Noisemakers – check.

Goofy-looking sunglasses shaped like 2011 – check.

Ready to take on a fresh set of challenges in the new year after having successfully completed all of your resolutions for 2010 – uh oh…

Did you even work on any of them at all???

Ok – don’t panic … this is still possible.  If there’s one thing that last week’s column about putting off your Christmas shopping until the absolute last possible minute taught us, aside from the fact that Mickey Mouse is awesome, of course, is that there’s always hope as long as there’s still time left on the clock and being that today is New Year’s Eve, there’s certainly no shortage of clocks as we prepare to countdown the last remaining moments of 2010 and make way for an even more spectacular 2011!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here – you’ve got a lot to do if you’re going to knock out an entire year’s worth of New Year’s resolutions in a single day!  Fortunately your friendly, neighborhood humor columnist has come to the rescue, though, and I’ve done my part by putting together a little list of some of the most common resolutions, along with my own surefire method for completing each one as quickly as humanly possible.  Now don’t get me wrong – there are a couple of them where you might find yourself having to compromise a little for the sake of being super-ultra-lazy here in the 11^th hour, but let’s face it, at this point even phoning a few of your resolutions in is still better than just completely ignoring them altogether…

Besides, when that shiny ball drops at the stroke of twelve and you can actually say that you did something with your life in the year 2010, you’ll thank me!  So without further ado for the sake of time – I present to you, the list…

Lose Some Weight
Diet and exercise didn’t work because, well, you actually need to do them in order to see the best results, but lucky for you there’s still another way – 24-Hour Liposuction! If you leave now, they can probably still get you in and out in time to catch the festivities … just remember to bring cash because, well, let’s just say that the 24-hour liposuction industry is one that runs on cash…

Quit Smoking
This one’s easy – smoking is gross, so knock it off already! Seriously, just round up all of the packs of those cancer death sticks that you’ve got stashed around the house, pitch ‘em in the trash, and then go ring in the new year with enough alcohol to sedate a small racing horse like all of us healthy people do…

Spend Less Money
Another simple one – when you go to do the one above, just be a girl so that somebody else will buy all of your drinks for you.  Easy-peasy!

Meet the Love of Your Life
Unless the love of your life happens to be a bartender or a “doctor” who performs 24-hour liposuctions, this might be one where you’ll want to consider lowering your standards just a bit.  How about instead meeting The Like of Your Life or maybe The Love of Your Night??? Let’s be honest – you were really just looking to get laid a little more often when you set this one last year anyways…

Get a Better Job
Really, I think everyone knows that you can’t find a better job until you’ve managed to escape all of the stress and chaos from your current job, so why put it off another day?!  A simple call from the bar with a hundred of your drunkest best friends to back you up should do the trick, and just think about how much more free time you’ll have to hunt for that dream job once you’ve had a chance to sober up tomorrow morning!

Generally Just Be a Better Person
Well, you’re reading this column, so needless to say you’ve already got an impeccable sense of humor going for you, and you’ve no doubt bought the book to match, so style and class shouldn’t be a problem, either.  I don’t know – maybe help an old cougar cross the street on the way to the club tonight, hold a few doors for the ladies, tip higher than you normally do, and that should be good enough, shouldn’t it?  I mean, “better” is a relative term, you know…

May 2011 bring you new rewards, redemptions, and if you’ve learned anything at all from today’s little whirlwind of a rat race, some new resolutions that will be just a tad bit easier to actually meet next year!

Happy New Year!!!

Go ahead and groan all you want – you knew that we were eventually going to have to do this sooner or later.  I mean, we’re almost all the way through January in its entirety, and I would be remiss as your life counselor and personal purveyor of comedic wordplay if I didn’t at least take a few moments to touch on New Years resolutions sometime this month while the year is still relatively young and the bad habits are still somewhat inebriated from the festivities and thus all the more easier to break.

Now the truth is, I’ll admit, that I don’t like resolutions any more than you do, to the extent that I was originally going to rub it in that I gave you almost an entire month before even bringing them up, when the truth is that hell, I haven’t even written my own resolutions yet! Talk about a horrible way to lead by example, I know, but blame it on the frigid weather, getting sick, a lousy economy, political quarreling, and a bevy of above average movies currently playing on HBO, not to mention trying to recover mentally, physically, and emotionally from the holidays and, well, now we’re just making excuses for ourselves, aren’t we?

Or are we???

