Month: March 2022

Yet Another Delayed SubscribeStar Saturday

The Portly Politico9 Comments

My sincerest apologies to subscribers:  yet again, I am running late with posting today’s edition of SubscribeStar Saturday.  My excuse, as always, is general busyness.  Indeed, I am currently proctoring the SAT to a roomful of thirty-seven sleepy, slightly soggy teenagers (we had heavy rains this morning).

That said, I’ll be returning to more serious fare with today’s post, which will probably go up this afternoon.  I’m going to talk about the war in the Ukraine.  I’ll be honest:  I don’t know much about it, at least not nearly as much as I should.  But I do think there’s far more nuance to the situation than the knee-jerk media portrays.

Here’s the short preview:  we should stay out of it.

More coming soon!

—TPP

Supporting Friends Friday: Son of Sonnet’s Poetry Community

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My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet has some exciting news:  this Monday, 14 March 2022, he is launching his new Locals page at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/.

Locals is a bit like SubscribeStar, but it’s more robust in terms of features, and the focus is on building up a sense of community between subscribers and the content creator.  SubscribeStar allows comments, for example, but Locals has built-in incentives to encourage more engagement, such as certain users gaining additional posting privileges and the like.

Son is going full-in with Locals, hoping to build up a community of supporters who appreciate good poetry and the culture-renewing possibilities it offers (you can read all about his mission on his “About” page; appropriately, it’s presented in the form of a poem!).

Son is setting his sights high, as he should:  he’s kicking off his foray into Locals with a special promotion he’s dubbed Race to 1000K.

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TBT: Memorable Monday II: Monday Steakhouse Blues

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As I wrote yesterday, today I’m taking my students to a music festival, where they will play and sing solo selections for judges.  They get a score based on their performance, as well as useful feedback from the judges about tone, pitch, articulation, musicality, and the rest.  It’s a very fun day, but also a very busy one.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, it always seems to coincide with one of the busiest seasons of the year, when time constrains are at their most stringent and intense.  Almost everyone reading this blog understands there is an ebbing and flowing to life:  you might enjoy one (even two!) weeks of routine, maybe even a bit of a lighter schedule than usual.

Then—BAM!—everything comes due, breaks, and goes haywire at once.  As my friend and regular reader Barnard Fife once told me, “trouble is like grapes:  it comes in bunches.”  Amen, BF.

The original post behind this threat, “Monday Steakhouse Blues,” was written at a particularly tough time for yours portly.  I found myself without Internet and putting in very long hours (and this was well before I had twenty-ish students for private lessons).  I spent a weary Monday evening eating steak at Western Sizzlin’ and writing a blog post on my phone.  The steak was good, but everything else at the time was pretty miserable.

Thank God for better organization, a greater sense of perspective (this is just life, and it will pass), and for 10 milligrams of citalopram every morning.  Gotta be thankful for the little things.

The “Memorable Monday” version of this post, which I have also reblogged below, went live the week before everything in South Carolina shut down due to the dawning of The Age of The Virus.  In other words, it was the last week of The Before Times, in The Long, Long Ago.  There are many things I miss about The Before Times, but a silver-lining of The Age of The Virus was that it saved me from the intense burnout I was experiencing at the time.

With that, here is 9 March 2020’s “Memorable Monday II: Monday Steakhouse Blues” (on a Thursday!):

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Midweek March Update

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yep, Portly readers:  it’s one of those blog posts:  a general update on the latest with yours portly because I’m out of both ideas and energy.  Sure, I should be writing about the war in the Ukraine or something important like that (instead of silly paintings and piano pieces), but, again—I’m more low-energy than JEB! at the moment.  Or, at the very least, my pantheric intensity has to be focused towards more pressing matters than this humble blog.

Early March is always a time when everything comes to a head at once.  Last week was the final week of third quarter, and was chock-a-block with various school events.  That saw me scrambling around all over campus during my precious planning periods performing various feats of technical wizardry (but all of the standard hedge-mage variety; the really powerful audio/visual spells won’t be cast for another month).  Incredibly, I managed to record all of Péchés d’âge moyen last week (give it a listen if you haven’t already—it’s less then seven minutes to listen to the entire album!).

Naturally, that meant a backlog of grading and comment-writing for report cards, which had to be completed over the weekend.  I’m grateful to Pontiac Dream 39/Always a Kid for Today for his movie review Monday, because that saved me some valuable time Sunday (it’s also an excellent review—you should go read it!).

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Even More Little Paintings

The Portly Politico8 Comments

I took a bit of a break from painting last week to finish up Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures, but by the time “More Little Paintings: Hearts and an Octopus” posted last week, I’d already churned out a total of fifteen of these little guys.

