New Years

I dislike New Years.

Everyone is supposed to be in a good mood, fake their cheerfulness, and embrace strangers like they were life long friends in a mass delusional shared experience. That you barely know these people, will never see them or meet them again: irrelevant.

The fact that you happen to be in the same geographic location at the same moment in time, midnight on January 1st, obligates everyone to believe they've achieved communal harmony. Reality disappears and suddenly you are in a Budweiser/Miller/Coors Light commercial.

Some alcohol is required to achieve this higher state of transcendence. It should be noted that New Years does not come with a warning label. I say screw the label! If I'm going out, I'm getting blitzed.

This year I had a couple of different options.

1. Join Varga at a hotel downtown for an all you can puke, mass trance rave party packed with a crowd in a drug induced haze.

2. Join Phil for a more low key night at a local karaoke club with Nafeesa, her sister, and her boyfriend, for cheap well drinks in Burbank.

I opted for two. I'm a low key kind of guy.

The karaoke club is the kind of place I like to drink. Dark, with worn tables and cracked seats. There is no cover, and we have a table reserved. There is a book of songs as thick as a telephone directory, and I'm immediately overwhelmed by my musical choices.

LA in general is a terrible place to karaoke, there are far too many professional singers who are trying to sign record deals in this town. If talent goes up to sing, it's like watching a professional on their day off, or the final auditions of American idol. If you have to follow one of them you'll suck twice as bad in comparison.

I settle on a monotone song, a song that doesn't have a lot of pitch or a complex melody, a song where the only necessity is one: you have to be loud.

I sing Metallica's Enter the Sandman.

Fortunately, I've had about enough to drink I'm convinced I can bring the house down.

No one pays attention. My voice isn't strong enough to be heard over the deep thrums of Metallica's base. That and everyone is getting drunk.

Somewhere around the second chorus the audience looks up. I croon into the microphone, finally I'm getting some respect!

Exiiit Light!

Enn-ter Night!

Take myyyy hand!

We're off to never, never land!

Then I notice that Nafeesa is gyrating next to me. I've become Prince, and she's my back up dancer! The audience isn't checking me out, they are checking her out.

When you have a former Miss USA beauty contestant dancing next to you, people wake up.

See the picture above if you don't believe me.

Thanks for the assist Nafeesa.

The next day Varga starts to describe the party downtown. It sounded like a psychedelic mind blowing experience. Did I make the right decision?

That's the problem with New Years, you always feel like you are missing out on something.

But upon reflection, I had a moment where I got to act like a rock star, complete with a hot back up dancer.

New Years was a blast.