Overall, 2022 was a pretty good year here at Chez
Hopper. First full one down in Texas. Positive growth in all members of the immediate
family. Little One firmly ensconced in college 45 minutes away. Patch
successfully navigating High School and fiercely feeding her entrepreneurial
spirit. The Mrs. mastering her Dallas Fort Worth territory. Me, I finally
figured out how to do my corporate cubical job with a minimum of stress.
Physically, I worked out something like 40 or 45 times (always in clusters,
never consistently throughout the year), lost some weight, gained some weight,
lost it again, and had a positive full body checkup. I read some quality stuff.
Played my acoustic and electric guitars a lot. And have something like a
hundred pages of notes for my magnum opus science fiction novel.
More on that latter piece next year.
My resolutions are twofold: to get healthy and to
write. Over the past week or two I’ve started a spreadsheet with these two
goals and listed the subgoals and tasks etc etc etc to get that done. It’s
something I enjoy doing when faced with the panorama of a new year. The trick
is to keep the fires burning past January, or, in some cases, past the first
week or even weekend in January. As always, we’ll see.
The Hoppers are staying home tonight and will watch a
movie yet-to-be-decided. Per tradition the Mrs. and I will watch some standup
comedy. The girls are old enough where they can partake in champagne with us at
midnight. Little One might sip a glass or two or three of red wine in the
evening. It’ll be fun and low key, just the way INFP me likes it.
The wife made plans for us to connect with her sister
and her family, and we’ll all do something together on Monday. I think we’re visiting
the Dallas Zoo as VIPs and having dinner, though don’t quote me on that. I’ll
have moved the iron twice and walked three miles by this point, as well as
chipped away at those hundred pages, Rodin-sculpting-the-Thinker-like, in search of the outline buried beneath. Wish me luck.
May everyone enjoy a healthy and prosperous New Year!
Yep. Time again. Another rotation ’round the Sun.
Three-hundred and sixty-five point two-four days, eighty-six thousand four
hundred seconds, each to contemplate and spend in enjoyment – or disenjoyment,
if I may be as bold to coin a somewhat unalluring yet workable phoneme
anathematic to Microsoft Word Spell Check – seventeen or eighteen daily hours
to wrestle Jacob-in-Genesis-like with great and sub-great works of literature,
screen both big and small, and music, sweet sweet music.
All this to say, “The following are the best and worst
Hopper has indulged in this year!”
And not just books, music, movies and TV. Experiences
and moments and phases are thrown in, too, on the off chance someone somewhere
unfortunate enough to read this may want to indulge in something similar.
Well, without further fanfare, here they are:
Best Fiction Read
(tie)
Voyage to
the City of the Dead (1984) by Alan Dean Foster, review here.
Pillars of
the Earth (1989) by Ken Follett, review here.
A mid-size
science fiction novel and a massive medieval epic tale – yet both were
fantastic! Both created lifelike worlds and characters, more real, as I am fond
to say, than the people who inhabit the cubicles surrounding you at work. The
conflict was palpable, the resolutions and revelations completely satisfactory.
I’d recommend both books heartily to any avid reader.
Best Nonfiction Read
With the
Old Breed (1981) by E. B. Sledge
Runner-up: Four
Days in November (2008) by Vincent Bugliosi
Both great
historical reads. Sledge’s book covers the WW II invasion of the Pacific islands
of Peleliu and Okinawa and is so packed with detail I felt I was wearing a
virtual reality headset reading through it. Bugliosi’s book examining the JFK
assassination minute-by-minute was also a detailed read, especially as he
pieces together Oswald’s interrogation from hundreds of sources and tracks the
assassin’s movements immediately before and after the three rifle shots.
Best Short Story
(three-way tie)
“The Bees of
Knowledge,” by Barrington J. Bayley
“Catch that
Zeppelin,” by Fritz Leiber
“The Storms
of Windhaven,” by George R. R. Martin
All from a
1976 SF short story omnibus, and all unique. I’ve blogged about those crazy
bees, here, and it’s a worthy read, as are the other pair. “Zeppelin” has a
great twist at the end involving perhaps the most notorious Austrian of all
time, and “Windhaven” is a rare George R. R. Martin tale where – spoilers! –
the good guys win at the end.
