New Year, New Schlock

First post of a new year - there's a part of me that always feels that it should be something, well, significant. Some statement of intent for the year to come, perhaps? A laying out of plans for my 2024 agenda, maybe?  A list of resolutions or objectives?  The trouble is that, these days, I just don't make those sorts of long-range plans.  To be honest, I never have.  But I'm at an age now when the futility of doing such things is all too obvious - there are far too many variables and unknowns that can blow you off course.  Besides, I've always liked to have a degree of spontaneity in my life, to just see what happens rather than try to force events with excessive planning.  I find it much less stressful not to have plans and schedules to adhere to - just see what turns up, instead.  But here we are in a New Year, I suppose that I should say something about my plans for here, even if only for the immediate future.  Basically, it's more of the same: I've already racked up a number of schlock movie viewings over Christmas to provide material for posts, (I watched two today alone - science fiction musical Toomorrow (1970) and an obscure (here in the UK, at least) Terence Hill spaghetti western).  Doubtless, other things will grab my attention and create new minor obsessions for me - and material for this blog.  These could take any form: a new film genre, perhaps, or maybe some aspect of pop culture entirely new to me.  (There have actually been a number of such minor obsessions this past year, which I've refrained from inflicting upon this blog).  Who knows?

But talking of the New Year, I was watching the BBC coverage of the fireworks last night, when it occurred to me how London-centric it all was, (unless you were in Scotland, of course, in which case you got all that Hogmany bollocks instead).  After all, London couldn't have been the only place in England to have fireworks going off in celebration of the New Year, now could it?  I mean, the BBC seem very keen to shunt its news coverage off to Salford, so why can't they show someone else's firework display in the name of regionalism?  They could have come here, to Crapchester and televise ours.  Not that there was any kind of organised municipal display in the park, you understand (the local council is too cheap to organise such a thing).  But they could have sent a roving crew aroubd to catch people letting rockets off from their back gardens, stuffing bangers through their neighbours' letterboxes or sticking lit Roman Candles between their arse cheeks.  Still, if we had had an official display, I'm sure tat, like London's, it could have illustrated some notable occurrences in the the town's recent history, like that time Chicken Kong, the twelve foot tall mutant rooster and world's crappest giant monster, attacked the bus station and damaged the upholstery on the number twenty seven bus when he pecked at it.  Or some our noted bizarre murders, including a dead monk in a suitcase, a dismembered body in an oven and two buggerings to death with strap ons in a local brothel.  We might not have the 'London Eye' to engulf in flame and explosions for a finale, but we could always blow up the local sewage treatment plant and send flaming turds streaking across the sky.  I'm sure it would be very popular if televised by the BBC.