Times Square, in 1904, in honor of the new headquarters of The New York Times which had just been erected at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway, and 42nd Street, the second tallest building in Manhattan.  The first ever New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square is hosted by the newspaper's owner, Alfred Ochs. 



"Come on, let's celebrate!" 

Detail, the sculpture courtyard of MOCA, Grand Street, Los Angeles. Across the street is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where we will be going this evening to hear Rufus Wainwright and Belinda Carlisle perform.

As some of you know and unlike some of the rest of you, I am a Rufus fan [see my September entry] and so I am very excited about welcoming in the new year with him and his friend Belinda who my friend BD says he sat next to on an Air France flight once and they both fell asleep and he likes to tell people he slept with Belinda Carlisle which is something of a stretch, but there you are.  

It's been such a busy and productive year, hasn't it?  And so much to look forward to, although at times, when the conversation turns to politics, I end up feeling like Virginia Woolf consoling the artist Carrington after Lytton Strachey died, trying (one can safely assume somewhat unconvincingly on Virginia's part) to persuade Carrington not to kill herself.  

However, as a lovely lady said the other day, "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.  Life is about learning to dance in the rain."

Now, if that isn't a message to carry with you into the new year, I don't know what is.   

As my old friend Dennis used to say, probably quoting a movie I never saw and usually in order to underscore some decision of his I had questioned and about which he felt particularly adamant: "Let me out of this hospital bed, let me out, I must dance -- I must dance!"

Now, one of my New Year's resolutions is to be more concerned about others, which you may think is no big deal at all but which I assure you is harder than it looks.  To wit, in case you missed it, (in Liz Smith's New York Post column) I share here a recollection of the late Arthur Schlesinger's regarding Douglas Fairbanks Jr. --

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had just come back from active duty in World War II and been invited to a Hollywood party.  "He was still in naval uniform, had been away for half a dozen years, and, as he entered a large room, his former wife, Joan Crawford, spotted him, screamed 'Douglas,' and swept magnificently across the room to embrace him.  Her first words: 'Douglas, you may not have heard, I have left MGM and have gone to Warner's!'"


On the other hand, we all do the best we can.

Happy New Year, my darlings, from the glittering and sometimes shallow and slightly unreal world of Hollywood,