Reprising My Year This week is almost always a moment of reflection as the year winds down and thoughts about the new year come to mind. Reflection is an important element of learning and we are never too old to learn, so I have decided to look back upon my year in 2023 and consider what exactly are the highlights worth reprising and thereby memorializing to help me sort out how to do better in…
The Aftermath We had 25 for Christmas dinner yesterday. We were supposed to be 29, but due to a touch of child illness, we were down 4 soldiers. Every one of those attendees is a member of our immediate family and their significant others. 7 have Kim’s blood. 8 have my blood. That means 10 are significant others of those 15. If we literally had all of my and Kim’s blood relatives and others, we…
My Favorite Things It’s Christmas Eve day and given that it’s Sunday, this is a pretty lazy day. The family horde has yet to descend. I have started the day with a few of my favorite things. After a good night’s sleep and nice hot shower, I got dressed for the holiday. That caused me to spend a moment thinking about my wardrobe. One of the things I have always managed to do is to…
Ho Ho Ho, Motherfucker Most of you will remember that line from what some consider to be the best Christmas movie of all time, the classic Bruce Willis Die Hard. The original was made in 1988 based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, written in 1979. Well, the Die Hard series tried to disprove that with no less than four sequels, Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Live Free or Die…
The Quiet Moments I am currently running about seven or eight days ahead of myself with my daily story writing. i go through cycles when I am ahead like this and when I am chasing my tail to get out a story to meet my daily morning deadline. Lately I have tended towards running ahead by as few as two or three days to a maximum of ten days. I don’t like to get too…
Lifetime Buddy About twenty years ago when Dustin Hoffman was 67 years old, I happened to hear him speak about one of the films he had just made. Perhaps it was Runaway Jury or Finding Neverland, but the point is that he was invited to talk about the film at the New York Director’s Guild Theater on 57th Street. I was a member of a DG Film Club that regularly heard from actors, directors and…
It’s Always Sunny in San Diego Life is temporarily back to normal around the hilltop. We are in between travels and yet still ten days until the Christmas hordes descend upon us. The decorations are 100% up outdoors and 95% done in the house, so we are as ready as we are going to be. The present wrapping is well advanced thanks to Kim and Melisa dedicating much of yesterday to the task. I too…
The Mail The movie The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, got broadly dissed when it was released. That was in 1997 and looking at its IMDb Metascore of 29, I think its fair to say that it also hasn’t aged particularly well. Nonetheless, I’m, generally a fan of Costner’s and I really quite like the movie. I think what I like most about the movie is what it says about civilization as we know it. It…
Das Boat Narrative nonfiction is a particularly pleasing form of writing to me. Many people would agree that there are more than enough true stories to fill our imaginations and that we don’t need fiction to lift our hearts. I have never been particularly good at writing fiction. I don’t think its a lack of imagination, but rather a lack of interest in factionalizing from scratch. I have been known to embellish a story to…
Breaking Bad I am fifteen years behind in finally watching Breaking Bad, but I have now done it over the past few weeks and I see what all the fuss was about since it was a riveting series. I am a big fan of strong titling and I must admit that this title always intrigued me because it was never clear form the outside exactly what it meant. The implication was that someone (presumably Walter…