Saturday, December 31, 2022

Happy New Year!

 


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!



Wednesday, December 28, 2022

2022 Best-Ofs!

 

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!

 


Monday, December 26, 2022

Christmas 2022

 

All in all, not a bad Christmas at all.


In fact, one of the better ones I think.


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.


Merry Christmas all!

 

 

Friday, December 23, 2022

Epic (Fail)


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.


And stay Epic-free, at least until the Spring.



Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Chuzzlewit Wit

 

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.


But I am still enjoying the ride.

 


Sunday, December 18, 2022

Excuses

 



I am guilty of more than a couple of these excuses, to greater or lesser extents, as most are, I believe.


Not all are; just most.



Friday, December 9, 2022

The Far Right ...

 



Kinda like this meme … been seeing it around a lot lately.


Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Places You Will Never Find Hopper

 

* 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!

 


Monday, December 5, 2022

The Dickens Tradition

 

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.


Saturday, December 3, 2022

Patch Scratch Fever

  

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 …