It’s good to be back at open mic—finally!—and I’m getting some of previously unreleased tunes posted to YouTube. One original tune I played last Tuesday, 13 June 2023 is a piece I wrote in 2018 about the open mic scene called “Private Lessons (Goth Chick)“—the cattiest song I’ve ever written.
When I was young I thought that life was so wonderful that foreign films were snooty, arthouse affairs, the kinds of flicks pretentious people only pretended to like in order to look sophisticated. That’s probably true of some foreign films (and most modern art in general), but I’ve found that the opposite is frequently the case. Some of the best movies I’ve watched lately were foreign films.
Koreans and Spaniards (of various derivations) make some of the best films. Much to my surprise and delight, the French make some excellent films, too.
To be clear, some of the crappier stuff I’ve seen have been pretentious French flicks. My beloved Shudder has a whole collection of French films that are, let’s say, experimental garbage.
But the frogs do get some things right now and then. One of those is 2004’s Calvaire (alternatively Calvary or The Ordeal).
This blog loves the arts, but especially the short story as a form. The short story is incredibly versatile, and can explore many of the themes of a novel without the time commitment. Often, less is more.
This Sunday, I thought I’d look back at three genres of short stories: ghost stories, Southern fiction, and science fiction:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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A perennial saw pastors love to buzz is how in our modern age, we face such a deluge of constant stimuli, we never have quiet time with God. Indeed, we sometimes seek out noise to distract ourselves from God.
The pastors are right. There is so much noise—audible, of course, but also visual—that it’s easy to go an entire day without much quiet time at all. I often fall into the trap of flipping mindlessly through my phone in bed instead of reading a book, or cranking up a podcast the moment I wake up.
I think the problem of constant, buzzing, inane noise is more than a spiritual one, even if that is chiefly what it is (after all, aren’t most problems, at least beyond the merely technical ones, ultimately spiritual?). It certainly distracts us from keeping our spiritual “ears” open to God’s still, small voice, but it also prevents us simply from thinking.
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Thanks to the gentle prodding of Audre Myers, I’ve decided to upload videos actively to my YouTube channel. I’ve had this channel for almost fifteen years (apparently), but only used it to upload a short video from the video game Spore in 2008 and some footage of my old group Brass to the Future playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” on Independence Day 2010.
I’ll mostly upload original music. There are plenty of songs I love to cover, but uploading those covers to YouTube without obtaining permission from the original songwriters is technically a violation of copyright law. I’m a big believer in the protection of intellectual property, and I’d rather not run afoul of the YouTube police, at least not for something legitimate.
That said, readers are welcome to cover my tunes, just let me know about it.
So, I thought I’d periodically post a digest of some recent uploads for readers who want to dive deeper into my music—for free!
My sweet, bossy, chunky, lazy dog, Murphy, turns ten today! She is a bull terrier, a notoriously stubborn yet loyal breed. Here’s a picture of her from a few days ago:
I adopted Murphy in 2021 from the Bull Terrier Rescue Mission after her original owner turned her over to a North Carolina animal shelter. What a terrible thing to be abandoned after eight years!
But his callous decision was Murph’s gain—I hope!—and mine. We immediately took to each other, and while she loves many people, she’s always most excited when she sees me.
She is a good dog, and I consider myself fortunate to have her as my first. Other than her innate orneriness, extreme stubbornness, and tireless neediness, she’s perfect. Those might all sounds like criticisms, but they’re just part of what make her so special.
I love you, Murphy!
With that, here is 15 June 2022’s “Happy Birthday, Murphy!“:
Science fiction is amazing. When it comes to fiction, it is probably my favorite genre, second to (but rivaling) only the ghost story. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction, which—as the name suggests—speculates about future events.
But the best science fiction doesn’t just look into the future—it tells us about ourselves, past, present, and future. That so much of the great science fiction of the twentieth century has come true, to one extent or another, is indicative of the power of the genre to diagnose social developments, if not to predict them precisely.
The latest uproar over artificial intelligence—and the apparent willingness, blind or intentional, to develop it beyond all sensible precautions—is a prime example of the failure to take the warnings of science fiction seriously.
Science fiction is not Scripture—far from it!—but we ignore its warnings at our peril.
Okay, okay—I know I shared “The Rings of Saturn” last Tuesday. However, I went out that Tuesday night to open mic night, and—with all humility—I knocked it out of the park. As such, I had to share footage of this live performance.
Horror streaming service Shudder is on a werewolf kick this month, flooding the platform with lycanthropic treats. Werewolves don’t get the same love as vampires, but they’re an interesting creature. Watching various werewolf flicks over the past week or so has demonstrated that the “rules” governing them are as versatile as those that govern the bloodsuckers.
Perhaps the best modern werewolf film is 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. The brainchild of writer and director John Landis—the man behind the “Thriller” music video—it takes the established mythology of the werewolf and expands upon it. The film even references the classic Universal Studios film The Wolf Man (1941), drawing upon that film’s contribution to the modern werewolf mythology (it doubtlessly helped that An American Werewolf in London was also a Universal Studios production, giving Landis full access to earlier Universal properties).
I’ve been writing (and singing!) a lot about space lately. My interest in the topic is steadfast, though the highlighting of it here on the blog ebbs and flows. I also will hasten to add that I’m not much for the technical details of space exploration and colonization, and I suspect that many of our scientific observations about space are, at best, educated guesses. Rather, I adore the idea of humanity stretching its fragile fingers into the firmament.
This recent focus also coincides with the re-release of several of my old instrumental albums into the digital space. To save a few bucks (“quid” to my English readers), I released Electrock Music (2006) and Electrock II: Space Rock (2007) into a digital double LP (twelve tracks each, twenty-four tracks total):
Start with “Launch” to begin a musicologist’s tour throughout our Solar System.
To take an abbreviated tour of our Solar System—with a major emphasis on Saturn—keep reading:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
The Portly Politico 