Happy New Year.
Logically, however, I don’t see what’s there to be so happy about it. New Year happens on roughly 0.3% of the days, which is a lot more common than your birthday if you were born on February 29th. A new year means a rent increase, a new set of work goals to meet, an older age, closer to death, and higher insurance premiums. Maybe the new year partiers would realize this once they sober up.
I happened to turn my head during the countdown to the “1 hour to go” mark at 11, and the crowd exploded in cheers. Obviously, when you have been standing in the cold rain for 11 hours and know the suffering will end in one more, you’d be pretty happy too.
The cheering, honking, and other noises were even louder when the 2010 sign lit up. One avenue, 33 stories, and a thick layer of glass away, those noises could still be heard. Remind me not to buy a condo in this neighborhood.
For this NYE excursion, I pulled out the camcorder that I haven’t used in about five years. It’s got much better zoom than my point-and-shoot still camera, but the only problem is I have no Firewire on this computer to upload that stuff with. So here we are stuck with slightly less than optimal images:
The actual ball drop, fireworks, and confetti rain at midnight was unsurprisingly unimpressive. Perhaps the point of this event is mostly about the celebrity presence and not so much the fireworks?
When you have hundreds of thousands of people, they not only pee in their pants but also produce a lot of litter. Therefore, as soon as the clock hit midnight, a mile long of sanitation trucks were deployed. Is it just me, or does everybody think this is more cool than the ball drop?
