My favorite moment on New Year's Eve took place an hour or so after midnight, at Malo, a bar on Sunset Boulevard.

Under the glow of the flocked red wallpaper, the party had reached critical mass, with the crowd flowing in waves from the jukebox to the bar, and back. Someone played "Ice Cream Man" by Jonathan Richman on the jukebox, and the Keelhauler called me over to dance with him. A lot of us were dancing: the pretty girl in the halter dress and Frye boots was dancing with the blonde in the beauty pageant gown, and Loyal Dan and Darcy were attempting a fox-trot, or possibly a polka. Nick was taking pictures from his perch at the bar. Charlie was waving his arms from the concrete floor, where he lay after falling backward through a door marked "Staff Only." Ribbons tied to gold and silver balloons hung down like a kelp forest, and we danced through them, tripping over the streamers wound in our hair and over our shoulders, to the floor.

The bartender, who looked like Jesus, turned the song down to amiably announce Last Call, and we all howled in unison, then shouted at him on our own that You Can't Turn Down Jonathan! Awwww! There was a large percentage of ex-Bostonians in the room, which accounts for the Jonathan bias I suppose, but even the Keelhauler, who hails from Wisconsin, enjoyed yelling about the injustice.

He brought it up later as his favorite moment of the night, and I thought he meant the fact that it's unusual to hear Jonathan Richman on a jukebox. "No," he clarified, "It was fun to yell at the bartender with everyone when he turned down Jonathan."

I agree. The joy of discovering solidarity while protesting being denied the second half of "Ice Cream Man" somehow transcended the enjoyment of the song itself.

We ended the night with increasingly loud rounds of "Auld Lang Syne" shouted over the bartenders' insistence that we all leave, the lyrics replaced by "LA LA... LA LA LA" by those too drunk to remember the words.

Star of the day. . .