Out With the Old, In With the New! The New Year's Thread

[minor muppetz]

I've never been a big fan of New Years. In fact I don't have any memories of knowing about New Years until 1993, having overlooked parts of Christmas songs that mention the New Year. Actually I should have been more aware of New Year in 1992, as that year I saw the New Years Pete special, and also started to notice years (in school we had to do journals and include the dates, and remember it being odd that we suddenly switched from 1992 to 1993... and at times would jokingly call it 1994).

But the concept of New Years registered with me in 1993, thanks to the Sesame Street Stays Up Late special. In fact that New Years Eve, I decided to act like Telly did in that special, not wanting the new year to come.

And it seems like my family didn't have any consistent New Years traditions. For other holidays we'd visit the same relatives houses each year on certain days (though in the past decade things have changed a bit), but with New Years we could be celebrating at home, at an aunt and uncles house, or at a friends house, and if we celebrate at home, we could have certain relatives over, certain different relatives over, friends and their parents over (and no relatives), or just be at home with no guests over. And in the past several years I've usually had to work late on New Years Eve, and it's been the biggest work nightmare of the year.

And there's also the fact that people really celebrate New Years Eve but not New Years Day. There's all that celebrating the night before, but the actual day usually feels more like a regular day than a holiday (okay, so there's a lot of holidays that feel more like regular days, but New Years should be more major than those). Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I drank or if I was a football fan.

And as a kid, I hated New Years because the sooner New Years comes, the sooner school starts again. I know, it doesn't start again on New Years Day, or even the day after, but it's always so close. And as an adult who no longer goes to school, once New Years is over, the special magical feeling of the holiday season is over as well. Though this particular holiday season didn't feel much like the holiday season (it did on Christmas Eve and Day, but otherwise the only times the holiday season felt like the holiday season was whenever I was driving at night and saw the Christmas lights out).

But I feel like 2014 was a very good year. It could have been better. You could even say there's 14 ways it could be better (could there be 2014 things that could have made 2014 better?). Sure, there's been less Muppet stuff since Muppets Most Wanted in comparison to the last few years after 2011, and we didn't get any collectors-market Sesame Street releases (and the only Sesame DVD this year to contain classic clips only had classic material that has been released on video). But hey, we have seen a lot of rare Sesame Street clips we hadn't known about (including material from the first 14 episodes). And Muppet Wiki now has a page for and images from the rare Muppet Madness VHS game (but as far as I could find, footage is not on YouTube). And both A Walking Tour of Sesame Street and Sesame Street Unpaved are back on YouTube, in addition to Stars and Street Forever being on YouTube. Aside from Muppet stuff, Weird Al Yankovic has gotten a lot of attention, releasing his last album (and the first to be a #1 hit) and finally getting The Compleat Al on DVD, not to mention UHF on Blu-ray. And both The Wonder Years and Batman have finally made it to DVD (now if only Muppet Babies could get a release...).

And for the last several years I haven't been too interested in modern music (generally preferring '80s music and earlier), but 2014 has brought us a lot of great songs that I really like, and not just from Weird Al's last album. There's great songs like "Shake It Off", "Fancy", and "All About That Bass". And I've discovered Charli XCX, whose appearance, singing voice, and songs are great.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Some serious health challenges:
-open heart surgery
-losing sight in my right eye
-having to miss four months of work
-putting one of our cats to sleep

But some incredible highlights:
-meeting Caroll Spinney
-seeing my best friend for the first time in four years, and meeting up with her again next June
-new church, new music ministry in full swing

That's part of life, taking the good with the bad. If the highlights for 2015 are as good as '14, I can sweat the bad stuff.

 

[animalrescuer]

Another highlight of this year I forgot to mention is my cousin and her husband finally having a baby girl after trying for so long!

 

[WalterLinz]

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

Here's to a muppety (I hope) new year!!!