Here’s some food for thought – frankly, I think that January is a lousy time to try and make any worthwhile changes to your life because there are just too many distractions – you’re just coming off of an extended holiday break, meaning that society is actually starting to expect you to actually do things once again; the holidays may be over, but the cookies and candies and other random, miscellaneous treats still linger around the house to serve as small, dietary cheats for weeks to come; and even just the mood in general is all apprehensive and judgmental, as if the entire world is just watching and waiting for you to fall off the wagon, either proverbially or literally, depending on your specific New Years resolution(s) of choice…

That’s why I’m personally not all that concerned about not yet having my own resolutions written – if anything, I would say that now is, in fact, the perfect time to finally sit down and scribble a few noteworthy self improvements down to try to strive for over the next eleven months.  At the same time that most people are being declared absolute failures with regards to the goals that they set only moments before clinking martini glasses or heading out to spend roughly seventeen hours corralled in Times Square for the ceremonial dropping of the shiny ball, we technically haven’t failed at anything yet … unless you count the act of actually choosing one’s resolutions in the first place, which we’re not going to!  While all of our friends and family are throwing in the towel and dropping out of the race, thus effectively returning to the previous lives that they wanted so desperately to get away from – that’s when the rest of us will finally stand up and give this challenge a healthy go!

And we’re going to get through this thing together, now that we’ve actually taken the initiative to start, that is, because if there’s one thing that humor columnists like me are good at, it’s getting things done … eventually. We may not always be the first to cross the finish line.  Hell, sometimes we don’t even show up the same day that the race is scheduled to begin!  But when push comes to shove and when most others have either failed miserably, dropped out, or simply lost interest altogether – that’s our time to shine, my friends!

So with those inspiring words energizing your desire to be the better person that you were kinda thinking about, but not really enough to actually make any plans for improvement a month ago, I want you to now put that pen to paper, write out exactly what you want to do in this new and exciting year that we’ve dubbed 2010, and then get your butt out there and start working on it!  Don’t worry – I’ll be right here with you every step of the way … well, actually I need to go and grab something from the other room first, and then I was actually thinking about getting a bite to eat and maybe running some errands, but you just go on ahead and get started and I’ll catch up just as soon as I can…

This is going to be a great year for resolutions – I can feel it already!

Ahhh, screw it – I’ll just do a few extra sit-ups tomorrow!

If you’re anything like me, you were one of the geniuses who triumphantly decided to take a stand this New Years and put taking better care of oneself on your list of resolutions, right between “Get really, really good at foosball” and “Figure out where that stench in the garage is coming from.”

Then again, if you’re exactly like me, you’re probably also finding yourself getting exceedingly frustrated by the lack of progress that you’ve been seeing as a result of said dietary and cardiovascular tortures, from the crunches and incessant jogging to the unyielding self-restraint in the delicious face of everyone else’s Chinese takeout lunches and overflowing hot fudge sundae desserts. All that hard work and dedication, and still we’re here just a trudging along with the figure of an inner-tube at best? I mean, seriously – what’s a guy gotta do to lose a few stupid pounds around here, anyways?!

Yes, that is the age-old question, far more important to our ever-bloating society than why the chicken crossed the road (to avoid getting eaten by fat Americans) or why hotdogs are sold in packages of ten while hotdog buns are sold in packages of eight (to remind us that we’re going to need extra to make up for that damn chicken getting away). Sure, it’s easy to put on a couple of dozen pounds by binging on cheeseburgers and pizza and hot wings and every other fast food staple that this overindulgent country was founded on – heck, your average over-eater doesn’t even need the holidays to round out that girlish figure, but then come swimsuit time, heaven forbid those pounds melt right back off like the butter did over tub after tub of movie theater popcorn in the several months prior. It’s like somebody stacked the deck in the tentmaker’s favor, I tell ya!

I guess if there’s but one thing that we can take from said savory sufferings in the name of seeing slimmer sizes, it’s the idea that while we may not necessarily be dropping massive amounts of actual weight while we’re sweating to the oldies and then subsequently forcing ourselves to eat food that really only appeals to people from that very same era, then maybe at least we can learn some valuable information about what sorts of things we can’t do to lose weight. I know that I sure have over the last eleven weeks, and call it trial and error … even if it does happen to be a bit heavy in the error category, but if merely one positive thing has come from this diet aside from all of the frequent flier points I’ve earned on my credit card for buying all of this so called “diet food,” at least I can now officially vouch that, among other things, the following do not help yours truly lose weight:

