Auld Lang Suck: the Failure of New Year's Eve to Stimulate and Entertain

Introduction
This study has been undertaken by the research team in order to delineate and quantify the level of displeasure with New Year's Eve as experienced by Manhattan worker monkeys. The research team has elected to put forth this effort as a direct reaction to the tiresome, small-talky elevator conversations that have transpired from 12.28.04 through 12.31.04. In this study, we shall prove that New Year's Eve is not only a stupid excuse for a celebration, but also a disappointing chaotic mess when experienced in Manhattan.

Materials & Methods
The study was conducted on Friday, January 31, 2004 from 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the desk of the principal investigator. All worker monkeys were questioned by electronic mail, shouting across the room, or telepathic communication, and submitted their responses to the research team similarly. Participating worker monkeys were selected on an entirely subjective basis, and should not be construed to represent a random sample of worker monkeys, but rather a complete sample of intelligent, like-minded worker monkeys. To protect the identity of each participant, their responses will be preceded by an arbitrary letter and amusing characteristic. Data was analyzed using a complicated spreadsheet with lots of pretty colors.

Results & Interpretations
The responses gathered have proven the team's hypothesis that New Year's Eve is an absolute abomination, as well as a blight on all other respectable holidays and occassions for getting wasted.

Worker Monkey A (gigantic feet)
"Dude, New Year's can suck my ass. Every year I look around at the crushing mass of humanity and realize that they are all pretending to have fun."

Worker Monkey B (drops horrific SBDs every afternoon)
"Last year I paid $150 to go to a bar that was completely full of vapid, over-cologned people. What can I say - I thought it would be fun! Instead, I spent the evening getting completely blitzed on $18 martinis and throwing up in a cab on the way home at 12:02."

Worker Monkey C (attached earlobes)
"Where do they pee? All those Times Square idiots, I mean. Tell me that! It's disgusting."

Worker Monkey D (sensitive new-age guy)
"I got all my drinking out of my system in college. I'm an adult person now. Is it too much to ask for the other adults to quit acting like 18 year old girls at their first frat party? Come on, now."

Worker Monkey E (nice watch)
"When you're single, all you can think about is who you will kiss on New Year's Eve. When you're in a relationship, you've got the person to kiss, but the big midnight moment is always sort of a letdown. Somehow it isn't as magical as you think it should be, even if you're in love."

Worker Monkey F (popcorn fiend)
"Last year, I saw this trashy drunk bitch totally hit the pavement. That was awesome in a wow-humans-are-totally-disgusting sort of way."

Worker Monkey G (nervous tic)
"Most nights, I'm in bed by 10:30. On New Year's, I have to fight to stay awake until midnight, and even so I'm yawning and have a glazed look in my eyes. If I'm with friends, they inevitably think I'm bored or uninterested in hanging out with them. Not at all! I just can't function so late at night, especially if I have a few glasses of something alcoholic."

Discussion
The research team expected the primary factor in the negative New Year's Eve experience to be related to the consumption of alcohol and subsequent hangovers; however, we were surprised to find that most respondents described their feelings more in line with disappointment and/or disgust in others. Does New Year's Eve bring out the worst in people? Does it allow us to see, with too focused and far-reaching a scope, just how base and moronic human behavior can be?
The team invites further discussion on this topic from the scientific community. We look forward to including the New Year's Eve experiences (past and present) of readers in future reports, so please document them using the comment system below.

Further Reading
Old, but still relevant
Apparently, "suck" is too subjective an adjective
From the other side of the bar
Oooh-kay
What's the hemisphere got to do, got to do with it?

In light of recent posts

Ha! Boy will Luis hate this! I, on the other hand, can't wait to get it. Mich, Chooley, I assume you agree.

Post-script to previous...

So I just made the trek over to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square to pick up the soundtrack to "Life Aquatic", since they don't carry it at the Altitunes in Grand Central that is right by me... A minute after walking into the Virgin Megastore I walked up to the first Virgin employee I saw and asked where to find the soundtrack to "Life Aquatic". He looked at me, looked down at the pile of CDs he was carrying and pulled out a copy of the soundtrack. "You rock," I said to him, and 5 minutes later I was on my way back to work. Bitchin'.

