I ended this decade as I think everyone probably should have. I started watching Back to the Future Part III (1990) at around 10:30PM. I fell asleep shortly after Marty (Michael J. Fox) tumbled over the McFly farm and woke up again hearing firing works signaling the new decade right about the time Mad Dog Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) took a tumble into manure and started his family on Buddhist feces-based hell.
2019 had its moments. So did the decade. I think back to where I was on New Year’s Eve 2009, and life seemed quite a bit different then than it did on the same date in 1999. There’s probably a reason for that. If one has exactly the same life at 25 that they had when they were 15, they’re probably a ward of the state.
Still, there is a sense that my interior life is somewhat the same now at 35 as it was at 25. That may be more of a comment on the day job than anything else. It’s still there, pulsating like some bedeviling thing originating from the inky blackness that lives between stars. Maybe I’ll try to work on that in the 2020s.
Everything else has changed, though. I gotta remember that.
When 2010 began I had a half-completed roughest of rough drafts of a novel, and the vaguest of inklings that I would get serious about finishing it someday soon. In 2019, by my best estimates I wrote 145,000 words. A personal record. As 2020 begins, I published my sixth book last month, and another one is nearing the finish line and should be out before the summer.
I have a complete show that you can put your ears now. It feels incredibly good to type that sentence. There were moments where The Fourth Wall seemed like it might fall in on itself. But I made sure that it’s complete. Go give it a listen, if you haven’t. Go give it a re-listen, if you’ve been with us since the beginning. I’m really proud of it, and everyone that helped make it a reality.
In the last moments of 2009, I was dating a girl. At the start of the 2010s, I immediately resolved to marry her. She acquiesced. That’s the best part.
Go read the books. Go read the blog. Go listen to the shows. I’ll be busy hanging out with her.
There will be some big changes in 2020. Many of them have already begun. I made some mistakes over the last few years. I’ll make brand new ones in the next ten years and make them with undiminished enthusiasm. Watch this space. I’ll have new things for your eyes and ears before you know it.
Now that I’ve taken stock of what I’ve put out into the world, let’s take a look at the things the world has put out. I’m usually loath to rank any list of movies. I refused to rank the Star Wars movies when I published reviews of the saga recently. Hell, aside from two-thirds of The Phantom Menace (1999), I think I like all of them. And yet, here’s ten movies over the last ten years that I have a pretty strong feeling about, in chronological order, some of which I’ve already reviewed on the site. More than a few of them are from the last twelve months. Memory is like that, although I stand by Us (2019), as I’ve managed to watch that movie five time and it’s only nine months old. There are plenty of other great movies, and if I think about this list for even a second longer, I’ll probably make more changes to it. Glad that there’s only three sequels and two Marvel movies in the batch. I live in the world, just like everybody else.
1. The Social Network (2010)
2. The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
3. Pacific Rim (2013)
4. The Lego Movie (2014)
5. Creed (2015)
6. Star Wars – Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
7. Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (2018)
8. Us (2019)
9. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
10. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Looking over the list of movies released this decade to make the above the list, I was struck by a few things. Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019) were nearly ten years apart. Kickass (2010) feels like it happened a thousand years ago. The internet maintains that somebody remade Flashdance in 2011. I have no memory of the film existing and maintain that the internet is trying to play a trick on me.
And now, my reading list for the year. Somewhere I reached ludicrous speed with my reading and far exceeded my reading goal of 62 books. Maybe I read too many books based on television shows with the word “Star” in the title, but what is a boy to do while waiting for Jean-Luc Picard to make his long-heralded return? As usual, an (a) indicates an audio book. I don’t count graphic novels, but I should probably get over that in the new year.
Robin (a)
The Green Mile (a)
The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (a)
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
Hope Never Dies (a)
Technical Writing for Business People
I'll Be Gone In the Dark (a)
The Odyssey File
Ghosts of our Past (a)
The Way to the Stars (a)
The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
The Valley of Fear (a)
A Writer's Guide to Persistence
The Right Stuff (a)
Conversations with my Agent (a)
Observations on Certain Documents Contained in No. V & VI of "The History of the United States for the year 1796," In Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton, Late Secretary of the Treasury, is Fully Refuted, Written by Himself (Otherwise known as “The Reynolds Pamphlet”)
His Last Bow (a)
On Power (a)
Death in Winter
The Final Days
Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke (a)
The Greatest Civil War Battles: The Battle of Shiloh (a)
Fire Up Your Writing Brain
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (a)
Jedi The Last
At The Mountains of Madness (a)
How to Write Groundhog Day
Fahrenheit 451 (a)
Slaughterhouse Five (a)
Eliza Hamilton
In The Shower With Picasso
Molly's Game (a)
Hidden Figures (a)
Casino Royale (a)
Taking Wing
2001: A Space Odyssey (a)
The Grip Of Film
On Poetics
The President's Club (a)
The Handmaid's Tale (a)
Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus
1984: Spring, a choice of futures
Cosmos (a)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Becoming (a)
The Red King
Captain to Captain (a)
Copper and Cobalt
A Tale Of Two Cities (a)
Waiting For Godot
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (a)
Through The Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There
The Field Of Blood (a)
The Godfather (a)
The 007 Diaries (a)
Star Trek Phase II
I, Robot (a)
How To Talk Dirty and Influence People (a)
Patriot Games (a)
Articles of the Federation
Mr. Mike
All Good Things...
Helter Skelter (a)
The Curse of Capistrano
Resistance
The Innovators (a)
Q and A
The Gatekeepers (a)
Before Dishonor
The Once and Future King (a)
Q Are Cordially Invited
The Enterprise War (a)
Mr. Arkadin
The Stand (a)
Leonardo da Vinci (a)
The Great Movies
A Woman First: First Woman (a)
Unity
Ayoade on Top (a)
Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders (a)
Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life (a)
More Letters From A Nut
The Fourth Wall Script Book
Steve Jobs
You Are Special
