Painting Update

Last week was our big Fine Arts Festival at school, and part of the festival included an art showcase.  The Fine Arts Department Head invited me to submit my little paintings for sale, which I happily did—all nineteen of them!

On the last night of the festival, I slashed the prices of all of my paintings, and ended up selling four that evening (“Ghostopus“; “Springtime“; “Feelin’ Froggy“; and “The Elixir of Life“).  As such. I’ve lowered all of the paintings on Bandamp to $15 accordingly (“Valenween/Franketine” is at $20, but just because I like that one so much).

I haven’t had time to work on too many paintings since the festival, but I do have a few newer ones that might be of interest to readers.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Worst Films: #9: Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Good ol’ Ponty is back with another movie review, continuing our mutual countdown of the films we believe to be the Top Ten Worst. You can read his #10 pick here, and my #10 pick here. Ponty continues the fun with Alien: Resurrection (1997). He really rips it a new one. With that, here is Ponty’s review of the 1997 dud Alien: Resurrection:

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Lazy Sunday CLX: Fine Arts Festival

It’s been a lazy weekend here at Portly Manor, as I’ve been recovering from a very long week of Fine Arts Festival-related activities.  It’s been pretty glorious being in bed by 9:30 PM and sleeping in until approximately whenever Murphy barks me awake to the use the bathroom, which is roughly around 6:30 AM.  I still need to file my taxes, so I’ll be working on that annual ritual of tedium later today.

For this week’s Lazy Sunday, however, it made sense to look back at this past week’s Fine Arts Festival, and to celebrate the achievements of the students involved.  I’ve also worked in a post about Son of Sonnet’s new Locals page:

Now to break the fast with my chubby dog, drink some coffee, and lazily get ready for church… and taxes.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2022 Postmortem

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.

This past Wednesday night was the Spring Concert for my students.  As is my custom, I like to do a concert “postmortem” with my students to talk about what went well, and what we could improve (myself included) for the next concert.

This year’s concert really went over well.  Anecdotally, I was told that a number of parents said something along the lines of “I thought last year’s concert was good, but this one was even better.”  I do think we hit the runtime just right:  the concert kicked off a few minutes after 6 PM, and we wrapped up right around 7:15 PM.  That’s with our dance classes performing in the middle of the program.

We split the concert into three parts:  an opening section with Middle School Music and a couple of solos; the dance classes performing six pieces; and a closing section with my High School Music Ensemble (and a few more solos).

With that, here is a breakdown of the two musical portions.

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

Supporting Friends Friday: Son of Sonnet’s Locals Page

My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet launched his new Locals page at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/ about a month ago, on 14 March 2022.

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!).

In addition to poetry, Son has been posting some reviews of some anime series, both written and audible.  He possesses a wonderful voice—and that’s coming from me, with my rich, buttery radio voice.  He’s even posted some ASMR (complete with a crackling fire and poetry).  Son features some Shakespearean sonnets as read by Miranda McGee, who also possesses the perfect voice for reciting poetry.

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TBT: Flashback Friday: Opening Night

Last night my students had their big Spring Concert, and I am hoping it went well.  I’m writing this post a day before the concert, but barring any wardrobe malfunctions or massive technical failures, it probably went well.  My students are well-rehearsed and know the songs they’re doing, so I think we’re in good shape.

Tonight the Drama students open their two-night run of Twelve Angry Jurors (Twelve Angry Men originally, but we have a mixed male-female cast).  A couple of students had to back out last-minute due to illness, family emergencies, etc., so I have to step in as Juror Ten, the bigoted one—gulp!  Fortunately, I’m not expected to memorize my lines, but I’m going to try to conceal my script in a legal pad so it’s not quite so obvious that I’m reading directly from the script.

Acting is very difficult.  This week’s TBT post looks back to when I played the lead in a play one of my former students wrote, Catching Icarus.  It was easily one of the most difficult and rewarding things I’ve ever done—and I’ve steadfastly avoided acting ever since.

I am somewhat mercenary in my artistic habits; acting is too much of a time (and mental) commitment relative to the gains (both artistic and financial).  I can slap together a good concert in a fraction of the time it takes to write, rehearse, direct, and stage a play.  And if a couple of kids can’t play on a concert, it doesn’t derail (typically) the entire event.

In other words, for me, acting is too much investment for too little return.

That said, it’s also very fun when everything clicks, and I see the appeal for those who are really into drama.

With that, here is “Flashback Friday: Opening Night“:

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Concert Time!

Tonight my students have their big Spring Concert.  It’s one of the two busiest days of my year (the other being the Christmas Concert), as there is much to be done to prepare.

The students are well-rehearsed and ready to play.  Today will be spend putting instruments on stage, and making sure everything is mic’d up properly.  That’s not difficult to do, per se, but it is quite time-consuming.

There are also a million little details to get sorted:  making sure extra copies of music are run off; ensuring that cables are taped down or covered to prevent tripping; checking the sound levels; making sure students know how to get on and off the stage efficiently; etc.  It’s a lot to do, but the payoff is worth it.

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Blogging Reflections at 1192 Days

Anyone who has been on WordPress for longer than five minutes has probably come across Cristian Mihai, a Romanian-born blogger, who writes about, well, blogging.  I don’t know much about Mr. Mihai, but he has apparently figured out a way to make a living blogging.

Many of his posts are tips about blogging, and almost all of them are sales pitches (no judgment here—I do it, too) for some blogging-related product or another.  I’ve never paid for any of his courses or the like, so I can’t speak to their quality.  He does sell reblogs on his blog, meaning he re-posts another blogger’s work in order to increase that writer’s views.  I don’t endorse that practice personally, but if people are willing to pay for that exposure, they have the right.

I do, however, have a free membership to his irevuo website.  On Monday, he posted a very interesting piece about Seth Godin, one of the early adopters of blogging.  Godin has been at it for over twenty years, reaching his 7000th post on 6 November 2017.

That’s insanely impressive.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Worst Films: Eaten Alive (1976)

Ponty and I have decided to run down our lists of Top Ten Worst Films, and this week it’s my turn to kick off my list.  The problem is that I often like bad films, so I don’t have a large list conjured up in my head, ready to go.

Nevertheless, I watch some real stinkers.  Most of the “bad” films I watch are simply boring—meandering, pointless, tripe.

This week’s selection, however, is not necessarily boring—there’s quite a bit going on in it—but is so ridiculous and poorly structured, I’m filing it under “bad.”

With that, here is my review of 1976’s Eaten Alive.

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Lazy Sunday CLIX: Scrambie Eggs

The title for this weekend’s Lazy Sunday comes from the breakfast scene in The Cable Guy (1996), in which Jim Carrey’s deranged character opines, “But I made us scrambie eggs!”  It was also the weekend of the Lamar Egg Scramble, and a good friend has been bringing me farm fresh eggs, of which I have been scrambling up quite a few on the weekends.

  • Egg Scramble Scrambled” – The last Lamar Egg Scramble before yesterday’s event ended in fisticuffs, and law enforcement shut it down early.  That was the first time since 1983, so honestly not a bad track record for an event that essentially quadruples the population of the town.
  • Lamar’s Sesquicentennial Celebration” – On a brighter note, Lamar is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, with a ton of celebrations to mark 150 years of being a town.
  • SubscribeStar Saturday: The Egg Scramble Returns” – The 2022 Egg Scramble “Over Easy” was a fun event.  It was the first Scramble I’ve managed to attend, and I was blown away by the size of crowd.  John and I played a few tunes, and it was a fun afternoon.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments: