I'll admit it - I do not yet have plans for New Year's Eve. I'm sure I will be somewhere that will involve a ball and dropping and a hearty chorus of that forgetting your acquaintances song, but I can't yet tell you where that is.

Tuning in to watch the ball drop is perhaps the strangest of our New Year's traditions, mainly because the camera follows the ball down so it rarely looks like it's moving. And even if we could follow the movement, think about what this practice means metaphorically. To "drop the ball" means to screw up, so by dropping the ball on last year, we're admitting that it didn't go quite as well as we'd planned. But that's why we have a new year. And we can screw it up all over again until we're able to drop the ball on that one, too. Great message, huh?

I'm not spending New Year's Eve alone - I know better than that. I don't want to watch Dick Clark wading through balloons while he presents musical acts of which he's never heard. And I certainly don't want to do it alone. At least with other people there, I can make fun of the phrase "New Year's Rockin' Eve." But there's nothing sadder than making snide comments to your lamp. Especially if you've dressed it up to look like a person.

When Dick Clark finally does pass away in 50 or 60 years, no one will know what to do about New Year's. He's been the only New Year's Eve host for so long that television executives would be at a loss. "And now, some drunk we pulled off the street! He may not have TV credits, but there isn't anyone left in the world who has hosted a New Year's special, and all it cost us to get this guy was a bottle of Chivas."

And though there used to be other hosts, Dick Clark has obtained such a monopoly over crappy New Year's specials that other networks have given up. NBC and CBS have their usual lineups of Leno and Letterman, which are both taped much earlier than midnight. "3...2...1...Happy 5:30!" And Fox has a New Year's show, but it's filmed live in Las Vegas. It's airing from 11:00-12:30 Eastern Time, which means it will end at about 10:30 in Nevada. Happy 10:30!

There is a reason I'm not sure where I'm going for New Year's. It's the one night the entire year that you don't need to make definite plans; half the people you know are throwing parties. New Year's is not like a typical weekend, where it's hit or miss. New Year's is always hit. Every bar is full, there's a line for every club, and the crappiest restaurants are reserved months ahead of time. There's even a big space in New York where half a million people stand around in the cold for three hours, trying to catch a glimpse of Dick Clark rocking his eve.

I will probably go to one of two parties that my friends are having, or perhaps both since they're five blocks from each other. And it's quite possible that there are more parties in between those two that I just haven't heard about yet. But wherever I end up, someone is bound to wish me a happy and healthy new year. Which is nice, as long as I don't have a healthy New Year's Eve. That's not a night you want to be swimming laps and munching on lettuce.

I've never thrown my own New Year's Eve party and I don't think I ever will. The last activity with which I want to start my year is cleaning up my living room. But some people are obsessed with throwing New Year's parties, even if other friends of theirs have already been planning their own party for months. When you throw a New Year's party because your group of friends has nothing else to do, you're helping out. But if you're simply throwing a competing party, it's probably because you want to take the credit for people enjoying their New Year. But the party we go to has very little to do with whether or not we enjoy ourselves. The concept of a new year pleases everyone, regardless of his or her station in life. If you're successful at what you do, then the New Year is just another in a long line of happy times. And if you're unsuccessful, well, the New Year symbolizes a chance to turn things around. And when that doesn't work, you're allowed to drop the ball and wait for the New Year after that.

But no New Year's Eve would be complete without making a few resolutions that you break by the end of January. This year, however, I'm only making one, and I swear I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to outlive Dick Clark.

Happy New Year.

As you get older, asking someone out gets easier. Knowing whether or not they'll say yes, however, stays just as difficult until you die or get married.

I can walk into a room, take a quick glance around, and know who is into whom immediately. But when it comes to whether or not a girl likes me, I am as clueless as a PC user looking at a Mac. And my use of analogies like that doesn't help me with the whole dating thing.

One of the reasons I have such a hard time knowing what someone really thinks of me is the distraction of what I want them to think of me. In high school, I'd make sure to say hi to this one girl as we passed each other in the hall. Usually, she'd smile and keep walking. But one time, she stopped to talk to me, even saying hello first. That had to mean she wanted me, right?

But a bigger reason that I have difficulty grasping whether or not a girl is in to me is because people lie. Many do not lie on purpose; it's a subconscious thing. I have seen many girls flirt with guys simply to get a confidence boost and a few free drinks. These girls have no intention of ever seeing the guy again, but they want to be able to say that they were the ones who turned someone down. Guys occasionally do this, but less often since we'll usually go home with any girl if she says yes.

