A Rockin' New Year's Eve
SO...
I decided to try to just breathe deep, relax, stop thinking about the same 14,000 work things and go try my damndest to have a good time. And lo and behold....it actually worked. I was bummed out at the beginning, because the age of the carefree STScrompFest is possibly over (although I think it can be reborn with appropriate adjustments and breaks for certain SP's to drink out of nearby LP's.) And I just couldn't imagine that trying to navigate the Big City on a Major Holiday would be any fun at all, compared to the massive Pain In My *ss. But hell, at least other people would be drinking, which tends to loosen 'em up, thank Allah. And hell, I was fine with anybody dragging me around, as long as I didn't have to decide anything.
Anyway, Will's mom won a drawing and got this sweet...well, suite, overlooking a goodly portion of Times SquaRe through a floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall picture window. We stayed across the street in a slightly less swanky hotel with Will's sis and her man. We had to have special wristbands and cards for the hotels, so that they could screen in and out of the building. Well, we figured we better get those early, since people start gathering in the morning for the midnight festivities. Once we got them, it started sleeting (Nasty, nasty weather....even the name makes it sound like the sluttiest of all atmospheric phenomenon) and the crowds started crushing in. At one point we could not enter through a perfectly good side of the hotel and had to push/shove/slide/move by mob through a sardine packed whole intersection of TS, which is BIG. Everybody was very nice about everything, but one lady started freaking out and shouting "Don't Freak Out! It's OK!" really loud, even though nobody was at all freaked out and the only thing threatening to make anybody freak out was her shouting like a maniac. So I figure, this is a preview of the whole night and we're going to shuffle like snails through a crazy crowd for the next zillion hours.
We were going to dinner in Greenwich Village at a restaurant Will's cousin works at, so we decided to try to head there early and spent a good chunk of an hour trying to get a cab, and then trying to get to a place where we could take the subway. Once we were on the subway, everything was cake. We sat across from some smiley older black ladies dressed to the nines, with one lady carrying a black leather handbag with a clock the size of the clocks on the wall of school* (that's wierd, it just occurred to me that clocks were the same at every school I went to...what is that? Is there a School Clock Company?) embedded in the front of it, which any other day of the year makes you look like you're A) Nuts, and /or B) a huge Flavor Flav fan, but which on NYE is really cool. "Hey, what time is it? Gee, let me check this giant clock I'm carrying!"
The one sad part of the evening is that I thought I didn't bring my extra camera battery and only had enough juice in mine to turn the cam on, take one quick shot, and have it turn itself off. Will had his cool antique Sychro-Compur camera with 3200 speed film BW in it,and after taking all kinds of cool shots, discovered at about 1am that his film hadn't caught the spool properly and none of his shots exist. I DID have my battery after all, so I missed a million Golden Opportunities (marked *).I got about 5 shots the whole night, two of them blurry subway shots. But one is awesome. So yeah.
So after we eat at a tapas restaurant where we order Everytbing On The Menu (called, "The Whole Shebang" on the menu*) we got in easily-caught cabs and sis-in-law and her man headed out to hang with her Way Gay friend who she always visits in NY and who usually ditches her in a dive (and in a disco) for another headboard notch. We went with Will's M&D and got dropped four or five blocks from Times Square. The crowds were nutty and there were cops everywhere*. Everywhere. I could have touched a cop at any time last night, with the exception of the hotel rooms and the ladies bathroom at Alta. We walked towards the hotels, but being in the core of TS, there was a baraccade in front of everything we needed to get to....
And then it happens. Somebody says that we have rooms in TS. We are asked to show our room keys. And like the Red Sea, police lines part for us, and we get to walk in the corridors kept free of people, for cops and the mayor, and muscians and the like. We get to gawk and walk and see the bands and soak it in and swing our arms and everything.* We were allowed to do stuff that anyone else would have gotten hollered at for...
We were Elvis. It was awesome. We went up to the hotel, and watched a good deal of the late evening from the big picure window while opening some presents*. About 35 minutes before 12, Will sez, "So, should we go down? Since, you, know, we CAN?"
I had never had any intention of actually being the Square at midnight, because it seemed that we would have to stay inside a dank crowd trapped, watching Mariah Carey lipsynch to be there at the fun brief moment. But everything had been a breeze cause of our magical badge with "Nurse" written on it, so I said, "Let's go!"
So we throw our coats on and get trapped in a elevator with a bunch of kids who look like they're at their prom* who came down fom the roof in an attempt to see the ball drop. They argued about which floor (8th or 1st? Whatcha think?) and generally wasted shocking a mount of our tiny remaining time. We just made it to the lobby and dashed out the exit that seem to make the most sense.
Bingo. We're in the midst of TS, and we've got 61 seconds on the clock*.
So the countdown begins, and it seems off, which I figured out later is due to the echo. And everybody EXPLODES! (Not in the Homeland Security way).
Everybody's hugging!
