Month: February 2024

TBT^2: Composing Humorous Miniatures

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I’ve been writing a lot about my composing lately, which might be wearing down my readers.  However, I have two updates on that front to sweeten the pot:

  1. My latest release, Epistemology, hits streaming platforms and Bandcamp tomorrow, Friday, 1 March 2024
  2. I have some tentative inquiries from at least two parties interested in commissioning original works from yours portly

I don’t have much more on #2 at the moment, but one of those commission will be paid, and involves composing for various flutes.  The other commission will be for an online friend of mine.

As for #1, I’m quite excited for this release.  It features some bold tracks, particularly the lengthy title track, “Epistemology.”

My latest bout of composing started last August (2023), but it was predated by a round of piano compositions dating back to February 2022.  That resulted in P​é​ch​é​s d​’​â​ge moyen.  I’m still planning to put together Red Tardy Slip Compositions, but I’ve tabled it for the time being to focus on more electronic works.

Here’s to composing!

With that, here is “TBT: Composing Humorous Miniatures“:

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Myersvision: The Face of Bigfoot?

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Audre’s convalescence has coincided with a revival in her bigfoot scribblings, and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m chiefly pleased because Audre is doing better, but I’m also thrilled she’s sending along Bigfoot content (“Footent?”) again.

This week’s submission involves a very lifelike—but, I would argue, clearly manipulated—image that purports to be a close-up photo of the big lug.  The picture looks very much like a person—indeed, I have worked with and seen people who look like the creature in the photo (no offense intended).

Audre has more to say on the matter, and dips into the often discouraging world of online Bigfoot investigating.

With that, here is Audre on the face of Bigfoot:

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Open Mic Adventures LXX: “Moody Noodling”

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A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Slade saxophone from Amazon.  Amazon is notorious for selling tons of junky Chinese saxophones in garish colors for low prices.  These horns are often barely worth the brass and cork they’re made from, but parents looking for affordable horns for their kids buy them without knowing any better.  The result is typically frustration with the instrument.

Yours portly desperately needed a reliable saxophone for some upcoming gigs, and repairs to my existing saxes (one alto and two tenors) are prohibitively expensive at the moment.  Also, my repair guy is a cantankerous old Northern guy who lives way far out, and the combination of expense, inconvenience, and a Yankee tongue-lashing for not maintaining my horns adequately had yours portly running to the arms of our Chinese overlords.

Well, Slade makes a surprisingly good sax for $230.  Typically these Chinese horns have all sorts of problems:  leaky keys, pads that don’t seal properly, etc.  Horror stories abound of purchases paying the equivalent of the horn’s price (or more!) to get it setup properly.

I decided to bite the bullet and try it after watching a video from Better Sax on YouTube, in which he compared one of the saxes to to his gorgeous (and $4000) Yanagisawa alto:

I ordered the cheapest possible sax, even though I could have spent another $40 or $50 for some cool colors.  When the sax arrive last Tuesday night, I was pleasantly surprised to see they’d sent me the wrong sax—their blue model!  It is an absolutely gorgeous instrument.

Check out that beauty!  Such a beautiful instrument, of course, demands to be played, so I did just that.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: History of Evil (2024)

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Political allegory is a tricky thing.  For every 1984 or They Live (1988), there are thousands of crappy, one-dimensional morality tales.  It takes seriously talented, subtle writers to pull it off, regardless of the medium.  It takes a hack to write an annoying screed that preaches at the audience.

In modern film, the screeching moralizing typically takes the form of putting woke buzzwords into the mouths of characters in iconic franchises.  No one will ever forget (or forgive) bitter diversity characters like Rose Tico, the character perhaps most synonymous with Rian Johnson‘s obliteration of Star Wars as a profitable franchise.  Brie Larson’s turn as Captain Marvel (2019) did much to sour audiences on what was once the unstoppable juggernaut of Marvel Studios.

At least one could argue (albeit, I think, incorrectly) that those films were essentially apolitical summer blockbuster fodder, with few DIE hires tossed into the writers’ rooms to throw in “The Message” for “modern audiences,” to borrow parlance from The Critical Drinker.  I think they were intentional subversions of classic heroic archetypes, but what do I know?  I’m just a hardworking chump with alleged “privilege.”

I digress—even if one could make that argument about the aforementioned films, it is significantly harder to make about a great deal of modern, socially-conscious horror flicks.  It’s always ladled on thick (almost every horror film made in the West—and every single horror film made in Sweden—features a lesbian relationship), and it’s always very clear that White Men Are Bad, or that Orange Man Bad.

History of Evil (2024) takes that trend to its logical conclusion, and throws out any sense of allegory or metaphor.  The entire film is an extended riff on the basic premise that all white, male characters are villains (even the one that seems good) and all brown, female characters are heroes.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: In Praise of Valentine’s Day

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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.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

A couple of weeks ago Americans celebrated Valentine’s Day.  Wednesday, 14 February 2024 was the feast day for Saint Valentine, the patron saint of engaged couples, happy marriages, beekeepers, love, and even the mentally ill.  Perhaps that last one is a commentary on how love can—sometimes literally—drive us crazy.

It’s become something of a trend to denigrate Valentine’s Day as a commercial cash grab, a blatant invention of the candy and floral companies to boost their bottom line in the doldrums between Christmas and Halloween.  That’s true, of course, but that’s just the modern iteration of Valentine’s Day.  It’s worth looking at the deeper roots of the holiday to appreciate it.