Worst Read
The Mirror
of Her Dreams (1990) by Steven R. Donaldson
(Dis) Honorable
Mention: Stone of Tears (1996) by Terry Goodkind
Ugh. Where to
start? I don’t want to bash the authors for their worthy accomplishments
compared to a rank amateur as myself. Yet I failed to enjoy either book. I
finished Mirror solely because it was a re-read from over 30 years ago,
but the incredibly bland and passive protagonist had me screaming at the page –
and at my family at dinnertime – for her to do something, anything, to save her
endangered self. Tears I could not finish. The second novel of a massive
worldbuilding series, I had to put it down at 200 pages as it devolved into a never-ending
vividly described sexual fetish I have no interest in. Ugh.
Best Movie
Whiplash (2014)
Runner-up: Fall
(2022)
How have I
never watched Whiplash before this year? What a superb movie!
Emotionally wrenching. The perfectionist in me was riveted with both Fletcher
and Neiman, filled with an odd combination of horror and admiration. You don’t
need to be a jazz fan to appreciate this. Most of the movie is the tension
between the two men. But after watching this I again felt that every-other-year
pang to do a deep dive into the music so antithetical to the Classical music
that older adult me loves. And best of all, the enigmatic ending – who won,
teacher or student?
I watched Fall
with Patch only two weeks ago, and never have I experienced a flick that
affected me so physically – sweaty palms, twitchy legs, nervousness and
anxiety, almost to the point of wanting to turn the movie off for a few
minutes. And I’m not normally scared of heights. Yes, upon reflection it’s
silly and filled with plot holes, but if you suspend your belief you’ll get
sucked in. Only twice before have I had such a visceral reaction to a movie – Aliens
in 1986 and War of the Worlds in 2005.
Worst Movie
None that I
can think of offhand. I did make my way halfway through a really bad Jet Li
dubbed movie a few weeks ago. Plus there are a score of half-watched (and
half-baked) documentaries on bigfoot I started, usually as visual fodder while
I ate my chicken wings on Saturday afternoon.
Best TV
Chernobyl
(2019 miniseries on HBO Max)
A couple
years late to the party as always, yes, but this was well-worth it.
Phenomenally good series I could not stop watching.
Worst TV
Sopranos
binge re-watch
Fifteen,
twenty years ago I watched this show somewhat enamored of Tony Soprano. You
know, the power, the confidence, the charisma. Now on a second viewing with the
Mrs. from July to October, I found him and his crew completely and disgustingly
repugnant and rooted for their demise. Not too surprising.
Best Music
Yes
Walking the
dog one hundred-and-seven-degree July day on a whim I selected Yes’s first album
(never ever having heard it) on the iPhone and was immediately hooked. I’ve
listened to all their 70s stuff and a good portion of their later work. I’ve
created a five-hour playlist. I’ve checked out Howe’s, Wakeman’s, and
Anderson’s solo albums. After years of not being musically moved by anything, I
appreciated this unexpected interest.
Song of the Year
“The Gates of Delirium” (1974) by Yes (particularly
the 12:45-15:00 section)
Best Moment of Creativity
Researching
my new manuscript … it’s been fun, as the research always is. Now to write it
in 2023 …
Bucket List Accomplishments
Read War
and Peace, cover-to-cover
Lincoln:
The War Years, by Carl Sandburg
Reclaiming
History – partial accomplishment, as Bugliosi’s Four Days in November is
basically just the first chapter of this mammoth work of debunkage.
Worst Family Moment
The theft of
the beloved 2021 CRV. Stolen August 24, 2022. Recovered September 16, 2022. But
it’s not the same car, and never will be [insert tearful emoji] …
Best Family Moment(s)
Little One’s
High School graduation and the weekend party that followed
Watching
Patch train for and work her first official job (refereeing soccer games)
Phases
Epic reads (War
and Peace, Ivanhoe, The Matarese Circle, The Pillars of
the Earth, Martin Chuzzlewit)
The Music of Yes
The Proust
Experiment
Record
Collecting
Little One in
College
Movie Night
with Patch
Binging The
Regular Show with Patch
Sudoku
Best Phase
This time,
NOT all of them. I definitely appreciate the time I spend with my littlest
not-so-little little one, especially since her big sister is away at college
the majority of the time.
Taking that
out, hands down I enjoyed Yes and the Record Collecting phases the most.
Now toss that dusty old progressive rock album on the
turntable and enjoy the end of 2022 and the birth of the new year!
Little One finished up her first semester at college
on the 14th. The Mrs. picked her up and she slept fourteen hours the next day.
Man, they must be working her hard over there at UD. Either that or she needed
to marshal her strength: for the next eight days she’d be wrapping gifts and
stocking displays at the local Macy’s. She made a pile of dough, but those
eight straight days of eight plus hours in the midst Christmas rush took a lot
out of her.
