Happy New Year. This is either my first column of 2001 or my last column of 2000. The same dorks
who are debating if the Millenium actually starts this year or started last year can have a little fun
with this new puzzle.
This edition of A Dog’s Lunch is a little late because I actually worked on New Year’s Eve. New Year’s
Eve, big money night for comics, and I’m usually home with Dick Clark wondering how his performers
are able to fake such enthusiasm. Sour grapes. Last New Year’s Eve, the first New Year’s eve of the
millenium—and now you know where I come down on this important issue—I actually worked on my
taxes. Talk about a dork. Just a little head start on my Schedule C itemizing.
This was an odd New Year’s Eve for another reason. Not only did I have a good gig; I slept with a hot
woman who looks remarkably like a friend’s wife. Now I know I have an Oedipal Complex, but I don’t
know what you call this? She wasn’t even my look. I’m big on the curvy Mediterranean types but this girl
was an Indiana Hoosier through and through. I’m starting off the New Year with a new ability to
compromise. It wasn’t one of my resolutions, but I like the results so far. The butterfly tattoo didn’t hurt
either.
New Year’s Eve makes me think. Not just that it’s another year passed without my becoming the toast of
the Cannes Film Festival or even the dubious Male Comedian Of The Year. I think my spinal surgery
gives me a flyer on my mediocre year 2000. I guess the thoughts are more important, with an eye toward
gain and loss, or last year, with an eye toward profit and loss. It’s odd though. New Year’s Eve also makes
me think about other times when I’ve thought. Why do I make thinking sound like a memorable event?
Every New Year’s, I think of the time when I wrote a poem when I was at the University of Delaware.
Thank g-d nobody saw it. Ah the dangers of being 19 and having a broken heart and a good vocabulary.
Another time, I once started to write a poem called, get this, THERE’S SOMETHING IN MY EYE, MY
DARLING, AND I THINK IT’S YOU. Please. Would that my fingers break if I ever sit down again to
write something so cheesy. You can’t write dick jokes 364 days a year and try to be Robert Frost on the
other day.
I’m into the arts and I’m pro-gay, so a couple of months ago I did go to a poetry slam in the Village. I was
curious about the poetry and I figured there’d be a lot of downtown, dark haired women there. Nope, just
me, a buddy who also wanted to meet women, and fifty poetry lovers who hated our shorthaired guts. On
the plus side, we were the only ones spending money at the bar. You can disagree, but I firmly believe
that beer is much healthier for you than coffee.
I never knew I was such a tough critic of poetry. I got asked to judge the Slam, and I didn’t mind doing it
when I thought it was going to be blind judging. Instead, I had to write down my score and hold it up to
the scorn of the judgmentally non-judgmental crowd.
If you have to piss off a group of people, poets are a good group. What’s the worst they’re going to do?
Come up with a mean rhyme about you. “Dave is a comedian whose material belongs in a bucket. He
couldn’t write a poem that didn’t end with Nantucket.” I finally broke down and gave someone a seven
and heard somebody murmur, “that’s a pretty good score for Dave.”
If she only knew. At least THERE’S SOMETHING IN MY EYE, MY DARLING, AND I THINK IT’S
YOU is known only to me, and it’s safely locked away for another year.