Did anyone else turn on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” last night solely out of morbid curiosity…?
I mean, I didn’t.
Well, not really, anyway. I would’ve turned it to ABC, anyway, out of habit as much as anything…but I DID really want to see how Dick Clark looked. It totally didn’t seem like a proper New Year’s Eve without Dick Clark hosting last year’s festivities, so I was glad to hear he was coming back this year…but then there was all that controversy about how they doctored up a photo so that they could have one of Clark with his “co-host” Ryan Seacrest together, and people wondered, “Well, geez, how bad off IS he?”
Well, he looked pretty much just like Dick Clark…but, man, as soon as he opened his mouth, there was no question that the man had had a stroke. At the party I was attending, people were, like, “Oh, my GOD, he sounds AWFUL!” And, okay, he didn’t have that booming, confident Dick Clark voice, no…but, still, the guy fought his way back from a stroke and, only a year later, he had accomplished enough in the way of recovery to be able to appear on camera (albeit in a studio rather than out on the street) and address the audience sporadically throughout the night. You almost wanted to applaud the guy. And, yet, lots of people at this party just kept going, “Oh, that’s so SAD!”
I don’t think it’s sad; I think it’s awesome.
Dick Clark has been a staple of my life for as long as I can remember, and I’m just glad he’s back…because when he’s really gone for good, I don’t forsee a need to turn on the TV on New Year’s Eve ever again.
