Should all the parties be forgot

New Years Eve is coming. And if you're trying to stop it, or slow it down, you are failing at your task.

What's left to do is figure out what you will be doing. Patrick over at ABlogAboutThings posted on the 5 types of New Year's parties. I am happy to say that I am not attending the first 4. The club where you dropped hundreds for a terrible time with terrible people. Or the house party you land in by default. Or the random empty restaurant where you don't have to sell your children into slavery in order to attend.

No, I will be at a house party on Long Island. A costumed New Years Eve bash. Jack and I had planned to go as JFK and Marilyn Monroe, but I think I may be too lazy, and he too tired, to pull this off. We'll probably cobble something together.

But I am a huge fan of the intimate house party. New Years Eve, I would say, is the night where every loser and his bigger loser friends hit the town because, GODDAMMIT! they are NOT LOSERS! They are cool, man! They can party like it's 1999! (Someone tell Prince he needs to put out a new track to inform them it is no longer anywhere near 1999).

And I don't want to be out with the desperate on this desperate night. Those poor saps clinging, nay grasping for dear life onto some semblance of a social life. Those drunk morons in Times Square who saw it on TV one time and fell for the tricks of expensive cameras, thinking the celebration is just as glamorous, and doesn't involve people throwing up on their new, expensive shoes.

Rather, I choose to stay in on nights like this. I go out when the losers return to their loser lives. When the people who know how to party and have a good time also return from their voluntary hermit-ization to resume their exciting lifestyles. These are the people who (usually) can hold their liquor. They are out to have fun, not out to prove to themselves that they can have fun.

I digress. New Year's Eve is a time to be with friends or family. To drink and be merry. My mom always told me that how you ring in the New Years is how your year will go. It makes sense, as I separated from my then-boyfriend for the evening (and you can see the result, as I referred to him as a then-boyfriend).

This year I will be partying it up WITH my new boyfriend. And the best friends I've had since high school. And my cousin who is the best friend I've ever had. I will call and wish a happy-happy to my Mom and stepfather, who are partying it up in Florida like the well-to-do snowbirds that they are. And my brother, who will be partying with his supermodel blonde bombshell girlfriend in DC. And my aunt and uncle, who will be doing god knows what. And my grandfather, who will be drinking Diet Sprite and watching the complete Rambo collection on DVD that I bought him for Christmas.

Friends. Family. None of the artifice or desperation. And I will be bringing my FLIP Mino HD camcorder, so I can create a short viral memory documentary so we can all remember the glory long after it is dimmed.

I hope the rest of you have an absolutely fabulous New Year's Eve as well. Each of us deserves it.