Supporting Friends Friday: Bette Cox on Heavenly Music

“God loves music. He invented it.”  Thus begins Bette Cox‘s wonderful piece—aptly titled “God loves music“—about music and its divine origins.

As a lover of music myself, I’ve long believed that the existence of music—that certain frequencies together create consonant harmonies and beautiful textures, that the mere manipulation of sound waves can become a transcendent whole greater than the sum of its physical parts—is proof positive that God Exists.  How could something so precise and so beautiful emerge from a chaotic Nothing?  Unless we’re including twentieth-century German Expressionism, it couldn’t.

Bette’s piece went up earlier this week on her blog Esther’s Petition, and it is a must-read.  She points out the ultimate purpose of music:  to glorify God, to worship Christ.  She also dives into the endless variety of music, and how a single song could keep a composer occupied for eternity.

The most poignant part of her piece, however, is a “mini-vision,” in which a throng of singers and instrumentalists of every stripe arrive to sing for an “audience of one: Jesus.”

Go read her post—and go make a joyful noise!

TBT: Summertime Schedule Begins

As of about 8 PM EST last Thursday, I’ve been living the Summer Break Lifestyle.  Other than camp and lessons, I’ve been enjoying a much more leisurely pace of living.

Summer is already filling up fast.  While the first week of Minecraft Camp is in the books, I have another session next week.  I’m attempting to run my Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for the second year, but as of the time of writing, it looks like I might just have one student, so that may get axed.

Nevertheless, it’s a good time to knock out some projects, especially when I wrap up camps.  I’m hoping to get back—finally!—to wrapping up the first volume of my Sunday Doodles book, which will go through the first fifty editions of the feature (over at my SubscribeStar page).  Indeed, I may do the first 100 editions, as I am currently at 144.  That will require more editing, but will make for a beefier book.

It’s also time to get cracking on some short stories.  I’ve been sitting on one story about a guy who eats an undercooked frozen pizza with bizarre consequences; now I need to write it!

With that, here is 8 June 2021’s “Summertime Schedule Begins“:

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Audre’s Worst Horror Movie

As Ponty and I have been rolling through our worst films, we encouraged Audre Myers to submit a review or two for the worst films.  In true Audrean fashion, she slammed out this hilarious, insightful review in no time.

That put me in an extremely mild quandary—when to publish this gem?  Ponty and I are about halfway through our back-and-forth countdown, but it’ll take us at least another eight weeks to finish the series.  I thought briefly about holding off and publishing Audre’s pick for Worst Horror Movie as a surprise for loyal readers.

But how can I withhold Audre’s comedic genius for that long?  More practically, I worried I might lose the e-mail thread—ha!  So I decided to publish Audre’s post now. Think of it as a halfway point reward.

I won’t reveal the title of Audre’s pick yet.  You’ll have to read on to see her choice (and, if you still want to after reading her review, to watch the film—she provides a link to the full thing on YouTube!):

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Minecraft Camp 2022

Yesterday (Monday, 6 June 2022) marked the beginning of Minecraft Camp 2022.  I’ve been doing Minecraft Camp since 2014, when a former colleague of mine created the camp and brought me on as his assistant.  That first camp—eight long years ago!—was announced on Friday, 6 June 2014 (it started on Monday, 9 June 2014) so there’s a nice symmetry there.   The cycle of time—and Minecraft—marches on.

My former colleague created a little blog for Minecraft Camp, Minecrafting at 5001, way back then, but I did not do a great job of keeping it updated last year.  That’s in part because we had something like sixteen campers, which made keeping up with the blog difficult.

I’m hoping to keep it updated a bit more frequently this time around.  I’m actually running two sessions of camp this year:  one this week, and another next week.  At the time of writing, I have eight campers confirmed, with a possible ninth.  I just have three campers for the second session, but I look for that to change—Thursday of last week I just had five campers enrolled in the morning; by that afternoon, I had three more last-minute sign-ups.  One of my campers is doing both sessions.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Worst Films: #6: Demon Wind (1990)

We’ve had some real stinkers on this long countdown of terrible films, but this week’s selection really blows:  1990’s Demon Wind.

Demon Wind is another Shudder find (thanks again, Audre).  One reason I love the service is that it is unapologetic about its commitment to preserving and propagating horror films:  the good, the bad, the enigmatic.  In this case, they’re also preserving some real garbage.  But one port’s garbage is another’s cult classic, though I doubt Demon Wind has risen to that status.

The flick is essentially a slasher, with the usual cast of obnoxious teens going to the country on some dubious errand.  The main character, Cory, is heading to the abandoned family farm with his girlfriend Elaine and a motley crew of annoying friends.  There are all the tropes of the slasher genre:  a grizzled old man warns them away from the farm; the kids are picked off one by one; and there’s the typical 80s meathead, Dell, who is so unreasonably combative, you’re kind of glad when he dies.

