Not since I first saw the kittens sing Destiny's Child

At the end of every year, spending the holiday week with the in-laws and my family in Ohio always puts some perspective on life. When you're in your rental car and you make that first stop for gas and coffee in rural Pennsylvania, and the parking lot is full of pickup trucks and zaftig folks in sweatpants, you really feel that transition. And then on your car's satellite radio (pretty cool!) your wife finds the "classic alternative" station, and it plays Squeeze and the Pixies and the blurbs between songs say things like, "the stuff you listened to when you were supposed to be in computer lab!" and you laugh and really dig it, and then you realize that you have your own oldies station, and you want to cry a little bit. But, as always it was a week full of lots of fun family madness (first chance to see Marine brother-in-law home safe from Iraq, thank God) cheap Columbus vintage stores and bars with 23 ounce beers for 3 bucks, along with the blessing/curse of no Internet connection (yay, no obligation to check email! Oh my God, I've got to check email.), and meals made of piles of meat, with a side of meat (so delicious, and there's that familiar sense of euphoria...oh, but now I'm lethargic and vaguely sad). Transitioning back to New York is tough! After a week of nothing but eating with breaks for drinking, you'll still stop on the way home for dinner at the Cracker Barrel, where the coffee comes with a side of gravy, and you get the sense that if they sold bottled water, it would be corn flavored (now with more niblets!). But, as much as I love going back to visit the big O, the best part is getting home to NYC.

So, here it is, the busiest year of my life is over, and of course 2007 promises to be even busier! I don't make resolutions, but I am committing fully to continuing what we've started and keep building projects that take full advantage of New York's unique cultural environment. My friend Lauren Cornell (herself a multiple threat curator-writer-Director of Rhizome.org) coined one of my favorite terms with what she calls the "Hipster Disciplines." The Hipster Disciplines overlap here more than anywhere else and that's how to break out of a niche in New York: make something that crosses those lines and brings all the hipsters together!

There were too many highlights this year for any kind of summing up here. So, I'm limiting myself to one moment: the most awesome thing in 2006 .