Kisses, shouting, funny hats, big red Lysistrata balloons, and singing*.
Massive amounts of multicolored foil fell as confetti. We saw cops doing chorus kicklines*** and posing for pictures with everybody. We sang "New York New York" with a million people. Massive amounts of positive energy.
So THEN, everybody left.
Seriously, everybody started towards their destinations after 30 minutes or so, and it started really clearing out. Will and I didn't have anywhere to go, so we watched things wrap up, and walked around and talked to folks. So I keep going to where I think we won't be in anyone's way and aren't walking past any lines I'm supposed to avoid. The stages were getting pulled bare, and I thought everybody who performed was already yanked out of there, but they apparently wait, and some get interviewed. We got to see the Mayor in his cavalcade*, as if we were about to get run over by it, and Regis P*. in his earmuffs on the balcony across the sidewalk, and Carson Daly (who I always think of from the Chappelle Show so he looked much nicer in person) who walked right between us*, and that would have been amusing, and entertaining, in a "surreal but silly" way that make your stories sound cool. I don't particularly watch anything these dudes are in, but people know who they are and it thrills.
But after the Mayor and before Mr. TRL, I backed up a smidge to let a lady through the flanking bicycle-standy police gates as she came out from the stage, and it was Mary J. Blige, and I did think that was really cool. She looked right at me, and then right at Will, and walked through with her family. I should have been cool and said Happy New Year, but my brain was busy saying "Hey, she looks just like Mary J. Blige." "Yeah, and she's dressed just like Mary J. Blige dressed when she was on the New Year's thing on TV." "..........oh, SHIT!"
So I smiled and nodded and at least didn't holler or harass her or do anything annoying.*
I'm sure there's more that I could put, but that's more excitement than I've had in months (and that was already true when I got off at Grand Central station yesterday morning.), and I wanted to pass it on. I wonder if my depressed, whiney (and strangely cocky, I read in retrospect, but I'll resist editing it) entry is evened out by this euphoric, strangely cocky one.
Tupac WOULD have wanted to be there, dammit.
-K
*thinks this kicks the shit out of the Waffle House but it still not as hardcore as Marshall and DJ*
ps - Will also ran into Ron Howard at the Starbucks next to the studio. Later I'll post another wierd story that happened on Thanksgiving when we went to take photos at someone's home for the holiday and it turned out to be a couple of those TV Judges (think Wapner) from those shows I can't watch. Surreal.
pps - J, I WILL call, I WANNA call....what's your hours...I don't wanna wake your peep.
I decided to try to just breathe deep, relax, stop thinking about the same 14,000 work things and go try my damndest to have a good time. And lo and behold....it actually worked. I was bummed out at the beginning, because the age of the carefree STScrompFest is possibly over (although I think it can be reborn with appropriate adjustments and breaks for certain SP's to drink out of nearby LP's.) And I just couldn't imagine that trying to navigate the Big City on a Major Holiday would be any fun at all, compared to the massive Pain In My *ss. But hell, at least other people would be drinking, which tends to loosen 'em up, thank Allah. And hell, I was fine with anybody dragging me around, as long as I didn't have to decide anything.
Anyway, Will's mom won a drawing and got this sweet...well, suite, overlooking a goodly portion of Times SquaRe through a floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall picture window. We stayed across the street in a slightly less swanky hotel with Will's sis and her man. We had to have special wristbands and cards for the hotels, so that they could screen in and out of the building. Well, we figured we better get those early, since people start gathering in the morning for the midnight festivities. Once we got them, it started sleeting (Nasty, nasty weather....even the name makes it sound like the sluttiest of all atmospheric phenomenon) and the crowds started crushing in. At one point we could not enter through a perfectly good side of the hotel and had to push/shove/slide/move by mob through a sardine packed whole intersection of TS, which is BIG. Everybody was very nice about everything, but one lady started freaking out and shouting "Don't Freak Out! It's OK!" really loud, even though nobody was at all freaked out and the only thing threatening to make anybody freak out was her shouting like a maniac. So I figure, this is a preview of the whole night and we're going to shuffle like snails through a crazy crowd for the next zillion hours.
We were going to dinner in Greenwich Village at a restaurant Will's cousin works at, so we decided to try to head there early and spent a good chunk of an hour trying to get a cab, and then trying to get to a place where we could take the subway. Once we were on the subway, everything was cake. We sat across from some smiley older black ladies dressed to the nines, with one lady carrying a black leather handbag with a clock the size of the clocks on the wall of school* (that's wierd, it just occurred to me that clocks were the same at every school I went to...what is that? Is there a School Clock Company?) embedded in the front of it, which any other day of the year makes you look like you're A) Nuts, and /or B) a huge Flavor Flav fan, but which on NYE is really cool. "Hey, what time is it? Gee, let me check this giant clock I'm carrying!"