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Lazy Sunday CXLVIII: More Movies, Part XVI: Movie Reviews, Part XVI

After weeks of reblogging posts about my friends, both real-life and virtual, I’ve decided to go back to another well-trod road for Lazy Sunday posts:  my many, many reviews.

Readers might ask why I title these “More Movies, Part [Insert Roman Numeral Here]: Movie Review, Part [Insert Same Roman Numeral Here]”—or, more likely, you didn’t notice until just now.  Either way, I have to offer an explanation:

When I originally started reblogging movie reviews on Sundays, I thought I might end up featuring other posts related to films that were not movie reviews.  Then I realized that pretty much the only times I write about flicks is in the context of movie reviews.

So, maybe one day I’ll do a Lazy Sunday with my rare, non-review movie posts (like this one).  For today, though, I’m just going to pick up where I left off with “Lazy Sunday CLI – More Movies, Part XV – Movies Reviews, Part XV“:

Well, there you go—back to the movies!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: The TJC Spring Jam II Review

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

The second TJC Spring Jam was a little over a week ago, and in the spirit of the original TJC Spring Jam, I’m offering up a rundown of how things went.

To put it briefly—and for those of you that want the essence of the article for free without paying $1 for it—it went quite well.  Instead of treating it as a big concert with a couple of opening acts, I decided to take a different approach:  highlighting my private music students.

As such, I presented it as “The TJC Spring Jam and Recital,” but really emphasized the “recital” portion.  My buddy John and I did play a few tunes, but even then I tried to incorporate students, and the whole event was much shorter than the first Jam and the two Spooktaculars.

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

It’s Not Bandcamp Friday

Today is not Bandcamp Friday.  According to that link, “Bandcamp Friday is over.

However, Bandcamp sent the following e-mail to its users:

On Friday, June 17th, from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, we’ll hold our third annual Juneteenth fundraiser, where we donate 100% of our share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education. Read our statement here.

Bandcamp Fridays will resume on September 2nd, and continue on October 7th, November 4th, and December 2nd.

Please help us spread the word!

bandcamp logo

Yeesh!  As such, I would encourage my readers not to purchase my music and merch on Friday, 17 June 2022.  I’m not surprised Bandcamp—a company dedicated to helping indie musicians sell their music—is embracing the woke agenda; personally, I don’t care.  I don’t even mind if Bandcamp makes money from sales on the platform; they’re a private business, and while they’re a pretty big player, there’s nothing totalitarian in their practices (yet), and there are multiple alternatives for musicians to sell music online.  It’s not like Google or Facebook, two virtual monopolies in the tech sector that dominate access to free speech and information.

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TBT: Reclaim the Rainbow

Well, here we are—that time of year when every corporation changes its logo into a rainbow format to avoid the persecution of people who define their entire identities based on which body part they want to stick into which hole.  God have mercy on us all.

Wouldn’t it be great if corporations pretended to love Christianity, like in the good old days?  Better yet, they could actually be Christian.  I guess Hobby Lobby, My Pillow, and Chick-Fil-A will have to do.

One casualty of our fascination with buggery—besides the kids groomed into “alternative” lifestyles and exposed to men in dresses reading them children’s books—is the rainbow, a symbol of God’s Promise never to flood the Earth again.

Rainbows are beautiful, but like everything the Left touches, they’ve been appropriated to represent something odious and sinful.

It’s time to “Reclaim the Rainbow“:

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Guest Contribution: Audre Myers’s Review of Stranger Things

I can now proudly attest that the esteemed Audre Myers, perhaps the one figure at the epicenter of my personal blogosphere, has contributed her first piece to The Portly Politico.  What a treat!  Even the way that Audre contacted me about her contribution is quintessential Audre:  she framed it as giving me a day off from the blog.  Very sweet!

I’m happy to give a day—or weeks!—over to Audre’s writing.  Her own blog, Words on the Word, is a lovely daily devotional; I recommend it highly.

Audre also shares my love of the spooky, the weird, the unexplained.  One of the first ways I became acquainted with Audre’s interests were her posts about Bigfoot over at Nebraska Energy Observer.  Here was someone writing with depth and seriousness—not conspiratorial goofiness—about Sasquatch!

That love of spooky weirdness is perfect for Audre’s contribution this week:  her broad review of the series Stranger Things, one of my personal favorite series as well.  The fourth season has just hit Netflix, so Audre offers up her take on the series as a whole—without giving away any of the fun plot points!

So, for the four of you out there that still haven’t seen Stranger Things, here’s Audre’s excellent review of and recommendation for the series:

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