A very happy New Year to all of you. So far so good. We celebrated with the kids last night. They went to bed well before midnight, of course, but not before Kieran downed half a bottle of "champagne" (Martinelli's Sparkling Cider) by himself. His college years should be interesting.
Marna and I stayed up past midnight for the first time in several years and watched the amusing but slightly ridiculous Love Actually, with Hugh Grant (!) as the Prime Minister. It's one of those movies, like Robert Altman's Short Cuts, that tries to weave together six or seven story lines that intersect at some critical point. I think they could have done without one or two of the plot lines and made a better movie, but it was decent enough entertainment for a New Year's Eve.
Today, we took down the tree and did various odds and ends around the house. I managed to slip out, sans enfants, to A&P for an hour of serenity. What a lovely grocery shopping experience! Virtually nobody there, the shelves newly stocked, short lines at the registers - small pleasures I know, but if you'd been at A&P on December 24th (or at our house for the past two weeks), you'd know how welcome and rare the peace and quiet is, Muzak and all.
No college football for me today, for the first time in years. I have no horse in the race this year and couldn't care less. All of this BCS nonsense only makes it worse. I did watch the end of Liverpool-Chelsea match, which saw my Blues prevail - rather fortunately - thanks to a deflected goal from Joe Cole, and maintain their five point lead over Arsenal. You get the feeling the gods are on Chelsea's side this season. About effing time.
A few late additions to my list of best pop albums of 2004:
First, a lovely new album, Weightlifting, by Scotland's long-lost Trashcan Sinatras. This is their first disc in more than eight years, having suffered through bankruptcy and series of other difficulties after their former label, Go Discs, went belly up. This new album is a beautiful little slice of jangly pop. "All the Dark Horses", "Country Air" and and "What Women Do to Men" are alone worth the price of admission.
Second, The Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free is quite unlike anything else I've ever heard. It's essentially a British welfare class rap album, but only in the loosest sense. It's really much more pop poetry, a bit like some of The Kinks' best work. The arc of the album traces a few weeks in the life of Mike Skinner (The Streets' songwriter and "singer"), who begins by losing a thousand pounds (he later finds out it has fallen down the back of his television) and suffering a series of other mishaps, meets and breaks up with the love of his life, feels betrayed by his mates, and manages to come out the other side in one piece. Listening to it, I laughed out loud in places. The beats are so basic and almost incidental to the lyrics at times, but still strangely appropriate. Unlike a lot of Skinner's American rapper counterparts, he never takes himself too seriously and he avoids coming off as some sort of poser. Totally, refreshingly original.
11:33:28 PM 
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