From the liner-notes written by Wes Anderson: "Seu Jorge, as Pelé dos Santos, translated, adapted, and performed eleven David Bowie songs for us in Portuguese. He sang on the decks of our ship, the Belafonte, while we were running at full steam on the open sea; he sang from the stage of an opera house in Naples; he sang on our studio sets at Cinecitta; and he played one song sitting on the roof of a lighthouse we had built next to a medieval castle. I tried to understand the Portuguese. Thinking of the lyrics in English, I asked, "Jorge, which word means 'cigarette'?" because none of them sounded anything like it. He nodded and said something very poetic about friendship and hope and the future -- but no 'cigarette'. I took a minute and thought about this, and then I said, "OK, but every once in a while add in a 'Rebel Rebel', will you?" I never read any complete translations, but in the end I am convinced that Jorge's words -- and unquestionably his beautiful performances -- capture the spirit of David Bowie's. Exactly what we were looking for."

Steve-Zi

You know you're venturing into uncharted waters when in the first five minutes of a movie a bizarre Brazilian guy with a named Pelé dos Santos starts strumming the chords to Space Oddity on his guitar and singing the lyrics in Portuguese...

If someone were to ask me to summarize the plot of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you. "It's about a father being reunited with his long-lost son," I could say, or "It's about an oceanographer's quest for revenge, searching for the elusive jaguar-shark that ate his friend and colleague Esteban," or even "It's about a reporter trying to write a story about the man whose photo hung on her wall as a little girl." Any one of those things is true, but yet any single one of those fails to capture the whole experience that was "The Life Aquatic".

I really disliked "The Royal Tenenbaums". I'm not sure why, exactly, but I do remember that it was incredibly slow, not particularly funny, and I just didn't care about the characters (if you ask Liz I think she'd answer the same thing, but also mentioning how much she detests Gwyneth Paltrow [kind of like my absolute hatred of both Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, which explains why, despite reading Spiderman comics religiously as a kid, I have yet to see either of those films]). I wasn't sure what to expect going into the theater last night, but having seen the trailer for "Life Aquatic" I was optimistic, since it promised to be much better...

The misgivings I had about "Tenenbaums" were not present in "Life Aquatic", and I found it to be a very refreshing movie with good pacing, great (and wacky) characters and a frickin' awesome soundtrack. David Bowie, the Stooges, Paco de Lucía, some original compositions and Pelé dos Santos (who is a real Brazilian musician named Seu Jorge, that I now highly recommend, based on his performance in the film). The soundtrack is a very worthy successor to the soundtrack for "Rushmore", that I really enjoyed despite never having seen the movie (I'd say something about "The Royal Tenenbaums" soundtrack, but I can't really remember it).

Bill Murray's performance as Captain Steve Zissou is awesome, and I really hope he gets another Oscar nod and an actual Oscar win for this one (I love him in any role, from "Caddyshack" to "Groundhog Day" to "The Razor's Edge" to "Lost in Translation"). I'll keep my fingers crossed...

The rest of the cast is also great: Owen Wilson as Steve Zissou's probable son, Cate Blanchett as the reporter doing the story on Zissou, Anjelica Huston as Zissou's estranged wife, Jeff Goldblum as the arch-nemesis, Willem Defoe as the "Intelligent. Organized. German." first-mate, and so on... After seeing this movie I think I'll definitely go see Wes Anderson's movies from now on, and I guess I'll have to give "Tenenbaums" another chance, and check out "Rushmore" as well.

I highly recommend the movie, and everyone should trek up to the Loew's on Broadway and 69th to see it, since it's currently only playing in limited release and it's the only screen in the city that's showing it (get your tickets in advance on Fandango.com [they have this cool thing where you print out your receipt, that has a barcode, and you take that directly to the person who rips your tickets, and they scan it and hand you your tickets right there, with no lines or waiting for a ticket machine!], since they're always sold-out).

