I am not an agoraphobe, generally speaking. I don't mind crowds so much. Sometimes it's nice to get lost in one. It can even be cathartic to find you're alone in one. It's only on national holidays where heavy drinking is encouraged and fireworks are in play that I fear them. I think that's quite reasonable of me, actually.

And that's why, generally speaking, I don't go out on New Year's Eve. I would rather spend the evening with a spliff and a couple of choice friends, or a tab of E and one choice shag, or, frankly, with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, alone, hiding under my desk, which is how I very happily whiled away Y2K, waiting for the world to end. Alas, it didn't.

My favorite memory of New Year's Eve in Boston is from back in 2004. From my diary:

The train was packed, but the crowd was fairly subdued, those who were conscious, at least. There was a young woman passed out across from me, and a middle-aged man, who was apparently not with her, kept shrugging and assuring fellow passengers that she would just ride the train back and forth all night, until she finally woke up. He seemed to think he owed us some justification for not intervening on her behalf.

Next to her was a big frizzy-haired brunette with her boyfriend, who was patting her on the back, and massaging her shoulders. I couldn’t see her face, because she was slumped over with her hair hanging down over it. She was swaying back and forth, slightly, and just before I got off, he had handed her a plastic barf bag (it was blue, but see-through), that she’d apparently been using for the ride. There was half a gallon of vomit in it, I’d say, and she was ralfing up some more.

It was only half-past ten when I got home.

A night to remember, indeed.

I had no idea before this year that respectable people paid hundreds of dollars for New Year's Eve "packages" at various restaurants and bars around town. Many without live music. But the thought of staying in on a night like New Year's Eve, when you actually have license to make an ass of yourself, more or less, seems too good a deal to pass up for many, apparently, and they're willing to shell out some bucks—is that a mixed metaphor?—for the privilege.

Back when I used to drink too much fairly routinely (we're talking college days here) weekends were all the license I needed (and weekends were Thursday to Tuesday in those days), but you pay for it, don't you? Not only the hang-over, which a little hair of the dog takes care of, but the snippets of ass-hattery that flash in your head for days, along with the creeping suspicion that everyone hates you as much as you do.

That's why I'm not really one to drink to excess these days. And from my soberer bartending days—also in college—I know that when you are not drinking to excess there is almost nothing worse than being around people who are. Of course, the best thing is for everyone to be a little drunk all the time, but some people can't tell "a little drunk" from "barfing into a Shaw's shopping bag on the T." And that's the problem.

But back to New Year's Eve. I had plans to meet Mr. Big* for a movie. He's got a thing for Clive Owen, and I have a thing for dystopian fantasies with apocalyptic undercurrents that promise a good cry, so the choice of a movie was obvious: Children of Men.

I didn't used to go to the movies for a good cry, by the way, but it's gotten fairly hard to get a good laugh out of them—and I mean, the kind that makes you cry—and so a simple cry it is. Not that I'm a push-over. But when it comes, as it did at the end of The Fountain, it may not be better than an orgasm, but it's as close as you're going to get at the cineplex. I mean, unless you go to the cineplex to get your perv on, in which case I don't want to know about it.

I almost cried during Children of Men, but it was all so fast-paced and hectic that there just wasn't time. There was one scene that had it gone on a bit longer, with the aid of a swelling score, may have done it. On the other hand, had they milked it, it may have turned maudlin, and then it would have felt icky to cry.

Though I didn't shed a tear at Children of Men there was a wonderfully misty-eyed moment a little later, back at Mr. Big's, when we were watching the Packers-Bears game. They were interviewing Brett Favre after the Packers' win, and we were debating whether Favre was hot or not.

Favre's got every right and reason to be, but there's just something missing for me. Mr. Big seemed to agree. Favre was nice enough, but didn't do anything for him, either.

Then, all the sudden, in the middle of the interview Favre starts choking up. He's fighting back tears.

Mr. Big's like, "that is SO hot."

I had to agree. As we all know, QBs are emotional guys. But sometimes it takes you by surprise anyway. And there is nothing sexier than a great big lug like Favre fighting back tears. It's even better than a dimple in your chin.

Watching the Gator Bowl the next day, we got into a discussion about whether or not American footballers wear cups. Everybody knows baseballers do, but that's because they're neurotic.

I decided to post the question on Yahoo Answers, even though their goofy point system encourages idiots to talk out their asses instead of answering the question in a useful way. Yahoo Answers is the absolute worst of wiki.

Within minutes of posting it, the question "Do American football players wear cups?" garnered these ever-so-enlightening answers: "only the male ones," and "well duhh, dont u see how many times football players get tackled in the nuts?" (Tackled in the nuts?) And (my personal favorite): "yes, and the dallas coach wears DD cups."

I have to admit I was rooting for "no," although I can't say why, exactly (something about that, of all places, being the hole in a footballer's armor, probably). Unfortunately, only roughly one-fifth of the answers were "no." However, that one-fifth was more convincing than the four-fifths that answered "yes."

For instance, one of the no's wrote: "nah man, i play football, and not even the weakest players wear cups, it takes away the comfort, iussually go out with just my boxers or the tights(gurdle) then wear the football pants. there are not a lot of news about guys getting hit in the jewels. theres no real concern about it."

