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HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s the countdown, with Dick Clark.
For decades Clark was the butt of jokes about being a perpetual teenager. No longer.
Two years ago Clark had a stroke, and I was one of the many who were surprised to see him make a New Year’s Eve appearance last year. This year his speech is still slurred, and once again he lost track of the countdown.
Clark’s clean-cut image belied the fact that in the late 50’s he was paid to promote records on “American Bandstand.” I assume he survived the payola scandal by having ABC-TV, and not just a local radio station, behind him.
I don’t think Dick lost count this year, I think it was more a matter of his difficulty with the “teen” numbers, ironically. By the time he started to say twenty, it was “nineteen” and then he took more than a second to pronounce each succeeding “teen”. He was a few seconds behind by the time he got to eleven, so he did the right thing and skipped ten – right on to nine – and almost got back in time with the countdown. He seems a bit better than last year, but it’s still hard to watch. To me, the most shocking fact is that Dick Clark has now lived longer than Guy Lombardo, the New Year’s Eve fixture of our youth! Guy Lombardo was another of the cultural icons who died in 1977. Guy was 75 when he died and Dick Clark is now 77. Yow!
Tom was practically in tears seeing Dick Clark in his condition! “God love him!” he kept saying. He always falls apart when he sees a picture of Annette Funicello in a wheelchair, too! Guess I married him partially for his terrific empathy and tender heart (awwww). Dougie, do you remember when I managed to tape the countdown to about six news years in a row on my old tape recorder? It had to have started before Dick Clark took over, because I was in college in 1976. I wish I had that tape!
Happy 2007! There’s already been a horrible plane crash, or, at least a big jet “gone missing” (term slated for the trash this year) in the waters of Indonesia.