Twenty New Year’s Resolutions I Didn’t Accomplish in 2020
4 min readDec 30, 2020
- Practice generosity, volunteer for talent night at the Los Angeles Jewish Nursing Home, be sure to show extra affection to any bubbes with the surname Sandler or Seinfeld.
- Stop picking my zits and address all problems head-on (move onto cuticles).
- Get to shul for T̶o̶r̶a̶h̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ , t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶m̶o̶n̶ , p̶r̶i̶e̶s̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶l̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶s̶, p̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶e̶c̶h̶, kiddush.
- YES, take an improv class, AND have to quit after an allergic reaction to mansplaining.
- Pull up to a party in the Hollywood Hills, and immediately lock eyes with my favorite 00’s star. She’ll have had work done, but it is unmistakably her as she snorts cocaine in the shape of the Disney Channel logo.
- Pick up the check when a successful friend comes to town, “Your Chase Plutonium is no good here!”
- Lay off the cussing. It’s crass, as fuck.
- Recall the 00’s Star’s Instagram post announcing the divorce to her goyish husband, and that she’s “looking to explore in 2020”. My gay Jewish heart will skip a beat, and I’ll approach her. “Have we met before?” she’ll ask, I’ll reply, “Mt. Sinai, row eight” We go somewhere private.
- Experience the Grand Canyon for the first time. Filled with awe, my soul will be still, mystified by Mother Earth’s magnificent, massive, vagina.
- Master Beyonce’s “Drunk In Love” moves. Send the video to my bat mitzvah’s DJ, proving, definitively, that I can “get funky”.
- Spend the entire evening sitting by the pool and laughing with 00’s Star. We’ll share Hollywood goss–“Maggie Smith slept her way to that Teen Choice Award, the wand really does choose the wizard!”–and our most profound shame: at fifteen, she hit her grandmother with her Mustang; I confess that I haven’t washed my bras in five months. Oof, that one’s been weighing on me.
- Write and direct the first big-budget, gay, holiday movie, Blintzes and Butches, a Pentecost Tale.
- Opt for elective iris implant surgery, because 00’s star’s favorite song is Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes,” and this is easier than lipo.
- Discover that 00’s Star is unexpectedly applying to college, and since I boast a 675 on verbal, I’ll offer to tutor her for the SATs. “Nobody has ever understood me before,” she’ll whisper, as we lie wrapped in satin sheets and flashcards. “You have an indomitable spirit,” I’ll say, kissing the crease of her neck. “Indomitable, that’s the hairy dude in the Himalayas?”
- Blintzes and Butches will not find the audience it deserves, (should I have gone with the more commercial, Tali’s TuBshvat?). Still, my luck will change when I win The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s annual Mamesh Kosher Danish-Eating Contest!
- Hastily breakup with the 00’s Star when she catches me checking the cheese for an OU. “It’s fucking vegan. What’s not kosher about that?” Things will have been weird ever since her scores came back; she’ll get an 800 in the Math section, but rank in the lowest 1% for verbal. Feeling embarrassed and exposed, I’ll spit back, “This never would’ve happened if Rabbi Sharon vouched for a Sunday test!” I’ll see myself out.
- Holding a twenty-five-year grudge for the People’s Princess, I’ll moon the Prince of Wales on a post-breakup trip to the UK. Months later, I’ll send a pre-Yom Kippur DM writing, “I apologize wholeheartedly for my actions, whatever ‘I apologize’ means.” I’ll feel justice has been served, until I see he has given Butches and Blintzes a five star Amazon review.
- See 00s’ face plastered across a giant billboard. After our breakup, she’ll abandon her academic ambitions and go back to acting. She’ll star in a soulless family comedy where teens teach their grandparents how to seduce on “the apps”. Being that 00’s Star is over thirty-five, she’s playing an elderly vixen who uses her Life Alert as a vibrator. You’ll wonder if she gets to keep any of the props as you text her a “hey”.
- Drink more water.
- Attend a new New Years’ party at that same place in the Hollywood Hills, and realize that I kind of lost my way. There will be just too many distractions in 2020, and while all my resolutions were fulfilled, I, myself, am not. Was that 00’s Star fling worth the time I could’ve spent fixing the third act of Butches and Blintzes, in which Malky sticks with her manipulative, lactose-intolerant, girlfriend, Lani, instead of pursuing the sweet rabbinic intern, Feigel? (Gay Twitter was on a RAMPAGE about that). Wouldn’t it be nice to have a year off from all the drama–the movie flop, love woes, Prince Charles’ lawsuit–what if everything shut down for a little? I’ll daydream about endless days of waking up late, focusing on writing, and pretending to be bummed about missing a camp friend’s wedding. Just me and my thoughts, all alone, confronting my own mortality–how wonderful would that be? Cheers to some solitude in 2021!