Another trend is to decry Valentine’s Day as some kind of attack on the single and their emotional fragility.  I’ve been single on more Valentine’s Days than not, but it never bothered me to see explosive expressions of love.  Red and pink hearts never drove home my own singleness, or made me feel bad for not having a girlfriend.  Thus, we have “Singles Awareness Day” and “Galentine’s Day”—even “Palentine’s Day.”  I’m not opposed to cutesy nomenclature, per se, and people having a bit of self-aware fun, but there is a certain anti-Valentinian undercurrent to it all.  And isn’t being anti-Valentine’s Day the same as being anti-love?

Well, that’s a false dichotomy on my part, but I do think we have a serious anti-romance problem.

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Phone it in Friday LIII: YouTube Roundup IX: Bull Terrier Edition, Part I

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How many Roman numerals can one man slam into one blog post title?  Three (III), apparently.

But you’re not here for the Roman numerals (or are you?)—you’re here for low-quality, mass-produced, trashy content.  This week, I’ve got the goods—the stinky, fetid, nasty goods.

Actually, it’s all quite family-friendly.  This week, I’m featuring some recent YouTube Shorts of my chubby, sassy bull terrier, Murphy.

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TBT^2: Little Paintings

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During The Age of The Virus I took up painting as a little hobby, and came to enjoy it.  Let me emphasize the word “hobby“—I am not a skilled painter, and while I have sold a few of my works (mostly to family members), it’s been an overall money-losing excursion.

I attempted to sell paintings at the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival last October, and managed to unload a single painting.  Of course, the little girl who purchased that painting loved it; it was a strange, whale-like creature that she took to be the Loch Ness Monster, and she adored it.  It’s one of the few paintings I failed to photograph, so I can’t show it here, but that’s immaterial—it was sweet seeing that little girl’s face light up.

Of course, the brightening of little girl’s faces doesn’t put cornflakes on the table, so I’m officially proclaiming my foray into painting as a possible commercial endeavor a failure.  As a hobby, though, it’s something I still enjoy doing, and I’ll do some light sales on the side for anyone interested.  Otherwise, I’m not going to push it aggressively as a possible revenue stream.

For those that are interested, I use these little canvasses for my paintings (note—that link is an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a small portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you).  Like everything, they’ve gone up in price, but they’re a pretty good deal for small (5″x7″), thin canvasses, and they’re easy to use.  There’s also an adorable 3″x5″ variety, which I am excited to try.  I like the idea of index card-sized paintings.

With that, here is 23 February 2023’s “TBT: Little Paintings“:

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Ponty Pontificates: BBC Hails Swift as the Second Coming

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Taylor Swift is, for the current moment, the biggest pop cultural phenomenon of the decade.  Her Eras tour has grossed billions, with tickets selling out almost immediately.  Indeed, the tour has a lottery-based system that grants the opportunity to purchase tickets—which still sell out instantly.  She’s singlehandedly gotten women interested in professional football, not because they care about the games, but because Taylor Swift is dating a player, Travis Kelce.

Swift is the embodiment of what every basic white girl wants to be:  famous, admired, talented, wealthy, attractive.  Her fans (Swifties) grew up with her, and now have the earning power to spend those aforementioned billions on concert tickets, tour merch, t-shirts, friendship bracelets, and everything else that goes with a major tour.

To say that Swift has a rabidly loyal fanbase is an understatement.  Girls get vicious when it comes to talk of Taylor Swift.  Believe me, I know—I teach teenage girls everyday, and the ones that love Swift love her.  Mention Swift’s string of failed relationships (and the songs that come from them), and they’ll leap to her defense.  Suggest she’s dating Kelce for the exposure, and they’ll claim (not incorrectly) that she gave the exposure to him.  Believe me, they get very defensive of “Taylor” (to be clear, I don’t go around challenging teenage girls about their interest in pop music, but I hear their conversations with other students all the time).

I have a begrudging respect for Swift’s songwriting prowess—she wrote one song in 5/4 time, which is impressive for pop music—but otherwise I suspect her power over her fans is terrifying.  It is an immense source of power.  Women are herd-like and aggressively social in their behavior, and are far more likely to follow a directive from Taylor Swift (or Oprah, or Beyoncé), than to think critically about what their queen/goddess/self-insert wish fulfilment diva thinks.

I’ve even conceived of a short story concept in which a Taylor Swift-style pop star suddenly encourages her fans to become traditional wives—and that is what breaks the starlet’s spell over her fans, who no longer worship someone who encourages sacrifice and giving up an empty, solipsistic existence.

The concern—as Ponty touches on here—is that Swift, a vocal Democrat, will start plumping for The Usurper Biden (or whoever the candidate will be).  Then, her legions of unthinking fans will vote for the party of excess, debauchery, and death.

It is perhaps a tad unfavorable to Swift’s fans to imagine them as occult worshippers of a tall, skinny babe with a microphone, but the slavish devotion with which they dedicate themselves to their icon is startling.  Of course, we’re just living with the consequences of the Nineteenth Amendment.

I’ll let Ponty take it from here.  Here is his discussion of the BBC’s obsession with Taylor Swift:

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