I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year, and not to be fooled into thinking something "special" will happen. It probably won't – and I'm speaking from experience. You see, when I was a mere child of 10 in 1950, I read exactly how life would be in George Orwell's "1984." You know, "Big Brother" and the "thought police."
While I was waiting, in 1968 Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick told me that in 2001 I would go on "A Space Odyssey" but I never did leave planet earth. Then, to make matters worse, in 1984 Peter Hyams consulted with soothsayer Kubrick, and told me that "2010" would be "The Year We Make Contact." They lied. 2010 came and went and I didn't make contact with anyone. You know who else lied? That hot-shot Steven Spielberg. In 1977 he promised that I would have "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I waited all year hoping for a close encounter of any kind. Yeah, right! It never happened.
But I guess I'm just the gullible type. Because, in 1982, Ridley Scott promised that by 2019 there would be "Blade Runners" tracking down bioengineered humanoids known as replicants and terminally "retire" them. I spent the whole year checking out my friends – sticking pins in them to see if they'd bleed. They bleed and now I have no friends.
Finally, a ray of hope. Or so I thought. In 1985, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd convinced me that if I had a DeLorean car and $100,000 I could go "Back to the Future" and end up in 1955 and start all over again. I waited all year. No DeLorean car, not even a Volkswagen. And no going back to 1955, hanging out on Bell Boulevard in Bayside, drinking egg-creams in Dick's Candy store.
That's it for me. Together with my wife, Sofia, hand-in-hand we'll step into 2024 with no false promises. Just wishing for a happy and healthy New Year . . . while waiting patiently for the 23rd century and Space, the final frontier, when the voyages of the Starship Enterprise and Its five year mission to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations. And to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Happy New Year!