My three kids muscled me off the Xbox for an hour so they could play Call of Duty Modern Warfare before bedtime. You know, that end-of-night time when you want to wind down before bed.

Earlier in the day, we had come across some video games in the garage that had been lent to my older son six or eight years ago. Now, of course, whatever platform they were for (Sega Genesis? Nintendo?) is long defunct. But finding them did give my eldest the opportunity to remind me again that this long-lost neighborhood pal was sent away to military school after he got a girl pregnant.

So just now, while watching urban warfare from the individual on-screen perspectives of my three children, I brought this back up. The on-screen military action as played out by my children brought back the image of childhood military school.

Me: “So, how old was he when he got sent to military school? 15 or 16?”

Lex (aged 18): “Something like that.”

Dietrich (aged 7): “What did he get sent there for?”

Me: “He got some girl pregnant.”

Dietrich: “Oh. How did he do that?”

Me: “The old-fashioned way.”

Dietrich: “Oh. What’s that?”

Emma (aged 11, and notably somewhat prudish): “Dietrich! Can you just drop it? You’ll find out soon enough!”

Dietrich: “I just don’t know what the old-fashioned way is!”

Emma: “And let’s keep it like that!”

Given the previous neighborhood example: Indeed.

Like most people, I’m hoping that 2010 will bring a new outlook. Well, my New Year’s celebration last night did.

My wife had to work, and my older son was going to a party, and my daughter was going to a sleepover, so that meant finding something to do with my seven-year-old boy. I briefly considered our spending the night playing Oblivion on the xBox, taking turns in our assigned roles: My solving puzzles and fulfilling quests; his killing every monster and demon in sight because my somewhat older fingers are too slow to survive an altercation with an alarmed pantry cat. But then I figured that we were going to be doing a fair amount of that during the day, so instead I signed us up for a fun program run by the City of Burbank:  a midnight hike up the mountains ringing the city.

So, last night at 8, we and about 30 other people, including our friend Trey, gathered inside the Stough Nature Center. It was one of those events were almost no one knows anyone else; there was a family of four from Brooklyn, an older man and his adult son, a woman from Japan, someone from Georgia, a single mom and her little girl, a middle-aged woman with a leathery face and brilliantly dyed pink hair, and an oddly quiet blonde who kept her hood up all night even when we were inside. We played games and talked a lot and picked at the buffet and listened to music. And my son got to hold a snake and a tarantula. (Photos of which he proudly showed his squeamish sister the next day.)

At 11:30 we started the ascent up the mountain. The air was crisp and clean, with a brisk nighttime scent given off by the wild shrubs and grasses on the mountain. My wife and kids and I had hiked precisely this route five weeks earlier, on Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a wide and gently sloping path, more of a mountain walk than a hike (and certainly not a climb). About 20 minutes later, we came to a large flat rise that overlooks this entire end of the valley, where we could see countless lights from Pasadena in the east, past Glendale and Burbank with downtown Los Angeles south in the distance, and off to the west. This view was impressive during the day; at night it was spectacular.

And then, at midnight, we all made apple cider toasts and stood back and watched the fireworks. From our vantage point, we could see no fewer than six different fireworks displays simultaneously. There was one in Pasadena. There was one in Burbank. City of Los Angeles somehow found the money to do one. We saw one beyond that that someone estimated as originating by the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, 40 miles south of us. That’s what this view is like.

Then we all posed for a group shot with the lights in the distance and made our way back down the mountain.  I said goodbye to Mike, and gave the single mom a farewell hug, and shouted farewells to others, and my son said goodbye to his best friend for the evening, 29-year-old David who patrols the coast for a living and had a video of himself out in the water with dolphins and who has a way with people and animals.

In February of 2009, I made a personal pledge to do what I could to spread as little grief as possible in the world. Everyone was already so on edge about the economy, with day-to-day wonderings whether or not we were sliding into the second Great Depression, that I figured I’d do my best to let things slide, or be helpful in small ways. Last night’s easygoing, relaxed, and altogether different New Year’s Eve with strangers on a mountaintop at midnight may not prove as memorable as my best Thanksgiving ever, but it was a good way to cap off the year.

I’m off to a party and midnight mountain hike sponsored by my city, my youngest and our friend in tow.

Before  heading off to do that, I thought I’d make a final statement about 2009. Here it is:

We should count ourselves lucky.

Really.

Just about everyone reading this right now (about 15,000 people) is far better off than almost everyone else on the planet.

In many ways, it’s been a miserable year.  But it could’ve been worse, and I think it’s getting better.

See you next year.

Tonight my 18-year-old was telling a friend over xBox live that he has a date Saturday night.

