Another year will soon be finished

By Lethbridge Herald on December 31, 2022.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber – Lethbridge Herald

Another year is over! In a few short hours, the page on the calendar will turn to 2023 and 2022 will be a part of history.

We all know our routine  tonight – we’ll either be going out for dinner to say farewell to the year, we’ll be spending it at a nightclub celebrating, or we’ll be hanging out at home with friends or family saying a toast at midnight. Or we’ll be wearing wool socks –  not necessarily matching –  and a bathrobe, munching potato chips on the couch with the dog and wearing out the thumb channel surfing.

New Year’s Eve is a night that deserves to be treated in a special way because we aren’t guaranteed to live another year. But I guarantee I won’t last until midnight. I’ll be struggling to stay awake until 9 unless I hit the caffeine hard and nap for half the afternoon. 

Alas, this isn’t an age thing; it’s a me thing. I’m not a night owl, I’m not even an early-evening owl. If New Year’s Eve could be celebrated about 2 p.m., I’d be all in because in early afternoon I’ve got lots of energy to burn.

Unless there’s a college bowl game that captures my attention tonight, I’ll be one of those searching for a movie to occupy some time before the eyelids refuse to stay open. 

As I’ve written before, I subscribe to the Hollywood Suite channels that offer movies from the 2000s to even the 1940s. I’ve also got the Crave movie package. And for me these channels are money well-spent, especially for the variety of older films.

Most nights, I scour all of them to see if something appeals to be for immediate viewing or recording. Some nights I come up empty-handed depending upon my mood – committing to 90 or 120 minutes isn’t something I am always ready to do after a long day at work. 

But sometimes a gem will just appear out of nowhere and I have to watch from start to finish like the Steven Spielberg made-for-TV movie with Dennis Weaver called “Duel” from 1971. If you remember this one, Weaver -who starred in the series “McCloud” – is a travelling salesman who suddenly finds himself being pursued by an unseen driver for unknown reasons in a semi-trailer rig. Spielberg was in the early days of his career but he knew how to keep viewers on the edge of their seats even then.

I can go all-in with offerings on Netflix, too. If I see a limited series that seems interesting, I usually watch the entire thing in one session. The tale of the New Zealand volcano is one example, the new release about the hoax caller in the U.S. in the late 1990s and early 2000s is another.

 I semi-binged on “Wednesday,” the new twist on the Addams Family which is by far the best series on any platform I’ve seen this year. Wednesday Addams, in fact, may well be the hero we all need right now.

What tonight has in store only time will tell but one thing I won’t be doing is reflecting on 2022. Been there, done that. No need to look back. I’m more interested in seeing what the future holds and we’ll start finding out in the morning. At 4 a.m. for me.

Have fun tonight. Be safe and enjoy whatever you have, or don’t have, planned. We’ll talk again next year after I find some comfy socks tonight. 

Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter.