Several thoughts on New Year’s Eve:

1. I think New Year’s resolutions are dumb. If you’re going to resolve to do something, you shouldn’t have to wait for a particular day to do it. Either do it, or don’t. And if you don’t want to do it, then really don’t. Breaking an oath to yourself seems as misdirected as belief in astrology.  (And whining about it later just compounds the impression.)
2. Taking stock, though, is a good thing. Milestones are good for marking time. Here are three of mine:  in 2012, it’ll be 20 years since I started my theatre company; 25 years since my wife and I got married; and 50 years since I was born. I’ll be taking stock all year long.
3. Since having children, I’ve spent most of my New Year’s Eves writing. That’s because my wife usually has to work the holiday, so we don’t have a party, and I stay home with sleeping children. Two years ago I took my youngest and my friend to an event hosted by the Burbank parks department that ended with about 40 of us scaling a mountain in the dark at midnight to toast the new year. That was pretty good. Last year, I said I was going to do nothing, then I had a friend say that he had nothing to do, then another friend, then a friend who was getting off work at 10 p.m. or so, and then I wound up with a small impromptu party of people watching intentionally bad movies I’d recorded. (Case in point:  “Slither.”) Basically, the event turned into an evening of some friends and I, and my 8-year-old, sitting around poking fun at not-good movies and having drinks. (Martinellis for the kid.) This year, I’m back to the writing mode.
4. A friend from my college days reminds me how we used to celebrate New Year’s Eve, before the mundanities of adulthood and responsibility. This sounds all too typical: “Do you recall the NYE party at the home of someone for whom Duane  was house sitting ? You and Jack  amused yourselves by filling a frisbee collection that hung on the wall with flour. When that task was completed you called dial-a-joke for a very long time, handing the phone to everyone who walked past you…Of course I was a stellar party guest myself…Paul  brought me to the party. I went to say goodbye to the rest of the guests, leaving Paul standing at the door holding my coat for no less than an hour, having another drink…and saying goodbye as though I wasn’t going to see any of you ever again..When surely I was going to see you then next day or the day after! I also recall that Duane was apoplectic!” Yesterday I was complaining that someone in my house keeps leaving the door to outside open, and therefore the $65 increase in my heating bill. Now I’m confronted with this vision of myself, 27 years ago, running up some innocent people’s phone bill and placing “clever” traps around their house.
5. Peel back the surface, and New Year’s Eve is a ludicrous holiday. What precisely is the message? Do we celebrate because we survived the year; is that it? Or are we making the statement every year that we’re just glad it’s over? Or is it just another excuse for a party? I honestly don’t know what it’s about. Please explain it to me.

I’ve been playing “Skyrim” since the early hours of 11/11/11, when it came out. Yes, the night before, just shy of midnight, there I was, standing outside the videogame store inside the otherwise shuttered Burbank Town Center mall, eagerly awaiting the game’s release so that I could run home and play it until early morning. I had scheduled the entire next day free and clear and had warned my kids:  “Get all your enjoyment out of the xBox now, because come 11/11/11, you won’t be getting near it for months.” Given their experience of me with the game’s predecessor, “Oblivion,” no one thought I was kidding. At the mall, awaiting the game’s release were late-40’s me and four dozen pimple-faced boys in black clothes. While waiting, I won a used “Batman: Arkham City” poster in a free drawing. I did momentarily light up when I saw a man who by appearances was older than me — his hair was white — but then I realized he was there because he was his son’s chauffeur for the evening. So, really, it was just me among the gamers who could have stopped on the way home and bought whiskey if he wanted.

