The Boston Phoenix
November 11 - 18, 1999

[Out There]

New Year's skeve

Welcome to the global coolness challenge

by Kris Frieswick

After in-depth research over the past four months, I believe I have identified the world's most commonly used words. From Nigeria to Kazakhstan, from Delhi to the Arctic Circle, from Tierra del Fuego to the tiniest Amazonian village where they haven't even invented verbs yet, the most frequently spoken words are "What are you doing on New Year's Eve?"

Ever since man realized that there were four seasons (plant the corn, water the corn, harvest the corn, freeze to death), we as a species have celebrated the changing planetary cycles. Then mankind got all anal retentive and insisted on knowing, to the second, when the next cycle begins -- and ever since, there's been some form of New Year's celebration. Throughout history, it has been a time for big plans and high hopes, followed by melancholy and disappointment when plans fall through at the last minute, blind dates turn ugly, and New Year's Day evolves into a game of "Where the hell am I and, more important, where did I leave my clothing?" This year's global manic-depressive episode is sure to achieve a magnitude not experienced since 999. And, as far as I know, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve wasn't broadcasting in 999, so how big a deal could it really have been?


The millennium hype officially started on January 1, 1999. "You have a year to make plans for the biggest party ever. Do not screw this up," was the not-so-subtle message. As if finding a date for Saturday night isn't stressful enough -- suddenly we were supposed to plan, a year out, the most important party of our lives. This is the party that, when we're 85, we will recount in exaggerated detail to our grandchildren (leaving out, of course, the clothing part). One day, the question of what we were doing on New Year's Eve 1999 will rank right up there with such biggies as "Where were you when the Challenger blew up?" "What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell?" "Why didn't you buy Apple when it was at 12?"

I fear that our plans, or lack thereof, for New Year's Eve 1999 have become the litmus test of our worth as social creatures, a shorthand used to determine our relative value as human beings. "What are you doing on New Year's Eve?" is not just about fun anymore. "So," the questioner might as well ask, "what are you doing during the biggest party ever thrown? Are you rich/creative/popular enough to properly commemorate the last day of the millennium, the day that, thanks to some bad computer-coding decisions by the US government in the 1960s, may mark the end of our society as we know it? Buddy, are you prepared to party like it's 1999?" Chinese take-out and a video just won't cut it this year.

Of course, we each face the inevitable fact that whatever we're doing, it can never be cool enough for the giganticness of the event. Many people have already realized the impossibility of the situation, and are simply refusing to answer the New Year's Eve query on the grounds that it is a trick question designed to identify losers. Which, of course, it is.

But those who are rising to the global coolness challenge are as much fun to watch as the scramble to bring the Defense Department into Y2K compliance. Some have taken the opportunity to cash in those stock options and do the "trip of a lifetime." New Year's Eve at the International Date Line sounds extremely cool, up until the point when your travel agent reveals the minor detail that the bulk of the International Date Line is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Equally cool is a champagne toast at the Eiffel Tower or in Times Square with five million of your closest friends/potential assailants. Some think it's cool to point out that January 1, 2000, isn't really the start of the millennium at all. These mathematical purists are planning their own kind of celebration to mark the real change of the millennium on December 31, 2000, a celebration that I'm sure will feature a lecture series revealing that the Easter Bunny and Santa are make-believe and that Twinkies don't actually have any cream in their creamy filling.

There is also the "siege mentality" group. These people will spend New Year's Eve snuggled up in the "compound," which has been freshly stocked with water, canned veggies, frozen steaks, Fritos, and enough videos to make it through "till things settle down a touch." These folks will while away New Year's Eve disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling their semi-automatic weapons, drinking Bud in cans, and waiting (hoping?) for looters to break in.


Another cool answer to the millennium question is "running away." I have a friend whose chief New Year's Eve goal is to get as far away as possible from human beings assembled in large crowds. She, like the FBI, is anticipating widespread mayhem from the "The end of the world is nigh!" crowd, the "Let's blow some stuff up" contingent, and the "Vegetarianism is cruelty to vegetables" activists, all of whom are bound to see this year's exceptionally large mobs as an open invitation to drive home their political views, whether through sophisticated, well-orchestrated media events or sheer, overwhelming firepower. For people such as my friend, running away is the only obvious option, coolness be damned. Because in the final analysis, what could be cooler than living to see the real turn of the millennium, in December 2000?

But, by far, the people with the coolest possible answer are those who can say, honestly, "I have to work." These people have been given a cosmic "get out of jail free" card. They are exempt from the foolishness. They have a built-in date, and they can be pretty sure that they won't get stood up. Sure, the initial impound announcement from upper management was probably a big bummer. But I think that if these folks take a moment and consider the alternative, they will realize that they, locked away in their little cubicles making sure we all come out of this thing with our bank accounts and computer networks intact, already have won the global coolness challenge.

I, my bank account, and my computer network wish them a fine, happy, and uneventful New Year's Eve. And when the big countdown finally comes, I will pause my video, put down my forkful of lo mein, and raise a heartfelt toast to them all.

Kris Frieswick is a magazine writer living in Newton. She can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.

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