Rather than subject you to week after week of bizarre paintings, I figured I’d dump them all into one post:

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Monday Morning Movie Review, Guest Contributor Edition: The Purge (2013)

The Portly Politico34 Comments

It’s always interesting to live during the times depicted in films, and to see how accurate the filmmakers’ predictions were.  There were no Mattel Hoverboards or self-lacing Nikes in 2015, per Back to the Future Part II (1989), but girls were wearing those puffy vests.  New York City isn’t a massive prison colony—at least, not as depicted in Escape from New York (1981).

And in 2022, crime runs rampant all the time, not just one night a year.  Even so, it’s still technically illegal to murder, steal, and pillage (unless you live in California), so 2013’s The Purge isn’t 100% accurate in that regard.

The Purge is one of those films that does what horror/science-fiction do best:  asks unsettling questions about human nature.  In an age where we like to believe violence is rare and brutish, The Purge argues otherwise:  that we need an outlet for our pent-up rage and frustrations, and it should be all let loose on one bloody night.

Would it work?  It’s too horrendous to contemplate—even if one night of mayhem would cure the ills of crime the other 364 days of the year, the cost would not be worth the benefit.  It would also be grossly immoral.

But it does offer an intriguing look into how society functions, and the things we do to protect ourselves.  The film also explores the nature of envy and greed.

Regular contributor Pontiac Dream 39—now Always a Kid for Today, or just “Mike”—offers up another excellent film review.  I’ve largely left it unedited, other than mild style changes, so enjoy his British spellings of words—and his trenchant insights into a disturbing film with a fascinating premise.

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Lazy Sunday CLV: Péchés d’âge moyen Posts

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On Friday, I released Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures.  At the time of writing, I haven’t sold any downloads via Bandcamp, but its tracks have a total of 113 plays from forty unique listeners, which is pretty good.  Goth Kilts of The Sandwhich Press and Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown of Dragon Common Room have both been wonderful about promoting the recording via their respective channels.  I mean, considering GK was the muse for the whole project, she’d better be pitching it!

Anyway, it was fun putting the pieces together, and in the spirit of album promotion (get it here!), here are the four posts about the project:

That’s it for this Lazy Sunday.  If you haven’t already, take 6’35” and listen to Péchés d’âge moyen.  If you’re feeling so led, pay $5 and pick it up.  You’ll be helping me out in the process.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Rapid-Fire Recording

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yesterday I released my collection of short miniatures, Péchés d’âge moyen.  It’s been getting a lot of plays on Bandcamp thanks to support from The Dragon Common Room and The Sandwhich Press, both chats/channels that I follow and participate in on Telegram (if you use Telegram, you should join/follow both; here are links:  DCR; TSP).

I’d hoped that in the few weeks I had between announcing the project and releasing it I’d be able to set up a more sophisticated recording rig.  Instead, I recorded the twelve tracks in a white heat, using my iPhone SE’s voice memo app, and placing the phone on the old Baldwin Acrosonic piano in my school’s Music Room.

These made for less-than-ideal recording conditions, but in listening back to the album, it worked better than I thought.

To read more of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

March Bandcamp Friday: New Release!

The Portly Politico6 Comments

After a lot of frantic composing and sloppy recording, it’s here: Péchés d’âge moyen, my short collection of twelve original piano miniatures.

My self-imposed deadline was today, the March 2022 Bandcamp Friday.  I made it—barely!

The total recording clocks in at just six minutes and thirty-five seconds, but I’ve jam-packed this release with bonus features:  videos, original manuscripts of each piece, and a PDF booklet detailing the origins of the project.  It’s not bad for $5 (although that comes out to approximately $1.43 per minute if you just listen to the album once).

I also had a blast putting this recording together.  The feel of putting pen to paper is just so satisfying, and each little bit of written music is like its own little work of art.  One reason I included the manuscripts with the recording is because they’re beautiful to look at—even with my poor penmanship.

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TBT: Hawkworld

The Portly Politico13 Comments

With war in Europe and lots of foolishness here at home, it seemed like a good time to look back at the excellent three-book miniseries, Hawkworld.  It details the stellar character arc of Katar Hol (Hawkman, essentially) and his rise, fall, and redemption in a corrupt, decadent empire.  His home planet of Thanagar sustains its selfish elite on cheap labor and imported luxuries, doping its citizens with designer drugs and endless parties.

It’s like a grimmer, grimier Metropolis (1927).  It’s also a powerful Silver Age comic that I highly recommend, and one I will probably reread soon myself.

With that, here is 9 March 2021’s “Hawkworld“:

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