• having potato chips around the house
• living within a drivable vicinity of any establishment that makes, sells, or even rents potato chips
• writing the words potato chips over and over again in a column until my mouth is literally watering to the point of toweling requirements
• eating chocolate cake for breakfast…
• …and for lunch…
• …despite following it up with a reasonable dinner
• making what may seem to be justifiable excuses at the time to skip a day of exercise
• skipping a whole week’s worth of exercise with the intention of eating nothing but grass and working out 24 hours a day non-stop the following week to catch-up
• swearing off exercise in its entirety and vowing to remain fat forever after stubbing my big toe like the dickens on the corner of the elliptical, while also subsequently being a bad influence for children within shouting distance who don’t really need to be learning such 4-letter words at their age
• cashing in a 401k at what could be its lowest possible value to help gather the down payment for a shady, amateur liposuction treatment that seemed like a pretty good deal at the time on Craigslist
• sobbing uncontrollably for hours into the night at the sarcastic, offhand suggestion that it’s really better that I don’t lose weight because otherwise the planet might shift off balance and roll into the sun
• spending so much time putting together this stupid list instead of doing something a bit more physically demanding than typing and being hilarious on the Internet

So many pink and red stuffed animals, so much chocolate…

…and yet yours truly is having an awfully hard time scrounging up the desire to dive into that heart-shaped debocle this year. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve already got enough on my plate between shopping for replacement garbage can lids and straining to maintain unrealistic New Years resolutions and cleaning up drunken remnants from the Super Bowl off my front yard to also factor in a healthy dose of worry about taking a walk on the mushy side without also kissing my wallet a fond goodbye.

Now I’m sure that some hardcore Valentine’s Day zealots (read: women under the age of 175) will be up in arms with the fact that we’re not dedicating every fiber of our being towards making this February 14^th even more credit-score-impacting than last year, and maybe I’d have a little sympathy for y’all if us guys had our own holiday dedicated to showering us with affections of the grandest scale, although just for the record, this year’s apathy isn’t really about jealous towards this sexist day … regardless of how much we’d love a three-foot tall solid chocolate statue of Cupid, complete with real working bow and arrows and the largest glass of milk you can find…

Realistically, I think for me at least this year’s fault can more so be blamed on simply the overwhelming complexity of it all, between Valentine’s Day gifts having already dominated the shelves since roughly the day after Christmas and roughly a gajillion other stresses already bouncing around inside my head before even considering the romantic ramifications of this red-laced ritual. I mean, really, do I go with the singing alligator bearing a light-up box of chocolates or the 158-page heart-shaped diary to fill with poems of my most romantic desires or, dare I even suggest it, something that can’t be found within the confines of Wal-Mart’s seasonal Valentine’s aisles?!

…because I’m going to be honest with you – us guys don’t necessarily enjoy purchasing all of that novelty, heart-splattered, $7.99 bargain bin crap, but at the end of an already tumultuous week where we’d just as soon come home and pass out on the couch with Leno trailing off in the background, sometimes it’s just easier to phone it in with a cheap box of chocolates and a singing hippo than it would be to spend umpteen hours on the phone booking travel arrangements for an 8-night vacation in San Juan, complete with romantic walks on the beach and confrontationally seductive waiters named Rodriguez who are working for a bit more than just a 20% tip, if you know what I’m saying. And besides, not for nothing, but realistically speaking, not every year can warrant an 11-piece orchestra playing that song from your sweet sixteen party that you kissed your first boy to under a pale moon sky … sorry ladies, but sometimes it’s just a singing hippo kind of year…

…and frankly, with the economy the way it’s been, maybe you should just be happy that the hippo is even singing at all! For there are plenty of other assorted purple and red stuffed animals in that bin and not all of them are predisposed to belting out Let’s Get It On every time you squeeze their lovable, asbestos-filled little bellies. And I know that this probably sounds like a bit of a downer for you, especially considering that many of you have been eyeing the jewelry stores ever since Santa neglected to get you those diamond earrings that you wanted for Christmas (Hey, don’t look at me – I was just as shocked as you were when jolly, old St. Nick let you down that morning!), but remember this – every surprise that you don’t get on Valentine’s Day is just one more thing that we can woo you with come our anniversary or your birthday, and unlike Valentine’s Day, you don’t have to share either of those with anyone else!

Well, it’d be nice if you could maybe split the anniversary with us 60/40 or something this year, but we can continue that discussion at a later day closer to our actual anniversary date … whenever that might happen to be. In the meantime, though, enjoy your smooth-talking hippo as a humble symbol of my undying love. Just try to keep it down, though – it’s been a long week…

New year, same old crap on tv…

But really, what else are we going to watch?! If anything, reality TV has been the most successful ongoing experiment to test just how desperate we, the people, are for televised entertainment. Sure, we’ve also had Jerry “You Ain’t My Baby Daddy” Springer and Ron “Why use just an ordinary fork when you can use the Amazing Fork-o-Matic 5000?!” Popeil and even Monday Night “I’m not athletic enough to do it myself, but I can still drink beer and idolize other guys doing it on TV in a totally heterosexual manner…” Football, but in the end, nothing has pushed the boundaries of desperate viewers near and far quite like reality television…

Of course, I bring this up, not because I’ve already failed on too many of my New Years resolutions to mention, but more so because this week one of the first reality TV shows that I ever watched, The Real World, celebrated the premiere of its 21^st season. You know the one – where seven strangers are picked to live in a house to find out just how zany people get when they’re surrounded by hot members of the opposite sex who have nothing but free time because they don’t actually have to work and pay rent on said ridiculously lavish house that they’d otherwise never be invited into for the purposes of fixing the cable, much less spending the next six months of their lives? Good times.

