Hello, person and/or people and/or robots of the future! Thank you for coming to allnewyear.com. This project is over, but I wanted this post to serve as a beginner’s guide, so you can get a sense of what this this site all about.
What is this site all about?
Good question, fictional question-asker! All New Year was a project started by Opus Moreschi, in which he did something he’s never done before, once a day, every day, for a year, and blogged about it.
Why are there no more updates?
Opus started his All New Year on his birthday, March 5, 2007 and completed it one year later on March 4, 2008.
How many new things were done?
366 (as Opus’s mother pointed out, it was a leap year).
Some of the most popular posts on All New Year were Taco Tuesdays, a weekly event in which Opus would eat something he’s never tried before, from freeze-dried larvae, to strange mexican candies, to dog food. Opus occasionally posts new Taco Tuesdays at his other site, HeyItsOpus.com.
I just saw you did something rather small and lame for a New Thing on this day or that. Does that count?
Listen, Fictional Question Asker. I used to like you, but now you’re getting a bit uppity. Yes, admittedly, some of the new things were lame. But you try finding something brand new to do every day while working full time, blogging daily, and trying to retain some semblance of a social life. It ain’t easy, chump.
What are your favorite New Things?
That’s like asking, “Which sharp stick did you enjoy getting poked in the eye with most” But here are the ones that resonated with myself or others:
The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with people from all over the globe writing me with suggestions, and support, and only very very occasionally to tell me how stupid I looked. But by far, imitation was the most awesomest form of flattery. Several people attempted to do their own All New Years - to varying degrees of success. I am not judging that in the slightest - it’s a difficult thing to do, and just giving it a try is admirable enough.
Emily decided to do her own Em’s New Year, along with a Taco Tuesday spin-off called Mini-Muffin Monday.
Dani, from the UK, started up Dani’s All New Year,: her version of Taco Tuesday was called Fritters on Friday.
Grace was inspired to do her own twist on the genre by making sure her next year was her Favorite Year.
Erika brought the concept to her craft business, My Imaginary Boyfriend, and did a craft a day for a month.
Popular YouTube vlogger Paperlillies recommended my blog to her many fans, her brother were inspired to do a Taco Tuesday, calling theirs Burrito Wednesday. Her accent makes here single edition far cooler than all of mine combines.
Are you going to keep doing All New Things?
God, no. From now on I will simply sit very still, concentrating very hard on never again trying anything new. (Fine, okay, I’m sure I’ll always be open to new experiences in a way I haven’t been before. Is that what you wanted?)
Do you realize you switched from third person to first person halfway through this list?
Opus Moreschi does realize that I did this.
How do you feel about it now that All New Year is over?
How do I feel? Honestly, relieved. All New Year was a huge pain in my ass. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad I did it, but it was exhausting, draining, frustrating, confusing and upsetting at times. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing.
What have you learned from the All New Year project?
I wish I had a pat, Carpe Diem, Oh-Captain-My-Captain, Bucket List sort of answer for that. But life doesn’t serve up easy answers - and if it did, it wouldn’t be as interesting. I started the project because I noticed a tendency in myself to remain too comfortable, to not step outside my own boundaries, and to not explore new things. If I saw those qualities in another person, I would probably be inclined to dislike them. By forcing myself to do new things, I was forcing myself to confront those qualities.
What I learned is that we have boundaries for a reason. And it’s always good to push those boundaries, test their elasticity. Maybe you’ll find what terrified you a year ago is easy for you today… or that something you’ve always shied away from is something you actually really enjoy.
But I think its just as valuable a lesson to learn that it’s okay to have those boundaries. If I don’t want to go clubbing until dawn listening to house music and taking illegal pills I buy off a guy in the bathroom who won’t give me his real name but tells me to call him “The Fixer” - that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. It means I know what I like - scrabble, ben & jerrys, and an early bedtime. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Do you have any other sweeping, grandiose projects planned for the future?
I’m getting a lot of interesting comments, links, and emails from people who have only discovered the blog now that it’s all over. Hi, new people! Sorry that my life is boring now. I need a break.
However, I couldn’t quite leave Taco Tuesday behind… there are brave new frontiers of weird food to try. So I’ve moved it over to my “personal” blog at Heyitsopus.com. Check out the all new episode.
Also I want to give big props and thanks to Alaskan singer/songwriter Marian Call, who was touring through Los Angeles and came by my All New Year Wrap Party. She was moved to write a song for the All New Year, of which she has yet to record, but sent me the lyircs, which I find hearbreakingly charming. This is Marian’s song:
A poor girl on her own in
the city, bemoanin’
The troglodyte males who molest her
Found welcome relief,
reinforcing belief
In good breeding, when her host impressed her –
At a very fine party
Not snobbish, but arty
And full of the finest of folks –
With wit and panache
And a grand ex-moustache
And punchy yet civilized jokes.