I took a PTO day on Friday so I ended up with a
four-day weekend. We all did some last minute shopping, decorating, and food
purchasing. I wrapped four gifts to each member of my immediate family. We
watched some holiday flicks at night and ate some delicious home cooking. It
was cozy, comfortable and warm.
I mention “warm” because Texas – as well as most of
the country – is in the midst of an arctic bomb or a polar vortex or whatever
they call a cold spell these days. Temps plummeted to the teens down here just
north of Dallas. Which is rare, though not unheard of. The biggest danger is a
burst pipe, as they’re not insulated as well as they’d be up north from what I
understand. So we let the faucets drip drip drip overnight and tried to stay
indoors as much as possible. When Patch walked the dog we had to dress him up
with the canine hoodie for him to stay insulated.
Since Little One is a night owl, Patch wakes up with
the dawn, and the Mrs. and I were completely and utterly exhausted from all the
last-minute running around, we weighed pros and cons and decided on Midnight
Mass this year. It was wonderful. We got to church early and managed to snag
aisle seats near the back and enjoyed a tasteful, reverent nativity mass. The
music was traditional and not overdone, the sermon short and on point, and we
got home and all in bed by 1:45 am.
Surprisingly, I woke first Christmas morning. Gone are
the days of toddlers and tweens waking us up at 6 am to open presents. Soon we
were all up and after a quick breakfast sat to dispense gifts to each other.
I have to pat myself on the back – this year was one
of my best in gift giving. See, I did this thing which I highly
recommend to you all. When an idea pops into your head for a gift for someone,
or when you notice something about someone and an idea clicks, type it into a
folder in your phone, and start doing this January 1. I did, and by summer’s
end I had the perfect present for each of my three girls. For the wife I bought
an authentic Aaron Judge jersey, New York Yankees #99, and sweated for a brief
couple of days a few weeks ago when the big guy was flirting with a trade to
San Francisco. Patch, well on her way to morphing into a gym rat, received a set
of kettlebells – 5 lb, 10 lb, and 15 lb. And Little One, my CSI SVU Dateline
junkie, received a very funny Keith Morrison mug and coffee thermos.
They enjoyed them all. Better than last minute gift
cards.
What did your blog host get, you ask?
Well, as always, I received more than I should and
more than I deserved. I can’t rank the presents my girls gave me because I
loved them all. In no particular order –
Two records –
one of Mozart chorales, one of violin concertos by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn
An AC/DC
t-shirt
A Civil War
card game
A new pair of
gray Allbirds, my favorite wheels
Ear buds, a
stress puzzle, fuzzy socks
And two
tickets to see the Dallas Stars (20-9-6 in first place in the NHL Central
Division at the time of this posting) play the Anaheim Ducks (record basically
inverted compared to the Stars) in February
Oh, and two
gift cards to be used to purchased books
All in all, not a bad haul. To top it off, I finished Martin
Chuzzlewit last night and then the four of us watched Christmas Vacation.
On a side note, my boss gave us all the next two weeks
to work from home. So no battling rush hour commuting. That was a nice, unexpected
treat.
But the reason of the season, er, the Reason for the
Season, is not lost on me. I have some big plans upcoming regarding that, which
I may or may not post here. Perhaps in a couple of weeks. I have been thinking
about doing a two regular once-a-week postings, one on music and the other on
religion, in 2023. It’s something I’d like to do since I don’t have the time
anymore to fatten up this blog with daily posts. We’ll see. I’m still pondering
that.
Well, now that 2022 is coming to end, I must confess a
failure. I failed to adhere to my New Years Resolution of 357 days ago.
A year ago I promised myself I would not read any more
epic books, be they novels or works of nonfiction. I’d only read books of 180
pages or less (about 150,000 words maximum).
Instead, here’s what I read, in chronological order:
World
War II at Sea – 650 pages
War
and Peace – 1,392 pages
With
the Old Breed – 344 pages
The
Matarese Circle – 611 pages
Ivanhoe
–
497 pages
Four
Days in November – 512 pages
The
Pillars of the Earth – 980 pages
Abraham
Lincoln: The War Years – 443
Martin
Chuzzlewit – 837 pages
That’s nine books for a total of 6,266 pages. That’s
an average of nearly 700 pages a book!
Had I kept my resolution, those 6,266 pages would have
encompassed nearly 35 books.
Yes, I scratched off some items of my bucket list.
