A teacher on my first day of year 7 said "you never get a second chance to make a first impression", and while he was talking about people, the same can be said for years.
Firstly, the quality of television seems more or less unchanged. The BBC opted to usher in the new year in similar style to previous years, with the fireworks on BBC1 and Jooles' Hooternanny (all shout HOOTERNANNY) on BBC2. Channel 4 went for repeats of Father Ted, which perhaps reflects the limited appeal of the comedy of the noughties
At the time of writing, around 1.50am on 1st January [frrresh] the BBC News website is telling too. It leads with the fireworks in London, clearly taking more importance than the Nigerian bombings which have killed 'a number of people'. No doubt if 'a number' of people had been bombed in London it would have made the headlines, showing nationalist narcissism has made it into 2011. The third story is about a Michael Jackson autopsy being cancelled on the Discovery Channel, showing the cult of celebrity remains unchanged, as well as media tastelessness. Interestingly, this story is described as 'NEW'. Who makes scheduling decisions in the few hours in the run up to New Year? (American time). Maybe they wanted to bury the story under collective jubilation. Now I think about it, why was the New Year on the news anyway?
In the world of music, the top 3 indicates the continued dominance of music gods BEP and Rhianna in 2011, and also the persistent churning out of unispired, commercialised, nauseating drivel from the X-Factor, as Simon Cowell holds the number 1 spot with a song called 'Matt Cardle'. I haven't heard it myself.
The film world has an equally dismal outlook for 2011 with predictable franchise nonsense dominating the chart. Narnia is at least derived from a legitimate literary source, but Harry Potter continues to exist; the Dan Brown of the world of children, squeezing every last penny out of weak and derivative ideas.
So this is my first impression of 2011. I do not have any New Years resolutions. Personally I like to look on this as not being able to improve on perfection although the impossibility of polishing a turd also springs to mind.