My instincts screamed "NO!" but the masses screamed "yes!" Who to believe?

I did a little more digging—Googled "do football players wear cups" which in .08 seconds garnered 1,230,000 references, many of them, as it turned out, to "The World Cup." Among the references to "athletic protector cups," however, was Slate's "Sports Nut," who did an enlightening piece on the disappearing jockstrap back in 2005, in which he confirmed my hunch:

I had heard that NFL players don't wear cups but was still astonished when Joe Skiba, assistant equipment manager of the New York Giants, provided confirmation. "The majority of players feel that less is more, especially padding below the torso," he explained via e-mail. "They feel that it hinders their speed and performance."

(A little piece of trivia for Bostonians: "Bike Athletic, the jock's apparent inventor and primary distributor...claims the contraption was invented in 1874 as "'support for the bicycle jockeys riding the cobblestone streets of Boston.'")

But I wasn't ready to start dancing in the end zone just yet. I needed more confirmation. I went to faqfarm.com, and looked under the apparently frequently asked question "How many pads does a football player wear?" And, as an addendum to the answer—"It depends a little on the player and position, but there are 10 basic pieces of equipment helmet, shoulder pads, a tailbone pad, 2 hip pads, 2 thigh pads, 2 knee pads, and a cup. Mouthguards are pretty much necessary, but not really a pad. Outside of that some players also opt to wear flack jackets, back and/or sternum plates, neck rolls, forearm pads."— found this little tidbit: "Some players do not wear a cup. (As a point of reference, virtually every major league baseball player wears a cup, while most NFL players do not.)"

Mm-hmm. Interesting. But I needed more.

The San Francisco Chronicle did a piece in September all about cups entitled "Players Take Pass on Cups," which opened: "Though shoulder pads remain a vital part of a football player's equipment, another piece of protection has fallen into total disuse. A moment of silence, please, for the protective cup." It went on to quote 49ers equipment manager Steve Urbaniak as saying, "In the seven years I've been here, I've never had a request [for one].''

"I've never worn one,'' quarterback Alex Smith said. "Not many people do. It's funny.''

Yes, funny.

"What about the risk of getting hit in that unprotected area?" the reporter asked.

"There could be, and has been, in practice,'' Smith replied. "I've never had it happen in a game.''

Said fullback Chris Hetherington: "In 11 years in the league, I've only been hit once there, knock on wood.''

And, according to the reporter, "Guard Justin Smiley said he has not worn a cup in nearly two decades."

More?

You want definitive? What could be more definitive than "The Flem File," David Fleming's Page 2 column for ESPN? In November he wrote an article entitled "When did cups become uncool?" He reports:

Philly's equipment guy, John Hatfield, 59, has been outfitting football players for 25 years.... Fifteen years ago, he says, everyone wore [cups].... Ten years ago, it was just the interior linemen. The last player on the Eagles to use a cup was center Steve Everitt in ... 1999.

He quotes one NFL player (who apparently asked to remain anonymous):

"If you want to get made fun of by your teammates, wearing a cup would be the fastest way to do it. In all the games I've played — on every level of the game — I've only caught a knee down there once or twice. It's not the best feeling in the world. And no one wants to have millions of people watching you cupping your (cashews) in agony. But if someone came out wearing a cup, the rest of the team would be like, 'What's going on with this guy?'"

So there you have it, Yahoo Answers' Yesses, Duhhs, and Of-course-they-dos (yes, one answerer haughtily declared "Of course they do").

It seems they're doing just fine for the most part without the cups, but thank goodness they're still wearing the old jockstrap, which has got to be one of the best things to come out of Boston since baked beans:


Anyway, to get back to New Year's Eve. We happened to step out of the cinema on the Common just as they were shooting off the fireworks, a lucky coincidence, since otherwise we would not have stuck around to see them. They were shooting them off from the graveyard, seemed like.

On the way back to the car we had a look at a couple of ice sculptures, and some of the strange, sadly unfathomable "shrinkwrap sculptures" that were sprinkled about the Common:


This one, by shrinkwrap visionary Hannah Verlin, seemed to be an albino dragon feeding on a rubbish bin. Does this bode well for the new year? I guess it depends on whether the rubbish bin symbolizes the year just past or the one to come.

The crowds were getting to Mr. Big, so after pondering the lesson of the albino dragon for a moment or two while a child pointed to it and screamed, "Look! It's a trash can HAW HAW HAW!" over and over, we fled the Common (thus this post's title: "an uncommon New Year's Eve"—clever, eh?) for the coziness of home, and the comfort of Dick Clark's "Poignant New Year's Eve Party" in Times Square.

Watching "The World's Oldest Teenager" struggle through the same corn-ball commentary he used to improvise before the stroke, now meticulously scripted and slurred at a snail's pace was, indeed, poignant. I'm all for it (Go Dick!) but it was something to behold.

Once that ball dropped, we popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly, popped some porn in the DVD player, and got busy welcoming the new year in the only truly proper and fitting way. By falling asleep on the sofa with our trousers down around our ankles.

And that's what I'm saying here. Who needs crowds and fireworks on the Common and big, flashy balls in Times Square? A bottle of bubbly, a Bel Ami DVD, and just ordinary, everyday balls is enough to make your own fireworks, innit?
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*Not his real name.