Oh, heaven preserve us
from louts who unnerve us
And bastards who pinch us and grope us
Here’s to the hepcat
who brook have none of that –
Our very own maaaaaaaaagnum Opus
Wow. Nobody’s written a song for me before (and I am guessing they won’t from here on out) so I am speechlessly thankful to Marian. Thank you to her, and everybody who has supported me in this crazyass project.
A lot of people have posted links and sent me great encouragement over the past year, and I’ve tried to give them all the proper thanks and I’ve surely missed some people along the way. So, if you’re reading this, thank you. Unless you’re reading this in order to find some way to stalk and/or murder me, in which case, please, do not stalk and/or kill me.
Just as the All New Year finished up, however, I saw a huge increase in people watching and subscribing and commenting on my videos on YouTube. I didn’t quite figure out why suddenly hundreds of people were interested in a now-extinct project, until I found this video from Youtube User Paperlillies.
She’s kindly given me mention midway through her vlog (which has a considerable fan following), at around 2:10. She even is considerate enough to pronounce my name correctly, which is a rarity.
A small fraction of my All New Year videos have made it on youtube, but I’m gonna head back and upload some old ones for Tigerlillies and others to watch, and enjoy, and comment about in adorable british accents.
Today, with infinite thanks to my friend Russ, I wrote and recorded a “Nerdcore Rap” track. Russ is a fixture in the Nerdcore scene with his awesome group Dead Circuits. Nerdcore is exactly what it sounds like - nerds, rapping about nerdy things. It seemed to fit me.
My hip-hop name was MC Snugglebunny, and Russ concocted the beat under his nom-du-sythm Amoebafingers. He did all the hard work; I just laid down the mad rhymes. Please enjoy the hip-hop masterpiece that is “Force Quit”.
Right click to save to your hard drive, add it to your ipod, and blast it from your maserati.
Voting, yesterday, was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. For somebody who’s almost professionally detached, who makes his money making fun of the the system, I sometimes forget that the process is really empowering. We don’t run the elections in this country with anything even approaching fairness or evenness, and yet, it’s still a pretty amazing process.
Watching the election results roll in on Wolf Blitzer’s Big Room of Technology was an enthralling experience for me, and in some ways I’m glad a clear decision wasn’t made on either side - this means more and more voters will get a chance to weight in. But knowing the campaign would continue on, I made my All New Thing today to donate money to a candidate. I don’t like the fact that running for president requires a huge amount of money, but one candidate has been getting that money not from political action committees but from individual donors. Considering how unusual that is, I decided to donate myself.
I’m not gonna get all Oprah or Chuck Norris on you by telling you who to vote for, but goddamn it, if you don’t vote I’m gonna come to your house and give you a roundhouse to the neck. For America.
Do your eyeballs like viewing things? Sure. So why not view some things related to All New Year?
Remember back when I voiced some drunk flowers for a PSA? Well the commercial is completed, and I think it’s pretty fun. Watch the whole thing yourself and let me know what you think. I play the flower on the left. The pretty, pretty pink one.
Also, if you’re one of the 7 people in America who get the cable channel “Fuel TV” you can watch me, my boss, and some waffles on The Daily Habit tomorrow night at 9.
Finally, you can see the season finale of Lil’ Bush tomorrow night at 10:30 on Comedy Central if you enjoy seeing what I actually get paid to write.
Small yet determined gremlins apparently pulled the wires from the back of the Taco Tuesday Pod-Cast-O-Matic machine a few weeks back, and I never noticed. Thanks to the vigilant eyes of my friend Julio, I have taken a can of Raid to those gremlins and sold their pelts for beer money. The Podcast is up and running once again. Haven’t subscribed yet? Hit the picture below to do so. Fun!
Wow. Just… wow. I just discovered that a lovely young lady named Emily has decided to embark on her own All New Year a few days ago. She’s got her own blog about it called, appropriately, Emily’s All New Year. She’s even decided to do her own version of Taco Tuesday called Mini-Muffin Monday.
This has to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (eating that bread off the loaf was a pain the ass). I’m thrilled that people are trying new things - whether it be every day, like Emily, or just every now and again. If you’re doing any All New Things, let me know - it makes me know I’m not alone in this crazy adventure.
I’m sitting here, feeling guilty over the weakness of yesterday’s post. I was busy, I was tired, and what I wanted to do fell though, but still… signing up for a web site isn’t exactly thrilling entertainment. I have an obligation to you fine folks.
So I’d like to pre-announce that tonight’s thing will be pretty awesome. Not for me. But hopefully for you.
On a day I felt sort of under-the-weather, I was glad for the soda bottles of home-made beer lingering in my bathroom closet. No, those lukewarm beers wouldn’t calm my churning tummy. But it did make for a very easy New Thing, the penultimate step in the beer-making process. Now that the carbonation process was over, I was free to move my beers to the fridge, where they would age more and become darker with the cold. In a week’s time I will have either a delicious triumph or a lot of skunky beer to pour down the drain. Only time will tell.
Tomorrow, hopefully, my tummy will be back to normal in time for an all-new Taco Tuesday. See you then.
