Chan's "sick," so I'm not in Times Square, but on a couch at Gumby's house, as the year the drought ended comes to a close. His team, the Florida Gators, is on TV in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, and conveniently he's too sick to go out. He had me all psyched up to go to Times Square, too. Would've been my first time since '97. Only this year it's like 50 degrees, when it should be 20. Terrible job, Chan. Oh well, I've definitely done the sit-around on New Year's Eve before. I'm more into the Twilight Zone marathon than the doing whatever adult-types do on New Year's Eve, with the hats and the champagne and the kissing strangers.

Now it's after midnight. Chan's laptop has been charging. It's 2005. We just watched that really freaky Twilight Zone episode "The Hitchhiker." Earlier we saw "Midnight Sun," another one of my favorites.

Earlier, we ate at the Mexican restaurant, and while I was eating my black bean burrito with no sour cream, I got to thinking about how I'm supposedly going to die one day, although that hasn't been proven. I was saying to Chan and Gumby how sometimes I feel like I just can't take my job any more. My job where I sit there all day, in a nice temperature controlled building, never having to challenge my muscles, or even my brain, really. Maybe I just feel like I'm wasting my life away. I said how I want to drive to Florida in March, sleep on the beach, watch some spring training games, and come back to where my problems will be waiting for me again. "What problems," they said. Exactly.

Then last night (which would be BEFORE the Mexican restaurant incident. I guess the story doesn't time, much live Nirvana's "Sliver": "I fell asleep and watched TV."), we were playing Scrabble, listening to music from Chan's computer, and I decided I wanted to hear that song from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. So I plunked a Susan B. Anthony on the table, and told Chan to download the tune, so I could hear it immediately. I thought first of how amazing technology is: I want to hear a song, I tell Chan which one, he hits a few buttons, and the song is magically playing. I feel like we should all have silver suits on. But then I thought, What the hell? People are dying, drowning, getting washed off the face of the earth, while others have no food to begin with and are sleeping in the street, a few minutes from where I sit in a comfy chair in a heated living room...and what am I spending my dollar on? A goddamn song that I don't need to hear. At all. I can hum it in my head.

I did think that maybe hearing the song might inspire you to do something to help people in some way; after all, music is medicine, but what's my excuse for buying that 80 cent package of Devil Dogs. Or that tenth Red Sox World Champs T-shirt? Couldn't I have one less T-shirt and give a little money to some homeless person?

What other pleasant thoughts do I have on this first day of the rest of Chan's life? Let's see....Chan's been playing this Nellie McKay person. She's pretty interesting. I feel like she's trying too hard with her lyrics sometimes, but I think I like her and her many different musical styles. She's no Joanna Newsom, though. She plays the harp (not harmonica) and has a weird voice. Why did I even compare the two? Because they both were born with female sex organs? Thanks, society, you've corrupted me. Sometimes I'll hear someone talking about a doctor, and without actually making a conscious decision, I'll get a picture of a man in my head. Then they'll specify that the doctor is a woman, and I get really mad at myself. But again, I blame society. Terrible job, society.

The Florida Gators lost. Their quarterback just refused to follow through when throwing. At one point, with only a glimmer of hope left, he tried to throw a ball out of bounds, and he couldn't even do that right. The ball floated up and then came down, on the edge of the end zone, where a defender reached out and caught the ball, barely keeping his feet in bounds. All the dude had to do was throw the ball into the stands. Instead he left it where it could get picked off. My dad used to do this on purpose when we'd play one on one football in the front yard. He'd just throw the ball away to avoid a sack, but would leave it hanging up enough so that I'd have a slight chance to run and catch it. Switching without even the aid of a new paragraph to Life Aquatic talk, it was cool how the very first line from the first Bowie song you hear in the film is "Look at all the cavemen go," because there's a band from around here called "The Cavemen Go," one of whose members is a big Sox fan. So...

I'm going to see Bill Murray get interviewed in NYC next weekend, thanks to my mom. (Xmas present.) How sweet is that? How often does Murray make a public appearance? I've got front row seats (thanks again, mom) and I was thinking about wearing a shirt that says "Don't hassle me, I'm local," like the one he wore in What About Bob? I think it'd be really funny, especially if everyone else is wearing, you know, normal people clothes.

I got some good answers on the last quiz. I liked the guy that said 420 doesn't belong, because he doesn't smoke the weed. Me neither, buddy, you get a point, but that's not what I was thinking of. Someone else mentioned the distances of the fences at Fenway, and picked 302, which is correct, but the reason was wrong. Keep thinking.

Speaking of weed, right after it hit midnight, they showed Snoop Dogg's message to Dick Clark.

Whoa! It's two in the morning, these guys are begging me to go home, and Chan just flipped to the Late Late Show, and who was on but Nellie McKay. She looks way different than she sounds. She just sang the line "I don't know how to shmooze." Awesome. Okay, she's almost as cool as Joanna Newsom because of that. Okay, I've gotta go. They got mad that I said I had to write about McKay just because we saw her on TV. But now I'm going home. Happy New Yizzle everybody. Be safe. Although by the time you read this, if you were unsafe, the damage is probably done. So I hope you were safe, how's that?