Image via Complex Original
The Brooklyn Nets notwithstanding, the most overrated facet of 2013 is right around the corner: New Year's Eve. This annual last call on the year that was is an over-hyped, played out, and absurdly expensive formality disguised as a good time. Even though it'll likely end in tears, a shattered iPhone screen, and a haymaker to the face, NYE invites millions of people every year to take a drunken stumble into January 1. Well Complex City Guide is here to take a dump on everyone's good time with 10 Reasons New Year's Eve is the Most Overrated Holiday of the Year.
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The last second scramble for tickets is enough to kill a man.
Christmas shopping is a nightmare, but the prep work for New Year's Eve is on a whole other agonizing level. Coordinating tables, bottles and tickets to a club for a group of 10+ people is as torturous a holiday tradition as Grandma Joan's prejudice rants at the Thanksgiving dinner table. By December 28, your crew will still be caught up in a cost-benefit analysis between hotel package parties and the more spontaneous dinner cruise option. You just want someone to make a decision, but it's an excruciating back-and-forth until every event in the city is sold out.
The weather is horrible, and catching a cab is impossible.
In January, Old Man Winter goes from being a seasonal charm to a cantankerous jerk who receives sexual gratification by inflicting pain. The 3 a.m. street rush on New Year's Day looks like the bedlam of war-torn Antarctica, where shitfaced refugees in sequence sheath dresses storm cabs like they're U.N. food tucks. After 45 minutes of braving the biting cold with an insufferably kvetching girlfriend, you'll wish for a spontaneous drone strike to take you out of your misery.
The patron to bartender ratio is typically 500 to one.
If your broke ass can't afford a table, then you're left to battle it out in the field with a thousand other cash-strapped peasants. The open bar looks like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during a 500-point plunge, with panicked guests stacked 10 deep and screaming incoherently. Clubs are very calculated with the way they handle New Year's Eve, and that $200 ticket gives you the privilege of battling it out for the occasional water-down vodka drink.
You’re more likely to get slugged by a drunken partier than steal a kiss at midnight.
So, you're a single guy with a fresh pair of tailored jeans and a pressed button-up layered elegantly underneath your cashmere sweater. You're the bro equivalent to George Clooney on Oscar night, and that cheap champagne buzz has you feeling as confident as Rickey Henderson on Xanax. You go to approach a woman, but a graceless, roaringly drunk dude spills a bourbon-cherry seltzer on your freshly polished Johnston & Murphys. At first, you think it's an accident, but the frenzied look in the goon's eyes let you know he's just looking for an excuse. Instead of Instagram, tonight's revelry will be captured and archived on WorldStar.
It’s a costly celebration at a time when your finances are already under fire.
With holiday shopping doing to your credit score what Steve Carell did to Anchorman 2, closing out 2013 with another exorbitant expense seems downright self-destructive. You can try to be responsible and set a budget. But, after a Moet-fueled pregame, all bets are off. With more champagne bubbles coursing through your veins than white blood cells, you'll likely bottom out your checking account with a magnum of Grey Goose at 2 a.m. That kind of YOLO fuckery can have serious consequences, particularly when it's done the night before your rent is due.
The night’s expectations are unreasonably high.
Life is not as whimsical as it appears on Apple iPhone 5 commercials, and that's especially true on New Year's Eve. Every year, you peg December 31 as a celebratory ode to new beginnings, but there's nothing regenerative about losing your cell phone and pissing yourself in a hotel elevator. Don't make the night bigger than it is, because New Year's Eve is just St. Patrick's Day with a formal dress code.
Getting irresponsibly wasted in a full suit just isn’t as fun, TBH.
Getting through the workday in ironed khakis and a pair of Clark desert boots is uncomfortable, but partying with Ke$ha-like fervor in a tailored suit is downright agonizing. For the ladies, the combination of form fitting chiffon, 8" heels, and peach vodka is even worse. On the Fourth of July, you're free to party shirtless and Super Bowl Sunday is sweatpants-laden affair. But, for whatever reason, New Year's Eve buffoonery requires heavy starch and a tie clip. It's just not right.
Doing NYE properly means beginning 2014 with a 48-hour hangover.
New Year's Eve is not a time to exercise restraint; it's an Usain Bolt-like sprint to the peak of sloshed mountain, and drinking your weight in bubbly definitely has a price. The remainder of your holiday break will be spent with a splitting headache and a mouth as dry as the Atacama Desert.
Rallying for 2014 is hard when you’re crippled with the regret of December 31.
Nothing derails your New Year's Eve resolutions faster than last call on 2013. A two-day hangover requires a ceaseless onslaught of Chipotle, which shelves the healthy eating edicts until February, and good luck getting on the treadmill when your every burp is a whiskey shot revisited.
And, it’s all for a 10-second countdown.
No holiday requires as much planning and hoopla as New Year's Eve, but it's all for a 10 second countdown and a stupid ball drop. For other holidays, you get presents, a turkey feast, or a fuckton of candy. But, New Year's Eve is just a costly, sloppy mishmash of d-bags and vomit-soaked toilet seats. NYE can GTFOH. Wake us up when it's 2014.