Out with the old, in with the retro. Celebrating the end of a rather miserable century at Roseland Ballroom, surrounded by glow-stick twirling club-kids in their 30’s all fist-pumping to uninspired electronica, felt alot like spending New Year’s Eve in the Matrix. At the stroke of midnight, I was forcibly kissed by a rather large girl in leather pants as the DJ played a nasty remix of “Auld Langzyne.”* Somehow, I knew the real me was somewhere far away, writhing in a mechanical cocoon and waiting for a new and hopeful decade to begin.

There were more than a few die-hard Paul Van Dyk fans who had traveled from far away places like Iceland and Vancouver just to spend New Year’s Eve at Roseland grooving to his beats – which was mildly shocking to someone who found it hard to get on the train from Long Island on that frighteningly cold and snowy night. I even met a couple from Amsterdam who kept asking around as to where they could buy weed in New York City. Why they left a place where everything good is legal to come to America is a mystery I will simply never unravel. Perhaps they were seeking revelation and exhalation in the music, but I doubt anyone found that.

Early in the night, the party was quite tame and uninspiring. This seemed to change within the same amount of time that it takes a standard dose of Ecstasy to kick in, although I make no definitive speculation as to why that might be. When I am offered strange drugs at a strange place, I always refuse. However, on this night, if Morpheus had stuck his hands out and offered a choice between the red pill and the blue pill, I would have reached out and swallowed both. It might have been the only thing to save me from the unbearable state of consciousness which kept me awake all night.

Now 2010 is here – a pretty, innocent baby with a fancy top hat on and 2009 and the dire century it concluded is an old man resting in his grave. All I can say is, good riddance you bastard!

* Disclaimer: There was no such remix, and if one appears, I want royalties.

Adam J. Rodriguez