Things I remember about Russia

The pervasive smell of laquered wood
Women in footwear that eclipsed even my own in impracticality
Dinner for 15¢
A dead dog's corpse lapping gently on the banks of the Yauza
A fellow student trying to explain to the Professor, in his intermediate Russian, why we were all staring at the river. He said we were looking at a "soboka kotoraya ne zhivyoht" - a dog who doesn't live.
Feeling the presence of Stalin, despite Khrushchev's best efforts to eradicate him
Living here
The opulence and the tragedy
Old widows selling produce on the steps of the metro
Mayonnaise: condiment, dairy-substitute, gastrointestinal doom
The amazing long, swift, and steep escalators on the metro
Talented but unemployed musicians performing for spare change everywhere - on street corners, in the perehod, whereever there is room to stand
A young beggar fiddling in front of Ismailovsky Park, saying the only English phrase he knew to all of the tourists: "Hello, my friend."
The Militsia
Being mistaken for a Chechen rebel each and every day. I know I'm terrifying-looking, but come on already!
The surly old man who checked our student IDs in front of Mendeleev University
My host mother asking me if I had ever met any black people, because she heard that America was "just full of them." !!
People laughing at my patronimic
An overnight train ride from Moscow to Saint Petersburg
Dancing with Yakov
Wishing I had kept a journal
Wanting to cry at the beauty and strangeness of it all

Singer-songwriters and their agony

Ok, I must admit that this was inspired completely by two things: a) reading about Shirley's obsession with the song "The Blower's Daughter" (just scroll down to where it says "Listen" and "Cheat") from the movie Closer, and b) hearing about Liz's current obsession with that song and consequently Damien Rice ("can-oo suck-oo my balls-ooroo" [sorry, folks, private joke for the Pup]) first-hand, with her playing the song a few hundred times at home the other night (not really, but it felt like a few hundred times because of this one repeated lyric [more on that later]).

Listening to those 3.5 minutes of singer-songwriter angst made me remember just how much I hate singer-songwriters and and want to bash their guitars like John Belushi in Animal House(and I’m sure many of you know the scene I’m about to mention): he’s at his frat’s party and he sees this one totally hippy-looking dude with 5 or 6 girls huddled around him, and he’s strumming on his guitar and singing a song that went:

"I gave my love a cherry that has no stone

I gave my love a chicken that has no bone

I told my love a story..."

At this point Belushi looks at the camera, raises his eyebrow slightly, and grabs the guys guitar and proceeds to smash it against the wall and stairs, shattering it to bits. He then gets this sheepish look on his face, grins and says “Sorry”, and walks away. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Beware the ides of March, Damien Rice!

"But why such hatred?" I hear you cry...

First off, if a musician's stage-name is a first name followed by a last name, I will in all likelihood not like him/her (there are, of course, exceptions to this rule). John Mayer? I'll turn his body into a wonderland...a bloody pulp of a wonderland. Martin Sexton and Jeff Buckley? I'll hallelujah all over their candy-asses. Tori Amos? I'll break her CD in half and eat a bowl of cornflakes, girl. Bob Dylan? I'll roll on you like a stone. I've got more, people, but I think you get the idea... (In all fairness there are actually a few Bob Dylan songs I like, but I figured I'd throw that one in there for good measure.)

See, I love music, I really do. I love all kinds of music, too many kinds some people have even said to me, because I can find redeeming qualities in almost every genre. Some people like pop and listen to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan (by the way, wtf is up with her?! She's frickin' 18!), which I can accept. Others listen to hipster-rock like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and god knows what other "The" bands are trendy these days, which I can accept. Heck, I can even accept the fact that half of our nation listens to country music trash like Martina McBride, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain and anybody else not named Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash (who rock).

I cannot, however, for the life of me understand the appeal that something like Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter" has... All he does for 3.5 minutes (or however long the song is) is strum on his guitar and sing this one lyric over and over again: "Can't take my eyes off of you". In fact, he sings that so often that when I saw the trailer for "Closer" and that song was playing in the background, I thought some dude was playing a lame-o cover of Gloria Gaynor's excellent song "Cant take my eyes off of you"! What a bizarre coincidence... The least he could've done was come up with something more original to whine about!

