Happy New Year 2019!

The Earth completes a rotation around the sun, and 2018 A.D. passes into history. Even though it seemed to pass swiftly and uneventfully, it feels long in retrospect. For me, it's hard to fathom that just one year ago I had moved across multiple states and settled into a new home. I spent 365 days working consistently, taking far less leave than usual up until the end. In spite of that, the days passed one after another, then weeks, then months.

It wasn't all no-nonsense work though. I've had some respite visiting some of the local sights in South Carolina (primarily Charleston and Beaufort) and I saw a Civil War reenactment in Aiken. Haven't had any grand excursions like I had in Utah or overseas, but I find that after a major move I tend to spend a year or so in one place, becoming acclimated to the environment.

Living in Georgia, I have to say I severely underestimated the summer heat. No level of warning can really prepare anyone for the sheer humidity of the south. It's dense enough to drive me indoors most days. It's not all horrible though--I wanted to get away from winter snow, and for the last two years I haven't seen a single snowflake. Somewhere between 40 and 60 degree weather, this area feels great around this time of year.

As far as everything else goes, I have no complaints. The area has its fair share of nice places and things to do. There are places to explore still, especially historic places with Civil War heritage and earlier. Libraries and writing groups are a little far from me, but I have partook in them occasionally.

That's pretty much all I accomplished this year--living day to day going from work to home again. Now and then I've been inspired to write and rewrite things, but critiques I get back caused me to shut a lot of projects down to either rethink, restart, or outright scrap them. It has become a discouraging process, and I've spent some months producing nothing as a result.

I may have learned a thing or two about the craft--maybe enough to polish a story, but not quite enough to make a story worthwhile. But after seeing so many other stories and understanding how they work (or don't work), I can't help but to look back on my older ideas and find them droll, cliched, uninspiring, and flat. Character and voice can pump more life into these stories, but changing those things after the fact is a long and complex process I haven't been able to pull off successfully. It's also a process that inherently changes a story, potentially into something it wasn't meant to be.

What's occurred to me lately is not just story ideas, but a concept for a brand of sorts. I never pinpointed any specific thing that makes my stories unique to me, until I realized one subtle element that crops up in most of my projects. They all feature something that comes from another reality. Given that this sometimes relies on multiverse theory or some other trope, the possibility opens to connect my stories as a shared literary universe. Doing so had the surprising effect of creating unity and focus, which in turn has made me more excited over my old projects. Plans are coming together to revitalize my writing. I hope to produce something--at least one thing--that can be considered truly finished by the end of 2019.

Goals

Last year I had the vague goal to stop feeling shame and fear. Some of that may have come from the world at large and the media's constant coverage over how doomed we all are. 2018 had its share of bad news--it seemed like every piece of news I saw was political catastrophes or environmental doomsaying. In my day-to-day life, fear and shame had ways of spilling over me from the people around me. Even in a new environment, I sometimes wondered if I measured up and met everyone's expectations.

It might not be possible to escape such broad feelings, but I do believe I can handle it better now than before. Since I feel more at-ease, I figure my singular goal had been achieved.

This year, I have more specific goals in mind--things that are measurable. In 2019, I plan to:

• Lose weight. Again? Yes, unfortunately, I have gained quite a bit over the past year. I already exercise 3-5 days a week--with more focus on eating habits, I plan to get back to the 200lb range (which would require about 40 lbs of weight loss).
• Read more. Firstly, because it's one thing writers everywhere say makes you a better writer--the more you read, the more knowledge and empowerment you can find regarding the craft. I also have a ton of books I picked up and never bothered touching again. In 2018, I managed to read 31 books. Next year, I want to make it through 50.
• Write more, with the intention of writing every day and producing one finished product by the year's end.
• Sketch more. I have the tools and the desire to produce something eye-catching, especially in support of my writing projects. With more practice and time, I hope to improve my skills and make something that looks genuinely nice.

I believe all of these things are possible, it just requires better time management. In an age when barrages of media sucks up so much time (including video games, movies, TV), it will mean putting aside some wants. And it might be hard, either because of compulsion or because I still have the goal of plowing through my own media backlogs (watching my unwatched movies, playing the unplayed games, hearing the unheard music).