The one sad part of the evening is that I thought I didn't bring my extra camera battery and only had enough juice in mine to turn the cam on, take one quick shot, and have it turn itself off. Will had his cool antique Sychro-Compur camera with 3200 speed film BW in it,and after taking all kinds of cool shots, discovered at about 1am that his film hadn't caught the spool properly and none of his shots exist. I DID have my battery after all, so I missed a million Golden Opportunities (marked *).I got about 5 shots the whole night, two of them blurry subway shots. But one is awesome. So yeah.
So after we eat at a tapas restaurant where we order Everytbing On The Menu (called, "The Whole Shebang" on the menu*) we got in easily-caught cabs and sis-in-law and her man headed out to hang with her Way Gay friend who she always visits in NY and who usually ditches her in a dive (and in a disco) for another headboard notch. We went with Will's M&D and got dropped four or five blocks from Times Square. The crowds were nutty and there were cops everywhere*. Everywhere. I could have touched a cop at any time last night, with the exception of the hotel rooms and the ladies bathroom at Alta. We walked towards the hotels, but being in the core of TS, there was a baraccade in front of everything we needed to get to....
And then it happens. Somebody says that we have rooms in TS. We are asked to show our room keys. And like the Red Sea, police lines part for us, and we get to walk in the corridors kept free of people, for cops and the mayor, and muscians and the like. We get to gawk and walk and see the bands and soak it in and swing our arms and everything.* We were allowed to do stuff that anyone else would have gotten hollered at for...
We were Elvis. It was awesome. We went up to the hotel, and watched a good deal of the late evening from the big picure window while opening some presents*. About 35 minutes before 12, Will sez, "So, should we go down? Since, you, know, we CAN?"
I had never had any intention of actually being the Square at midnight, because it seemed that we would have to stay inside a dank crowd trapped, watching Mariah Carey lipsynch to be there at the fun brief moment. But everything had been a breeze cause of our magical badge with "Nurse" written on it, so I said, "Let's go!"
So we throw our coats on and get trapped in a elevator with a bunch of kids who look like they're at their prom* who came down fom the roof in an attempt to see the ball drop. They argued about which floor (8th or 1st? Whatcha think?) and generally wasted shocking a mount of our tiny remaining time. We just made it to the lobby and dashed out the exit that seem to make the most sense.
Bingo. We're in the midst of TS, and we've got 61 seconds on the clock*.
So the countdown begins, and it seems off, which I figured out later is due to the echo. And everybody EXPLODES! (Not in the Homeland Security way).
Everybody's hugging!
Kisses, shouting, funny hats, big red Lysistrata balloons, and singing*.
Massive amounts of multicolored foil fell as confetti. We saw cops doing chorus kicklines*** and posing for pictures with everybody. We sang "New York New York" with a million people. Massive amounts of positive energy.
So THEN, everybody left.
Seriously, everybody started towards their destinations after 30 minutes or so, and it started really clearing out. Will and I didn't have anywhere to go, so we watched things wrap up, and walked around and talked to folks. So I keep going to where I think we won't be in anyone's way and aren't walking past any lines I'm supposed to avoid. The stages were getting pulled bare, and I thought everybody who performed was already yanked out of there, but they apparently wait, and some get interviewed. We got to see the Mayor in his cavalcade*, as if we were about to get run over by it, and Regis P*. in his earmuffs on the balcony across the sidewalk, and Carson Daly (who I always think of from the Chappelle Show so he looked much nicer in person) who walked right between us*, and that would have been amusing, and entertaining, in a "surreal but silly" way that make your stories sound cool. I don't particularly watch anything these dudes are in, but people know who they are and it thrills.
But after the Mayor and before Mr. TRL, I backed up a smidge to let a lady through the flanking bicycle-standy police gates as she came out from the stage, and it was Mary J. Blige, and I did think that was really cool. She looked right at me, and then right at Will, and walked through with her family. I should have been cool and said Happy New Year, but my brain was busy saying "Hey, she looks just like Mary J. Blige." "Yeah, and she's dressed just like Mary J. Blige dressed when she was on the New Year's thing on TV." "..........oh, SHIT!"
So I smiled and nodded and at least didn't holler or harass her or do anything annoying.*
I'm sure there's more that I could put, but that's more excitement than I've had in months (and that was already true when I got off at Grand Central station yesterday morning.), and I wanted to pass it on. I wonder if my depressed, whiney (and strangely cocky, I read in retrospect, but I'll resist editing it) entry is evened out by this euphoric, strangely cocky one.
Tupac WOULD have wanted to be there, dammit.
-K
*thinks this kicks the shit out of the Waffle House but it still not as hardcore as Marshall and DJ*
ps - Will also ran into Ron Howard at the Starbucks next to the studio. Later I'll post another wierd story that happened on Thanksgiving when we went to take photos at someone's home for the holiday and it turned out to be a couple of those TV Judges (think Wapner) from those shows I can't watch. Surreal.
pps - J, I WILL call, I WANNA call....what's your hours...I don't wanna wake your peep.