Ask Howard • 12-15-23
Small talk, cat talk OK, guys, I’m thinking it best we immediately just hit the ground running with this holiday column — my final of the year here — and kick things off with a stalwart sample listing of a few desperately-needed, stalled-out air fillers that you must commit to memory for whenever you find yourselves trapped at that most horrific of holiday Hindenburgs — the dead New Year’s Eve party going down in flames.
Holiday party small talk is, after all, inescapable; everybody alive during holiday season invariably parrots a riff on exactly these same life-support bromides, over and over: “Wow!
How is it nearly 2024, already? It’s like, POOF! 2023 disappeared in an instant! The seasons just seem to blur by, faster and faster, every passing year!
How is it that the older I get, the younger everybody else looks?” Nobody gives a damn that you’re just spouting a stream of sophomoric clichés.
