It's 1:40 PM on New Year's Eve, but this post will appear on New Year's morning. I am swamped with reviews, sitting in the living room where my ten year old twin brothers tug at each other's hair and scream "choo choo" while playing with newly-bought toy train sets. But in the interests of this post and to keep it timely, I must transport myself mentally to a better time and a better place. Tonight I'll be dining at the East Village's Mermaid Inn (the New Year's menu looks delectable), finally catching Almodovar's Broken Embraces at Sunshine Cinema, and dancing all night at the Old American Can Factory, usually host to perennial favorite Issue Project Room, but tonight featuring "local stars DJ Eleven, DJ Ayres, & Cosmo Baker of The Rub [, who] are famous for their funk, soul, r&b classics parties that bring out Brooklyn's finest." Which I would invite you to, but it sold out last night/this morning.
Whoops... still not thinking in the present tense of this post, which is New Year's Day. After my somewhat controversial post on Christmas, I do feel blessed to have two such important dates to my credit on which to blog. I would like to provide a smattering of music from my collection in the interests of narrating New Year's Eve into the morning, as I hope I am currently experiencing it -- tired, swathed in blankets, curled up in the arms of a loved one and with no intention of moving, except perhaps to retrieve hot chocolate and more blankets.
Perhaps you were like Raymond Scott and spent New Year's Eve in a Haunted House. More likely you were getting spifflicated like George Formby would have wanted you to, Letting the New Year In by making an utter fool of yourself. If you're politically inclined, your thoughts may be as confused as Bono's on New Year's Day, somehow shifting between simple love poetry and "the golden age, and gold is the reason for the wars we wage." Moving along...
You may have been struck by wishful thinking last night, with temperatures in New York near freezing and chances of frozen rain. Like Lou Christie, I wished it was just a little Summer Snow, or that, in the more forthright words of Elizabeth Mitchell, Winter's Come and Gone. Ay, that's the rub of New Year's--you have to watch the fireworks in the bitter cold. By 8 PM, after sundown, you were feeling what the Mississippi Sheiks call the Winter Time Blues. By 12 AM, you were Frozen By Blizzard Winds, much like the album by Kevin Drumm and Lasse Marhaug. When completely numbed by cold, with nothing left to lose but your circulation, you may have taken Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet's advice to simply "Listen, the Snow is Falling".
Along with Meade Lux Lewis, today you will be doing the Hangover Boogie, because you Drank Up All the Wine Last Night with Sticks McGhee. You had to do something last night to keep warm! When you sober up, you'll be smart like Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and become a Hot Chocolate Boy. For all the lovers out there, perhaps you will follow Yellowman's lead and indulge in a little Bedroom Mazurka (absolutely NSFW--Yellowman a the Lover Boy is slightly more innocent). The refrain to your thoughts will not be dissimilar to Go-Kart Mozart's, aka Lawrence Hayward's: "People like me, no, we're nothing like you, we'd rather stay at home, have a screw. Oh people like me, We're Selfish and Lazy and Greedy".
Happy New Year from yours truly.
Recovering from the cold New York night today!
Posted by: Hot Chocolate Girl | January 01, 2010 at 12:27 PM