And cheers to new upcoming Muppet interstitials, a new Cookie Monster special, and SS's 46th season!!!

 

[D'Snowth]

Actually, I think I may have a for-realsies resolution for this year... I think I'm going to try to stay in the present.

By that, I mean, for years, I've always put too much emphasis on what I'll be doing in the future, whether it's months, or even years down the road, then whatever I try to work out for those future plans seem to almost always come crashing down as a result... really brings to mind the old saying, "If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him what your plans are."

So, I think this year, rather than worry about what the future holds, what I'll possibly be doing, or anything like that, I'll just stay in the now, and live life one day at a time.

 

[dwayne1115]

Actually, I think I may have a for-realsies resolution for this year... I think I'm going to try to stay in the present.

By that, I mean, for years, I've always put too much emphasis on what I'll be doing in the future, whether it's months, or even years down the road, then whatever I try to work out for those future plans seem to almost always come crashing down as a result... really brings to mind the old saying, "If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him what your plans are."

So, I think this year, rather than worry about what the future holds, what I'll possibly be doing, or anything like that, I'll just stay in the now, and live life one day at a time.

Oh man I have to always be thinking ahead and planning something exciting, for me to do in the coming months. If I did not do that then when I'm doing my day to day working, and blah I would go nuts.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the new year! I'm planning on going to Walt-Disney World for the first time ever, I'm planning on getting a new place to live latter this year, and maybe a new or better job.

Here is to a new year full of up's and downs, good and bad, and everything in between.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm going to be the guy that puts the not that positive spin on this, but I refuse to believe in the "New Year, new promises" crap. If you put goals on anything and you fail, it becomes a huge blight on the year. There were a few times when I actually thought that something was a sign (very stupid things, mind you) and then wound up having a crappy year because I was expecting things to work out that didn't.

 

[D'Snowth]

You know, everybody said that 2015 was going to be "the year of positive changes," but that totally has not been the case at all. 2015 was off to a decent start, I'll admit, but it seems like about halfway through it came crashing down and has done so ever since. I threw my back out twice this year, the first time resulted in my getting sciatica that I now have to be even more careful about so as not to trigger it again (and I already have tons of back problems anyway because of a birth defect); I lost my dream girl twice this year to two other guys, and I really, really thought this would be the year I could finally tell her how I've felt about her for so long - maybe I could have been a little more aggressive and assertive, even though that's not the kind of person I am and it's not in my nature; our old landlord had to sell the property and basically retire because of health issues - at least the new owners are nice enough and actually want us to stay (which is unlike most landlords), but it was a really iffy period for a while there; my hometown decided to permanently cancel a local holiday we've had for almost thirty years because it apparently doesn't generate enough revenue for the city compared to the millions that go into organizing the event every year; summer was held over for a week, so we lost a the first week of September (my favorite month) to unseasonably hot weather; the blowtorch weather pattern that caused us to lose nearly two-thirds of December to unseasonably spring-like weather, resulting in the worst Christmas ever. Not to mention all of the bad stuff that's been happening all around the world, such as Donald Dump running for president; all of these mass shootings across the country that a certain political party won't even let our president do anything about because they keep whining, "u can't take r gunz away! dat infringes on r constatooshunal rits 2 bear armz! obummer da wurst prez eva!" and of course ISIS is trying to kill everybody and they've already nearly wiped out France.

So yeah, 2015 was not a year of positive changes like was predicted. I don't know what 2016 holds in store, but I hope it's an improvement over what 2015 was like . . . so to 2015, I say good riddance.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Is it the new year where you guys are yet? It's still 11:17 where I live.

 

[D'Snowth]

Yep. 22 minutes in.

You know what I miss about New Years? Back when TV Land used to be good, they'd do this thing where on New Year's Eve they would show the final episodes of all their shows, then on New Year's Day they would show the pilot episodes of their shows. I ought to just do it myself, since I have a lot of these old shows on DVD anyway.