Happy New Year!

Six hours of 2008 to go and counting. Wishing all the Stinquers a most excellent 2009. I can’t imagine what I’m going to do with all the extra time next year now that I won’t be spending hours every evening worrying about the dirty tricks Hillary and Bill and later John and Sarah were trying to pull to slow down the Unicorn Express.

I appreciate nojo for providing this place to blow off steam and for all the writing. The Year in Review post by itself was priceless if possibly a touch Faulkneresque. I appreciate all the rest of you for allowing me to toss out occasional bits of nonsense without throwing me overboard from this internet Ark. Mostly I appreciate all the comments and the insights from a diverse group of people I wish all lived in my neighborhood so I could invite them over to watch KO and Rachel and the Colts games.

@Dave H: Now you can start worrying about the RNC assassins and Hillary assassins organizing teams to take out the Unicorn and, of course, the Adkisson Brigades, fed by tens of millions of the unemployed, returning veterans, never-employed former students, starving desperate bankrupted retirees, underemployed neonazis and Jesus-crazies-turned-suicide-bombers funded by RNC front groups. One nightmare ends and another, unimaginably worse, begins.

I am a dork for the World Service broadcast of Big Ben at midnight. Just the sound of that low bell. The inexorable march of AWESOME.

And of course the Beeb went on to reporting about that nightclub in Bangkok and Gaza. Happy happy, joy joy.

BTW Nojo: Western Europe was an hour ago; the Home Countries were just now. Revelry FAIL.

@chicago bureau: Saw that stuff about Thailand … it seems every year at this time there’s a disaster AND a Middle East blowup. Feh. Enough already.

@chicago bureau: Do we have any members in the Home Countries? No? Let them find their own clocks.

@nojo: Lyndon Benedick might be there.

@SanFranLefty: The OH had to go in for emergency surgery. Nothing major just very surprising and sudden. Got home today and is recovering nicely. I’m exhausted.

Going to bed soon. I got cured of New Year when I was working at the Shubert for four years and had to negotiate the crowds and closed streets.

Happy 2009 to all! Except Cheney and Bush. And Rumsfeld. I hope they suffer.

@nojo: What are the Home Countries? I know what the Home Counties are, but not the other.

ADD: @Benedick — here’s to a swift recovery. Happy ’09!

TJ/ best excuse EVAH: When Charles Barkley was busted in Arizona early this morning for DUI, he told cops he ran a stop sign because he was in a hurry to get some oral sex. According to the officer who wrote the report, “He told me that he ran the stop sign because he was in a hurry to pick up the girl I saw get in the passenger seat.”
The officer continues: “He asked me to admit that she was ‘hot.’ He asked me, ‘You want the truth?’ When I told him I did he said, ‘I was gonna drive around the corner and get a b**w job. He then explained that she had given him a ‘b**w job’ one week earlier and said it was the best one he had ever had in his life.”
Best laugh I’ve had all week.

@Mistress Cynica: The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Sussex.

@Mistress Cynica: Even though he played for the Rockets, damn Barkley makes me laugh. And I’m falling off the couch laughing at that one. I love that he asked the cop to admit the chick was hot.

I will laugh harder when it comes out that the hawt woman was a tranny, a la Eddie Murphy.

@Benedick: Tell Mr. Benedick to get well soon! Chicken noodle soup has magical curative powers. Or tell the dachschund to snuggle with him, doggies can cure anything. Or at least take up more than their fair share of the bed. We’re already drinking champagne – no way we can make it until midnight.

@Benedick: And now we are all trying to figure out what played at the schubert for 4 years, so we can know the secret identity of our thespian friend.

@SanFranLefty: I have a memory of Barkely that is vaguely political, even. I saw him play in college, visiting UF, back in 1984, the year of Mondale. His nickname at that time was “Where’s the beef Barkely.”

I give this question to you stinquers, though I already have my own answer; should I get high? Yes, I think.

I say this with great respect.

Dick Clark? It’s time, brother.

@chicago bureau: I say this in all complete sincerity, all snark off. I am completely between, not sure whether, to feel embarrassed for Clark, or, and I now lean this way, inspired, tearful, even, and admiring. He’s bad off, this took enormous effort, not just phsyically on Clark’s part, but on the political front, insisting against the networks and the advertisers, I am sure, that he was gonna do it, this determination to do this, I am sorry, but I am weepy. He is brave and admirable.

@Promnight: I saw him briefly last year, and I felt bad for the dude — quite an achievement, given how he was a world-class asshole when cogent. (And, I’ll admit, a decent game-show host.) But Ebert’s about as far as I can handle in that direction.

Promnight: The strain of doing this, up late at night with everybody looking at him. Must take a lot.

I was weaned on the $25,000 Pyramid. (Really. Game shows before PM kindergarten boosted the old math skills, and was my introduction to useless trivia. My sister had AM kindergarten and soap operas afterward. Funny old world.)

Love the guy. Much props, but I think there’s no need for him to keep doing this.

@chicago bureau: I’m gonna disagree for one reason only. I am gonna be old and drooling someday.

At 11:45 Mrs. Prom and I started surfing around looking for a new years eve show. I was amazed, I just never thought about it, that Comedy didn’t put on a show hosted by Stewart, duh, no brainer. But no. MTV was doing a Myley Cyrus New Year? This makes me want to leave the country more emphatically than Bush being president did. MTV’s Mile-ey Cyrus New Year? Yoiks, Scooby, lets get out of here.

There was nothing else, nothing else but Dick Clarke. Nothing else to make me feel connected, to my own past, to others, Dick Clarke, its all there is to cling to in the face of a Myley Cyrus New Year on MTV. When he dies, I want them to give his body to the Disney animatromic engineers so they can fit his head up with servos and whatever else is necessary to allow his corpse to appear on TV and usher in the new year, forever.

For Auld Lang Syne, motherfuckers, for old long since, god bless you all.

@Promnight: I’ve been enjoying the trainwreck on CNN. Some guy was heckling Kathy Griffin, and she yelled back, “I don’t come down to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth.” If that isn’t quality TV, then I don’t know what is.

@Promnight: Sadly, I remember when Dick Clarke was the “new guy” on New Year’s Eve. I grew up with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians at the Waldorf.

@Mistress Cynica: So did I, but that was what Mom and Dad had on, in my room, it was Dick Clarke.

OK. It’s half past six, where is everybody? I’m up drinking coffee. The dogs have been out. It’s morning, people.

@Promnight: I’ve come out all over Facebook. I still don’t know what it’s supposed to do. Apart from share. But the show was Crazy for You. Did the whole run, out of town, Pia Zadora, the nice lady from The Brady Bunch, everything. I played an effete English tourist. It was a big stretch.

New Year’s Eve at Times Square was hell.

Santa Fe checking in at 9:37 Eastern/7:37 Mountain. Just watched our Ozzie Shepard do her thing on the snow by the burnt firework casings. Last to bed, first one up. No hangover. My friend Hector made Mexican cocktails from a blended Scotch whiskey I never heard of, OJ, and grape juice, no ice. Sounds weird, but wasn’t bad. His wife Sandra brought the roast beast last night, a chile and spice rubbed pork shoulder roast with a side of pinto beans and corn tortillas. Mmmm.

Hector’s been keeping me up on the crime scene in his home state of Zacatecas, Mexico, which is overrun by a paramilitary group called the Zetas. Kidnappings, extortion, physical violence are the order of the day there.

Hung over.

Too much Vodka

Had a breakfast of grease (eggs, bacon and toast.)

Must sleep now.