New Year's Eve in Prague, where the drunker you are, the more fireworks you're in charge of.

Walking to my friend's place around 10:00 at night felt like I'd entered a war zone. Apparently sticks of dynamite counts as fireworks here, because that's what people were lighting off and lobbing into crowds of people. You'd be talking to someone and then there'd be flash of light and then you were deaf for the next half hour. Absolute mayhem. Wonderful, drunken mayhem. By the end of the night the whole city lay under a blanket of freshly smashed glass. Old Town Square was jam-packed with revelers, singing and shouting and wishing everyone Happy New Years in dozens of different languages. I clinked my champagne bottle against countless others as we walked through the streets in search of a good club, which was any one that had a bathroom. We found one, danced for a while and then I headed out around 3 or 4 to wander the city for an hour or so, looking for the right tram to take me home, which would have taken about 20 minutes to walk to. The streets were still mobbed at 4, bars stay open all night here, but I was happy to get back to my apartment and crash.
When I re-emerged from my mini-coma it was only 10:00 so I pulled my laptop into bed and watched The Royal Tenenbaums. I love that movie, and loved it even more on the first day of a new year, the image of Chaz hanging off the back of the garbage truck with his sons and Royal at the end was especially meaningful. And the song 'Feeling Good' by Nina Simone has been running through my head all day. Here are the opening lines.

'Birds flying high, you know how I feel,
Sun in the sky, you know how I feel,
Breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel,
It's a new dawn, it's a new day,
It's a new life for me, yeah,
It's a new dawn, it's a new day,
It's a new life for me,
And I'm feeling good...'

If you haven't heard this song, you should go buy the album 'Blue For You'. The whole thing is fantastic. After one listen you'll feel ready to take a ride through town on the back of a garbage truck.


As I walked through one of my favorite parks this afternoon I saw the odd firework rise above a hill in the distance, like there were still some die-hard party animals who were scrounging their supply closets for one last thing to light off. I'm glad someone locked all the canons up.