The Longest Night of the Year

I have just never been cool enough for New Years Eve. As a kid I remember it being one of the longest nights of the year. My parents used to attend parties called Hootenannies on New Years Eve. My father and some of his friends would bring their guitars and play songs like Wabash Cannonball and Red River Valley for the  hours it seemed to take  for midnight to arrive. Maybe that's because living in the Central time zone, it was only eleven o'clock when we saw the ball drop in Times Square and then we still had another hour to fill.

I can stay up well past midnight most nights but New Years Eve bores me to death. I guess if I drank I would have something to do but I have just never understood holidays whose main focus seems to be drinking. I have never needed to drink to have a good time. Let's face it I don't have a good time that often. It's so much trouble. I need weeks of rehearsal and lots of beads, feathers and sequins to really enjoy myself.

As an adult I have slept through New Years on several occasions. The last few years I have resorted to watching Anderson Cooper pretend to be shocked by Kathy Griffin on CNN while she pretends not to know he is gay. Why can't he just come out? No one is watching CNN anyway. 

CNN fires her every year then hires her back. It must be tough having to top herself each year. But if George Carlin is to be believed there are seven words you can't say on television and Kathy is only on her fourth year. I guess she is good for three more. By then even Fox will have a openly gay host and Anderson's coming out announcement will be obsolete. 

It's tough deciding  which would be most frightening, an out and proud Hannity, O'Reilly or Beck. Please, don't let it be Beck. I would even help pay for the gay aversion therapy his family would be sure to  arrange for him. After all the detox program they put him through was a total succes, right?