I took the game home and started playing it and have been playing it ever since. I’m happy to report that I’m now a Level 31 Imperial with a solid mix of fighting and spellcasting abilities, and I no longer die every three minutes or scream for my 9-year-old to come grab the controller and save me.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with my friend Victor. Victor is roughly the same age and mindset as me. Over lunch, we discussed various books, the joys of comic books, a little current events, how our kids were doing in school, and our love for games and gaming. I got perhaps a little too whipped up discoursing about “Skyrim,” but he did seem interested — honest! — and said it was on his Christmas list. I told him that if he did get it, not to worry, that while the adventurer’s path begins shakily, eventually he would become stronger and more able, and not to worry about dragons in particular because with a little practice they’re actually quite easy to kill and to bask in the triumph of sucking their souls into yourself. You know how sometimes when you’re in public other people will overhear and join in with a comment or a question? In this case, no one did.

Yesterday, I emailed Victor to see if he had indeed gotten his Christmas wish. Here’s what he said, and this is what makes me feel again how under-appreciated and exploited some of us men may feel this holiday season:

“I did get Skyrim and can say definitively, my kids really enjoy it.  They watched me play for an hour and then in the days since Christmas have logged in countless hours playing and I have played for about 3.  I have not played long enough to decide if I really like it or not. I’m still more caught up in  learning the interface than enjoying the story.  I am looking forward to a few hours of playtime over the long weekend.

I have not yet read that Julian Barnes book–that was co-opted by my wife who is reading it slowly.

Have a Happy New Year.

I should add that as my kids sat fuming and watching me play “Skyrim,” I thought their combustion would rise to the level of explosion. Finally, I started cycling in play times for them, too, on the xBox:  45 minutes each, as scheduled on the kitchen timer, and then it was back to me. This may have made it worse — “I just need five more minutes to finish this quest!” — but it seemed a good primer for life, where hopes are often forestalled, and time is of the essence. It’s also a good lesson in power:  money usually triumphs, and I paid for the game and the electricity that runs it. In this way, I’m encouraging them to do well in school and in life, so that some day they can shut out their own kids at a whim.

Finally, in the early hours of yesterday, I caught the nasty illness everyone had been passing around my house. After many many hours of vomiting and diarrhea and chills, the sort of sessions that definitively prove your faith in God because you find yourself bargaining with Him, I fell in to a previously unheard-of 11-hour sleep.

I woke up this morning feeling wonderfully refreshed:  It was all behind me. I went downstairs to fix myself some breakfast. My mother-in-law asked how I was feeling, and I said, “I feel great!”

Then I leaned over to pull on my boots and threw out my back.

Imagine me sitting in one of the seats in this video, watching this show. Then you can imagine why I don’t do it any more.

And re this imaginary theatre’s bathroom, I’m betting that everyone in Hollywood instantly thought of a place we love… that we don’t want to go any more because it’s so difficult to, well, “go.”

Successful people usually have their own way of working. Here are 10 Management Secrets of Kim Jong Il.

In his autobiography, Joe Simon says that as a boy he got to meet a Civil War veteran and got to “shake the hand of a man who shook hands with Lincoln.” This was part of his inspiration for creating Captain America — the idea of meeting an icon. I completely love this little bit of American history: from Lincoln, to frail old veteran, to schoolboy, to the enduring American icon Captain America.

Just a week after Jerry Robinson’s death, Captain America co-creator Joe Simon has left us for that four-color splash page in the sky. Here’s an interview with him from last summer, courtesy of the Washington Post. I’m glad he got to see the Captain America movie — where, after the bad previous filmic attempts, producers actually got the character right — and I’m glad I got to meet him once, and got his autograph on my hardback reprint of the first Captain America comics from the 1940’s.

Here’s what I saw when opening a drawer in our kitchen.

Note the title of the book.

To be fair, it could also be the electronic ignition.

What did the Los Angeles Film Critics Association name the Best Picture of the year? You guessed right:  “The Descendants.” (Had there been no other movies released this year, I still wouldn’t have voted for it.)

By the way, the association also placed a lot of praise on  “Tree of Life.” Those friends I trust didn’t like that one either.

I just checked — and three of the association’s member critics are friends, and two more are former students of mine.