Another reason I think I hate singer-songwriters is that, for me, it's all about the music, as I was telling Liz last night, and almost nothing about the lyrics, save for very rare occasions (it's so rare, in fact, that I can't even think of one of those occasions right now). Take Led Zeppelin, my favorite band: can you guess what the appeal of songs like "Stairway to Heaven", "Kashmir" and "Achilles' Last Stand" is to me? Let me give you a hint: it's not in lyrics like:

"There's a lady who's sure

All that glitters is gold

And she's buying a stairway to heaven";

"Oh let the sun beat down upon my face

Stars to fill my dreams

I am a traveler of both time and space

To be where I have been";

or

"Oh the mighty arms of Atlas

Hold the heavens from the earth

From the earth

Whoaaaaaaaaaaa."

No siree.

Led Zeppelin is my favorite band and those are some of my favorite songs because of the mind-blowing power of their music, the killer guitar-riffs and the unison with which they all play, the fact that they're truly a band. Even in songs like "Tangerine", "All of My Love" and "Going to California", that are very calm and collected by Led Zeppelin standards, what strikes me most is the music, not the lyrics:

"Tangerine, tangerine

Living reflections from a dream

I was her love, she was my queen

And now a thousand years between."

This isn't exactly Shakespeare, is it? In fact I think it's more like Dan Brown: you really enjoy what is written (or sung in the case of Led Zeppelin), not because of what is actually written on the page (because, let's face it, "The Da Vinci Code" isn't exactly "Hamlet"...), but rather because of how he conveys those words, with a great background story. Tangerine is a kick-ass song, and it's all in the music, which is what conveys the feeling of the lyrics, not the lyrics themselves. What the hell do the lyrics I just quoted mean? I have no frickin' clue, but I know the music is still great.

Sooo, going back to Damien Rice: what can we find in his song "The Blower's Daughter"? We've got the line "Can't take my eyes off of you" or some variation thereof sung 18 times, with some guitar-strumming in the background. At least Led Zeppelin has some real music going on behind *lyrical gems* like this one, from "Ramble On":

"T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor

I met a girl so fair

But Gollum, and the evil one crept up

And slipped away with her her."

Mr. Rice can't even say he has a particularly pretty melody going on behind his whining. Maybe it's just that I can't appreciate poetry, who knows... (That's a completely different can of worms, and I feel I can be only so controversial in a single post without risking bodily injury, :-)!)

Anyway, enough bitching for now. I'm heading to my firm's Christmas Party at Cipriani's in about 4 minutes, where I will proceed to stuff myself with filet mignon, cocktail shrimp the size of my fist and Grey Goose tonics. Liz even said that I shouldn't come home early, since she'll be wrapping my gifts (yay!). It's gonna be a big one, peeps...

Afterthought: gee, maybe if Natalie Portman's character in "Closer" had a daughter then she would be the real "Blower's Daughter", get it? Thank you, thank you, I'm here every Tuesday and Thursday. Tip your waitress. Try the veal...

Miss Jackson if you're nasty

This is among the most disgusting things I have ever read, particularly the very last line of the article. Not to mention the fact that all of these supposedly hot girls look completely busted, or as the divine Ms. Jones would say, "To' up from the flo' up."

Beauty is, of course, subjective. Perhaps I am a bad person for thinking that these girls are: a) nasty, b) vapid, and c) classless. On the other hand, how low can you sink? Buying a fake engagement ring so that you can supposedly ward off the advances of construction workers? I have news for you, mamacita. Those guys will still cat call you regardless of the ring's presence or perceived bling-factor. (I can't believe I just wrote "bling." Kill me now.)

All the same, what living, breathing woman hasn't had to fend off the unwanted advances of a would-be suitor? My Catholic guilt tells me that it's wrong to lie, but what about white-lying to a man to save his dignity and prevent your own discomfort? Surely that isn't so bad... or is it? In the past, I've pretended not to speak English (or in Moscow, not to speak Russian). I've said I had a boyfriend when I really didn't. I've even been so forthright (gasp!) to say, "Thank you, but I'm really not interested." How do you handle the situation?

The pain!

