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Time for the annual end of year/beginning of year post. This end/beginning of year, like most, finds me in Southern California, which is better than it could be. Everything's better than it could be.

I'm looking forward to 2010 but I'm gonna be realistic about it. It's gonna be no easier than 2009. Wind's gonna blow, bossman's gonna keep his foot on the throttle. Just going to try to ride out the rough waters and fill each weekend with 47 hours of fun.

My fiercest goal for 2010 is to try to get a weekly pickup game on Sunday mornings at 10 am in a nice gym. That's the only time I think I can make it consistently. Anyone interested or have a lead on a gym?

2011, according to my charts, is the year of real change. The kind that only comes along so often.

I just read a very surprising book by late night television funnyman Craig Ferguson. Do you like Ferguson? It's taken me a long time to warm up to him but now I think he's the best of all the late night guys. Better than Kimmel? you ask in disbelief. Better than Kimmel. Give the dude a try -- actually give him two tries, because he's only good about half the time.

Anyway, the book is a sprawling novel called "Between the Bridge And the River". It's got plenty of flaws, and some of it is just way way off the mark...but at the same time it's actually a pretty heavy piece of writing. I tip my hat to the guy because he actually throws himself into some intense, universe-questioning territory and doesn't come out of it looking like too much of an asshole. I give it a 22.5 out of 30 and I say you pick it up and read it this year.

The book made me think about those 20, 30, 50 pivotal moments in anybody's lifetime. Sometimes you know it as it's happening: My life is changing forever right now. Like, maybe the first time you got drunk or read a book that spoke directly to you or saw a boob in the wild or grasped a parent's hand as they died.

Other times, it's a moment that seems like it'll fade from memory within a couple of hours, but instead lasts a lifetime. For me, there was the time I stared into a teacher's eyes moments before I was about to skip his class. He was a teacher I really cared about, and during my lost years when I was inches away from flunking out of high school his was the one class I never gave up on. But then one day, I couldn't bring myself to go. The reasons were probably unclear to me then and certainly are now.

On the way to his class, just as I was concluding that I would blow it off this one time ONLY, I stopped and got a drink from the water fountain. And he was right behind me in line. As I stood up, our eyes met, there was a passing acknowledgment. And then I turned around and walked away, out into the open air of New York City, away from where I was supposed to be. But it was at that instant, I believe now, that my standards became permanently lowered. That I accepted the fact that I was a fuckup. From then on, any success I had made me suspicious, mediocrity was met with relief, and failure itself failed to produce any real sting. Failure was the soup that's always on the menu.

Of course, at the time I was just like, Ugh, get me the fuck out of here. I can't take it. Whatever it was. It ate at me a little, but every day was filled with stomach-wrenching stress so it didn't seem that different right off the bat.

In the end, the teacher was so freaked out by my no-show, he actually ended up reaching out to my family. My pop confronted me, the teacher and I had a heart to heart, and he helped me get back on my feet academically. Which also ended up changing my life. Mr. Geller, if you're reading this, you are my hero.

So that little look we gave each other at the water fountain, him thinking, See you in a minute, me thinking, Sorry to let you down but you won't see me anytime soon, made a permanent imprint. One, it changed me as a human being, internally, forever. And two, it rescued me from the academic junkpile. (Although maybe if I'd bottomed out completely I would have had some adolescent epiphany and become an unstoppable wrecking ball of success.)

Whatever the case, let's hope that 2010 brings pivotal moments for all of us, and the good kind, like seeing boobs in the wild for the first time.