The reason that asking someone out is so difficult is because we cannot predict their response. There's a comedian named Dustin Chafin who has a bit about how we handled this in elementary school. You'd simply pass a note - "I think you're foxy. If you dig me, check the boxy."� If we could still do this, life would be much easier. Lamer, sure, but easier.

I once had a long conversation with a female friend to whom I was quite attracted. The subject turned to how a guy could tell if a girl likes him or not. Okay, I outright asked her how a guy could tell if a girl likes him or not. She told me about a few signs - laughing a little extra at his jokes, touching him whenever possible, and steering the conversation towards dating or sex. She'd been doing all three of these things all night, so I took a chance and called her on it. She laughed, touched my arm, and told me that I was being ridiculous. After all, these signs didn't count when they happened between friends. And then she asked me about my first sexual experience. In a friendly nature, of course.

We all know how difficult it is to get out of the friend zone, but the "I barely know you zone"� doesn't work either. Meeting someone at a bar can be fun, but the possibility that it turns into anything substantial is more uncommon than an English major getting an A in a physics class. Wow - I have really got to quit using those analogies.

The easiest way to meet someone is through a friend. But the third party introduction can lead to problems of its own. If you hit it off, you may step on your friend's toes because they might have been after the person they introduced you to. And if it does work out, you better get married. Because if that relationship fails, you'll have to argue for custody over your mutual friend since the three of you can never co-exist again. Don't bother trying - there's nothing worse than going out to a bar with an ex. "I'd like to buy a shot of awkward for my friend here. Make it a double."�

In the quest to couple off, we are left, then, with one way out - being completely inadvertent. Meeting someone accidentally is a wonderful thing, since you have no way of learning most of each other's flaws until a few dates in. And the older you get, the more someone is likely to give at least one date a chance. If they turn you down when you ask them out, that's okay too - they weren't in your life before, so what's so much worse about them not being in your life now? As long as you don't ask anyone out over a loudspeaker, rejection is not humiliating because no one has to know it happened. Unless she writes a memo to your friends.

"I thought Steve was gay, so I said no way."�

Maybe it's better that we're beyond the whole note thing.

I hate waiting. I hate waiting more than burnt pizza, cold weather, and wearing wet socks combined. Of course, if I were waiting for burnt pizza in cold weather with wet socks, that'd be much worse than just waiting. But I still hate waiting.

I am an impatient person. And what's worse, I'm a New Yorker. I'm not sure if that chicken came before that egg, but I do know that being a New Yorker makes you more impatient, and being impatient makes you more of a New Yorker. I'm so impatient, I'm annoyed that I've only finished two paragraphs of this column.

I hate waiting in any form. I hate waiting for my train, and then I hate waiting while I'm on the train. I hate waiting for a phone call, and I hate waiting on hold when I'm the one who calls. I hate waiting to meet someone, and well, I really hate waiting to meet someone. And above all else, I hate waiting on lines. At the post office, at the movies, at a baseball game, for the bathroom. Lines are one of the things I hate most, because not only am I waiting, I am standing. I know that hate is a strong word. But I'm too impatient to look up another one.

There's that commercial with Catherine Zeta Jones where she talks about a bored guy waiting on line for something, and she hands him a phone. When I first saw it, I figured he'd pass the time by playing video games on it or by making a few calls. No - he dials his buddy and has him put his phone up to the TV for a kung fu marathon. I don't know if I've ever been bored enough to listen to kung fu, but I did sympathize with his desire to get off that line.

But worse than lines is the idea of a slow-person-in-front-of-me (otherwise known as a SPIFOM). Often, I'll be on a stairway, or trying to walk on a subway platform, or making my way down a crowded street, and the person in front of me is a turtle. They are not green, and they do not have a shell (usually), but I have met plenty of turtles that have a better ability to move out of the way when someone is trying to pass. So I wait for the SPIFOM to move, and they do not. The person in front of me is so slow that I have time to mock their sluggishness to whomever is standing next to me. You may find that rude, but so is being a turtle on a busy sidewalk. And it would be much ruder if I actually placed both hands on the SPIFOM's shoulders and gave a hearty shove, which I've thought about doing quite often. When you are stuck behind a SPIFOM, you have plenty of time to think.