Actually, I’m not sure if I should admit this, but growing up I honestly really enjoyed The Real World, as much as a prepubescent young boy can enjoy watching sexy twenty-somethings lounge around doing cool stuff like playing pool and hanging out in the Jacuzzi and gettin’ crazy just off camera, but close enough that we could guess what was going on. It was a show that had everything that I was looking for – hot, feisty chicks, buckets of controversy, and a timeslot right after Saved by the Bell – what more could a kid without a social life want?!

And sadly, as I eventually transcended into adulthood, things didn’t get much, at least with regards to my social life, and thus Survivor came onto the horizon, where we replaced the house with an island, the trendy clothes with bikinis and skirts made out of palm fronds, and even added the little bonus of a million bucks prize money to spice things up a bit and ensure that everyone would stay at each others’ throats over the next 39 days. I lost a good portion of my mid-twenties to Survivor, eventually jumping ship around season 187 (editor’s note: actually 10) when unbelievably, I found myself finally bored of watching women who haven’t showered in three weeks duke it out in their bikinis…

Of course, the whole eating rats thing didn’t help, either.

I think even those among us who find themselves even more engrossed in reality TV than me (i.e. you’ve never seen sunlight in the last 15 years) will sheepishly admit that our beloved reality television is definitely one of the guiltiest of pleasures of our time. Case in point – the one I’m watching right now takes a mansion full of women who’ve posed in Playboy (or at least will after their appearance on the show) and coerced them into all swooning over three eligible bachelors, all of whom would be more than happy to date a woman who’s showed her ha-has in Playboy, except for that one teensy, little detail that their Mom’s are also living in the house and are all too eager to share their opinions about who’s too hussy or fussy for their favorite sons. Hell hath no fury like a Mom who doesn’t want her son dating a porn slut…

What’s that, you’ve been watching Mama’s Boy (on NBC), too?!

Can you believe what happened the other week with Megan’s breakdown?! I know!!!

But the funny thing is that even though each of us no doubt have our own guilty pleasure reality favorites, we also are quite clear to maintain a list of other shows that we wouldn’t be caught dead watching, too. So whereas I used to enjoy me some Survivor and I’ll still watch The Apprentice, I couldn’t care less about Big Brother and will readily admit that The Amazing Race is simply way to amazingly boring for me. I’m sure you’re the same way, dreaming at night about being the next big contestant on American Idol or Dancing with Screech from Saved by the Bell: The College Years, but turn on a rerun of Fear Factor where they’re eating baby alligator eggs and then swimming with the mothers and the line is firmly drawn! And yet that’s the beauty of reality TV shows, in that they’re so cheap to put on the air, you can crank out eight or nine different hits about fire breathers and midgets and fire breathing midgets, and people who want to date fire breathing midgets, and if by some odd twist of fate nobody ends up watching it, you can still just keep on trucking next season with your groundbreaking new series about nine hermaphroditic sheep herders picked to live on a mountain to find out what happens when people stop being polite and the sheep start biting back.

Now that I’ve given the folks at FOX another three seasons worth of material, it’s time for me to bid you ado so that I can grab some popcorn before The Littlest Ninja comes on. You know the one, where they pick 127 highly-skilled ninjas and place them in a cafeteria filled with traffic cops and silly putty, then … well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but let me just tell you, when those ninjas get mad – wow! Parking tickets and silly putty everywhere! I’ll bet you that was a game of Twister that those traffic cops won’t soon forget…

With reality like this, who needs the real thing?!

Well, now that that’s over, let’s all just take a deep breath and try to move on!

I know that this particular holiday season was somewhat of a stressful one. It’s amazing how presents and food and decorations and family can all be welcome treats to your life one by one, and yet still somehow manage to cause copious amounts of stress when they’re all piled on top of each other like the ingredients of the new Quadruple-Decker Artery-Clogger from McRonalds. And don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas like a new pair of socks or a freshly baked batch of chocolate chip cookies, but still, after that much chaotic caroling, it’s also understandable for a bit of relief to be sighed when all is said and done…

So here we are, only a few days left in 2007, with 2008 right on our doorstep. Now is the time for life planning and resolution making and the generous knocking back of cocktails…at least on New Years Eve, anyways…for in only a few days we’re about to be given a fresh start. A new hand will be dealt, and it’s up to you whether to raise the stakes, go double down, or do some other poker term that I’m unaware of because I have better things to do than watch other people play poker on TV at three o’clock in the morning.

