Here we are

...uh, where's here, exactly?

Doubtless there are more than a few people nursing headaches this morning, asking themselves this very question and wishing that they could escape back into the nothingness of sleep whence they came. Not me. Not us.

I haven't seen the New Year in for many years. I hate to be whatever the New Year's equivalent of a pre-spirit Ebenezer Scrooge might be, but I'll bah-humbug the New Year every year until I'm dead. I've earned that right over many a hogwild Hogmanay, none worse than the first.  

Really, people. Do you have to get drunk because tomorrow you write the date with a slightly different set of pencil-strokes? Really?

Never mind, it's another of the many ways I'm not human, and that's okay. I slept in until six this morning, having gone to bed soon after the Leafs lost another to close out the year. I haven't seen a new year in for many years. I have faith it will be there in the morning, and so far my faith has been justified.

After so many years of mayhem--they all blur into each other--I've decided that yes, there is something to celebrate on New Year's Eve. That we made it through another year. That I don't have to dodge nachos and cheese being hurled at my head. That it's unlikely anybody's going to barf in front of me this year. 

Eva and I had a lovely day yesterday. We haven't done a twofer at the movies for quite a while. We saw David Fincher's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and Bird's MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, Both were very well done, but neither completely lived up to my expectations.

GIRL was, in many ways, superior to the Swedish production. You'd expect it to be, given that it had what, ten times the budget. But I found Mara's Salander too sociable, not silent enough. Rapace, as far as I'm concerned, nailed Larsson's creation. 

And I confess, I have trouble shutting off my brain whenever there's an action sequence. Some movies fall into Rambo Syndrome, i.e. let's shoot roughly 3.6 million bullets at the hero and if we're feeling particularly realistic that day, one of them might graze his buffed shoulder and add character. Some movies suffer from that odd idiosyncrasy of bad guys having to explain themselves, frittering away countless opportunities to blow away the hero and prevail. Just once I'd like to see a smart villain in a Hollywood production.

And then there are the car chase scenes, the ones where traffic is either magically nonexistent or at least compliant enough to get out of the way. GIRL has a short chase scene, motorcycle chasing car. Motorbike wins, in a most unconvincing fashion. The car driving psycho need only slam on his brakes and turn the chaser into people pate...but he doesn't. Sigh.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE is chock-full of gross improbabilities--but if I mention even one of them I'll spoil something. Give that movie its due; it has some of the most eye-dropping stunts I've ever seen and a pace that almost never lets up. As popcorn movies go, seeing this one is a no-brainer.

Back in '91-92 I saw pretty much everything Hollywood put out. I couldn't do that today even if I wanted to, because I'm not made of money. I shudder to think how families can afford it...a night out for you and your wife and two kids could easily run you a hundred bucks or more.

Once the movies let out, we headed home and commenced to stuffing ourselves with all manner of junk  food. This is the one night of the year where we say the waist is a terrible thing to mind and just go nuts. Sausage rolls. Mozzarella sticks. Oriental hors d'oeuvres (which in our happy home is pronounced "hoovers doovers" and om-nom-nommed with authority). Chips and dip and crackers and cheese and a bucket of pop and all this ensures the first movement of the new year will register on the Richter scale, but who cares.

And now it's 2012. There's a sharp cold front about to hit us in five or six hours, with snowsquall warnings posted for Monday. Winter has come, riding in on the wind like a hoary old harridan, and we're all here. 

May your year be what you make it.