TBT: VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

31 July 202524 July 2025 The Portly Politico2 Comments

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, we were gearing up for a presidential election. Now Trump is back in office—woooooot!—and he has a worthy successor in the wings.

It’s going to be tough sledding in the years ahead, but it’s reassuring to know that we have a legitimate successor ready to roll in 2028. Vance’s incredible speech to the various heads of Europe’s governments earlier this year was a call to government accountability—and for Europe to wake up. It was not an attack on Europe, per se, but a powerful plea for its leaders to do something to improve the lives of their people.

I’m excited to see more from Vance in the years to come.

With that, here is 17 July 2024’s “VP Vance: A Worthy Successor“:

Ululations for U-Haul

30 July 20257 August 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

This past weekend I had to move a bunch of furniture from my future in-laws’ home to my little house. They are downsizing to a smaller home, and have been donating, selling, and/or rehoming nearly twenty years’ worth of accumulation to whoever will take it. That means a great deal of their goods have made their way to Dr. Fiancée and me.

The move itself was not terrible, although we had the brutal task of moving an elliptical machine from their second-story rec room to their first-floor garage. I recruited two former Music students of mine (quipping, “you didn’t know when you signed up for Music in the seventh grade that it was a lifelong commitment”; one of them rejoined, “I should have signed up for Drama”) to assist in the hurly-burly, and we got it all done. We’re in the midst of a severe heatwave here in the South, so all three of us guzzled down water. One of my guys got a bit lightheaded from the heat and exertion, but still managed to assist admirably.

In the process, we moved a recliner, couch, nightstand, dresser, and queen-sized bed (with mattress, boxspring, frame, and headboard) into my little house. I also received a Husqvarna riding lawnmower—quite a gift!

The idea is that I will live like a hoarder for the next nine months or so until Dr. Fiancée and I purchase a home together—one that will, hopefully, accommodate all of this furniture (it will).

But moving all of this nice furniture (thanks, Dr. Fiancée’s mom and dad!) meant getting a truck and trailer large enough to pull it off. That meant making a reservation with—groan—U-Haul.

Open Mic Adventures CXLI: “Vibin'”

29 July 202530 July 2025 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Yours portly has three separate releases that I plan to now release in early September, as my distributor, CD Baby, usually takes about three weeks to approve releases for distribution. Two of the releases feature older works, but one will feature tons of new pieces.

This week, I’m featuring one of those new pieces, “Vibin'”:

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Strain (2014-2017)

28 July 202527 July 2025 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Today I’m taking a bit of a departure from my usual reviews. Instead, I’m going to review a television series, although one with a cinematic quality and a Hollywood director attached: The Strain (2014-2017).

The Strain is about a group of creatures that resemble a zombie-vampire hybrid called the strigoi (also called “strigs” and “munchers” in the show). These creatures are filled with parasitic worms that they pass onto their victims. Even one worm will multiply rapidly inside a host body, although the full transformation into a strigoi takes a few days.

The strigoi in the show are under the control of The Master, an ancient, powerful strigoi who has almost limitless power over his minions: he can see through their eyes; he can speak through their mouths; he can command them to attack (or not to do so); and he can give some strigoi greater or lesser degrees of autonomy and/or their original personalities. The Master can also transfer himself (in the form of a red parasitic worm among thousands of white ones) to other bodies, and can give humans “The White”—a white substance that, in the right doses, grants humans incredibly renewed health and an extended lifespan.

There are strigoi not under The Master’s control, but the show never clearly explains why. One strigoi, The Born, is the vengeful offspring of The Master and a human. There are also The Ancients, a set of which reside in New York City (the “New World Ancients”), and a set that reside in the Old World. The New World Ancients are portrayed as vampiric husks, existing in a state of stasis and complacency. All of these strigoi are at odds with The Master.

A plucky band of humans, led by the elderly Jewish pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian, also fight against The Master, to degrees that grow increasingly desperate as the show progresses and their numbers dwindle. Setrakian is a Holocaust survivor, and his archnemesis is Thomas Eichhorst, the chief lieutenant of The Master. Eichhorst was the commander of the concentration camp where Setrakian was held captive, and the two share a lethal bond that, I would argue, is the best part of the show. The decades-long duel between them is fascinating viewing.

So, what of the show itself? I have mixed feelings about it, to be sure. Over the course of its four seasons, I found much about the show that I found tedious and boring. Season 3, particularly, got bogged down in side stories, but the finale almost made the ride worth it.

Lazy Sunday CCCXIX: July 2018 Deep Cuts

27 July 202522 July 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

I couldn’t think of a good theme for this weekend’s Lazy Sunday, so I went back to the archives from July 2018 and picked three deep cuts; let’s see how they’ve aged:

“The Human Toll of Globalization” – a post inspired by a long Chadwick Moore piece about the human toll of globalization.
“An Open Letter to Papa John’s Pizza” – my letter to Papa John’s Pizza urging them to lighten up a bit.
“Dissident Write” – a rundown of writers I enjoyed at the time.

