It was New Year’s Eve 2005. There I was, hunkered down in my little bungalow, scotch in hand, trying to keep the dogs from freaking out over the fireworks and occasional gunfire that characterize my neighborhood on the last night of the year. We don’t go out on New Year’s in Miami — too dangerous.
So there I was, anticipating watching the ball drop and seeing Dick Clark’s holographic projection “live” from Times Square or watching Anderson Cooper being kissed by a drag queen in Key West, when all of a sudden, the TV went blue. Flicking through the channels, I was greated by blue, blue, blue screens. So I poured another scotch and listened to the firecrackers, bottle rockets and occasional semi-automatic gunfire until the old year rolled over.
Come to find out today that one of those gun-totin’ cowboys killed my cable. Apparently, Comcast had a devil of a time tracking down the source of the problem — a bullet hole in one of its main fiber-optic lines. So me and about 50,000 of my neighbors were forced to have a television-less New Year’s, which gave us time to reflect on a monumentally crappy old year and list our resolutions for the hopefully less-crappy new one.
Resolution #1: Stay home and helmeted and flak-jacketed next New Year’s Eve.
