Woooooooot—it’s Halloween! At long last!
Halloween is particularly fun when it’s on a Friday. My little town “observed” trick-or-treating last night, but I’m going with Dr. Fiancée and my niece and nephews tonight (we’re not dressing up, but the kids are). I’m looking forward to some family time.
How are you celebrating tonight, readers?
With that, here is 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:
We’re living in heretical times. All sorts of New Age nonsense is afoot.
The thing is, all the “New Age nonsense” is just Old World paganism and Gnosticism wrapped in therapeutic language. People are looking for answers—the easier the better. I’ve been reading the classic, authoritative book on the subject, The Kingdom of the Cults (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, as are several others links in this post; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you), by theologian Walter Martin, and it is wild how many of these cults share the same basic qualities—claiming to be “Christian” while perverting and distorting the very heart of the Gospels.
With that, here is 14 October 2024’s “Rooting Out Heresy: The Cathars“:
Ponty has done real yeoman’s work this week, helping to cover some key posts for yours portly. He delivers once again with this review of sequel. He loved the original; as for the sequel, well… read on!
Sequels are an interesting thing in video games, something about which I’ll opine on some other time. It’s fun going back to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), for example, back before any “knew” what a video game sequel should be. Just look at the second installments in the Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda franchises for prime examples of how wildly different sequels can be from their originals.
Now, the expectation feels something a bit like what we see in the film industry: take the original concept, but make it bigger. Unfortunately, widespread wokeification over the past decade has twisted that into “take the original concept, but make it woker.” To be fair, Ponty does not point to wokeness as the downfall of this game; rather, he offers up a very detailed and well-supported analysis as to why this sequel fails to live up to the grandeur and beauty of its predecessor.
One other note: several of the links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of any proceeds made through those links, at no additional cost to you.
With that, here is Ponty’s review of Ghost of Yotei:
Hi all,
Spooky Season IV is out now. Get it for 30% off with promo code ghost.
That’s all I’ve got today.
Happy Listening!
—TPP
Spooky Season IV is out today!
Ponty delivers up some great posts this week, giving yours portly a bit of a break during a particularly busy season. He worked overtime (complete with overtime pay—zero times 1.5 is still zero!) to get this fun review to me in time to run in the vaunted Monday Morning Movie Review slot.
I remember seeing today’s film around the time it came out, when I was in high school (or possibly a few years later, in college; the early 2000s are a distant, warm blur to me now), and it made me really think about death, the way one does when at a funeral. I still think about this flick every time I board a flight, especially in those first few moments after takeoff. I breathe a tiny sigh of relief once the plane has finished its ascent.
I’ll let Ponty explain the rest. With that, here is Ponty’s review of Final Destination (2000):
My review of October continues!
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Tonight’s the night—the 2025 Spooktacular! My students have been working hard on their solos, and it should be a fun night.
I have done a concert around Halloween for years, and started calling it the “TJC Spooktacular” in 2019. At that point, it was pretty much a solo show, with my buddy John hopping on to accompany me on a few tunes (or for me to accompany him).
During The Age of The Virus, I couldn’t find a venue that would book live music, largely due to concerns about big groups of people in a confined space. So I conceived of turning my front lawn into a seating area and my porch into a stage. Thus, the Spooktacular in its modern iteration was born.
That first front porch Spooktacular in 2020 was not a recital for my private music students, but was instead a more self-indulgent concert: John and I missed playing live music. I also paid a couple of groups to perform as openers: one of my students and his punk band—their first live gig—and two of my open mic music friends.
Then I began to transition towards the Spooktacular being a recital for my students. That helped to attract more people to the event, but also shifted the tone away from “raucous-but-mild-Halloween party” to “family-friendly Halloween party.” The original Spooktacular was never bacchanalian, but the current recital version is much more focused on family fun. The costume contest also seems to be a big hit among the little ones, too.
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On 1 October 2025 I launched a YouTube Shorts series, 31 Days of Halloween. The concept is simple: one, one-minute (or shorter) Halloween/horror movie review every day for the month of October. These reviews are super lo-fi—just yours portly recording on a phone, sitting at a desk. No frills, no fancy editing, just me giving my impressions of the films in an unscripted, fast way.
In case you’ve missed any installments, I’m featuring the several days of reviews. If you want to catchup on Days 10-16, check out last week’s YouTube Roundup.
A quick note: most of the links below are Amazon Affiliate links, typically linking to the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, as well as the books they’re based upon (or the novelizations of the films). I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you.
Why are monsters so fascinating? Is it because they represent challenges—real and unknown—that we must face and overcome? Are they a reflection of our bestial nature, our proclivity for sinfulness, even and especially towards the ones we love?
I think these reasons are accurate, but here’s the simplest explanation: monsters are cool. Every little kid who gets into monster movies doesn’t do so because the monster is a metaphor for grief, or nuclear war, or our darkest inclinations. No, it’s because we want to see the monster—and see the good guys defeat it in some intriguing way.
Yes, we can appreciate monsters at a deeper, more sophisticated level as we grow older and experience “monsters” in our lives, but at the bottom of it all—after all of our high-browed interpretation of what are, essentially, B-movie fairy tales—we just love a cool, scary, weird monster.
Female readers may not understand this concept as intuitively as male readers, but anytime there is a big, scary beast in a video game, men’s first instinct is “how do I kill that thing?” In games that permit early access to monsters way over the player character’s abilities, there is a thrill in surviving—often narrowly!—an encounter with a far stronger foe. Even failing to defeat him is a lesson learned, and an opportunity for new growth.
I’ll never forget when my younger brother defeated an incredibly challenging enemy in the Nintendo classic Dragon Warrior. He went into the encounter with a copper sword, one of the weakest swords in the game. I still don’t know how he did it—he had wandered way off the intended path of his quest—but defeated this evil wizard-knight. That was over thirty years ago, and I still remember it.
Yes, there are real monsters. Yes, monsters in fiction are often symbolic of some deeper fear or anxiety. But monsters—and defeating them—are also just really, really cool.
With that, here is 24 October 2024’s “TBT^16: Monsters“:
As noted on Monday, yours portly has been tied up with some major life stuff—all good, but all quite time-consuming. Indeed, today marks one month to my wedding! Dr. Fiancée and I are excited, and most of the details have been hammered out (I know that I will regret writing that overly optimistic assessment). At this point, it’s mostly just paying the vendors.
I’m also gearing up for the Spooktacular, which is this Saturday, 25 October 2025. Yours portly is not the best about maintaining a clean home, as it’s not a high priority to me. As long as the kitchen counters are disinfected and the toilet is scrubbed, I’m content. Naturally, dust and crumbs accumulate like the ash from a volcano; somehow, I’m incapable of eating breakfast without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Murphy and I both do our share of shedding, too. I imagine the tops of my ceiling fans would give housewives the hives.
The Portly Politico 