two seperate couches (we have a three-couch setup in the living room). Anyway, we were watching Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper make each other uncomfortable on live television for the last hour of 2010 while Cindy slept off the jet-lag from her flight back from India.
“So, you have any new year’s resolutions?” Zach asked.
I pursed my lips and wrinkled my forehead. “Nah,” I answered, “Resolutions are stupid.”
Well they are.
“I don’t like to set myself up for disappointment,” I continue, “and besides, you can make a resolution at any time, not JUST the new year.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I agree.”
I mean, I make AT LEAST 15-20 ‘resolutions’ EVERY DAY that I can’t manage to keep overnight until the next day. Most fizzle out within an hour. If I can’t keep my resolve for a day what would ever make me think I could keep it for a year?
No.
And really, what is ‘new year’ anyway? Just another day in an arbitrary system of time created by man. Who the fuck cares. Why are we partying? As far as I’m concerned, the ‘new year’ holiday was created as a moneymaking scheme by the manufacturers of oversize novelty hats. Fuck it. You can all stay out partying all night and ‘resolving’ things til you lose your voices, and probably your phones and wallets too, and have to play a terrible game of vomit hopscotch all the way home.
I’ll be here on the couch - one of three! - watching a comedian and a newscaster interact awkwardly over the airwaves, thinking about how it’s never really any different.
