It’s New Year’s Eve. Run for Your Life.Well, folks, we were back for a moment, and now we’re gone again. But never fear, Daily Intel will return with a vengeance on Wednesday (and for good. We have no vacation written into our contracts — we just had to stop last week because our fingers, and souls, were bleeding). Since we know you’ve probably already left work and are going on to whatever horror you’ve got planned for this evening, we’re going to leave you with a bunch of heartfelt wishes for New Year’s Eve. While we would normally recommend getting the hell out of the city on this wretched night, we know you all, like us, are still here, and that you, like us, still allow yourself at your age to be bullied by some latent high-school-era belief that tonight should be the most fun night you have this year, and not only that, but the most fun night of your entire life thus far! We sure hope you won’t be disappointed! Here’s to that! And along with that we’d like to bestow upon you the following well-intentioned toasts…
May you
• Know more than eight other people at the giant open-bar party that you paid $200 to get into.
• Be so entertained by friends and merriment that you don’t have to watch any New Year’s Eve special on any major network, including MTV because God help you if you do.
• Not have to give a midnight kiss to that only semi-cute person you were sandbagging at the beginning of the evening in case no one hotter came around.
office-party patrol
Inside the Viacom Holiday Party: Screw It, Let’s Get WastedViacom employees and freelancers weren’t sure what to expect from their holiday party last night. After the company announced they were making major cuts to employee and freelancer benefits, no one was in a great mood. People talked about protesting at the party, wearing “Permalancers Are People, Too” T-shirts and handing out stickers that someone had made on which WTF replaced the MTV logo. Some people were talking about boycotting the party altogether. But at 5 p.m., after HR veep JoAnne Griffith sent around a memo announcing the cuts would be less severe than previously announced, the rage subsided, the angst transmuted into relief, and Sumner Redstone’s serfs succumbed to Weimar-esque debauchery. Daily Intel got a report from inside the belly of the beast.