My other son, aged seven, was listening in.

“You have a date?”

“Yeah.”

“You have a date Saturday night with a girl?”

“Yeah.”

Seven-year-old:  “Seems icky.”

Eighteen-year-old:  “Wait a few years.”

My son got a job today.

No, he hasn’t graduated college (yet). He’s only a freshman. He got a job for this semester break while he’s home from college.

This continues a fine family tradition:  that you should always be working, and if not two jobs of some sort, then one extra-long, extra-hard one.

My father owned his own business, which of course left him plenty of time to… start another business.

My brother-in-law works full-time for the township. While, of course, running his own business.

My brother owned one business, hired me when I was a teenager to help him start another one, and ran both for a while. (Eventually, he sold that first one.)

What did my two nieces do when they came home from college on winter break? Get jobs. Then go back to college.

In one form or another, I’ve run a business since I was 11. My first business was selling comic-books through the mail. At the same time, I was sending things off to magazines to get printed. (Well, actually, to get rejected.) Eventually, I got better at both; at least, I like to think so. Now I run my company, I write and direct, and I teach. How many jobs is that? Or, given the advent of technology that makes work ever available, perhaps we should consider that we’re at a stage where we should stop thinking in terms of “jobs” and start thinking about effort — and which efforts pay, and which don’t. (It’s worth noting that efficiency expert David Allen doesn’t distinguish between things that are “work” or “fun” — each is still a time commitment that must be checked off.)

So now my son, who will be here only through mid-January before heading back to college, has gotten a job canvassing for a group that fundraises for AIDS Project LA. Although it’s not his first job, it was his first job interview, and he nailed it. He should be proud; I know I am. His first job was with my company, Counterintuity, where he worked for a year. No, it wasn’t pure nepotism; first, he volunteered here at our client open house, then when he said he’d like to work here, I made him go see my partner and apply. She decided to hire him, and I don’t think she regretted it later. (Or I would have been sure to tell him.) So I guess that’s two job interviews of sorts that he nailed. Good for him, because there will be more in his future. And probably a business or two as well.

I wish I could see this production in New York, which promises much sweet sorrow:  a production of “Romeo and Juliet” — cobbled together from people’s (false) recollections of how the play goes.

If it’s true that “War is Over (If You Want It),” then surely “Recession is Over (If You Want It),” because wars are hard to end. Either that, or John and Yoko were wrong, and we have to get that song off the radio because it is seriously misleading people — just like all the love songs do.

I’ve written here often about my friend Trey Nichols, a man of talent and taste whose plays excite me and whose insights amuse me.

Recently Trey, who is also an actor and whom I’ve had the great pleasure of directing, did a short film. (He also did an Irish accent, which took me back to the time we did a play about someone talking someone else into blowing himself up.) This runs about 10 minutes. Here it is.

Generally, my Christmas wish list consists of two things:  books and music. This year was no different, and left me with an unforeseen bonanza.

When the presents were unwrapped yesterday, I was left holding three books from my list — The Humbling by Philip Roth, Under the Dome by Stephen King, and Invisible by Paul Auster — as well as a biography of Teddy Roosevelt as our naturalist president (courtesy of my daughter), and the sensational book of this fun little London art project (courtesy of a friend who eerily completely understands my tastes). (The new biography of Churchill was also on my list but didn’t arrive under the tree.)

I also put one music CD on my list, Some Girls by the Rolling Stones.  I’m not a fan of those rolling fellows, but I did remember liking that album, which I had in its original lawsuit version 30 years ago. Because my new car links with my iPhone, allowing the stereo to play whatever music I’ve imported, I’ve been thinking about music I’d like to hear in the car, and recently I thought of this album, which I never bought on CD. So I put it on my list.

The surprise, though, was this:  My friend Trey, who joined us for Christmas, remembered that he had something in the trunk of his car that he wanted to show me. No, it wasn’t Jimmy Hoffa — it was about 300 CDs from his sister, who had successfully  completed importing all her CDs onto iPods or somesuch and was no itching to unload the clutter of cases. She’d given them all to Trey, and he was offering to share them with me:  Have some, burn some into my computers, whatever. So Trey and my son Lex and I spent an hour or two going through CD cases while I cooked Christmas dinner. (Turkey and all the trimmings, so there was plenty of time.)

