I was doing some test-solving for work yesterday, and one of the puzzles had a New Year’s Eve theme. My first thought as to people associated with the holiday was, of course, Guy Lombardo – but no, the celebrity reference was to Dick Clark. Effin’ kids.
So naturally, this got me wondering, in a typically Doper way, about exactly where the dividing line is on age, between those whose pavlovian response is Guy Lombardo, and those for whom it isn’t. (To clarify – I don’t have any specific memories of Mr. Lombardo – his time was definitely waning when I was a wee twickster – but I’ve still got the knee-jerk reaction between the holiday and his name.)
So – poll – how old are you, and what is your immediate response to “Who’s Mr. New Year’s Eve”?
53 – Dick Clark. I don’t believe I ever saw Lombardo on New Year’s. When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to stay up and, by the time I was, I wouldn’t have listend to Lombardo on a bet. If it was anything, it’d be Johnny Carson – seeing the Tonight Show was a rare treat.
53 – Dick Clark. I remember seeing Guy Lombardo on New Year’s Eve, but he isn’t the default memory for me.
Of course, admitting that either one of them actually made an impression on you is admitting that you’re a pathetic loser who couldn’t get a date on New Year’s Eve and actually watched who was on TV.
Guy Lombardo. My paternal grandmother and her daughter watched him, and got us kids to follow the tradition, though I remember my brother Mike (who’s about 3.5 years younger than I am) mentioning to my parents that he had seen Guy for the first time. Somehow, I hadn’t watched the broadcast – maybe Dad (who’s a clarinetist/saxophonist and thus always had a gig on New Year’s Eve, to which Mom accompanied him) was already letting me stay by myself. Maybe I had been at Grandma’s, but watching something else, reading, or sleeping.
Anyway, I did see Lombardo ring in the new year a few times before he died. Most vivid memory of the Royal Canadians was their version of Bad Bad Leroy Brown – not only a bowdlerization of the damn so that the line became “baddest man in the whole darn town”, but a tacked-on verse which proclaimed “Now he’s nice, nice Leroy Brown”.
During the first three decades of my life, New Years Eve held all the social impact and importance of Arbor Day or Groundhog Day. It never occurred to me that it was a date night, or, for that matter, that it was a night on which some kind of meaningful television broadcast took place.
I have seen Dick Clark. I associate him with Ed McMahon and revile them equally. They are both humorless and charmless and ponderous people.
When I think of Guy Lombardo I think of “Boo Hoo…Why must I feel like I do…” or “Come the Whippenpoofs assembled with their glasses raised on high…” or perhaps “Hut Sut Val Din An Er Sinderay Et Sut Val Rah Val Rah Soo Wit”… not necessarily hit hits but, where not, stuff he showcased.
I don’t associate either of them with new year’s eve. I don’t know as how I associate anything with new year’s eve.
New Year’s Day is all about eating lots of black-eyed peas, though.
Guy Lombardo would tear out Dick’s throat in a second. After all, everone who has watched the Muppet Show knows that Guy Lombardo is just the were-form of the twisted monster know to the world as Vincent Price!
