Month: May 2022

Zelda Game & Watch

The Portly Politico13 Comments

A few weeks ago I ordered a treat for myself:  the Nintendo Game & Watch: Legend of Zelda.  It’s a nifty little device, based on the old Nintendo Game & Watch LCD handheld games.  Nintendo revived the concept with handhelds themed around Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

The units usually retail for $50, but Amazon had this unit on sale for $42.50 (now it’s around $45, I believe).  Amazon was also offering $10 off any order to try their location pickup and locker service, and I used some credit card rewards to whittle the final price down to $25 out-of-pocket for yours portly.

I then promptly forgot about it until nearly a week after it had shipped to the store for pickup.  I realized that I was too late, but hoped the pharmacy pickup location had not returned it.  I managed to rush over there between lessons one afternoon, and was thrilled to find my purchase still in their storage:

Zelda Game and Watch Packaging

This little unit is packed with goodies:  The Legend of Zelda; Zelda II: The Adventure of Link; and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.  There’s also an old-school Game & Watch-style game featuring Link, and a full-color clock that emits a quiet electronic “tick” every second, and features Link scurrying around Hyrule, slaying monsters.

Those three Zelda games are my favorites.  I still remember getting Zelda II: The Adventure of Link one year for my birthday, and my mom telling me to go ahead and play it before my younger brother woke up, because he would demand the controller (some things never change). The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was one of my favorite Game Boy titles.

I’m also a huge Zelda fan, and always have been.  The series and its focus on exploration, action, and puzzle-solving have always drawn me in, and I used to design my own maps and monsters as a kid.  The music has also always been inspiring, and I even arranged the iconic theme song for my old group, Brass to the Future:

I finally cracked the unit open last week, and pretty much lost all of my free time to playing The Legend of Zelda.  I realized I had never beaten the game before, so after nearly thirty-five years (the game reached the United States in 1987, and I think we got our Nintendo Entertainment System Christmas of 1988), I decided to sit down and finally defeat Ganon.

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Happy Memorial Day 2022!

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Like last year, I’m taking this Memorial Day off from Monday Morning Movie Reviews and blogging.  Depending on how productive I was Sunday, I may or may not be writing comments for final report cards today; otherwise, I’m kicking back and taking it easy.

Memorial Day is a bit of a curious holiday to me.  As I wrote last year:

Memorial Day typically marks the beginning of summer.  Given that it’s a day to remember those who have died for our liberties, some might see it as somewhat ironic, or even disrespectful, that we spend the day at the beach eating hot dogs.

I prefer to think of it another way:  it’s a celebration of everything for which those men died.  Hot dogs, pool parties, family, good music, good times; in essence, freedom, the kind of freedom that Americans savor.

That freedom was bought with a heavy price—and it’s been bought over and over again.  Indeed, the fight continues here at home.

Don’t take these freedoms for granted.  Take a moment—between bites of hot dog—and give thanks to those men for our liberty, and to God that we live in the United States of America.

I’ll definitely be enjoying hot dogs and freedom today—I have an abundant supply of the former from The TJC Spring Jam and Recital, and an abundance of the latter thanks to our forebears.

Here’s wishing you a restful day, too!

Happy Memorial Day!

—TPP

Lazy Sunday CXLVII: Friends, Part X

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It’s the tenth edition of Lazy Sunday posts dedicated to looking back at Supporting Friends Friday features.  I think after this Sunday I’m going to give the SFF retrospectives a break for a bit, as I’ve nearly caught up to the present day with them.

This weekend’s mix is of a more literary and theological bent:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: More Graduation Day Wisdom

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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.

Way back in May 2020, I wrote a SubscribeStar Saturday piece with some advice for graduates, most of it financial in nature—stay out of debt, start an IRA, save for retirement, etc.

A lot has changed since 2020.  I wrote that post during the early days of The Age of The Virus, back when we were all a bit frightened by what was going on, but already waking up to the tyrannical nature of the government’s response to The Virus.  It was also before rampant inflation and market instability in a structural sense really hit.  Sure, you had the shutdown collapse that March, but with government largesse forthcoming, the markets recovered those losses quickly.

I would still recommend saving and investing, but I would temper my advice in a less materialist direction.  So, here is my some more dubious graduation day wisdom.

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

Gig Day VI: TJC Spring Jam II

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the fourth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, especially the last Spooktacular.

This year, instead of inviting another band to open the concert, I decided to make the first portion into a recital for my private music students.  I’ve been teaching private lessons for years, but have never done a recital, so it was high-time to give my students and opportunity to share their considerable talents.

The recital element also brings with it a built-in audience:  the students naturally come with their parents—and, potentially, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends, etc.  More people means more merch sales, and possibly more tips and donations.

