In this my last report of the decade, I wish all my readers a
preemptive Happy New Year. Despite all the grim news, I remain hopeful that mankind
will come to its senses, and miraculously we will all unify to solve the
problems of the world. Albeit an ambitious goal, my New Year’s resolution is to
do more good than harm.
I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s Eve celebrations, and in
the past twenty years Shauna and I have not gone out to celebrate New Year’s
Eve. Instead, we’ve elected to prepare a good meal at home and to watch the televised
broadcast of the ball drop at Times Square. For several years, when I still lived
in Buffalo, I hosted a big dinner, and afterwards, I and all my guests went
downtown to watch Buffalo’s version of the ball drop. The weather was typically
awful, and eventually that tradition fizzled like flat champagne.
When I moved up to Toronto, our last big First Night outing
was legendary for its badness. It was a black-tie event at a recently opened high-end
restaurant near our apartment building. Shauna and I knew the owner and wanted
to show our support, but the night turned into a complete disaster. The party
was an expensive, prix fixe, multi-course, (allegedly) gourmet dinner, including
live music. At the last minute, our party of four turned into a party of three,
and the evening went downhill from there. The food was terrible, courses were
served out of order and horribly late, plates were dropped, and food was
spilled in laps. The live music might have been tolerable, but the band was set
up in a narrow walkway, removed from the diners and therefore inaudible. By the
end of the night, the atrociousness of the evening became laughable. Looking
back, most of my New Year’s Eve experiences have been less than satisfactory. I
vowed that we would never again go out for dinner on New Years Eve.
When I was a young teen, my introduction to inebriation occurred
at a sleepover party at my friend’s house on New Year’s Eve. His mother told us
that she would permit us to drink sparkling wine that one night, so long as we did
not get drunk, and if we remained in the house for the entire evening. For the
four of us inexperienced teens, that was a license to guzzle. Probably because
it was so cheap, as our intoxicant of choice, we chose Cold Duck, which tastes
a bit like bad soda pop. We went through several bottles of that rotgut
alternative to champagne, and three out of four of us had a pretty good time.
One drinker did not pace himself, downing four or five 7 oz. glasses before the
rest of us had finished our first. That amateur became violently ill, and
within an hour of his over-indulgence, began to projectile vomit all over the room.
It was like a mob hit; there was barf everywhere. Nothing kills a good buzz
like the smell of vomit. To rub salt into the wound, we had to clean up the mess.
While I and the host of that ill-fated party hosed off our sleeping bags in the
basement laundry room, we could hear our then very unpopular friend upstairs moaning
about how he felt so sick that he wanted to die. At that moment, the rest of us might have been ok with that.
My final New Year’s Eve disaster story involves a girl I dated
in Buffalo, back when I was in my late twenties. At that time, she was writing her dissertation
for a PhD in Urban Geography at The University of Buffalo. We attended an abominable
New Year’s Eve party at the home of one of her scholarly friends. I was not
pleased about what promised to be a boring evening, and I made the stipulation
that I would only go if she agreed to be my designated driver. I did not know
one person at the party, and as I suspected, none of those arrogant university types,
who made it their blood sport to make me feel like the stupid guy at the party,
were in any way warm or hospitable to me. Anticipating their (possibly correct)
assessment that I was the Luddite of the party, I sat alone in the corner
drinking copious amounts of Meyers Rum and orange juice (which I brought).
Finally, one friendly attendee took pity on me and began to talk to me. As luck
would have it, he too liked Myers Rum and orange juice. He and I became fast
friends and, as we got pleasantly plastered, we made light of the
anti-celebration unfolding in front of us. We discussed everything but academia
and occasionally took pleasure in mocking the room full of self-important
academics, for whom the highlight of the evening seemed to be lighting the Baked
Alaska at midnight. Later, as we drove home from that abysmal party, my friend appeared
to be a little nervous. She asked me a lot of questions about the man to whom I
had been talking at the party. What did we discuss, did we talk about her, and
what were we laughing about so heartily? It turned out that the man, with whom
I had had such a good time, was the head of the UB Geography Department, and
the most senior academic at the party. He was also her advisor. I’m not sure how
he felt about the evening, but Meyers Rum sure made the party more enjoyable for me.
Again, Happy New Year! I hope the next year is a healthy and
productive one for you. Make sure you make travel arrangements that do not include
driving while inebriated, and whatever you do, have a good time! Be good to
each other, and yourselves, and try do more good than harm.
Jamie Oppenheimer, Songwriter, Author,
Blogger, Radio Producer, & Host has been writing THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
every MONDAY since 1992 and has published the articles on his blog since 2006.
We are including Jamie's weekly reports, as a feature of #HuntersBayRadio, The Bay 88.7FM.
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