THE BELL CURVE -- Joseph N. Bell

Treb Heining showed up for our January neighborhood poker game still a

little dazed from his millennium labors in New York’s Times Square. Treb

played a kind of God role in that celebration. He was responsible for the

cornucopia of blessings from above that rained down on almost 2 million

people who hung out in the Square during the 24-hour celebration.

From his eyrie on the eighth floor of the Minskolf Building, Treb used a

walkie-talkie to direct crews stationed at a half-dozen other locations

well above Times Square. At precisely scheduled moments, they showered

the celebrants below with a heavenly assortment that ranged from paper

boomerangs and cherry blossoms for Australia and Japan at midmorning in

New York, to three-foot balloon replicas of the Earth and tons of

confetti at midnight in Times Square.

The nuts-and-bolts of this operation are fascinating even to a technical

illiterate like me. Treb showed me a book that seemed to be a foot thick

containing the various scenarios as they emerged over the year of

planning that preceded the event.

But it was Treb’s reaction to his part in the Times Square celebration

that intrigues me enough to resurrect the millennium a month after we

have gratefully buried it.

Conversation around a serious poker table is generally minimal, and

philosophical reflections are considered bad form. It was not

well-received when I asked Treb between deals what the defining moment of

that long night in New York was. So a few days later, I sat at his

breakfast bar and asked the same question. His response was immediate.

“It happened at seven o’clock,” he said, “when we celebrated midnight in

London. We dropped 700 pounds of foil confetti that picked up and

reflected the lights in Times Square and took on a kind of magical

effect. At that moment, the loudspeakers carried the first music that the

people below us recognized: the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love.’ And

suddenly a million-and-a-half people were singing at the top of their

lungs that all we need is love -- and there wasn’t a dry eye in my crew.”

And just as suddenly as he told this story in his Santa Ana Heights home,

Treb Heining was once again the 15-year-old kid who got a job blowing up

balloons at Disneyland and became the best balloon blower in the whole

world on his way to being called on by the people who plan political

conventions and Super Bowls to Saudi Arabian princes to contribute his

skills to their celebrations.

Along the way he’s acquired the business smarts and sophistication to

function in this world. But he has also never lost the wonderment of that

15-year-old kid.

“I told them for months that they couldn’t possibly bring off the

minute-to-minute schedule they drew up,” he told me. “There were too many

scattered pieces forming in too many different places. None of us knew

what was going on elsewhere. And then at 7 a.m., like some kind of

miracle, it all came together. It gave me goose bumps as the ball went up

the pole and the crowd cheered. For the first time in weeks, excitement

took over from stress, and I started to enjoy myself. It was rather like

being pushed over a cliff and enjoying the fall.

“The things I’d rolled my eyes at early on were really happening, and all

of a sudden, high up on those buildings, we became spectators, watching

the people we’d been working with all those months do their thing. Like

magic, Times Square literally became a part of Japan, and I began to feel

what we were tapping into around the world.”I told Treb about the New

Year’s Eve 10 years ago when my wife and I emerged from a theater near

Times Square into a much smaller mob scene that was totally out of

control and downright frightening.

“That was one of our worries, but so were the threats of terrorism we

kept hearing. None of that happened. There were only 14 arrests that

whole night, and those weren’t for criminal acts. Normally a crowd is a

beast, unpredictable. But this one knew that something new and wonderful

was going to happen every hour, so it didn’t have to create its own

excitement. There was an enormous feeling of connection with the event.

That Beatles song set the tone for a lovefest the rest of the night.”

The last hour was rock’n’roll and country-western for the U.S., and Treb

remembered that the dancers who had been working on stage and had

finished their gig were dancing in the emergency lanes on the street out

of sheer exuberance. At midnight, Treb’s people dropped a solid wall of

confetti, the ball came down, and the new millennium came in.

He says proudly that the New Yorkers who ran this event refused

steadfastly to commercialize it. They were offered all kinds of name

performers and commercial sponsorship and turned them all down. “They

insisted on keeping it pure,” said Treb, “to allow New York to salute and

honor the rest of the world.

“We worried that expectations were too high,” he concluded. “That the

program was too exotic, too worldly. That people wouldn’t get what we

were up to. But, by God, they did. For that one night, at least, the

whole Earth was united in Times Square.”

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column appears

Thursdays.