So, tell me—are these posts stale with the stink of irrelevancy? Or are they still farm-fresh examples of my biting wit?

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Chicago 2025: Field Museum of Natural History

26 July 202525 July 2025 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

Every summer for the past three summers I’ve taken a trip to see my older brother, who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. I go the week of the Fourth of July, when everything slows down and we can enjoy some quality time together.

As part of my visits, we always spend a day or two in Chicago. We will drive a couple of hours north from Indy to Hammond, Indiana, where we catch the South Shore Line train to Chicago’s Millennium Station.

Every visit is different, as Chicago contains multitudes of everything: museums, restaurants, public artworks, parks, libraries, theatres—and a Dunkin’ Donuts on every block. It is also a wonderland of architecture, as various Gilded Age magnates competed with one another following the Great Chicago Fire to build the biggest, tallest, most ornate buildings in the world. I love how every nook and cranny of Chicago seems to possess some beautiful architectural flourish and Gothic ornamentation.

This trip, we decided to spend the morning of our second day to visit the legendary Field Museum of Natural History. The Field Museum is most notable for Sue, the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil, a replica of which is on display deep in the bowels of the museum. Her actual skull is displayed nearby, as well as this impressive Triceratops skull:

Photo Credit: Paul G. Cook — An old fossil—and a triceratops skull!

I love museums, and while I love art and historical museums, I think natural history museums are my favorites by far. There is something mind-blowing and humbling about witnessing the breadth and depth of God’s Creation, from ancient beasts to exquisite gemstones to human artifacts (the last of which, really, is an extension of God’s Creative Power, that small sliver with which he endowed us humans, made in His Image).

The Field Museum had all of that—and more!—in glorious abundance.

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Phone it in Friday XCVIII: YouTube Roundup LCVIII: Sue

25 July 202521 July 2025 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

During my visit to see my older brother in Indianapolis, we spent a couple of days in Chicago. On the second day of our trip, we visited the Field Museum. The Field Museum is basically a natural history museum, and it features one of America’s biggest—and oldest—attractions:

TBT^16: Modern Art and Influence

24 July 202521 July 2025 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’m currently reading through J.D. Cowan‘s short book The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide (those are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you), which isn’t precisely a guide on how to write pulp but, rather, an extended argument for why one should write pulp. Cowan unapologetically—indeed, enthusiastically—argues that the “low art” of the pulps provides readers what they want: action and wonder. He makes a reasonable argument for reviving this older form of writing, which features punchy writing and upright heroes: audiences want to read such stories, but “OldPub” (his term for the current publishing industry) prefers massive tomes that push approved messages. Readers lose out, therefore, on good stories, and the publishing industry is dying as a result.

That’s gotten me thinking about art and writing and what not. Last summer, a guest writer, Brian Meredith, wrote a post entitled “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Art” here at TPP. I don’t precisely agree—I think we can have (more or less) objective standards for what qualifies as good art and literature—but he does touch upon what I think is the important distinction between “low” and “high” art. Cowan argues in his book that pulps are “low art,” but that doesn’t make them worthless. But both low and high art can, I would argue, be quite bad. Just take this example from author and poet Liza Libes (Libes is an exquisite writer; she’s just sharing an excerpt from some trashy “romance” novel); no one can read that and not realize it’s awful writing (and not just because of the lurid subject matter).

But the worst art is art that is only valuable in the financial sense because the people making it are either a.) well-connected and/or b.) elevated because of some perceived victim status. We’ve had too much of both lately, and it’s why—as Cowan argues—the publishing and film industries are dying slow deaths (and, yes, yes, shortened attention spans due to TikTok and what not play a role, too, I’m sure, but people go to those platforms because they at least give folks what they want). That was the crux of this post, first written back in 2021 and reblogged mercilessly every summer.

With that, here is 25 July 2024’s “TBT^4: Modern Art and Influence“:

Interminable Heat

23 July 202521 July 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

It is hot—interminably hot—here in South Carolina. I can only imagine how much worse it is for our senior correspondent, Audre Myers, down in Florida. My European readers will struggle to comprehend the kind of heat we’re experiencing. I still can’t comprehend entire nations in the developed world that don’t have air-conditioning; it is truly a privilege for Europeans to have the luxury of not having A/C, much less not having to run it constantly.

I’ve often referred to the South in the summer as akin to living on the surface of Venus. Our poisonous gas atmosphere is in the form of humidity—breathable, but barely. Imagine walking outside and feeling not just heat, but a kind of all-encompassing clamminess that somehow manages to make you feel even hotter. Yes, you can get acclimated if you’re willing to stay out in it long enough, but you have to drink constantly, as the combo of heat and humidity is constantly sucking moisture from your body.