2005-01-03 - 10:34 a.m.

Somehow, someone messed up. The memo wasn�t passed, or at least, maybe it was, but no one read it. I thought this was understood. I thought this was a universal moral imperative, not unlike, as it was said by my philosophy instructor, �don�t rape wittle babies,� or �you can�t make grilled cheese with blue cheese.� It�s just wrong. A decree on the level of blue cheese and wittle babies was ignored this year, and I�d like a personal letter of apology from the President, Pope, and Barbra Hutton.

Does not the world understand that on the week between Christmas and New Years you do nothing?

Nothing.

You wear the clothing you got for Christmas. (Since you haven�t done laundry in a month.) You begin to get the credit card trembles as you realize what horrific debt you�ve just landed yourself in. You assuage the trembles by pummeling your word hole with whatever candies your mom got you alongside a new toothbrush, and finally you burrow a hole in your couch watching horrible movies on PAX.

That�s it.

I�ll have none of this again.

As lovely as it was to see the latest inductee into the laugh track circle of death, call a bar�s attention to a gentleman he�d just met, culling drunkards far and wide to bellow �Happy Birthday� at him while mumbling his name at a key line � �Happy Birthday, dear�musafucadoo�� � it was Wednesday. Wednesday! I don�t get this damn pretty by sleeping only three hours a night.

I�ll have no more of these phone calls that last until three in the morning, and require a pit stop at the charger, because the battery has been battered and belittled by the bellicose babblings bubbling out of the earpiece. I�m run dry of cigarettes and beer thanks to those telephonic invasions, and I must say, I don�t appreciate it.

The day before New Years, especially, is supposed to scheduled exclusively for endurance training for the day to come: laying down a sufficient beer base, and sleeping good and early so you�re ready to roll as soon as the cham-pan-yea is popped the following day. It is certainly not meant to be spent at Webster Hall, taking a leak into lighted urinals full of ice, between rounds of over-priced whiskey and snarky banter. And by the way, just because I want to step outside for cigarette, I do not need to be corralled into a little tiny area and not allowed to leave because I might, just might go pick up a gat and bust a few caps up in this house.

All you�re supposed to do is go to friend�s house, carrying a bottle of whiskey � we have enough cham-pan-yea � watch DVD Christmas gifts, look quizzically at Regis hosting the big evening, scream obscenities into cell phones when the ball finally drops, drop a couple lips on the nearest attractive member of the opposite sex, raise your glass with your bartender, and go home happy and stumbling. That is all. All I ask.

Give me one day that ensures I�ll spend a weekend in my boxers drooling onto my couch while sucking down the Pinot Noir that was supposed to be for a special occasion. I don�t need a week of insanity to bring on such exhaustion.

And I certainly don�t need to be drug out on Sunday to perform stand-up off the top of my head at a small show in Union Square, drinking Ying after Ling trying to steel courage between peels of laughter in the back garden.

I don�t need it. Where is the sanity and loneliness of the Holiday season?

To all that deprive me of such masochistic wonders, I say�

Happy New Year, and Thanks.

�And fuck you, I need coffee.

previous - next