Chances are good that I'll have some more travels happening in the next year, which will impact time and planning for certain months. Life in general has a way to take time away, but when it's in the good company of family and friends, it'll be time well-spent.

So much has changed in the last few years and so much will change in 2019. I plan to make positive, productive changes. If you are too, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

Film Review: Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

"Don't you know who I am?"

"Sure. You're a nut!"--David Huddleston and Christian Fitzpatrick
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Ah yes, Santa Claus! We all know and love this jolly fat man who invades people's homes and eats all their cookies, under the pretense of leaving cheap wooden toys behind. With all the whimsy and imagination that surrounds the legend, a big-scale fantasy epic seems appropriate to capture all the magic and wonder Father Christmas embodies.

What we have with 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie is a yarn split into two halves. The first act or so follows a 14th century toy-maker (David Huddleston) who's shanghaied by elves. They curse him with immortality and force him to deliver their crummy toys to brats all over the world.

Even before this portion of the film ends, I was let down. It wasn't the colorful elves (heck, I got a kick out of their synchronized toy-making). It wasn't the fantasy (if anything, I wanted more--the film has its nice moments with the starry night skies, all the light beams, the snow). Nope, the thing I objected to the most was the story, or lack thereof. This is THE Santa Claus movie, right? His movie, and his story. But what we're given is a limp noodle of a plot that conveniently shoehorns an average schmoe into the Santa Claus legend because a bunch of elves say so. Santa literally walks into the toy shop and finds everything already laid out for him: the toys, the sack, the reindeer and sleigh. He is told that he is the Claus and he will deliver these presents. Santa has no agency and he never chose this. And it bugs me because all potential in this story is wasted.

By comparison, 1970's Santa Claus is Comin' To Town achieves so much more. As a story, that film gives me everything I could want--a complete backstory where Santa actually influences the events, chooses his destiny, and brings together all those elements that constituted his legend. With Santa Claus' own personal movie, it's all thrown at him, and with a shrug he just does it. He becomes a slave to the caricature, and there's nothing heroic about it. Now, you could argue that greatness is thrust upon Santa, but even on that level the film fails because Santa never struggles.

After all this drama-less baloney passes, Santa is finally challenged when one of his elves (Dudley Moore, probably the most charming performance in this film) attempts to automate the toy-making shop, but fails. He winds up going to the big city, where his work is embraced by BZ, a rich dude in the toy biz (John Lithgow, in a performance so wild and buffoonish that he becomes a hilarious love-to-hate villain. Easily the highlight of the film). They make some toys and stuff that makes people fly--apparently, it's much safer than the inflammable dolls and junk-ridden teddies that BZ was probed for. Inevitably, BZ plans to double-down on all the elvish magic, resulting in potent candy canes with a possibility of combustion. It's up to Santa and a couple of kids to stop all the madness!

Once the film hits the modern age, it becomes a bipolar experience where intercity crime, homelessness, and poverty are treated as comedy. Once BZ blustered into the film, it struck me that I had seen all this before in another Salkind production. Santa Claus' own movie was squeezed into the template of Superman: The Movie. These are both lighthearted epics about legendary figures. They both start off with the characters positioning into their respective niches (although Superman's origins are much more developed and spectacular than Santa's). And in their last halves, both films bring these figures to the urban world to fight some ridiculously rich and hammy villain with a silly plot. Both movies even boast the same kind of special effects (awkward optical where characters and things zoom in front of a speeding background--in the same year of Back to the Future, this just looks dated and cheap).

Unlike Superman's movie, this one drags through stretches of uninteresting subplots before the plot flatlines. In two hours, Santa Claus brings this whole story to a close by performing a loop-de-loop with his sleigh to save the good characters we're supposed to adore. And that's it--BZ is brought to justice when he floats away on his own accord (and what is it with people in space--do the Salkinds think people can breathe up there?).

Ultimately, Super Claus: The Ripoff provides no satisfying setup and no satisfying payoff. What it does offer is shenanigans that can be amusing and funny, but often for the wrong reasons. The best that can be said is that it's harmless, making it an apt viewing choice for families. And I wouldn't fault any family for making this movie a regular Christmas tradition. But if it's whimsy and magic you want, Tim Allen does it a little better in his movies, and if it's a good story you crave, you still can't beat that puppet movie from the 70s.

2/5