Less Nightmarish New Year, Everyone:

On Yelp, 2024 and the Spanish Inquisition

ABOVE: The year ahead, probably.

If you’re like me, and I hope for your sake you aren’t, you watch images of people celebrating New Year’s Eve – all smiles and joy and excitement, popping champagne and blowing party horns and wearing hilarious “2024” glasses – and you think, “Are you fucking crazy?”

Are you insane?

What the fuck are you cheering for?

There’s a whole YEAR ahead of us, the horrors of which we can scarcely now imagine.

Tell me something, Hilarious Eyewear: when you were cheering last New Year’s Eve, did you imagine 1200 Israelis being killed by Hamas terrorists, or 20,000 Palestinians being killed by the IDF soldiers? Did you imagine Trump would be leading in the polls or that Biden would still be alive? Did you imagine university students chanting Hamas slogans? “LGBTQ+ for Hamas,” did you imagine that, Mister Silly String? AI is about to wipe out millions of human jobs, and humans are embracing it. “Isn’t it cool!” NO IT ISN’T FUCKING COOL, IT’S THE FUCKING APOCALYPSE. And if that wasn’t bad enough, nearly two dozen animals and plants went extinct this year. Gone. Forever.

What the fuck are you cheering for?

If you had any sense, you would be hiding under your bed and refusing to come out.

That, in any event, was what I was feeling this past week, as people began appearing on the streets wearing “2024” t-shirts and glitter top hats. Fortunately, me, Orli and the boys had decided to head to a remote town a few hours drive away, a town that was barely a town, a town where I could forget the dread that New Year’s always causes in me.

It was no use.

We arrived at noon, but there is no escape from technology, not anymore, and emails chased me into the remotest of Air BnB’s: emails for New Year’s sales, for New Year’s parties, for New Year’s wishes from craven politicians.

“Hey, Man,” came a text from a friend. “What are you doing for New Year’s?”

What am I doing?

I’m barricading the front door.

And then night fell, and we grew hungry, and I went online to look for a nearby restaurant. There weren’t many choices, for which I was grateful (if you find yourself being driven mad by the relentless options capitalism demands for its own survival, check out The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz - not surprisingly, there are now a lot of books about the paradox of choice, so you have to choose which book about choice you’re going to read). So few were the restaurants and so old the reviews, that many of them were from 2020-21.

The Covid years.

And it changed everything.

“Nobody wearing masks indoors!” wrote one irate Yelper of the local burger joint. “I didn’t feel safe AT ALL.”

“Waiter pulled mask aside to take order,” wrote another of the Mexican place. “Disgusting!”

“Takeout only,” wrote another, “proof of vax required.”

“Closed,” said more a few listings, “due to pandemic. Please check back in a few months.”

Many of them never reopened.

As I read those Yelp reviews, I recalled those dark days - the days of KN-95 masks and latex gloves and eye guards, of our kids stuck at home in darkness and solitude, of supermarket fights over toilet paper, of desperation and fear and no room at the hospitals for all the dead.

And it helped. It cheered me up. Because whatever the fuck this year brings, Yelp is there to remind me what a fucking nightmare those years were. And we got through that. Somehow, we got through.

I know, I know – war, elections, climate change. 2024’s going to be a bumpy ride, and I catastrophize with the best of them. I expect the worst, assuring myself that if I do I’ll be prepared for it when it comes. But I’m old enough now to acknowledge that particular plan has never worked – to quote Rabbi Palin, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Fifty years ago, I spent nine whole months in my mother’s womb, trying to prepare myself for the world that lay beyond her pelvis. And I failed. Utterly.

“You’re a Jew, kid,” said my mother as they placed me in her arms. “Here’s The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here’s the Diary of Anne Frank. Cancer runs in my family, heart disease runs in your father’s. In a few years, something called “Social Media” will appear, and here’s a picture of the future President Donald Trump. Good luck.”

And so the Covid-era restaurant reviews on Yelp gave me something like hope. Sure, the year ahead might contain unimaginable horrors. They usually do. But nightmares end, and masks come off, and restaurants reopen and humans remember how miraculous ordinary life can be.

“Huge outdoor patio,” wrote one reviewer from 2021 as the pandemic was waning. “So good to be out among people again! Highly recommend!”

Me, too, Buddy.

It’s not enough to make me pop champagne or blow party horns when the clock turns 12:01 AM. Not even close. But if you’re like me, and I hope for your sake you aren’t, it’s something, at least, to hold onto.

It’s almost worth cheering for.

Yours in the fetal position,

S.