Nonetheless, 2008 is going to be a whole new ballgame and I think we’re going to see some pretty interesting happenings over the next twelve months. Just how interesting??? Well, funny you should ask…

Scott’s 2008 New Years Predictions…

• Santa Claus will find an extra bag of toys laying around that he mistakenly forgot to deliver earlier this week and head back out for another run in early January, thus fulfilling this child at heart’s Christmas List with the much-coveted Nintendo Wii.
• A mere three months into the new year, I will accomplish what no other man has by not only attaining all of my new years resolutions already, but also choosing new and even harder resolutions and meeting those goals as well. By March 31^st, I will be the wealthiest, most physically fit, hilarious guy on the planet, and I will owe it all to the magic of Oreo cookies.
• This upcoming $600 economic stimulus check from Uncle Sam will solve all of my financial problems.
• A potato chip or cookie company will woo me with their greatest culinary creations ever, then promptly break my heart into a thousand, million pieces six months later by pulling every last one of them from the shelves of my local grocer.
• Gasoline prices won’t really be much of a concern anymore because the big three automakers in Detroit will join forces to revolutionize American transportation with a complex system of monorails, hovercrafts, and teleportation units.
• Paramount will come to its senses and decide not to commit yet another tragedy of the silver screen by canceling the upcoming release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The rest of the film industry will learn from this bold gesture and begin hiring writers to create original scripts once again.
• My wedding planning will take a turn for the better when I’m informed that I’ll only need to work three extra jobs in order to pay it off before I die.
• FOX will churn out the most ridiculous reality show ever, this time involving Playboy playmates who challenge each other to rousing games of checkers, backgammon, and other nostalgic favorites. It will be FOX’s most successful reality show to date.
• The 2008 Summer Olympics will occur in Beijing. Other than costing me two weeks of TV time, I will not care.
• Google will dominate the election and become the first search engine to be elected President of the United States. YouTube will be its quirky, but lovable Vice President. Yahoo! will inquire about running Google Adsense on its site to try to raise a little beer and pizza money.
• In a last blunder of the season-like move, President Bush will pardon the annual turkey for Thanksgiving and then immediately deploy the bird to Iraq for Operation: Freedom Feast.
• After consuming unhealthy quantities of eggnog and gingerbread, yours truly will repurpose this idea next year in an effort to crank out an easy column so that I can get back to my annual Christmas holiday detox.

You don’t have to tell me that New Years resolutions are tough.

It seems like the perfect time for a change of pace to turn an otherwise flawed existence around, and after a handful of apple martinis, you might be surprised at some of the really good alterations one can come up with for a new life in a new year, but unfortunately once the hangover from those drinks wears off and you’ve finally managed to finish picking all of the confetti out of the carpet, the actual follow-through for said resolutions can be a whole ‘nother beast…

Which in judging by our current position on my brand-new 2007 wall calendar featuring none other than America’s favorite dysfunctional family, The Simpsons, it probably goes without saying that at least for a good majority of you, your resolutioning has just about come to a crushing halt. I mean, even if right out of the gate you took the extra step and made your first resolution Try Really Hard to Keep My Other Resolutions, chances are you’d still be crying for help a few weeks into January … but never fear, for when life proves once again that you’re an utter failure, that’s when I’m here to step in as your local resident humor columnist to help you through these toughest of times with my superior wit and inferior wisdom!

The way I see it, while your own personal failure is truly an embarrassment to the human race, by the same token if I don’t step in to try and help you back on your feet, I’m not much better to our greater cause. Now mind you, compared to you I’m still better – I mean, you’re the one who wasn’t able to keep your resolutions, not me – but all in the same, eventually after the gloating and showboating tapers off I do feel a bit of an obligation to come forth and do what I can to keep my fellow man chugging along towards goals of being more attractive by losing weight, being more attractive by not being in debt to every creditor on the planet, and even being more attractive simply for the sake of being more attractive! Hey, it’s the least that a non-failure like me can do…

So what I’ve done here is spelled out a few tips, if you will, to address your failures in each of the most prominent of New Years resolutions categories. Some of them are common sense, and no doubt all of them should be pretty easy, but nonetheless if this kind of gentle prodding is what it’s going to take to get you back off the couch and into that gym so you don’t find yourself sitting on the beach in a sweat suit here in a few months, then I’m more than happy to do my part. You can thank me later, when you’re thin and presentable…

Dieting & Weight Loss

• Despite the talking Pillsbury guy in your dreams, cookie dough is not your friend.Throw away the tube of it that you have stashed in your purse, and for the love of God stop stuffing your face with it while you finish reading this column!
• Exercise hurts so much because it’s God’s way of punishing you for getting so fat in the first place. Remember, they can only make those angel wings so big in heaven, so suck it up and give me another twenty laps, princess!
• A general rule to always keep in mind while dieting is that if you find yourself actually enjoying any given food, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.
• When the going gets tough, never underestimate the powers of starvation.

