Monday Morning Movie Review: Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

This week’s pick is the definition of niche:  a British indie film about sound design for an Italian giallo film.  If you’re a horror aficionado and interested in film scoring and sound design, you’ll love this film, as I did.  If not, it’s still worth watching, but you’re probably not going to appreciate it as much.

That’s my basic take on Berberian Sound Studio (2012), the story of a meek British sound engineer who finds himself working in a hostile Italian sound studio on an (apparently) very graphic giallo flick.

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Lazy Sunday CXXVII: Indie Musician Rants

I’ve been in a mood lately—a mood of laying everything out there and being even more candid that usual.  That’s manifested itself in some recent posts, in which I’ve ranted and vented about the trials, the tribulations, and the smells of being an indie musician:

  • Sleep!” – A bit of a downer of a post, in which I contemplated shuttering the blog.  Only one person commented, so I suppose this cry for help and/or desperate ploy at getting attention failed.
  • Spotify Theft: Another Indie Musician’s Rant” – The main response to this post was, “sorry, I don’t stream music.”  Well, perhaps none of us should now that Spotify is stealing royalties from small artists like me (or will be starting in 2024).
  • Confessions of a Frustrated Creator” – A post detailing some of the frustrations that I and, I imagine, many artists face.

But, hey, who cares about art when we can have debates over the marginal tax credit and how much money to send overseas?

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Acceptance

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.

Readers are likely familiar with the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.  It’s one of those psychological models that has percolated into the popular culture.  As is often the case, The Simpsons illustrates it better than I can:

When it comes to the future of our nation, I’ve reached the “Acceptance” phase after many, many years in the other phases.

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

Confessions of a Frustrated Creator

Yours portly has to get something off of his massive, hairy chest:  I don’t think I’ve been delivering the best content lately.  Blogging daily is always going to be a game of quantity versus quality, but I feel as though I have been phoning it in more and more.

It’s my job to give you what you want, and I haven’t been doing that very well lately.  Quite frankly, though, I’m frustrated.

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TBT^2: Resist the Black Pill

It was another disappointing election day last week, both locally and nationally, with Democrats doing better than anyone would reasonably expect and infanticide enshrined in Ohio’s State constitution.

But we have so much to be thankful for as conservatives.  Roe was overturned, after all, and at least we can have these political battles to protect the unborn, instead of their murder being illicitly enshrined in the national Constitution.  Trump is outperforming Biden in polls, although that doesn’t mean much at this point, nor does it mean much when election shenanigans are widespread.

Regardless, we must continue to hope and to pray—and to believe.  I’m fairly pessimistic about America’s longtime prospects, but it comes from a place of realism, not desperation (as, I’m sad to admit, it at times has).  In the meantime, God Has Given me ample opportunities to make a difference among the people in my life.  That’s all most of us can reasonably ask.

With that, here is “TBT: Resist the Black Pill“:

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Spotify Theft: Another Indie Musician’s Rant

I’ve been using Spotify for years as both a listener and a musician, although I’m firmly in the Apple Music camp these days.  That dedication is only cemented further after Spotify’s latest announcement to changes to its streaming payments to musicians.

It seems that for tracks with fewer than 1000 plays per year, Spotify will take any unpaid streaming royalties for those tracks and redistribute them to major record labels (or, ostensibly, to all the other users on the platform who have tracks with 1000 plays or more).

That’s straight-up theft.  Spotify already pays abysmally low—something like $0.0011 per stream.  Put another way, a track has to be streamed about nine or ten times to make a penny.  I’m already not paid if a track is only streamed once in that particular time period, because Spotify doesn’t send royalties below $0.01.  I typically have about four or five monthly Spotify listeners (averaging seven at the time of writing—woot!), which comes out to a few cents every month—maybe.

“Well, Port, who cares?  You’re losing a few cents a year.”  That’s one to look at it.  The other, correct way is to view it as theft of my royalties for my music.  Stealing ten cents is still stealing—it doesn’t make it right.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Puppet Master I-III (1989, 1990, 1991)

Good old Shudder has been putting up some real classics of schlock lately, and that includes the first three films in the popular direct-to-video Puppet Master series.  These are not good movies, but they are a fun distraction.

The brainchild (children?) of Charles Band, whose entire career seems to have been dedicated to churning out super low-budget horror films with a strong sense of self-awareness, I remember the various Puppet Master flicks being terrifying as a kid.

For context, my parents did not plop five-year old Portly down in front of Puppet Master.  The early 90s were the golden age of direct-to-video flicks ending up on cable as reruns years later.  Somehow, at some point, I caught a few minutes of one of the films, and was thoroughly spooked.

Consider:  as a kid, the prospect of murderous, spooky-looking puppets coming to life is pretty scary.  I’m sure everyone reading this blog—even my older readers, who probably got a cedar log and an orange for Christmas—had at least one weird, creepy toy, and had some vague dread that it was filled with malice intent.  My mom had these creepy dolls that were supposed to be a little boy and a little girl, with heads made from some kind of 1960s-era molded plastic.  Those things still give me the jeebies.

So, do they hold up years later?

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Lazy Sunday CXXVI: Veterans Day Posts II

Yours portly has been run ragged lately.  It’s a bad sign when I’m unable to get Lazy Sunday posts written two weeks in a row.  We’re getting into the busy season for events at school, and setting up lighting and sound equipment with a broken ankle does not make it any easier (although I must note that I have had tons more help than usual with these tasks, and I have been blown away with the outpouring of charitable good cheer from my colleagues, administration, and fellow students).

I slept around twelve hours Friday night into Saturday morning, and apparently, it was exactly what I needed.  That doesn’t make for keeping up with a writing schedule, but it sure helped with my overall health.

But today’s post isn’t about yours portly.  It’s about remembering those who have served our nation in our armed forces.  Each year I reblog a Veterans Day post from 2018.  It might be one of the best public addresses I’ve ever given.

Here are all of the Veterans Day posts going back to 2018:

There you have it, folks.  Thanks to everyone who has served, and a huge thanks for those who have given their lives in the line of duty.  No mere blog post can do justice to the depth of your devotion.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Solemn Saturday: Veterans’ Day 2018, Commemoration of the Great War, and Poppies

In lieu of SubscribeStar Saturday, I’m taking today to observe Veterans’ Day with the annual reposting of “Veterans’ Day 2018, Commemoration of the Great War, and Poppies.”  What follows is a transcript of remarks I gave to the county Republican Party to which I belonged at the time (I have since moved to another county, and am no longer active in any county Republican Party):

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