In the boxes, I found:

• numerous Chemical Brothers CDs
• three Nine Inch Nails CDs
• the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• lots of house and trance music
• Stereolab
• some Brian Eno-produced CDs
• Tool
• Coverdale Page
• Moby
• Radiohead

and lots of other things that interest me. Soon I had towering stacks of CDs that I wanted to put on my laptop for possible transfer to my iPhone. But of course, here’s what happened: Where just an hour before I’d had one new CD, Some Girls, to import and enjoy, now I had, potentially hundreds. One new CD was special, a few would have been novel, but 300 were overwhelming. Worse, they robbed each other of their distinctiveness. By the time I had imported just a few of the CDs, I was looking through to see what to cut:  Suddenly, these R.E.M.disks didn’t look like their finest worksongs, the idea of importing three Nine Inch Nails CDs really made me hurt, and I almost said nevermind to a Nirvana disk I somehow didn’t have. After importing 15 or 20 disks, I looked at what was left and decided I’d pick five — and no more — put them on my laptop, and from there, put what of those I wanted onto my iPhone, and then return to the real world. Because if I didn’t winnow all these down to something manageable, this would wind up becoming another project, and that’s something I don’t need any more of.

So, a couple of hours later, I packed all the CDs back away and was finished with the ordeal of too much new music and was just about to shut down my laptop when I saw one last CD — the one I’d asked for for Christmas. Brand new and almost forgotten. So I imported one more CD, and thought it sounded pretty good.

A few days ago I turned over the keys to my beloved red 2007 Ford Mustang. Its time had come:  The lease was up. In its place in front of my house now sits a blue BMW 135i convertible. Yes, I was tempted to get another Mustang convertible, which would have been my fourth, and was even considering getting a third red one in a row, and debated whether doing so would signal a complete lack of originality, or a complete command of originality, because after all, who would get the same model car in the same color, three cars in a row? But I snapped back to reality when I realized that none of that mattered, that what mattered were things like features and price.

I was fine with the features on the old car. The features on the new car are comprehensive and frequently inexplicable. Because the car is linked via Bluetooth with my iPhone, if someone calls my cellphone while I’m driving, the sound system immediately switches over to the sound of a ringing phone, which I can answer (or not) from my steering wheel. That’s easy enough. But until someone who works for me figured out the correct way to place an outgoing call, every call I tried to make meant first calling home and hanging up. Given that my wife sleeps during the day, this can’t have been amusing. The first time I refilled the car with gas, I couldn’t figure out how to open the gas tank door. There are also three soft rubberized buttons that line the bottom of the rearview mirror, and I have no idea what these do. I’ve pressed them numerous times with no discernible effect, but for all I know, I’m activating landmines in Bavaria. In an effort to resolve these and other riddles, I was recently reduced to reading  owner’s manual; even writing here that I read the owner’s manual seems a shameful admission, but I did. And I still can’t figure out half the features.

If it seems I’m complaining about the car, I’m not. I actually love the car. I love the 459 electric seat adjustments, and I am confident that by the end of this lease, I will have that seat perfectly adjusted. (I make a little progress every day.) No, what I’m complaining about is yet another indication of my own future shock; first I couldn’t figure out advancements in video games (I think it was “Donky Kong Country” that left me behind), then I couldn’t make a web page (this site in its current design is testament to that), and now I can’t properly drive my car. Prepare the wheelchair, tartan blanket, and grassy hillside behind the rest home.

The only feature I actually don’t care for is the one that has me thinking there’s a bit of overkill going on in automobile advancement. The first few times I took the car out, whenever I was backing up it seemed there was something happening in my peripheral vision. I’d start to back up, then jerk to a stop because something was moving over there on the right and I didn’t want to hit it. By the third time, I realized what it was:  the passenger side mirror. The car does many things for itself, not least of which is decode the approximate amount of ambient light and conclude whether or not it should put its own headlights on. Never mind that I’ve been putting the headlights on — or not — for myself for three decades with no problem.  It seems it does a similar thing for the passenger side mirror when engaged in reverse:  It swivels that mirror down to give you a “better” look at what might be there for when you’re backing up. Only problem:  My human brain, being engineered to react to movement, sees the movement and instructs my brain to stamp down on the brake. How I ever reversed the previous thirty years without this technological advance I don’t know, but I do wonder if there’s some way to disable it. (Which will necessitate another look at that Tolstoyan owner’s manual.)

I should also add that the car has sonar.

That it has some sort of James Bond tires that you can continue to drive on after a puncture, and that that mitigates the need for a spare.

That you can program the seats to automatically readjust to different people’s preferred settings via their electronic keys.

And that the front seats have leg extenders, or a shortened version of the footrest that comes up on a La-Z-Boy.

This is the sporty BMW convertible that still has a back seat (which I need so that I can occasionally transport children — mine). This isn’t the top of the line “touring sedan” 7-series BMW. I wonder if that model has a jacuzzi, a raw bar, and photon torpedoes.