Happy New Year! I hope you are looking forward to 2019 with anticipation and optimism. For myself, while I can't say that 2018 was all that different from years of the recent past, I am nevertheless the Eternal Optimist who hopes for exceptional occurrences in the coming year, and I wish for the same in your life too, and all good blessings. We had fun tonight here at Pearl's. She is 94, but managed to stay up until just a little while ago. We watched the ball drop in Times Square with Anderson Cooper on CNN. Pearl had a blast and was excited. In years past she has always been asleep at Midnight on New Year's Eve, but back in January I read an article about the benefits of liquid vitamin B1 for the elderly, and especially for dementia patients. We started using it with Pearl and it's done wonders for her energy level and alertness. So right there, that's something exceptional that happened in 2018.
As I said above, my routine did not vary much from years past, simply because of my job requirements, but I did watch a lot of movies, read a fair amount of books, and went to a few concerts, too. It's worth doing a "best of" in each category, I think, just for the heck of it.
I write down all my movies in my journal notebook, and wouldja believe it - I just tallied them up and I watched 225 flicks this year. Holy Smokes. That's not even close to my record, though. One year, when I lived with my Mom, we watched 400 movies, which meant double features on some nights. But of all the movies I watched in 2018, one stood out as not just a great film but an experience to be remembered for life. That was the screening I attended, in June, of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. They were showing the movie in 70mm, projected on film, not digital, just as it had been shown when it opened in 1968, fifty years earlier.
What made this screening extra special was that I had been taken by my Dad to see "2001", in 70mm, when it opened in April 1968. We saw it at the Cinerama Dome. I had just turned eight years old.
I never again saw the movie in the intervening years, so it was quite an experience and really something to contemplate, seeing the film when it opened, at the Dome with my Dad, and then not seeing it for fifty years (a half century), and then seeing it for a second time, fifty years later, at the same theater and projected once again in 70mm. Dad was with me in spirit this time. It was The Movie Of The Year. ////
As for books, I read about 30 in 2018, everything from JFK and RFK assassination theories, to a history of native American genocide, to a story of missing Russian hikers, to Richard Hoagland's "Monuments Of Mars". I read true crime books and crime fiction. Two Stephen Kings and three Paul Tremblays. I read a lot this year, so much that it affected by drawing output, which I will devote more attention to in 2019. For my book of the year, it came down to three choices. Two were biographies I absolutely loved, one about the ultra genius physicist Paul Dirac, who discovered antimatter and who, in a way, was even more brilliant than Einstein. But more than that, he was a very interesting person, one with a lot of quirks, and incredibly shy. As a shy person myself (though not to the extent of Dirac), I could relate. Moreover, I learned a lot about his work in quantum theory.
I also thoroughly enjoyed David Lynch's biography. He is one of my favorite filmmakers and probably my favorite overall artist, and his life has been as unique and interesting as his art. It was amazing to learn of all the people he has met and the situations he has found himself in.
But I think the very best book I read all year - or let's say the most important - was Tom Bearden's "Energy From The Vacuum", a 900 page tome that took me four months to complete. In the process, I felt like a earned an honorary degree in electrodynamics, so elucidating was Bearden's comprehensive explanations about the way in which electrons and photons are cycled in and out of "4space" and 3space", 4space including the time dimension and 3space being our visible world. Far better to allow Col. Bearden explain how dipoles are formed and how "negentropy" recycles energy through systems open to the vacuum. I had to learn a new language to read this book, though it did not include impossible equations ala Coxeter's "Regular Polytopes", thank goodness. Still, "Energy From The Vacuum" took a good deal of concentration to get through. It was made easier by Bearden's use of repetition of his theories and their terminology, and by his talent for explaining these concepts to the layman. It is a revolutionary book, I think, and it really extended my knowledge of the way things work. If you ever want to challenge yourself (unless you are already a phD electrodynamicist) you might give this book a try. It will flat out blow your mind, and that it why it is my book of the year.
As for concerts, I only went to 13, and I saw some great shows including Eric Johnson, Alcest, Alice Cooper and Hilary Hahn. But the show of the year has to go to Todd Rundgren's Utopia, who had reunited for the first time since.....(when?)......sometime in the 1980s? Well anyway, they came out with most of the classic lineup intact, Todd on guitar and vocals, Kasim Sulton on bass and vocals, and Willie Wilcox on drums and vocals. They had a new keyboardist who also sang, completing the four part harmonies that were reproduced flawlessly in concert. They opened with the 18 minute "Utopia Theme" from the first album, a work from 1974 that rivals the best of English progressive rock. These are men in their 70s or mid 60s. They played a 2 hour 15 minute set almost without a break, of some of the greatest progressive and pop music of the 70s and 80s. As we all know, Todd is Godd all by himself as a solo act, but he is a Supreme Being as the leader of Utopia as well. We fans never thought we'd see them again, as they had called it quits eons ago and never a word was spoken since. But for whatever reason, Todd pulled them all together again for one last go round (or maybe there will be more, please!), and not only was the playing and singing incredible, and the energy level that of 35 year olds, but the colorful lighting took us fans back to a more psychedelic time when the music was new, and provided a perfect backdrop for the reemergence of our long lost band, who never lost a step in all those missing years.
So Todd Rundgren gets Concert Of The Year for the third year in a row. He is off the charts good. And so was everybody else I saw.
The only other thing I do besides work, is hike. I didn't hike anywhere near as much as I did in, say, 2015, but I still did a few good ones. Two or three were even farther and more intense than anything I've ever done, so very briefly I will say that my hike of the year was at Rocky Peak in June, when I did an almost 8 mile round tripper, going nearly four miles into the sandstone wilderness of the Santa Susana mountains. It was mega, and made me feel that I could still do it, still get out there and really explore. ////
So those were some highlights of 2018. I am the eternal optimist as reported earlier, and so in 2019 I hope for two things, companionship (non-male, thanks) - or even a relationship - and I hope to learn about what happened to me in 1989, nearly 30 years ago now, the event that forever changed my life.
Nothing means as much as those two things : to have someone I can share life with, and for myself, to know What Happened. I will hope and pray for these things as I do at the start of every year, and I will believe that they will happen. They are all I've got. ////
See you in the morning. Happy New Year! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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