By Brendan Loy

With the girls asleep upstairs — Becky having gone to bed shortly after our traditional Milk Toast at 10pm local time (midnight Eastern) — I rang in the New Year by following through on my ridiculous/stupid/awesome “DU Bally Drop” idea. Here’s the video:

I was also livecasting via iPhone, as you can see. Here’s that archived video, complete with Tom Petty goodness for Mid-Majority fans:

Original version of this post (titled “Watch the Bally Drop!”) below…

At midnight Mountain Time, DU Bally will drop down a pole from a “2010″ ornament to a pair of “2011″ glasses, signaling the start of the New Year. Or rather, he’ll do that if my Rube Goldberg device — involving an electric timer, an external CD-RW drive, a piece of fishing line, a cutting board, and lots of scotch tape — works as planned. Anyway, you’ll be able to watch live here:

This is the quite possibly the dumbest / most awesome thing I’ve ever done.

STAY TUNED!!! (The pre-recorded video above should be replaced by live video once I’m broadcasting.)