Smart Art (Ringing In the New Year Edition)

 

New Year's Eve couldn't come sooner! After all, it's been 365 days of rising prices, heightened international tensions, increasing inequality, burgeoning racism, growing sexism, skyrocketing attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism in the ascendency. Any downward trends? Yeah, myself, because all of it has left me down in the dumps. Funny how that works. Not that I've entirely given up hope. I mean, 2026 just gotta be better! There's no place to go but up (assuming prices, international tensions, inequality, racism, sexism, attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism all go down.) So what's the best way to celebrate the deep-sixing of 2025 and the welcome arrival (and hopeful course correction) of 2026? To best answer that question I went to a seance and asked the medium to contact birthday boy Henri Matisse (above), who suggested that at the stroke of midnight, we all start...

...dancing!

Happy New Year

from Shadow of a Doubt

Quips and Quotations (Present Tense Edition)

 

Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.

Duck! Here comes another year!

--Ogden Nash 

Vital Viewing (Gregorian Calender Edition)

                                                       You are cordially invited to attend

 THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY!!!

Free Food!

Free Drinks!!

Free Lavatory!!!

 State of the art design, too!

Live Entertainment! 

 

 

(Don't worry. They take requests.)

There will be a dance floor! 

 (Management will not be to blame if your date leaves without you.)

If your birthday falls on December 31, you get in at half-price!

(Um...I already said the whole shebang is free, didn't I? Let me rephrase that...)

If your birthday falls on December 31, you get to leave and come back again!

Dress code strictly enforced!

 
"I don't see anything hanging out, do you? Let 'em in!"

Proper ID required!

"OK, let me see your driver's licenses...hmm...only one of them looks legit, so..."

"...you can stay, but the other one will have to leave."

If at the end of the night you are too inebriated to drive, management will arrange a ride home for you.

(That's the best I can do. Uber is all booked up tonight, and the taxicab companies have all gone under.)

                                                                   R.S.V.P.

Huh? You mean you're already here? In that case, let the festivities begin...

 

(Yeah, I know it's past their bedtime, but I promised them they could stay up late.)

Well, that was fun, wasn't it? But the party's winding down now...

Myself, Judy, Mel, Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Darla, Miss Crabtree, Cyndi, Mariah, Julie, Gaga, The Honorable Mr. Mayor, Dick, Johnny, Rosey, Ray, Maureen, another Johnny, Donna, George, Henri, Julia, Fred, Rita, Gene, Cyd, Marilyn, Truman, Joan, Harry, Christopher, Michael, Guy, and a dozen or so people whose names I didn't get would like to wish you all...

                                                          A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
  
OK, now hurry up and get out of here, because...

...the landlady is liable to show up at any moment.