New Year's Eve!

Okay – what’s your resolution?

Me, I love New Years especially for the resolution. I’ve kept a couple, but mostly – nine outta ten, I’d say, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, to be more accurate – mostly they last but a couple of days. They’ve run the whole gamut from quitting smoking to exercising to writing that darn book to finding a job. I like setting goals. After all, setting them is the easy part.

Anyway ...

Last year I vowed for health and to continue my quest to get published. Well, I’m still here and haven’t been to the hospital all year. But the only publishing I’ve done is this amateur do-it-yerself stuff here on the Hopper. Still, I want to continue in this vein by tweaking these resolutions a bit.

So what do I resolve to do in 2014?

Three things ...

(ahem)

FIRST:

Instead of a vague promise for “health,” I decided to change this to “energy management.”

I recently read something that did a small seismic shift within me. There is no “time management,” only “energy management.” I realized the deep truth to this. No matter how I blueprinted my day, if I was lethargic nothing got done. Things only get done those rare times I’ve crackled with energy; energy from a good night’s sleep, from blood circulation, from flexibility and maybe slightly overtired muscles from a workout.

So I’ve created a small list (six items) of things to keep doing on a daily basis to up my energy levels.

SECOND:

Instead of the command to “get published!” I decided to change this to “finish my current book.”

Last spring I outlined a short novel in the vein of Philip Jose Farmer’s stories, kind of as a tribute to the type of works of his I enjoyed. Came up with a satisfactory twist ending and wrote most of the first chapter. All I need to do is discipline myself to write a thousand words a day. Did it twice before for my other two novels; now I just need to get back into the swing of writing again.

So I’ll bang out a thousand words every day for three months, take a week or two off, and then revise it. By my birthday in September I want my third novel completed. Then I’ll worry about getting it published (or anything else I’ve written).

THIRD:

This is my bestest, favoritest, most exciting resolution of all – and I think I am going to keep it secret for now. Perhaps it needs a most humble and modest name as I throw hints out about it here and there on this website ... something like the Great Quest of Six Thousand Years. Yes! That’ll do. Look for more cryptographic nods, winks, whispers and clues at the Hopper as 2014 unfolds.

That all being said ...

Have a Safe, Happy, and Healthy New Years Eve!!!

2013 Hopper Best-Ofs!

Best Novel

The Hawkline Monster (1974) by Richard Brautigan

The only book I read all year that I truly, truly could not put down. But it’s R-rated, and even still not recommended for everyone.

Reviewed here.


Best Non-Fiction (tie)

An Army at Dawn (2002) by Rick Atkinson
The Day of Battle (2007) by Rick Atkinson

First two parts of his “Liberation” trilogy detailing the evolution of the United States armed forces in the European theater of World War II. Will get to the concluding book later this summer.

Close second: The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), by Richard Rhodes


Worst Novel

Time Enough for Love (1973), by Robert Heinlein

Blabby, meandering, purposeless. For some reason I never could get into any of Heinlein’s “adult” novels, despite being passionately in love with his “juvenile” books, and I fear I may be the lesser for it.


Best Short Story

“Roller Ball Murder” (1973), by William Harrison

Recently reviewed here.


Worst Short Story (tie)

“JC on the Dude Ranch” (1979) by Philip Jose Farmer
“The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol” (1977) by Philip Jose Farmer

The unfathomable nadir of my Farmer reading experience the first half of 2013. One blasphemously stupid, the other lecherously stupid.


Best Movie

Seen in the theaters – Gravity (2013)

Reviewed here; in a perfect world it’d win for Best Picture and Best Actress.

Seen at home – The Tingler (1959)

What an awesomely fun movie to watch with a horror-obsessed nine-year-old!


Worst Movie

Land of the Lost (2009)

Reviewed here; please don’t make me re-read it, please!

Runner-up: Sharknado (2013)


Best CD

Hendrix, People, Hell and Angels (2013)

Favorite song off the CD – “Somewhere” (“Earth Blues” and “Hear My Train a-Comin” close seconds)

As for Hendrix again winning Hopper’s Best CD/Song of the Year ... Believe me, I tried to listen to other music this year! I really did!


Best Hopper Phase

Let’s see ... we had the Philip Jose Farmer reading extravaganza (nearly twenty works, one after the other), watching baseball for the first time in 35 years, revisiting the nitty-gritties of the greatest generation and World War II, the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, and Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers and Great Expectations).

And the winner is ...

Baseball!

(only because I can’t wait for Opening Day 2014 and to take my girls to another MLB game)

The Desolation of Jackson

My decision to boycott the remaining two Peter Jackson Hobbit movies has caused a predictable stir among some of my friends. Here are a half-dozen reasons for my decision –

(1) Peter Jackson is tone-deaf regarding the source material. No, make that completely deaf. He sees all the shiny trinkets, yet has no clue for the vast underlying ethos / telos / logos that is Middle-earth. (Note: look them words up; I couldn’t find anything better in English.)

(2) I think one reviewer nailed it best when he said that Jackson’s Hobbit is not Tolkien’s The Hobbit brought to the big screen, but some sort of fan-fiction version of The Hobbit brought to the big screen. I’d sandwich “fan-fiction” with the phrases “amateurish” and “backed by oodles of free-flowing cash” for greater accuracy.

(3) The Lord of the Rings is around 1,100 pages divided into three roughly equal length books. A movie was devoted appropriately enough to each (though the final film installment, The Return of the King, was insufferably too long). The Hobbit is a book basically equal in length to one of the Lord of the Rings books. So why is Jackson further subdividing The Hobbit into three movies???

(4) Every single character, save for Gandalf dispensing grave wisdom, speaks in breathy over-enunciated English-accented whisper-shouts.

(5) Radagast the Brown’s bunny wagon from the first Hobbit cinematic installment. My eyes – no, my brain – will not accept any further blasphemies.

(6) There are no Xena: Warrior Princesses in Tolkien.