Month: May 2024

SubscribeStar Saturday: Universal Studios 2024

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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.

Last weekend my family made one of our iconic pilgrimages to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.  I took a couple of personal days earlier this week (burning through the rest of them for the soon-to-end school year) and we enjoyed an extended visit.  It was the first time since August that all of us were there—my parents, both of my brothers, my sister-in-law, my niece, and two nephews.  Nine people in Universal Studios is fun and logistically difficult at the same time—ha!

As I’ve written on this blog before (and in my highly unsuccessful book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Stories), Universal Studios is the proverbial “happy place” for yours portly.  I don’t require much excitement, but there is something comforting about strolling through Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, even in painfully hot Florida weather.  It’s also the one place yours portly truly cuts loose financially, where I allow myself some budgetary leeway and enjoy the fruits of my considerable labors.

This trip we tried something a bit different.  My younger brother, the family’s “cruise director,” as I call him, has hit upon a unique strategy for getting the most out of Universal Studios in a limited amount of time via gaming the on-site hotel perks.  It made it feasible for a large group of people during a busy weekend to experience most of both parks (Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure) in two full days.

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

Quick Friday Update; Constitutional Carry

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly is still playing catch-up from a combination of end-of-the-school-year-busyness and post-vacation-readjustment.  I know the blog has been short on substantive content lately; unfortunately, I simply lack the time and energy to put more into it at the moment.

I have a busy weekend of non-blog writing ahead (mostly stuff for the Town of Lamar), and precious  little time today to work.

Last night (Thursday, 9 May 2024) the Town’s Police Department hosted an event with SC SLED (basically, the “FBI” for South Carolina) to discuss the implications of our new constitutional carry bill.  There is a great deal of handwringing over the idea of hot-headed eighteen-year olds blowing each other way now that they can carry openly, but when I asked the SLED agent if any of the other thirty-four States with constitutional carry had experienced an uptick in these emotional bouts of lethal violence, he waffled, saying that “it varies from State to State.”  My entire impression is that this law enforcement officer didn’t really know what he was talking about.

I love the police, but like engineers, they tend to look at an issue from only one angle, usually that of safety.  Safety isn’t necessarily the enemy of liberty, but it frequently is.  Eighteen-year olds are still going to blow each other away in the heat of the moment; now we can just see the ones stupid enough to display their $500 handgun on their hips.  There’s a lot of hysteria over the new law, but not much thoughtful reflection.

Let a thousand handguns bloom.

TBT^4: Egged Off

The Portly Politico5 Comments

In a better, vanished era, eggs were cheap.  At one point, you could get eighteen eggs here in South Carolina for around $0.89-$1.19.  I’m not talking about the 1980s; this was four or five years ago.

Fortunately, it looks like chickens might soon be legal in my town, thanks in part to the efforts of yours portly, but mostly because everyone is feeling squeamish about cracking down (no pun intended) on “illegal” fowl in the city limits.  Hopefully I’ll have a full report next week.

Let a thousand eggs scramble, I say.  People need relief.  Cheap eggs and abundant fertilizer can only help.

With that, here is 4 May 2023’s “TBT^2: Egged Off“:

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Open Mic Adventures LXXIX: “Pink Princess”

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Today’s track is from my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for quick errands.

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Sunday Abroad

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Yours portly is on a family vacation, so my posts will be quite short for a few days.

That said, please check out my seventeenth album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

I really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too.  It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for quick errands.

Here’s a full playlist (for free):

Happy Listening!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2024 Postmortem

The Portly Politico2 Comments

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.

My students’ big Spring Concert was this past Tuesday, 30 April 2024—the perfect way to finish out a super busy month.  T.S. Elliott wrote in The Wasteland that “April is the cruellest month,” and for yours portly, it’s true—it’s my busiest month of the year at work, and I always seem to come down with a gnarly sinus infection during the height of it, largely (I suspect) due to exhaustion.

But April is also the coolest month because my students get to showcase their talents at our awesome concert.  This year’s concert was overstuffed with goodness, like a really comfortable, worn couch that also produces high quality rock ‘n’ roll.

Perhaps that’s not the most elegant or eloquent metaphor.  What I mean is that the concert was long, but good.  The length was the result of structural issues:  we had to incorporate Dance, Choir, my Middle School and High School Ensembles, and various soloists.  Rather than trim the fat (and, to be clear, there wasn’t much fat to trim) and shortchange my students, I leaned into it, producing a concert that was a bit over two hours.

To be clear, my goal is always to get to one hour, maybe ninety minutes.  Seventy-five minutes is a good compromise.  But with the Choir director insisting on featuring five beautiful but laborious choral pieces, and Dance students doing their arrhythmic gesticulating, it tends to pad out the runtime.  My thought is, why should my students suffer because we’ve expanded our offerings in the performing arts?

My administration was not pleased with the length, but as I pointed out to them, it’s the same as going to a varsity baseball game on a Tuesday night, and we never complain about those.  Further, my Karen-esque boss hosts two large, lengthy beauty pageants each year, also on school nights, which easily match or exceed the length of my concert.  Quite frankly, I’m tired of compromising on this issue.  If athletics and the boss get whatever they want when it comes to length of programs, I’m going to pursue the same tactic.

But I digress.  That’s material probably best left behind the paywall, but I’m pretty ticked off at my administration right now, and frankly don’t care if they stumble upon this rant.  Regardless, the concert was awesome, and my students did extremely well.  Seriously, it was the best one yet.

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

May 2024 Bandcamp Friday

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Today is Bandcamp Friday!  That means Bandcamp waives their share of any purchases made on my Bandcamp page today (Friday, 3 May 2024), so it’s the best possible time to buy my music if you want to support yours portly.

Yesterday I released my seventeenth Bandcamp album, Four Mages.  It is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

Here are some platforms where you can listen:

Four Mages is just $5 on Bandcamp, and most of that goes to me today.

For those looking for the cheapest, easy way to listen, here’s a YouTube playlist:

Happy Listening!

—TPP

🧙‍♂️Four Mages🧙‍♂️ Out Today!

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Today is 2 May 2024, exactly twenty-six weeks to Halloween!  What better day to release my latest collection of compositions, Four Mages?

🧙‍♂️Four Mages🧙‍♂️ is a collection of ten electronic tracks, all but one of which (“The Blind Prophet“) is color-coded. Each piece explores some facet of fantasy archetypes, weaving and casting a musical spell upon listeners.

It’s $5 on Bandcamp, and is also available on all major (and minor) streaming platforms except for Spotify.

I’m quite excited for this release; I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed composing it.

Happy Listening!

—TPP