Nobody wants to be born on January 3rd. At that point, everybody is either partied out or enacting New Year’s resolutions, already. Honestly, by day three of partying in a row, whether you’re just drinking, or doing drugs, combining the two, or you’re just dancing the days away at a five-week rave in Germany; based on pure adrenaline and highly charged sexual vibes alone, you’re still dragging like Hunter Biden on any given Monday, afterwards.
If God gave you the universe, you morphed into Art Show USA, who was born on New Year’s Day, inspiring his dear dada to call him Number 1 Capricorn. His dear dada didn’t nickname him Number 1 Capricorn to make him an insufferable, know-it-all twat bore, but to praise the almighty, the most-high Hashem, for perfecting human civilization with his beautiful boy, whom he blessed with out-of-this-world good looks, hilarious acting chops, and a beautiful builder’s artistic mind, ripe with unlimited imaginative topping possibility.
I’m also positive that Art Show USA would make a great-looking brother, like Rick Fox, if he used the blackface filter through Instagram to do so. Every day, Art Show USA’s best friend, Shawn Wayans-Stein, resented his existence half the time, because he was born on January 3rd and had less birthday rocker-gathering memories than the Elephant Man had bottles thrown at his head for trying to crash games of Spin The Bottle after his black-tie makeover one too many times.
One day, Art Show USA was having lunch with Shawn at school, and he says, “Why don’t we trade birthdays, Shawn? I was born on New Year’s Day, as you know, which everyone treats like their own personal birthday celebration, so everyone is in a perpetual state of good cheer until they strike out at midnight in their desperate dash to suck face with the nearest available girl to love. “So, you won’t feel like a loser benchwarmer scrub in junior high school again. When you’re born on New Year’s Day, everyone is out of the house to celebrate their unique brand of specialness with their planned lifetime partners-in-love, whether it’s done of out of begrudging spite or not.
“The point is, even if you’re stuck home alone on New Year’s Eve, have zero friends to party with, and parents who don’t reserve much bonding time with you ever (unless they feel stranded with a pronounced pang of empty loneliness when they retire to Arizona in their more advanced, retired, CNN-consuming years amid so-called Pandemic scares, where fewer people died this year than last), you can still make out with your blown-up balloons with pretty drawn-on faces, and not feel completely deflated for making out with a poor man’s blow up doll.
“Because, deep down, you know you’re not the only one making an extra effort to reward yourself with some extra good loving on New Year’s Eve (or not).
“You’re my best friend, and I love celebrating your birthday on January 3rd with just you, like the one year we went duck pinning and had the entire place to ourselves; or the time we had an entire laser tag room to ourselves; or the time we snuck into weird, weak Howard Stern’s floor seats to see the Knicks, because he was still de-bloating at home from eating one too many Turkey Burger salads at Jimmy Kimmel’s house for New Years. “Still, it feels cooler to be in Manhattan on your birthday than in an abandoned duck pin bowling alley in Danbury, CT, that looks more dated than the low-rent, whiteout paint job on the walls.”
Shawn says, “I appreciate the gesture, Art Show. I’ve thought about what it would feel like to have myself celebrated on New Year’s Eve instead of on January 3rd, which gives sloppy thirds a bad name. And you’re a good friend for offering to trade birthdays for the year.
“Now I know why you spent all that time watching those graphic design tutorials on YouTube to make me a fake ID reflecting my New Year’s day birthday, just so I can hear a bouncer at some swanky club in the city look at my ID and say, “Oh, snap—happy birthday, New Year’s boy. Don’t forget to pace yourself. I’d postpone New Year’s resolutions ’till January 2nd, because you’re not sleeping tonight.”
Art Show says, “I did make you a fake ID for your birthday. I know you don’t drink alcohol like me, but I wanted to give you the feeling of being a Number 1 Capricorn, for a change.”
Shawn says, “Again, I appreciate the gesture, Art Show, but I actually prefer the celebrities born on January 3rd. Eli Manning was born on January 3rd and he’s a much bigger pimp than Tom Brady. He’s NFL royalty before we awoke in a plagued universe gone wild. Plus, Eli beat Brady in the Super Bowl and prevented his perfect season from happening, due to him asserting his big-time clutch gene.
“So Brady is married to Gisele—big deal. She’s like 80, in model years. Robert Loggia from Scarface was born on my birthday, who plays Tony’s Jewish mobster boss for a bit. He drops the hilarious line, “Never underestimate the other guy’s greed.”
Art Show says, “I hear you Shawn. JD Salinger was born on New Year’s Day, like me, and he became a reclusive freak who spent four decades in the New Hampshire wilderness, writing books for himself like a tweaked Holden Caulfield on an endless trust fund funded retreat, with all his time-release Adderall delivered to his doorstep by his various pharmacist groupie fanatics at large. “So, how much did he relish the company of others on New Year’s Eve? I never really thought about this until now. J. Edgar Hoover was a glamorized peeping tom, also born on my birthday, New Year’s Day. It’s not as if Mini Me, born on New Year’s Day, who died prematurely in his forties, could boast of a sustainable, long-lasting career with legs after Austin Powers 3.”
Shawn says, “But we can’t let your killer fake ID go to waste, Art Show. I read about a Beastie Boys cover rap trio group performing at some dive bar on the Lower East Side on New Year’s Eve, this year. Why don’t we go there together and get our bodies moving to some Intergalactic Planetary? We’ll have to fight for room to dance because of the ban on smartphone devices, to make old-school hiphop city life great again.”
Art Show says, “Didn’t you say the name of this gastro pub on the Lower East Side was called Hip Hops?”
Shawn says, “You got it, Art Show. With a friend like you in my corner, I’ll always have a bigger hop to my step than the rest.”
Michael Kornbluth
Do It All Dad Year Podcast Blog 