Me and nine friends played Whirlyball this weekend. What's Whirlyball, you say? Well... take a basketball court and replace the hoops with a round target where that square on the backboard is. Get a softball-sized whiffleball and give each player a scoop, sorta like jai lai or lacrosse scoop. Two teams of five. Oh yeah, everybody drives a bumper car!

It's sorta like polo on bumper cars instead of horses. The key is to pass the ball to your teammates, since carrying it won't get you far- every time you get the ball you find yourself being battered by three of the opposing team. Sometimes you are concentrating so hard on getting the ball that you don't watch where you're going and BAM! right into the wall. Plus, if the ball's all the way down at the other end of the court, you might as well just ram whoever's closest to you. The fact that the court is at a bar doesn't help your driving skills.

Let me tell you, it is a brutal sport. We played two half-hour games. Not for those with back problems. Everybody has a seatbelt-shaped bruise across their hips now.

Imagine playing hockey or basketball where there were no fouls, and you were encouraged to ram the heck out of your opponents. Physical size doesn't matter since everyone's got the same vehicle. Our two teams were closely matched and the scores were 8-10 and 7-7. By the time the hour was up, I was done. I felt like a hockey puck.

For New Year's, we went first to my friend Lun's house for a fireup. One of the best things about the city is the diversity- everybody's from a different place. Lun's from India, and there were me and my roomies from Ohio, a friend from Wisconsin and her friend from Alaska, Lun's friend from Sweden, and a bunch of my friends from Mexico City. Of course, Singular, Guadalupe, Piloto, Cabuto, and E-D were there. We talked a bit about worldwide NYE traditions. In my family, you absolutely must eat black-eyed peas on the first day of the year, for good luck that year. My sister's in Ecuador right now, and she says that they make effigies called "anos viejos" and burn them in the street. Then all the guys dress up like women and dance in the street until drivers give them money. I told her that we had people burned in effigy in the street, and men dressed as women dancing in thongs in traffic for money, but it wasn't for New Year's, that's just Chicago.

We headed down to Navy Pier to watch the fireworks. The El train is free on NYE to encourage people to keep from driving drunk. Everyone's spirits are high and the city becomes a little friendlier. The
fireworks over the lake were beautiful, with two competing shows, and the glowing city in the
background.

I noticed an odd phenomenon while down there. In residential high-rises, you can see the windows of hundreds of apartments at once. On New Year's Eve, everyone's watching the same show, right? Dick Clark in Times Square, doing his 120th NYE celebration. So when everyone's watching the same show, all of those windows glow and pulse in sync as the televisions inside flicker from scene to scene.

Then back to our place, where we had the first party of 2002! It started at 1AM on 1/1. We figured people'd have other plans for the evening but would want some place to go to relax. So we ushered in the new year until the sun came up. Nobody got sick, but Brooklyn did get so drunk that he threw his pants out the window.