I am usually at a concert New Year's Eve, and I had a tix for Govt Mule, unfortunately I've been battling a cold all year and was laid up once again. So I was stuck watching the ball drop on "ABC's Rockin' New Year" and I have yet to see a more depressing sight in my life than the speech impaired Dick Clark.
Clark, one of the great Mercian broadcasters, suffered a stroke in 2004 and returned to ABC 2005 into 2006. And it is really sad. I don't know if he is in pain, my father suffered a stroke and his face was partially paralyzed but he could still talk. Clark on the other hand, seems to be in pain as he speaks and works not as a joy of renewal but a signpost of a future yet to be reached. The perennial teenager, the Peter Pan of rock and roll, grew old and it bloody depressing.
Clark is 82 years old and has been counting down the ball drop in Time's Square to ring in the New Year since 1972 and all that is left is me feeling completely uncomfortable at watching the charade. It might no be fair, aging is both fair and unfair, it is a level playing field, but watching Dick Clark struggle isn't fait to him and certainly isn't fun for us. It is like a painful sticking your nose in the muck of your own transitional nature. If Dick Clark is past it, where does it leave us. And is it really, really, really what we want to see as the season draws to a close?
The ambivalence is self-evident, it feels like by calling for Clark's retirement we are in the process of warehousing the aged. Still, Clark is a very rich and very successful man. It is time for the American teenager to set down.