What all of this comes down to is that waiting equals boredom. A lot of people enjoy the alone time, but I'm not all that interesting to myself. I've already heard all my stories, and I never really need to ask how my day was. I know how my day was. It was boring, because I spent half of it waiting.

In college, I didn't wait much because I didn't have time to. I had my classes, and my friends, and my extracurriculars, and my jobs, and occasional time to eat and sleep. Sure, I would have to wait for a few things--mainly appointments with advisors--but actual time to sit and do nothing was so rare that I was thrilled. Now, my life is based around sitting and doing nothing, so sitting longer and doing more nothing isn't such a reprieve.

Doctors have waiting rooms, which try to help you wait by offering unpleasant chairs and substandard magazines. It's a nice thought, but cracked vinyl and a six-month old issue of Prevention don't help the cause. Then I'm just as bored as I was before, only more uncomfortable. Though I'm not sure which makes me uncomfortable - cracked vinyl or reading Prevention. And once my name is finally called and I exit the waiting room, I'm sent to an examination room where I wait some more. But now I'm waiting in my underwear with the door slightly open, which is slightly more comfortable than reading Prevention.

I know that I sound bitter and jaded in this column, and I expect lots of e-mail telling me that I should lighten up. But I don't mind - see, I can check my e-mail on my phone, which gives me something to do while I'm in line at the post office, at the movies, at a baseball game, or for the bathroom. Or even while a particularly slow SPIFOM is in front of me. Besides, writing those e-mails will give all of you something to do instead of sitting around. I know you're bored - you'd have to be to read this far.

So go ahead and send those letters. I'll wait.

There's a large part of America blanketed by snow right now, and a larger part that's just freaking cold. So it would follow that indoor activities would be given a greater emphasis, since people are only outside while going from one inside to another. What doesn't follow, however, is that all the movies out suck.

There are no movies I want to see right now, with the exception of the new Bond flick, and that's just because I want to see every new Bond flick. With a Bond movie, you know it'll be bad, but it will at least be fun. Which is half an accurate description for everything else out there.

Rather than go see these awful movies and tell you what I thought of them, I decided to just tell you what I think of them now (with a little help from imdb.com). I save a few bucks, I don't ruin the ending since I never actually saw it, and I get to invent a lot of crap and then make fun of it. It's perfect for everyone.

I now present you with Movie Reviews of A Bunch of Movies I Have No Intention of Seeing.

Maid in Manhattan
This is the touching story of Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes finding love through a series of intricate lies. Lopez plays Marisa, a beautiful and well-educated maid, who has dozens of resourceful and clever maid friends. They are all just resourceful and clever enough to be maids. Also, they're sassy. Fiennes is millionaire playboy Christopher Marshall, who has made all of his money through his uncanny ability to be easily duped. It is one thing to ask your audience to suspend their disbelief, but this is ridiculous. Part of the promo says that it's the best romantic comedy since Pretty Woman. No - it's the best romantic comedy about a girl without rent money falling in love with a millionaire since Pretty Woman. And that's just because it's the first. It is probably more believable that a guy will fall for an LA hooker than for a New York chambermaid. I've seen LA hookers and I've seen New York chambermaids, and you can guess which one Jennifer Lopez more closely resembles.

Treasure Planet
The folks from Disney drive up to the descendants of Robert Louis Stevenson with a truckload of money asking to buy both the rights to Stevenson's classic story and all of their dignity. Sorry, that's "The Making of Treasure Planet."� In the actual "Treasure Planet,"� a gang of lovable, marketable creatures go on an incredible journey through mall displays and happy meals to find the true meaning of commercial tie-ins. The story follows teen shipmate Jim Hawkins through his travels as a cabin boy on a space cruiser. Boy, that's something we can all relate to. Jim befriends the ship's charismatic cyborg cook (haven't we all), who turns out to be planning a mutiny. Perhaps he'll attack the bastards who wrote this drivel.

Santa Clause 2
Tim Allen is back as that regular guy who was forced to give up his life and become Santa Claus, but this time, there's a twist. See, Santa has to get married by a certain time or the world blows up, or they kill his elves, or maybe he just stops getting pestered by his parents, but there's a reason. Oh, and there's hijinx. A LOT of hijinx. So much hijinx that the studio didn't bother with an original concept that could go wrong. Instead, they went with one that is proven to suck.

Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights
Perhaps the first ever Chanukah movie, Eight Crazy Nights is very proud of containing a new version of the Chanukah Song. Because we hadn't heard enough of the last few. Adam Sandler does have the potential to be really funny, as evidenced by his first CD. But he also has the potential to suck, as evidenced by his last CD. So which Sandler do we see in Eight Crazy Nights? Whichever one it is, it thinks that a new version of the Chanukah Song is a good thing, so we shouldn't trust it with our $9.

Extreme Ops
A few extreme friends take an extreme vacation in the Austrian Alps, only to discover that they're sharing the mountain with terrorists. Now they've got to use all their extremeness to get to safety and warn the world of the extreme danger. In the meantime, they have more than one extreme run in with the extreme terrorists and the battle scenes are extreme. Extremely extreme. Of course the good guys win and the bad guys lose, thanks in part to the sheer (and extreme) ingenuity of the good guys. Apparently, they brought along some maids.

Every time I start coming down with something, I say, "what a lousy time to get sick."� As if there's ever a point where I'm sitting around bored and say, "you know what I could really go for right now? Phlegm!"�

I realized I was getting sick Wednesday evening, when my head felt heavier than normal. You know the feeling - when you turn your head and keep going in that direction regardless of whether or not you want to. It was my friend's birthday, so I figured I'd take a quick nap, go out and see him, and then come home and rest some more. One thing being sick does is make you delirious enough to believe that you are capable of a quick nap.

Three hours later, I woke up, head throbbing, shivering and sweating at the same time, and desperately trying to find an orifice out of which I could breathe. And while I realized that I was going to miss Thanksgiving, I understood that this was one of the better times to get sick. I had four solid days of nothing to do, I had my dad around to get me jello and other such attempts at solid food, and I had movie marathons on TBS. As times when I could get sick went, this one wasn't so bad.

"Okay,"� I figured. "I'll go to sleep now. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it will have been one of those 24 hour flus."�

Have you ever had a 24-hour flu? I've had the flu over a dozen times, and every last one of them has lasted upwards of four days. The 24-hour flu was invented when a doctor and his golfing buddy were on their way home from playing a few rounds and the golfing buddy realized he'd need an excuse when he showed up at work the next day.

"I've got to call in sick. But no disease in the world only lasts 24 hours! What if I told them I had the flu?"�

"But the flu lasts upwards of four days."�

"The 24-hour flu."�

"That's preposterous,"� the doctor said.

"Would it be preposterous for $20?"�

And the myth was born.

If I had the 24-hour flu, I would have slept right through it, because I went to sleep at about 2:00 AM Wednesday night, and didn't wake up until 8:00 AM Friday morning. Yes, I slept clear through Thanksgiving; as far as I know, Thursday never happened. I was very thankful to be asleep, however, because if Friday morning was any indication of how I would have felt Thursday night, it was best being unconscious. I got up, had some water, checked my e-mail, and went back to sleep.

I am aware of my personal bests when it comes to most things. I know the most push-ups I've ever done in a row, the most pieces of pizza I've ever had in one sitting, and I know that my previous record for consecutive sleep was 19 hours, something of which I had been quite proud. While I'm in no state to have a bite of pizza or do a single pushup, as I write this Saturday evening, I have slept through roughly 60 of the previous 72 hours. And while there might be an asterisk in the record book due to my ingesting 35 pounds of Theraflu, it's safe to say I have that one locked up for a while.

When I have been awake, I've been absolutely delirious. That first time I checked my e-mail when I woke up Friday morning? I replied to one message simply with "yes."� I must have been trying to answer things quickly, except the original message never asked me a question. The original message was "I hope you have a great Thanksgiving."� To which I replied, "Yes."�

I don't remember much of what I've been thinking while I've been awake, other than going over the lyrics to "Hurricane"� several dozen times. I do not know the lyrics to Hurricane.

The way I've been telling if it's AM or PM is that my alarm clock has a little dot that comes on when it's AM. But there's a second little dot that comes on when the alarm is set. I accidentally turned my alarm on and spent several minutes rationalizing why it would be light out at 9:00 PM. Until my dad came in and noticed the alarm was set, I had myself convinced that it was because of the holiday weekend.

Unfortunately, the lunar calendar falls incredibly early this year, making Hanukah the second holiday I might sleep right through. Friday night, I realized that Hanukah was fast approaching, and I asked my father when the first night was.

"Tonight,"� he said."�

"Okay."� I responded. "When is tonight?"�

Maybe I'll just take a quick nap.