Published: January 02, 2009 11:37 pm      

BERNIE HORNICK | Take Clark off as rocker

I slept through New Year’s Eve.

Not New Year’s. New Year’s Eve.

That’s the difference between then and now. When you’re younger, you sleep off New Year’s. Later on, you sleep through New Year’s Eve.

Some would call it no life. I prefer to call it maturity. But don’t tell anyone.

Actually, that’s the reason I didn’t go out and celebrate.

The reason I didn’t stay in and celebrate was Dick Clark.

For decades, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” was, well, rockin’.

He’d do the Times Square ball drop live in the chilly air.

He’d introduce the Captain and Toenail, FrenchKISS or Huey Lewis’ News.

Everybody would be honored to step onto the platform with Dick. He was a rock ’n’ roll icon.

“I haven’t seen a performance like that since Chubby Checker in ’62,” he’d proclaim.

All the millions of viewers at home would marvel at how he never ages.

Now, he’s still an icon.

Rock and roll, not so much.

Never ages? Another urban legend shattered.

At the risk of sounding insensitive – it’s never stopped me before – it’s time to, umm, pull the plug on Dick Clark’s appearance on New Year’s Eve television.

No, don’t pull the plug on Dick himself. He serves as a useful reminder on the dangers of cholesterol-clogged arteries.

Just disinvite him from televised appearances. He’s a big boy; he can take it.

I got my fill on New Year’s Eve 2007 and was sure that frightful appearance would be the end.

As the ball dropped, cohost Ryan Seacrest said from the chill air, “Now, let’s go to our studios and hear from the one, the only, the legendary, American Bandstand’s Dick Clark.”

Out with the old. In with the older.

ABC didn’t catch on and the struggling Clark, no doubt propped up with a broomstick inside his shirt, returned again this year.

Don’t send me cards, letters and e-mail about how I’ll get old some day. I feel like I’m already there.

I don’t mean to be mean-spirited. I really don’t. It’s like bad-tasting medicine, ABC: It’s for your own good.

And I wish Dick the best in retirement. In retirement – not on TV on New Year’s Eve. He’s perfectly fine for the “Bandstand” retrospective show.

ABC, not wanting to hurt Dick’s feelings, instead chose to subject millions of Americans to Clark for another year.

Yeah, that balances out: The feelings of one multimillionaire versus the downer being subjected on tens of millions of viewers already struggling through a recession. Clark didn’t invent New Year’s, after all, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t invent the tele.

Next year, I look forward to again celebrating New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Rhianna, Coldplay or whoever the kids dance to today.

And as I listen to the jumpin’ jive of Will.i.am, I’ll remember a simpler, more innocent time.

Dick Clark, ageless and virile in my mind, would shout at the top of his lungs along with guest hosts Suzanne Somers and Phil Collins, “Happy New Year!”

A festive New Year’s leaving the infirmities of time to another day.

What a concept.



Bernie Hornick is a reporter for The Tribune-Democrat.