Happy Y2K

By: Jeff Lagasse

A man sits in a log cabin in the middle of desolate woods, a shotgun cocked and scores of pea and soup cans lining the musky interior walls. A clock stands on the lone table in the room, slowly ticking down to midnight. A transistor television sits on the same table, displaying a screen that's half snow and half Dick Clark's face. This man is not a rugged outdoorsman, nor is he spending a romantic evening in his out-of-the-way bungalow (in fact, he's probably alone with nothing but the Sunday New York Times to keep him company). He's one of the many who feared that the coming of the year 2000 heralded some apocalyptic technological breakdown that would send civilization spiraling into decay.

He's also one of the many that I'm laughing at rightnow.

While this unfortunate fellow was spending his New Year's huddled in the corner of his cabin with row after row of the Jolly Green Giant's face staring at him, I was spending it with friends of mine, comfortable in the certainty that, after midnight, the lights would still work and Peter Jennings would look just as harried from having to get up at four in the morning. Sure enough, the ball dropped, and nothing happened. People waved their Champaign glasses high in the air (many of which had seen plenty of business all night), couples exchanged their kisses, and Granny heaved her meaty arms in the air and proclaimed that the New Year was apon us with enthusiastic drunkenness. Meanwhile, the people who drained their bank accounts and headed for the country were wondering why they had no use for their CVS scented candles.

The doom-and-gloom people had their say prior to the New Year, and now it's time for the other half to gloat, the half that predicted the new millennium would not only be normal, but uneventful. And for the most part, it was. There was no terrorism, no mass murder, and Jesus didn't rise from the grave and tell us all that, regardless of what Santa said, we're all on the naughty list. There were only two events that were remotely spectacular. One: a whole lot of tipsy Frenchmen wondered why the Eiffel Tower was lit up like Boris Yeltsin on a whiskey binge. Two: Dick Clark didn't age again. To all the people who thought the world would rot, I'd just like to say...

Ha. Ha. Ha.

But you know what group makes me laugh more than any other group? Do you know what collection of people leaves me rolling on the floor with my hands clutched to my side? The scores of starry-eyed religious zealots who swore left and right that the coming of the millennium would be marked by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, opening for the headliner of them all, Jesus Christ in the flesh, ladies and gentlemen. I can imagine all those people now: sitting at home dusting off their turbans, sacrificial goats, and the plastic Jesus's from the dashboards of their cars, wondering why the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west.

You know why the lights are still on? You know why the computers are still working, why the religious event of the millennium turned out to be a flop? Because the year 2000 is just a year, an artificial date we made up so we could all mark our relatives' birthdays in our calendars. There won't be anything revolutionary that will set his year apart from the last, or the one to follow. There are three zeroes, and that's the only reason it's such a big deal. So enjoy writing "00" in all your daily planners; it doesn't mean a thing.

Now if Dick Clark is still on in the year 3000... THEN there'll be something to talk about.