Auld Lang Sigh

People would pay good money--people are paying good money--to be in Richard Wiley's shoes come Dec. 31, 1999. Living in Las Vegas, the novelist and English professor has a front-row seat for what aims to be the ultimate New Year's bash. Vegas, riding a wave of momentum as a rejuvenated, all-purpose vacation hot spot, set out years ago to own this holiday--and, after all, whether you're staging a thousand-year bash or the apocalypse, Babylon-by-Hoover-Dam is a pretty natural choice. Can you think of a better place to be for the millennium?

"I can't think of a worse place to be for the millennium," says Wiley, "because of all the Strip nonsense. There's that false sense of camaraderie with strangers... The idea of the millennium is so overwhelming it makes me catatonic." Wiley will spend the holiday in Vegas, all right--but quietly, within the four walls of his house.

And in that he's not alone. Early this year and before, prognosticators and entrepreneurs predicted millennial revelers would party and spend as if it was their last night on earth, traveling to exotic locales, blowing enormous wads and filling up premium locations fast. (Back in 1992, a TIME millennium preview declared, "You might need a reservation--now.") But a funny thing has happened on the way to the fin de siecle: a lot of us are deciding to pass on the big bash. According to a Yankelovich poll for TIME and CNN, 72% of Americans say they are not planning to do "something special" on New Year's Eve, up from 63% who responded the same way in January. Only 21% now say they plan to travel away from home to celebrate. Instead, many will be Y2Kocooning, holding more subdued, intimate observances with family and friends. People like Diane Pollock and her husband Harold Goldberg, of San Rafael, Calif., who decided to stay home with their two-year-old daughter Sarah, so she won't have to tell people someday that she spent the millennium with the baby sitter. "We would rather she say she was at a party with her mom and dad," says Pollock.

For Pollock and others, the what-did-you-do question has forced the issue of what they most value. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment but underwhelmed by Dionysian blowouts, many are "opting not to go to the big party," in the words of trend watcher Faith Popcorn. "They're staying at home hiding under their beds, playing with their dogs, playing with their babies and wishing it were 1954." Even Bill Howard, marketing vice president for the Atlanta Convention and Visitor's Bureau, says that counter to his industry's expectations, "There is more of a spiritual mood than one of celebration." Howard plans to spend the night with his wife at a house in the Smoky Mountains.