Noise in the Shape of Writing

I almost never remember to make plans ahead of time for New Years. This explains why I tend to find that the really good L.A. parties are sold out by the time I start looking into them. Even so, this year was oddly satisfying. I made several promises to several friends that I was going to be at this party or that party -- and I trult meant to go at the time! -- but then proceeded to flake on all of them and stay at home with my family. My daughter promised me that she really wanted to stay up til midnight and I simply could not resist the offer. We toasted in the new year with French lemonade & grenadine. We blew horns for ten minutes while it seemed the rest of Santa Clarita was awake, drunk, and clearly in posession of illegal fireworks (thank you, nearby Ventura County!).

We spent the hour leading up to midnight watching a very scary countdown; No, not Dick Clark or Regis -- the 100 scarriest horror movie moments of all time (according to Bravo). Turns out my daughter LOVES scary movies (she didn't want to turn the channel, even when I was grossed out by a scene of bloody teeth falling out from "Demons"... I'll have to rent that one some day).

This reminds me of some other memorable New Years moments:

My best New Years (non-forgotten) memory:
Going to a multi-thousand person Hollywood street party, realizing that the dressed-up, glitzed-up, coked-up wannabes there were not my crowd and then high-tailing it back to my neighborhood bar BARELY in time to get inside, order two Heinekens and cheer in the new year with my no-name working class peeps. I think it was 2002.

My creepiest New Years:
Setting up christmas lights around the upstairs roof-access window, playing techno music, lighting off illegal fireworks and toasting-in (with Martinellis) the new MILLENIUM with my daughter (age 3 at the time) on the ROOF of our house... SPECIFICALLY so that I could create a memory from the age of three that she could always recall regarding the millenium. I figured it would be sad to tell people "yeah, i was three years old in 2000, but I was too young to remember it". So every few months I ask her if she remembers her millenium party and she still does. Creepy, huh.

Most surreal:
Toasting in the new year almost as an afterthought while playing King Henry the 8th in a live game/party/masquerade. I had gone planning to drink in the new year as only a 30-year-old would want to. Somehow I ended up pontificating and whooping it up Henry the 8th style -- completely immersed in my character (whose several wives were in attendance, to my surprise) and trying to solve the climactic puzzle -- paying very little attention to the new year itself. I am pretty sure that beer was an integral part of the evening.

Does anyone else have a particularly poignant New Year's memory they do or don't remember?

Pat.