For this one, though, I’m not playing up the moneymaking aspect too heavily.  Yes, I hope to recoup some of my expenses for food and such, but the point is more to celebrate the hard work and talents of my private students.  If I sell some t-shirts and paintings, well, all the better.

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TBT: Disincentives to Work

The Portly Politico6 Comments

I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom this week, but it sure feels like things are falling apart all around us:  food shortages, rising unemployment, riots.  I think we’re in for a really nasty summer, but I hope I’m wrong.

We’ve been muddling through longer than we realize.  While gas prices have only shot up in the past five months, people have been dropping out of the workforce for a good while now.  Back in the Obama years, conservatives used to mock (rightly) the government’s unemployment figures for leaving out the labor force participation rate, which was pretty paltry back then (something like only 60-70% of working aged people were actually actively looking for work; the unemployment rate was based off that portion, rather than all working aged adults).

Now we’re in the midst of what the mainstream media is calling “The Great Resignation,” with millions of Americans quitting their jobs.  That’s due in part, I believe, to the generous government largesse during The Age of The Virus.  We’ve all gotten a taste of easy money—inflation be damned!—and now we want the gravy train to keep on rollin’.

But I think it goes deeper than that.  My generation in particular—prone to wokery, alas—legitimately has gotten the short end of the economic stick, entering the workforce during a recession, saddled with billions in student loans and overcredentialed.  Granted, some of those problems were our fault—we fell for the siren song of expensive degrees—but we were largely following the advice that had worked for our parents’ generation.

Understandably, many of my peers did not want to go back to waiting tables and pouring coffee for strangers—or going back to other thankless jobs.  Not all of those folks are deadbeats or mooches—some of them are just worn out.

Regardless, the government’s sticky hands are in all of this mess (for example, college tuition is so astronomically high because the government will keep extending loans to anybody to get them to go to college, even if that person isn’t going to earn much with his degree).  Work is annoying, stressful, and demanding—but doing it makes us better people.

With that, here is 26 May 2021’s “Disincentives to Work“:

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Beethoven’s Routine

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Long-time readers know that I love Beethoven (particularly his Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral”).

Readers also might know that I keep a fairly busy schedule.  Doing so requires sticking to routine, but that’s not always my strong suit.  My mind tends to jump from one task to another, but I find that writing out a detailed “to-do” list and crossing it off helps me to focus in on a task for extended periods of time.

When I really get into something—working on a new collection of piano miniatures, grading papers, or writing blog posts—I can focus in for hours, and often do that.  But working into that flow state takes time and, more importantly, motivation.  It’s the latter that I have been lacking the past week, a combination of end-of-the-school-year exhaustion and a renewed interest in Civilization VI.

So I thought it’d be interesting during this winding down season—when my own routine is about to change to the more leisurely pace of summertime—to look at Beethoven’s daily routine, care of YouTube channel Inside the Score.

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Shortages

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Everyone reading this post has noticed their grocery and gas bills shoot up over the past few months.  These are not the result of the war in The Ukraine, despite the mewling protestations of the Biden Administration to the contrary.  In part, they are the result of extended lockdowns during The Age of The Virus, and the subsequent disruption to the world’s “just-in-time” production model.  Shutting everything down immediately probably didn’t do much to stop the spread of The Virus, but it definitely stopped the spread of goods, and the production thereof.

But these shortages seemed largely academic until recently.  Sure, you’d hear about them here and there, and it was impossible to buy toilet paper for awhile, but other than a few panic-induced shortages, you could pretty much get what you needed, even if you had to pay double for it.

Now, for the first time since the very early days of The Age of The Virus, I’m getting seriously concerned about looming shortages—and not just a few missing luxury items from store shelves (not that toilet paper is a luxury item, but there are always substitutes for that), but the basic necessities of life.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Worst Films: #6: Elf (2003)

The Portly Politico16 Comments

We’re back with another of Ponty’s picks for the worst films of all time.  As always, Ponty delivers an interesting choice, this time for #6:  the Christmas film Elf (2003).

Elf is one of those movies I’ve never seen in its entirety, but I know about all-too-well.  It seems that every girl I’ve ever met loves this movie, but not just with some yuletide enthusiasm; they act like it’s the greatest Christmas film ever made.

I don’t know why that is.  Is it because women are incredibly social creatures, and bandwagon about everything remotely popular?  Is it because of the story about a son meeting his deadbeat dad and falling in love with a hipster?  Or is it just harmlessly funny, the kind of non-edgy humor women tend to prefer?

Whatever the reason, it makes me dislike the movie more, perhaps channeling the contrarian curmudgeon inside of me.

Needless to say, I’m with Ponty 100% on this one.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2003’s Elf:

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