Debt Reduction

• Don’t pay for anything that you can get for free. Food, entertainment, sex – all of these things can be had without costing you a dime, as long as you’re willing to lower your standards accordingly. Remember, when you’re up to your neck in debt, you’re in no place to be choosy.
• Spending your hard-earned money on things might be deemed a waste when trying to pay down your debts, unless said things can be used to blackmail those whom you owe money into reducing or eliminating your debts entirely. In the case of incriminating photos, video, and audio recordings, I think you’ll find that quality can be the most worthwhile investment of all!
• If all else fails, I’ve heard that there are people who can get you a new identity for a small fee – kind of like a witness protection program for deadbeats, except considerably less legal. Just make sure that the new social security number that they give you is from somebody who did a little better at managing their finances than you did…

Getting More Organized

• Ask any government employee – the key to being productive is planning, so don’t even think about getting organized until you’ve made at least three comprehensive assessments of your target goals, held numerous planning sessions, and brought in an outside team of highly paid consultants to analyze the most probable road to success. Four months down the road, you’ll be almost on your way to starting to get organized!
• Instead of letting things pile up on you, deal with them as soon as they’re in front of you. For example, if you know that you have no intention of ever paying those child support payments, don’t pile them on the corner of your desk where you’ll mill over them later. Just toss them in the garbage can and give yourself a pat on the back for taking a step towards getting your life in order!

Social Anxiety

• Take baby steps by first spending time around lesser creatures before working your way up to larger crowds – start with dogs, then when you’re ready move up to something bigger like cows or horses (a trip to a local farm may be necessary). Eventually you might be ready for country music fans – they’ll be a good transitional step from the barnyard to actual human beings for you, and if things don’t go exactly as planned, the worst to come out of it will be a couple of bad country songs that nobody’s going to listen to anyways.
• Tip the scales in the other direction by not only making an effort to spend more time around lots of people, but also making everyone else as uncomfortable as possible with your presence. Shout catchphrases from your favorite television show, randomly touch people in seemingly innocent places when they least expect it, wear clothes completely opposite the season you’re currently in – who’s socially anxious now?!
• At the end of the day, consider that there are a lot worse things in this world to be afraid of than simply being around people. Unless they happen to be cannibalistic people, I’d take a crowd of people over a crowd of grizzly bears any day.

Being Less of a Jerk

• Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’ll take even more to curb that bad attitude of yours, buddy, but you can start by doing one nice thing for somebody each and every morning and build from there. Even if for a while that somebody just so happens to be yourself, hey – you’ve gotta start somewhere!
• Sometimes the key to being kind to other people can be found in simply not spending any time around them, so hopefully you’re not facing both social anxiety and general jerkiness at the same time or this suggestion of embracing solitude isn’t going to help much. Nonetheless, one out of two is still better than the none out of many that you’ve got going now, so maybe it’s time to choose your battles…

Being a World-Renowned Humor Columnist Like Me

• Woa, woa, woa … now let’s not go crazy here and bite off any more than you can chew – besides, that’s what got you here in the first place! Why don’t you spend the next couple of months just focusing on not being an overweight, broke, socially awkward jerk and if that goes reasonably ok, we’ll circle back and teach you how to be hilarious like me later…

If there’s one thing I fear more than being exposed as an utter failure at life after I prove myself to be unsuccessful in the realm of New Years resolutions, it’s the compounding idea that on top of all of that, I’m going to get stuck watching eleventy-gajillion hours of American Idol between now and kingdom come.

I know I’m not the only one out there who finds themselves getting sucked into watching this epic embarrassment of talent across our fair nation, and it no doubt usually starts for each of us in roughly the same way. A girlfriend, boyfriend, BFF, or HTMLFF has a borderline obsession with the show, which results in our being coerced into watching an episode or three so as to not wind up sleeping on the couch or removed from our BFF’s MySpace Top-8 or something even more treacherous. And it all seems so innocent at the time – we moan beforehand, slip in plenty of sighs during the various lulls, and are sure to groan “Thank God that’s finally over!” as the credits finally put an end to Seacrest’s inane chatter, but deep in our subconscious – in places of the mind normally reserved for remembering advertising jingles (“N-E-S-T-L-E-S … Nestle’s makes the very best choc-late!”) and all the birthdays of The Three Stooges (October 5^th, June 19^th, October 22^nd) – an unheralded addiction is already beginning to develop…

It’s easy enough not to pick up on at first, as you randomly catch yourself reminding the other person about Idol Night where you’ll both sit and stuff your faces full of pizza and nachos and laugh about how amazingly talented these people think that they are, even when it’s plain to everyone but their mothers that they have the vocal talents of a rabid wombat who’s been locked in a closet with William Hung. And you know that it’s gone south when you don’t even find yourself feeling the least bit guilty about relentlessly mocking these hopeless failures for being so darned clueless to their ineptitude anymore – it’s like watching a freak show with sporadic, but thankfully infrequent interruptions by a select few who actually do have talents outside of chiseling gum off of the bottoms of desks at the local high school for the rest of their days.

Of course, the trouble is that while it may very well be the freak show that gets us subconsciously hooked, but in only a few seemingly short weeks those hilarious audition shows are behind us and now we’re in for the long haul. You know, when it seems like there are more hours of Idol on in a given week than actual hours in a day, and heaven forbid you dare to take a week off or get yourself sidetracked because catching up is pretty much unpossible without dedicating entire days to Idol catch-up and just as an FYI, most employers don’t exactly consider Idol catch-up to be an acceptable use of sick time.

And I guess the worst part of it is that despite all of the moaning and groaning and attempts to render ourselves deaf in order to reclaim roughly 87 hours of productive time a week while American Idol is on the air, deep down we know all too well that at the end of the day there’s really no escaping this TV show. We’ll watch, we’ll watch some more, we’ll even text our votes each week to the number on the screen, and when it’s all over we’ll gather around the water cooler at work the next day to whine about how Vanessa was robbed or how dreamy Jake looked during his hypnotic trance rendition of Love Me Tender. It’s really all we can do during the 19 weeks that this Simon Fuller creation dominates the airwaves, our brainwaves, and ultimately our lives. Well played, you magnificent bastard…

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few things that I’d like to get done while I still have control of my own destiny. Sevener out!

Next to Christmas, it’s one of my favorite times of year – out with the old and in with the new! Just forget about your girlfriend leaving you for another woman or your boss firing you so she doesn’t feel as guilty about dating your ex-girlfriend, for there’s a new year ahead and who could think of a better time to get your life in order once in for all?! Who indeed, and so we all gather around with our champagne glasses in hand, beckoning in the new year with a kiss from the pretty girl just lucky enough to be standing nearby and a list almost a mile long of things we’re going to do differently the following morning.

We’ve all got our own lists, some with only a few key points and others filling pages upon pages with goals that’ll no doubt be thrown to the wind by mid-January at the latest, and if you’ll let me cue to in to a little secret, I’ll tell you this – it certainly makes the job of us columnists pretty easy for a day or three! Ask just about any columnist, no matter what they’re actually supposed to be covering, and they’ll be able to tell you months upon months in advance that their closest deadline that falls around New Years will no doubt cover his or her own resolutions – it’s pretty much a gimme, really. Mind you, I’ve been doing this for a year or three already, so I thought it might be a little more fun this time around to try something different…

When it all comes down to it, it’s honestly not that difficult to write up a few goals for yourself, now is it? Lose some weight, save some money, stop kicking the neighbor’s cat as you leave to go to work each morning – the list pretty much writes itself. Keeping this in mind, rather than bore you all with my own list of New Years resolutions (…of which the highlights I actually just already gave you anyways…), I think that it would be much more enjoyable to present to you some very special resolutions that I’ve devised for other people instead! Honestly, it’s always more fun to focus on the problems of others rather than even attempt to address your own anyways, and besides, why beat yourself up over such silly nonsense when you can just as easily berate the guy next to you?! Of course, you may not want to mimic my intentions here exactly if your subject just happens to be that huge guy sitting next to you at the bar who most likely eats entire chickens for breakfast and could probably bench press your car, but as I’m really not too concerned about any of these folks ever reading my column, at least I’m in the clear!

To Madonna…
Stop thinking that your immense stardom can actually have a positive effect on the careers of performers generations behind you. By all means, feel free to keep making out with them in public, just don’t expect any major career advancements to come from it!

To President Bush…
Just keep your eyes on the horizon. We all know how difficult this presidentiary bit has been for you and that you pretty much have felt like a deer in the headlights for the past three years, but it won’t be long now and all of that will be far behind you – nap time will be here soon enough.

To Ashton Kutcher…
Please stop trying…period. Honestly, I always thought that you were hilarious on That 70’s Show, and I can understand that now you’re moving on and are trying to convince an audience that you can be a serious actor, too. Let me tell you this – running somebody’s car into a brick wall or getting them investigated by the FBI on MTV is no way to get there!

