Sic transit gloria swanson

This was the scene on Duval this afternoon -- and thank you very much, but I won't be around at midnight to see Sushi ride the big red pump down.

Gives a certain vibrancy to the phrase "drag and drop." Still, been there, done that, been stepped on and jostled enough, thank you very much again.

And that was when people still had standards and the shoe was spangled.

Nor will I be on Lower Duval, watching the giant conch shell drop at Sloppy Joe's. Too . . . sloppy, in every awful sense.

I am tempted, briefly, to watch the Wench Drop at the Schooner Wharf. It's fairly close to the apartment, and though it sounds horribly non-PC, it's -- horribly non-PC, but at least consensual.

Evalena Worthington, who owns the wharf bar, dresses up as her own vision of pirate wenchitude and has herself lowered about 80 feet down the mast of the Schooner Liberty, at anchor off the bar. Then cannons go off, doves are released and -- with the drag queen and the conch also dropped elsewhere on the Rock -- our little island has again done all in its power to stave off the forces of normalcy.

I plan to stave them off at home. Asleep.

But happy 2007, however you ring it in. Just don't wring yourself out.