Yes, I learned a lot about a wide variety of fields. Yes, I sampled some literary
genres in which I rarely partake.
But a lot of them dragged, to be honest.
Now, I want to write my third manuscript in 2023. I
did read four SF paperbacks this past year, all in summer, but since my novel
will be SF-based, I feel like I wanna put away two or three dozen SF paperbacks
immediately to get back into the swing of the sci fi thing. And, as we all
know, the perfect science fiction paperback clocks in at exactly 180 pages.
I had been noodling with dipping the toes in Plato
January 1st. And that might happen sometime in 2023. But I’m kinda burned out on
the Epic. The Republic is 400 tightly
packed pages, two columns per page in my Great Books edition. I want to read a
story that will grip me on a Sunday and come to a satisfying conclusion that
Saturday.
So on January 1st I’m going to crack open the SF
paperback that’s been longest in the On Deck circle and enjoy some mind-bending
adventures in the future.
I’m about two-thirds through with Dickens’ Martin
Chuzzlewit, plugging along at about thirty pages a day. To read the man is
to immerse yourself in witty humor, and it’s a thing that must be taken in slowly to be
best savored. Speed-reading is antithetical to any of the works of Charles
Dickens. One must read it as if one were actually present in the events being
described. I’ll admit, it’s a struggle for me to do, but when I do manage to
pull it off, I’m repaid by passages like this –
All the knives and forks were working
away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and
everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defense, as if a famine were
expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become
high time to assert the first law of nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be
considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment – for there was a
turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle –
disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had
flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled,
leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of
the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like
sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter
melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and awesome thing to see.
There’s more, much more to reward the sensitive reader,
but most of us today are incapable of following, having long been acclimated
against lingeringly overlong sentences and protracted paragraphs in our
post-internet world.
A page or two later –
Pursuing his inquiries, Martin found
that there were no fewer than four majors present, two colonels, one general,
and a captain, so that he could not help thinking how strongly officered the
American militia must be; and wondering very much whether the officers
commanded each other; or if they did not, where on earth the privates came
from.
Surprisingly, or maybe not so, Dickens does not seem
to be a fan of the United States. At least the U.S. circa 1843. One of the main
characters, whose reputation is (possibly) falsely maligned in England, sails
to America to make his fortune, is promptly fleeced and forced to return
humbled. A good hundred or so pages are devoted to the U-Nited States pinned
and penned under the wit of Dickens, and it is quite the unfair match.
* Spelunking 1,000 feet below the surface of the earth
* Holding a banner over my head on stage behind a
Democrat politician
* Watching the depth gauge as the submarine I’m
observing in descends to 400 meters below sea level
* Marching in a First Deadly Sin Parade
* Cracking the doors at a Toastmasters meeting
* Being “audited” at the local Church of Scientology
in Irving
* Sharpening knives at the Culinary Institute of
America (located in beautiful San Antonio, Texas)
* At any of the seven thousand car dealerships in the
Dallas area asking the receptionist, “Can I fill out a job application?”
* Flexing and posing oiled while rocking a skimpy spedo
on stage at a bodybuilding competition
* Adjusting that aerial antenna atop the Empire State
Building, no matter how many harnesses I’m hooked into and how many zeros are on
the end of that check you’re gonna pay me
* Idling the hours away gabbin’ at the northeast water
cooler at the office where I work
* Clamping a bungie cord around my leg – on anything
over an altitude of ten feet above ground
* On the dance floor flaunting my macarena / cotton-eyed joe / YMCA skillz to the crowd
Note: If I’d be likely to find you at any of
the situations mentioned above, more power to ya! It just ain’t my cup of tea!
I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts since I returned
from Hilton Head last week, and have been unable to pinpoint the source of this
anti-sorts-ness. Randomly, on Wednesday Patch asked me to drive her to the
library so she could pick up some reading material. I never turn down a trip to
the local biblioteca, and continued that habit. Once there, browsing the
shelves with no ulterior motive in mind, I rounded a corner and there it was:
Martin
Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens, in the pristine and handsome
Everyman’s Library edition.
I knew instantly why I was experiencing this sort-less-ness.
I haven’t read a Dickens novel since we’ve relocated to Texas, nearly eighteen
months ago, and I always enjoy reading a Dickens around Thanksgiving.
