Regis is tanned and rested, the barricades are up, and the electronic sensors are scanning the air for biochemical nastiness.
Homeland Security forces have welded the manhole covers shut, locked the mailboxes and cleared the skies
above Times Square.
It’s party time.
With as many as threequarters of a million revelers due in Midtown tonight – and decent weather in the offing – this New Year’s bash could be one of the biggest ever.
“We’re thinking of postponing the ball drop for a couple of days,” said a psyched David Billotti, spokesman for the
shindig’s sponsor, Times Square Alliance. “I’m just kidding.”
“Lovely weather,” Billotti added as an army of workers made last-minute preparations for the countdown. “We’re going to have folks all the way up to Central Park.”
Billotti expects diehard partiers to start crowding into Duffy Square – where Seventh Avenue and Broadway meet – at 9 a.m. today.
The show doesn’t officially get under way until 6, but tourists hoping for a glimpse of actress-singer Lindsay Lohan are expected to swarm in early.
Lohan, who will perform in the middle of Times Square for MTV, is this year’s main attraction.
Regis Philbin – subbing for an ailing Dick Clark – hosts the televised bash.
Organizers earlier this week conducted an “air-worthiness test” of a sampling of more than a ton of confetti due to rain down on the square. And at noon yesterday, bash officials conducted the annual “ball test,” in which the 6-foot-diameter New Year’s Eve sphere was lit up and sent halfway up the 77-foot flagpole.
With Post Wire Services