To Peter Jackson…
Don’t ruin a good thing. Even though the opportunity probably won’t even present itself until another year or two down the road, do all of us Tolkien fans a favor and omit any plans to bring The Hobbit to the silver screen as well. Sure, it sounds like a good idea now, but don’t let that giant pile of money fool you – the series was amazing…can we just leave it at that?

To Michael Jackson…
Limit your poker nights to people over the age of thirty-five. I’ve still got faith in you, but even you’ve got to admit that the case is getting tougher and tougher to argue, so why not just make this year a little easier on yourself and keep them above the legal limit, eh? …poker nights – everything’s an innuendo these days with you, man…

To Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger…
By all means, if you have any questions…anything at all, really, don’t hesitate to ask for help! Being the governor is a tough job and sometimes, contrary to popular belief, simply blowing up everything within a three-mile radius just doesn’t solve all of your problems. Just remember that you’ve got an experienced staff at your aid and it never hurts to get a second opinion! Oh yeah, and whatever you do, please don’t touch the red button…

To Every Single Person in This Town That Actually Still Believes That the Buccaneers Will Bring Home the Championship Again This Year…
Find a new team to support…someone who actually stands a snowball’s chance in hell. Seriously, though, I know how excited we all were when our hometown team won the Super Bowl and brought tons of publicity to the Tampa Bay area, but you have to understand one thing – it was all a fluke. It’s never going to happen again, so take my advice and enlighten yourself to the ins and outs of Professional Women’s Bowling or something…you’ll thank me later.

And Finally, To Saddam Hussein…
It’s time to take one for the team and just turn yourself in. We all understand the whole “I hate America”­-thing that you’ve got going, but we’ve just got better things that we could be doing with our time. And besides, it won’t be long before another season of Survivor is starting up here shortly, and I’ll be damned if my TV show is going to get interrupted again because another one of your stunt doubles got trampled by a camel or something! Do us all a favor and just cut the act, for Hollywood’s sake…

Recently I was walking down the street and somebody asked me what my New Years Resolutions were. Keep in mind that I live in a fairly small town, so it’s not really that big of a deal for a complete stranger to be curious about the hopes and dreams of someone they’ve never actually met. Unfortunately, things have been so busy that I really didn’t know what to tell them, so I did what any logical person would do in a case like this – I lied.

Ok, actually I pretty much diverted to the default resolutions of losing weight, spending more time with the family and taking up an obscure hobby which I honestly couldn’t care less about, like knitting or small engine repair. I think that I would normally be able to just re-use the same resolutions from the year before, considering they last until about the second week of January, but seeing as I usually never even think to set any resolutions until that second week, it kinda becomes useless. Nevertheless, this year will be different because unlike other years, I found a way I can milk a column out of it at the same time! Actually, my original goal was to fit in half a dozen various birthday gifts as well, but I’ve only got so much time to get this done…

Of course, all columnists are pretty much expected to write a piece on resolutions this time of year, so I thought I’d do something just a little bit different. Rather than take a look into the future, I’m thinking that it might be fun to take a little look at the past and all the zany events that have happened over the last year. Ponder with me for a few…

• What if the citizens of Florida actually knew who they had voted for?
• What if that whole Y2K thing really had happened?
• What if bell-bottoms and tie-dye suddenly came back into fashion?
• What if the people behind Tomb Raider, Jurassic Park 3 and the other “hit movies of the summer” had spent their time doing something productive?
• What if there had been a category in the 1st Annual Just Laugh Weenie Awards for the Biggest Publicity Stunt of 2001?
  • Could anyone have possibly topped us?
• What if we suddenly pulled a Dr. Lobster and hated all of our readers?
  • How in the world do they get away with it and still pull down those numbers, anyways???
• What if Kim Burke actually did have that creepy, third leg?
• What if our invitation to the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards hadn’t gotten “lost in the mail?”
• What if I had gotten sex for Christmas?
  • What would Santa have carried it in?
• What if I hadn’t put off this column until the night before it was due?
  • Would it have actually mattered?
  • Could it really have been any funnier, anyways?

I could go on and on, but there’s a glass of eggnog calling my name and I just hate to keep a good drink waiting! But before I wrap this up, let me make one recommendation to you for the year 2002:

If you want to make a worthwhile improvement to your life in the New Year, STOP TAKING IT SO SERIOUSLY!!!

Yeah, that’s right – live a little! It seems like not nearly enough people in this world know how to laugh anymore and if you ask me, that’s exactly what we need in times like these. Life is chaotic enough without people stressing out about every little thing, so the next time you find yourself at your wit’s last end, try something like this…

Happy holidays!