For Old Lang Zyne

As many of you prepare to ring in the New Year tonight, I can’t help but reflect back on some of the more memorable NYE celebrations I vaguely recollect attending.

There was that time in high school when I came down with the Taiwanese Flu for the entire winter break and I ended up watching the Beastie Boys perform live on MTV at midnight.

Then one time in college, a bunch of us planned a ski trip to South Lake Tahoe and we ended up at the casinos on New Year’s Eve.  Vehicular traffic was prohibited on Highway 50 at Stateline so the road between Harvey’s and Harrah’s was awash with a sea of parka-adorned, mitten-clad, half-drunken revelers eagerly awaiting the stroke of midnight.  Having had a decent evening playing blackjack, I still vividly recall the sleepless night I spent crashed on the floor of one of those motels on the strip with about ten people I hardly knew all the while worried that someone was going to roll me for the lousy C-note I won at the tables earlier that night.

And then there was the year I hung out with friends in a rented beach house in Santa Cruz.  It was that very evening when two of my co-workers bet me sixty bucks that I wouldn’t grow a goatee.  I grew it out and there it stayed — in one form or another — for at least half a decade.

I could never forget the time my band — the world renowned Bay Area Band — played our friends John and Traci’s wedding in downtown San Francisco.  There can be no excuse to forget your anniversary if it happens to fall on December 31st.

One year my friend and I went to see a Grateful Dead show at the Oakland Coliseum.  I couldn’t believe they opened with Hell in a Bucket and closed the show with Sugar Magnolia, before encoring with Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.  Ah man, who am I kidding?  It was a Dead show!  I’m surprised that I even remember going to the concert.

And then there was that time in the hazy crazy daze of my youth when a group of us wanted to be high rollers for New Year’s Eve and get a room at The St Francis Hotel.  Well, one person in our crew got a little too rowdy a little too early and we were shown the streets by hotel security before the sun went down.  We ended up part of the teeming masses crammed into Union Square at midnight.

As far as memorable NYE experiences go, nothing compares to the year Fehmeen and I spent the holiday at Disneyland.  The future Mrs Picetti was sicker than a dog but that didn’t prevent her from enjoying the Magic Kingdom with every ounce of her being.  She was annoyed that every single doll in It’s a Small World was singing American Christmas carols that I thought they were going to permanently ban us from ever floating through the ride again.  Besides feasting on our weight in yummy churros that night, I will never forget spinning round and round the Teacups with my beautiful girlfriend until midnight and watching the fireworks light up the Southern California sky.  I never wanted that ride to end.

So, Happy New Year’s to you all.  Maybe Fehmeen will let me have a syringe-full of champagne down the tube ’roundabout midnight — most likely Eastern time.  Cheers

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