Boy, 2,000 years went by like that, didn't it? It seems like only yesterday it was 1275.
A few weeks ago the Los Angeles Times approached me to write an essay on the millennium. "We're wide open to whatever might occur to you." How often I've wanted to hear those words from a date.
In the offer from The Times I saw a chance to express my more serious side and write about the deep philosophical impact of the dawn of a new millennium. But as days went by and the deadline for the piece loomed closer, I was seized by a writer's block like I'd never had before. At first I blamed the block on my mother just because that's worked for me in the past. When it didn't, I realized the source of my writer's block was panic: Just five days before New Year's Eve and I still didn't know how I was going to celebrate this gigantic event. I hadn't felt this kind of pressure since the Bicentennial.
I was frozen with fear that I would wake up today and feel like I'd missed something and everyone else hadn't. I'd already experienced that with nine proms, including the one last year--don't ask me to explain.
"Screw the Times essay," I thought. "I need a plan for New Year's Eve." I worked without sleep for the next 48 hours to come up with the following options:
1. There's a millennium bash up at Hef's Playboy Mansion. I know that most of the men reading this are thinking, "You'd have to be gay not to go to that." And some of you, who are more insightful, are thinking, "You'd have to be gay to go to that." Oh, the pain of it.
2. I could spend a quiet New Year's Eve with one special person. But there's no person special enough for this New Year's Eve. I could be in the bathtub with Claudia Schiffer and / or the Dalai Lama and still be thinking, "It's bigger than this."
3. I've been invited to go see Barbra Streisand perform in Las Vegas. That's big, I guess. If only it wasn't in Vegas. Life would be so much easier if Streisand would sing at Hef's place. Oh God, help me.
4. I could put myself in a time capsule and have my friend Dave Duchovny bury it in the backyard. He's into weird stuff like that.
5. B.J. Thomas and Canned Heat are performing at the Van Nuys Airport. I turned that gig down. It would seem hypocritical to show up now.
6. I could join a friend who's flying to Katmandu and then hiking up into the Himalayas. I'd rather wait and do that off-season. Maybe April.