So after weeks of stinging pain every time I ate/drank anything hot/cold, I finally went to the dentist today (I was supposed to go a few weeks ago, but that day my attorneys invited me to go have lunch at The Four Seasons with them, and who am I to say no?). She basically redid the filling, saying that maybe there was just some area that wasn't covered properly, so hot/cold liquids would go into the tooth and make it hurt...

Anyway, it wasn't too bad, and my notoriously anasthaesia-proof mouth only took 3 shots to get numb, and she redid the filling in half an hour. The problem is that I just had some room temperature H2O and I got the same feeling, though less intense (the lydocaine hasn't worn off completely yet). I really frickin' hope it's just my tooth that is sensitive from the drilling and scraping, and not that the problem hasn't actually been fixed...sigh...

Off to the Brooklyn Brewery with Liz to drink more frosty beverages that will make my teeth hurt. Oh joy.

Money habla-s

This morning, Luis dropped off the special holiday notecards for our super and handyman. I asked him to do this for two reasons: it's more convenient for him en route to work, and he can speak America's second language, further placing us in the good-people-who-we-won't-kick-out-because-of-their-darling-but-verboten-kitties category.

As it turns out, my manipulation is working splendidly. There were big smiles involved, accompanied by the tidy exchange of money for services rendered (and temporary blindness), totalmente en español. Now, all we have to do is ask them nicely to fix some things, and act natural about Fosse and Conan when they show up. Cats? What cats?

Christmas-time woes

Why is it that it's almost impossible to get all your Christmas shopping done in a timely fashion, and more than 2 weeks before the actual gift-exchange? I've bought so many gifts already, but so many are still missing... Even when we have the webpage loaded right in front of our eyes Liz and I can't seem to muster up the strength to sit down and order the gifts we're getting for our brothers+sisters-in-law, despite the fact that the order page has been open in Firefox for at least two full days! Sigh... Maybe tonight we'll actually do it.

Plus another problem that's rearing it's ugly head is the fact that, while we're not sure if we're technically allowed to have them, our wonderful boys are standing in the way of things getting fixed in our apartment. Lord knows that we'd be in hot water if our super came by to fix stuff and saw two cats in a supposedly animal-free building... While I don't think it's strictly enforced, clearly it would be safer to either: a) not have them around when the super's coming over (but it's impossible to find out in advance, since he just shows up when he's free), or b) wait until after we give them some dinero for Christmas, so that they're more likely to ignore their presence, even though we can be pretty hard to ignore sometimes! The list of things keeps getting bigger, though, so we want to try and fix these problems as soon as we can, because believe you me, no one likes their closet door to fall on their leg. Do you like it? Yeah. I didn't think so. ;-)!

But back to these gift-obtaining shennanigans, I still need to get the piece de resistance for the pup, and while I have many ideas and leads, I actually need to go out and see how those ideas play out.

I also still need to get stuff for my sister and Liz's dad (I know what I'm getting him, but need to find out what other accessories and such I can get him with it), plus one or two more things for my mom. Lordy there's still stuff to do!

You get me Closer to god

I'm sorry for the short notice, but does anybody want to go see Closer with me on Saturday afternoon? I would really like to see it, mostly because of Mr. Delicious himself, Jude Law. Hee. Any takers?

Hot diggity damn!

So today marks our one-year anniversary! Yep. Three hundred and sixty-five days since we met. Honestly, I couldn't be happier with life right now, but I'm sure you all knew that, hehe. I'm happier than a kitty with a rugby ball! (OK, I realize that was a totally gratuitous shot of one of our gorgeous cats. So sue me...)

Work has finally resumed it's normal, sluggish pace, and all I've been doing lately is make closing sets, copy documents, etc., and no more of those "stay til 3am" days, which I'm pretty happy about, even though my OT$ will be less. But hey, that's what Christmas bonuses are for, right?

I just remembered an e-mail a friend here at work sent me a few months ago, with a link to some other guy's blog that gave you a good cross-section of life as a paralegal.

Anyhoozers, I gotta go finish some stuff before checking outta here to head to dinner with Liz at Brasserie (one of our faves). What to have? Steak and frites? Moules and creamed spinach? Steak and moules? Qvestions, qvestions...

Hugs.