happy new year

The fashion is to be both racy and cryptic.

Last year I spent new year's eve in urbana with Dan and Jenny and Dan's friend Jesse. When you spend a year drinking nothing but cold duck and forties, you have to end the year with something special. So we each drank two bottles of cold duck, it being a holiday.

This year Ed and Phil and I went to new orleans. Farah and Shoo both backed out, on account of having shrivelly little balls. This year's theme was burning yourself. We mixed fireworks and lighter fluid with beer and liquor to get started, and I burned my face a little. Then it was off to city park for the christmas tree bonfire. There were house parties on every block, and the street was choked with people lighting off all kinds of fireworks. The smoke was so thick that at 11:45 when the bonfire was lit, we could barely see its 30-foot flames from two blocks away. Nick told us beforehand that he heard there might be naked hippies there dancing around the fire, like burning man or something. As it turns out, he was talking about us. There was someone there with bongos, and there were a few people prancing around the fire, but most of them were with us. This lead to a discussion later about whether it was more gay to skip or to prance. People were throwing bottle rockets into the fire, so the whole crowd was actually being attacked by the fire. As the fire died down and we drained our champagne, Ed decided we either weren't in enough danger or didn't look enough like hippies. So he took off his shirt and ran through the fire. Then Philly got pressured into it. Guess who was next? No, you're way off! It was me! Then the girls took their turns. Allana ran through in her sandals and got second-degree burns. Riley and I carried her back to her car. As this story comes to a close, you might find yourself wondering "why the hell would you get into a car with someone who couldn't even walk on her own?". Well, I thought it was blisters and not booze that made her a gimp. As it turned out, I was wrong. She drove toward Bourbon Street (I say "toward" loosely, meaning only that Bourbon street was our destination, not that we were really headed in that direction) like a bat out of hell. She ran up on a curb going fifty, lost control, started laughing and lost even more control, blew a stop sign, and ramped a curb to go flying into a park. And did she stop? No, it didn't even phase her. She went tearing through the park and got back out onto the street. I jumped out and yelled at her. Riley said "oh, no, she's fine. does this all the time." I took this to mean that I had met a man who, like a lemur, had absolutely no survival instinct. I did get her to stop driving, but that meant we didn't make it to bourbon street. I'm the only one who remembers the drive that night, so it seems fitting that I should write it down here to remember it.

That night Ed got slapped in the face, and I got punched. He deserved it. I didn't. But I sure had a cool shiner the next day when we finally went to bourbon street and saw breasteses and girls making out.

On the drive back home we fell in love with top 40 country music. I've had the stereo in my pickup tuned to WIXY 100.3 today's top country ever since.