Well, I like to say that. But in reality, the “tradition”
only started in 2013, and I’ve never read Dickens two Thanksgivings in a row. In
a sketchy order I’ve read The Pickwick
Papers, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield. In between I’ve read
other non-Dickensian classics, such as Billy Budd, Ben-Hur, and, unsuccessfully, The Brothers Karamazov, in addition to
heavy stuff about the JFK assassination, another topical November favorite,
such as Mailer’s Oswald and Posner’s Case Closed.
Now I knew I needed to make up for lost time. I must
read Martin Chuzzlewit to make up for
lost time, and an old promise to perhaps the greatest novelist of the English
language.
Promise? you say. Indeed, “promise,” I reply. Promise
to set a great karmic injustice to rights. You see, thirty-five years ago, as a
poor, struggling underclassmen in a prestigious northern New Jersey high
school, I was assigned to read A Tale of
Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, for an English class.
I procrastinated.
Then, delayed.
Furthermore, I dithered. Dallied. Put it out of mind.
In fact, I don’t ever recall cracking open the book, if ever I did take it out
from the library.
No. With a blue-book essay looming on some unknown
questions concerning the book, I did, unfortunately, what many students who
take the low road do.
I cheated.
Sort of. I read the Cliff Notes for A Tale of Two Cities the night before,
and prayed to the gods of B.S. I’d be able to bluff my way through that blue
book.
I did. I remember getting a B on the test. Probably finished
the class with a 90 or 92.
Seventeen years passed with Charles Dickens, London,
Paris, and the French Revolution completely out of mind. Then, taking the train
one morning into NYC for a horrible job I was working, I realized I had to set
the scales of blindfolded justice to balance. To pay the piper. To make amends
to a man whose work I short shrift. Short-shrifted? I dunno. It just made me
feel bad whenever I thought of it.
So, during Thanksgiving 2002, I read A Tale of Two Cities, for the first time, cover-to-cover.
This is all a long way of stating that, from this
December 5th forward, Hopper shall unfailingly read a Charles Dickens novel
every Thanksgiving. Hopefully the Good Lord will give me remaining years to do
so. After all, I have about eight novels to get through before I begin re-reads
*. For those so inclined to inquire, those eight are, in order that they were published:
Oliver
Twist
Nicholas
Nickleby
The
Old Curiosity Shop
Barnaby
Rudge
Dombey
and Son
Bleak
House
Hard
Times
Our
Mutual Friend
As of this posting I am 155 pages into the 875-page Martin Chuzzlewit. I was a little
nervous I’d not finish it before year’s end, but I think I’ll have it done by
Christmas, leaving enough time to put away an old On-Deck SF paperback before
2023.
Happy Reading!
One of Hopper's numerous writing gurus
* The versions of Dickens novels I’ve read range from
around 550 pages (Great Expectations)
to David Copperfield (920 pages). If
I assume the average Dickens novel to be 750 pages, I’m looking at 6,000 pages.
Expectations took me three weeks to
read, Copperfield six weeks, so the
average Dickens novel takes me a full month to get through. 6,000 pages and eight months. Should be fun.
SCENE: Driving back from the grocery store
with Patch, who’s very animated discussing her high school Spanish project
about Argentina.
ME: Hey, can you tell me the one
country in the world that does not want you to cry for it?
PATCH: Huh??
ME: What country does not want you to
cry for it?
PATCH: I dunno.
ME: [triumphantly] Argentina!
PATCH: [looks at me as if I’m a recent psychiatric hospital escapee.] What?
ME: [singing] Don’t cry for me Argentina! [pause] You might not remember that
song. It’s from a musical. From the Seventies. Madonna did a cover of it, in
the Nineties, I think.
[She shows no sign of acknowledgment. The conversation
then shifts to her entrepreneurial interest of starting a website to sell used
clothes she finds in thrift shops.]
ME: [lively] I know what you can call
your website!
PATCH: [warily] What?
ME: Patch Scratch Fever! [It comes out
clumsily, like a tongue twister. I have to repeat it, slower each time, to get
it to come out right.] Patch Scratch Fever. Patch Scratch Fever.
PATCH: What even is that?
ME: It’s a variation of a song … from the Seventies.
PATCH: Dad, sometimes you forget I’m only
fourteen. I wasn’t alive in the Seventies.
ME: [ruefully] Yeah. I guess you’re
right.
[We sit idle in silence at a traffic light for a
minute, then continue to drive.]
ME: [cheerfully] You know, Patch,
sometimes when I chat with you I feel like Rip Van Winkle –
PATCH: WHO??!?!
Note: The original punchline involved “Laurel and
Hardy,” but damned if I can remember the setup. The conversation did take place forty-eight hours ago,
after all …
