Happy 2011 Gentle Readers! Miss Manners refers to her readers as “gentle readers” and this year I resolve to be more like Miss Manners. I’m sure all of you are itching to know how a whirling dervish of energy and excitement such as me spent my New Year’s Eve, so here goes. Early in the day, I picked up Shauna’s parents on my way back from Buffalo and drove them up to Jasper Bark Lodge. Early in the evening on New Year‘s Eve, we watched the Canadian Junior hockey team lose to Sweden in a shootout, prompting the consumption of my first malt beverage. I can’t catch a break with any of my hockey teams this year! My pal Bob took me to a Sabres game on my last visit to Buffalo (first NHL game I‘ve attended in years), and the Sabres came from a 0-3 deficit to tie the game up, only to lose the game 3-4. I think that in 2011, I’ll resolve to watch less hockey and more curling. We had a lovely salmon dinner at Jasper Bark Lodge, accompanied on my part by several more sparkling malt beverages, then watched the various summaries of 2010 on T.V. You can all go out and enjoy your black tie events; give me Anderson and Kathy in my jeans any day. I suppose I have attained full blown codgerdom, because I am perfectly happy to “potato out” on the couch and take in the bleachers perspective. I love to hear those best and worst summaries, and of course the notable events of the past year. On one end of the significance scale, we had the horrendous earthquake in Haiti, which killed over 200,000 people and left more than a million homeless. Another big news story was the BP oil spill, which I believe (and hope) is the worst environmental disaster ever to befall North America. There was mention of the Republican political sweep in November, a not-so-subtle message from the voters that they‘ve changed their motto from “Yes We Can!” to “Oh NoYou Don‘t!” And then, on the other end of the significance spectrum, from the sublime to the ridiculous, there was mention of the bedbug epidemic in New York City, as well as the Madonna-like popularity of Lady Gaga. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen won the celebrity bonehead awards for bad behavior. At Midnight, I watched the ball drop in Times Square, I watched the guitar drop -- or should I say partially drop -- in Nashville; I even watched a transvestite named Sushi lowered from the second story of a building in Key West, Florida, sitting in a giant slipper. That 14 year old tradition is one of my favorites. Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca to walk around in a circle, and I aspire to make my pilgrimage to Key West in order to see the transvestite lowered in a slipper as the clock strikes Twelve on New Year‘s Day. It was amusing to see CNN’s John Zarrella, whom I best remember for his Florida hurricane coverage, flanked by Sushi and another wisecracking transvestites dressed up to look like Cher (and if you’ve seen Cher lately, you know that’s not much of a stretch) after the “slipper drop.” I think CNN has really locked up the gay/transgender audience. You don’t see Dick Clark fraternizing with transvestites, do you? Then again, come to think of it, who knows what Ryan Seacrest does in his spare time? There is something vaguely hermaphroditic and sexually ambiguous about Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper announcing the ball drop for CNN in Time’s Square. Keeps me on my toes.
As I began this report earlier in the week, the East Coast was digging out from a horrendous Christmas blizzard that dumped close to three feet of snow in parts of downstate New York, and left a lot of people celebrating their holiday in airports. We, up in the Great White North, got a lot of rain and above freezing temperatures. La Nina has so far been gentle to the Great White North, but today, as I finish writing this report on Sunday, the snow is beginning to fall again.
Finally, I have my usual unrealistic list of wishes for the New Year. I have a re-occurring pipe dream that a lot of problems would simply go away if we paid (some) teachers more and (most) lawyers less. We’d have a better educated, possibly more productive population, and less inclination to waste money on frivolous lawsuits. I’d like a public broadcast of Bernie Madoff, stripped naked and left in a large gym surrounded by all the investors he bilked, who could then unleash their hollow vengeance on him armed with high-powered paintball guns. I don’t want him to die, I simply want him badly bruised and humiliated. I believe this would be therapeutic for our nation. I’d like Israel and Palestine to finally make peace, solar-powered desalination plants dotting the coastlines of parched Third World countries, and finally, I wouldn’t mind terribly if Sarah Palin’s gun backfired. Welcome to 2011, this is your loyal, albeit dysfunctional, purveyor of the truth, ushering in year nineteen of the Oppenheimer Report. Save the whales, for last.
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