New Year’s Comminution

It’s frankly impossible to imagine a written document less likely to be read than a newspaper column on New Year’s Day. The original Magna Carta, maybe? Does that actually exist? Is it in the British Museum’s basement? etc. 

But the New Year’s Day newspaper column must be written. Much more than a contractual obligation – which merely provides the column its legally actionable inducement (and believe me, in the deadline-driven days right around year’s end the MJ lawyers are stalking around the place and glaring like Mamet characters), the writing of the New Year’s column is a spiritual compact with the reader, whose habitual routine of the heart must needs be met – or however you say that. There is, you see, surely no more devoted reader than that of a newspaper columnist… you still there? Ha ha, kidding. Ha.

Common sense dictates that, at base, the New Year’s column should be aspirational, since the root word of “aspirational is aspirin.” New Year’s Day, for all its floral, high flying odes to new beginnings, must first be steadied with analgesics gobbled from trembling hands. You know the drill; it’s that vermouth-laced thing boring a ragged tunnel from frontal lobe to occipital ridge. Note to self: emesis = nemesis

Face the Slate

“New Year” is typically aligned with notions of “new beginnings,” a “fresh start,” a “clean slate,” and so on. Of course if every January you are excitedly yammering about a “clean slate,” it means last year’s clean slate is a now a mud-caked mockery of the good intentions that had so energized you one short year ago. Oh, and your finger-snapping New Year’s cheer is insufferable. Anyone ever tell you that?

“Hoo boy! Time for a clean slate!” 

“Yeah? What happened to the clean slate you sang about last January?” 

“I…uh…”

“SHADDUP WITH YOUR CLEAN SLATE!” {excuse me}

Look; I don’t wanna be the guy who snatches away your New Year’s resolution, chides you like a playground bully as I wave it before your saddened, velveteen puppy eyes, then manically crumples it into a tiny little ball, grunting with exertion, finally throwing your dumb resolution in the dirt and savagely grinding it with both heels, all the while grimacing like a madman as I stare you in the face. Do I wanna be that guy? Naw! That’s the old me. The new me? I’ll be like a golden daffodil, which is a kind of flower that I’m pretty sure is golden. But the resolution thing? C’mon.

All this glib New Year’s chirping about clean slates is good for one thing: buoying the January share price of Clean Slates, Inc. Haven’t those people profited enough from your annual recidivism? Maybe this is the year you forgo the Resolution and the dime store halo you hang from it. Yeah, sure you’re gonna go to the gym, not just this year but, like, in perpetuity. You betcha! But on day two your moth-eaten terrycloth robe gets caught in the treadmill and is torn from your Adonis-like figure; a physiological self-appraisal confirmed by the outright screams of the
other gym-goers. Within the hour you are hoisting to your previously smug New Year’s yap an apple fritter the size of a steering wheel. You can feel the bicep burn!

Resistance is Futile 

The Starship Enterprise landing party – always comprised of the three highest-ranking guys on the ship and one nameless boob in a red Federation “Kick Me” blouse – materializes next to a gang of lizard guys whose zippers are all but plainly visible in the soundstage lighting. Of course as soon as the transporter sparkles resolve, panicky Ensign Whatnot whips out his phaser and is vaporized by the boss lizard, whose encased actor can barely raise his rubberized arm to fire. “Resistance is futile!” the boss lizard intones solemnly, clearly the leader in his ill-fitting, silver lamé tunic. 

Well, reader, I’m afraid that is the theme of this year’s column… No, not silver lamé!!

Resistance is Futile. To put it in terms that seem less melancholy and hopeless and more in the spirit of true yearly renewal – you don’t have to dub yourself a Knight of the Round Table every year. You’re just going to fall off your steed in your 60 lbs of riveted armor and helplessly lay there. All you have to do this year is to move incrementally from last year’s position. 

You be you. That scheme has worked pretty well so far, right? Just ask your family and friends – your lovebirds. Why mess with a good thing? Betterment is not a river in Egypt. Or whatever.