Remembering Through the Haze of it All

Everyone looks forward to New Year's celebrations, right? So I thought it would be fun to see how many I could actually remember.

• Childhood: Long run of spending New Year's with the Miller family. My folks would let me have one alcoholic beverage and they would let their friends smoke in the house.
• Adolescence (pre-MCAE): Honestly can't recall much of this time. I think there were a couple of cast parties in there somewhere.
• 1990-91: Party at the farm. Lots of MCAE friends and a few locals. I believe two of my friends raided my underwear drawer and paraded around the house with my blue tiger strip briefs on a stick. Shortly thereafter I switched to boxers.
• !991-92: Party at the farm. I was totally infatuated with my girlfriend and don't even remember my future wife showing up at the party. A few days later my band (well, half the band) played a party in a small town where someone brought a copy of the new Ministry single featuring Gibby of the Butthole Surfers and I heard for the first time Jesus Built My Hotrod. Having recently purchased my Firebird, my life changed forever.
• 1992-93: Pillsbury Asylum. Two floors of a big old house in Minneapolis, loud punk bands, acid, pot, alcohol, codeine, lighting cigarettes off the stove burner, the gauntlet of hugging gutter punks lining the stairs scaring off all but the brave. Given the number of people present I'm not sure it scared off anyone. The whole thing came to an end when some skinhead attacked a girl who lived there.
• 1993-94: I want to say I was at Perkins in Albert Lea drinking coffee, but I can't be certain.
• 1994-95: Cedar house. I remember the party was huge and ended badly as parties in houses occupied by over a dozen people in their teens and early twenties often do. I believe this was the source of the, "Those other people puked all over the floor but not you. You had a bucket!" speech inspired by splitting a bottle of Old Grandad bourbon whiskey with a friend. Luckily I was not the puker.
• 1995-96: My first house! Puke on the carpet. Candle wax on the carpet. Puke on my room mate's bed.
• 1996-97: At my place again. Can't remember any details.
• 1997-98: I believe this was at the girls' apartment and Ben showed up and Leied everyone.
• 1998-99: No clue.
• 1999-2000: Had just gotten back from spending Christmas at Disney World in Florida. New Year's Eve hopped a flight to Seattle. When we got there it was just starting to snow. Was picked up by a total stranger, driven to a suburb, handed the keys to a brand new truck, and quickly drove to Idaho to spend the evening with X and Barb. We figured if Y2K turned out to be as bad as some predicted, being in Idaho in a house with a wood burning stove and my dad's brand new truck wouldn't be so bad.
• 2000-01: Mankato where I managed to single handedly polish off an entire bottle of Glenlivet and rant incessantly at a former GI about the merits of an anarchist society. The next day I felt fine and he was still impressed.
• 2001-02: Jello shots in the breakfast nook and shooting BB-guns in the basement.
• 2002-03: Albuquerque wedding! Shortly after the New Year hit the couple in the hotel room adjacent to ours had very loud, very brief intercourse. Albuquerque smelled awesome!
• 2003-04: Portland OTO party. We were on the decorating committee and had liberated a couple garbage bags full of ivy to string up around the lodge. Just glad we didn't stick around for the clean-up. Still plenty to do the next day.
• 2004-05: Steve and Evil-E. I was the designated driver. A British guy and my South African friend broke into the Monty Python 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' sketch while Lost Highway played in the background.
• 2005-06: Julie came out for a visit.
• 2006-07: Had never done the bar thing on New Year's and wanted to give it a shot. Went to the Triple Nickle with a friend. His New Year's resolution was to slow down his drinking and womanizing. We proceeded to get him drunk off his ass and convinced him to take home a girl he had just met. This earned me the nick name 'El Diablo'.
• 2007-08: Fuck! Can't remember that one. I was doing so well. I'll try harder this year.

Happy Gregorian and widely accepted New Year!