HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” is still on hiatus until 2015, but the host has returned in a web exclusive to help articulate what many of us have long realized: New Year’s Eve is the worst holiday of the year.
New Year’s Eve harnesses the combined negativity of being alone on Valentines Day and being depressed about getting older on your birthday. But unlike those holidays, New Year’s Eve takes what is normally a solitary exercise in self-pity and puts you in a room with 35 other people experiencing the same crushing loneliness and five perfect couples who the rest of you hate for their seemingly perfect existences.
Okay, that’s might be a bit of a bleak outlook. But even if you’re one of those lucky people with a great job, friends, and significant other, Oliver sums up New Year’s Eve’s terribleness in a single sentence:
“It combines three of the least pleasant things known to mankind: forced interaction with strangers; being drunk, cold and tired; and having to stare at Ryan Seacrest for five solid minutes.”
You could have the best damn life in the world, but the universal axiom first popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre still holds: Hell is other people. And Super Hell is when those other people are drunk and/or Ryan Seacrest.
One surefire way to make sure your New Year’s doesn’t suck? Spend it with John Oliver! The comedian has four shows at the Wilbur Theatre December 30-31.
