NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTIONS… Happy New Year’s everyone. It still blows my mind when I look at the date and see the year two thousand seven. I know the calendar is only an arbitrary form of event-measuring, but it still applies to our psyche, and the passing of two thousand seven yearly time-units seems like something to get excited about. Without delving too deeply into the methods of capturing movement with symbols, it is conceivable to ignore the current method of time management in favor of another, based on some wholly different starting point. Wouldn’t it be fun to create a calendar that isn’t based on some hyped deity?

Oh, I don’t know—why do I always question things? I so envy people who happily go along, accepting everything the way it is, not wasting their time on ridiculous philosophical inconsistencies. I definitely need help. Maybe this will be the year when I finally become an adult, whatever that is. Maybe my concept of what an adult is supposed to be is skewed (or is it skewered?). I just seem to want to spend my whole life hanging out and having a good time.

I have always had difficulty accepting the grind, day to day, week to week, year after year, decade into lifelong and see ya later. I don’t know for sure, but I feel like it all comes down to the end, whether it be a split second or months laying in bed, when you reflect back on it all. I sense that in those moments you’re either going to be laughing and smiling at all the wonderful memories, or you’re going to be disappointed and disgusted that you didn’t take a few more flying leaps along the way.

Nobody has ever come back to tell me if I’m correct in this hypothesis, nor have I had the good sense to ask those I’ve known while they were approaching death, so conjecture is the vehicle upon which I transport this idea. But I have always trusted my intuition, plus I have met an absurdly large number of people in my life, therefore I’ve got a bit of an inside track.

FAB FOUR REDUX… I’m listening to the new Beatles album called Love (oh yeah) while I configure this mélange. It’s a remastered, redigitalized, remixed regurgitation, reworking renditions by those four renegade Rembrandts. I appreciate what George Martin and the rest of them are attempting, and it is interesting to have the different Beatles songs interwoven the way they are here, but it seems also like a case of modern staccato-attention-span snippets—like a bunch of students cut up paintings by a master, then pasted them together in a collage.

I also have trouble with the annoying flatness of digitalized music reproduction. The resonant intermingling of afternotes that occur naturally in the presence of musical instruments playing together is muted or amputated completely in the sterile techno-environment of modern studios. All that aside, those lads sure did make an impact, didn’t they? Better to get all the albums, line ‘em up and play them in their entireties one after the other.

STOP THIS… I want to take this time to communicate a few stray critical thoughts—random ramblings from this restaurant rogue about some things that bother me:

• Drinks without cocktail napkins. When I sit at a bar, or at a table that has a hard, non-absorbent surface, please place a cocktail napkin under my icy beverage. I don’t want to continually drip water and other liquids from the outside of the glass onto my clothes, nor do I want to have my drink sitting in a pool of water.

• Luke-warm stuff. Please try to serve hot drinks hot by heating the cup first, hot soups hot, hot food hot. I know how difficult it can be to coordinate timing in a restaurant, but it is possible. The reverse is also true. If you’re serving an up drink like a Martini, take the half-minute to a minute extra to ensure the drink is chilled properly.

• Boring meatless dishes. Please use a little more creative thought when faced with someone asking for vegetarian options on the menu. Most restaurants already offer many interesting items they use as accompaniments to meat and fish entrees. Try creating a few dishes involving those, along with legumes or beans as protein sources. Then vegetarians, of which there are a growing number, can have something beyond pasta to choose from.

 • Boring dishes in general. In fact, those of you creating menus out there, please find a way to come up with more interesting appetizers, entrees and food items in general. It seems that some restaurant operations just rehash the same couple of dozen menu items from place to place, homogenizing the lot of them into a menagerie of mediocrities.

• Boring music. If you are going to use music as a method of creating ambiance, please pick interesting, diverse choices. And play it at a level that it is audible, not where it is just an annoying incomprehensible noise.

• Boring visuals. Folks with TVs, I hate to break this to you, but there are interesting programs available beyond ESPN. I can understand broadcasting key sporting events, but come on, can’t you think of other exciting visual stimuli to try during different times?

Wow, I was going to begin to list all the things I’m happy about on the scene, but I ran out of space (Martha, I think this guy comes from space). I’ll pick this thread up again soon and continue knitting my little scarf full of opinions, comments and inconsequential thoughts…meanwhile, thanks for stopping by.