Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Balldroppin’

This week, thousands of people will gather and direct their attention towards the One Times Square building to celebrate as its ball drops. Which has always seemed pretty intrusive, if you ask me.

I remember feeling extremely awkward and self-conscious all through my teens. It’d be hard for me to imagine a bigger nightmare than what Peter Brady had to go through: forced to join all of his siblings in a recording studio, with some middle-aged recording engineers along with his mom and housekeeper all watching on happily, as they all sang a song about how his display of secondary sexual characteristics. But the monsters in charge of The Brady Bunch turned it into the catchy “Time to Change” and forced him to go through it again and again.

Sitcoms were always pulling stuff like that. I vividly remember an episode of The Cosby Show where the audience laughed at Theo not knowing how to shave. Not cool, audience. A less embarrassing rite of passage would’ve been to have Cliff giving Theo tips on dating women and no wait scratch that forget I said anything. I get that it’s supposed to reassure kids that it’s all perfectly natural — as Greg Brady1 said, every boy has a man inside.

But it’s hard to make the transition from Boyz II Men, and it’d be easier without everybody staring and pointing. Speaking of difficult transitions: it’s also hard to say goodbye to yesterday, but that’s what everybody’s going to have to do on January 1st. Somehow I feel like it won’t be that difficult to say good riddance to 2025, though.

1
And Kevin Spacey

1 And Kevin Spacey