Author: The Portly Politico

Tyler James Cook is a singer-songwriter in Lamar, South Carolina. He is formerly of The Lovecrafts and Brass to the Future, and currently performs regularly as a solo artist at local open mic nights. He sings and plays sax, keys, and a little bass. He loves songwriting contests, even if he isn't cool or talented enough to win them. He won the 2012 Artsville Songwriting Contest's People's Choice Prize for his original song "Contest Winner." He also maintains _The Portly Politico_, a politics and culture blog, at https://theportlypolitico.wordpress.com.

Midweek Koi Pond Update II: Life and Death in the Pond

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This past weekend Dr. Wife and I visited our new home and checked on the koi.  We had unseasonably warm weather, which raised the water temperature just north of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  That was just enough for the koi to come up when I spread (too much) food across the surface of the pond.

We did not get any pictures—d’oh!—but it looks like we have four or five existing koi in the pond:

  • A bluish one that Dr. Wife named Cobbler
  • A classic white and orange koi (Sherbet)
  • A white-ish one
  • One that seems black-and-yellow, although this might be Cobbler as well at a different angle
  • A more strikingly orange-reddish one

We also saw two or possibly three of the original population of ten rosy red minnows coming up to feed.  The others might have been hanging out below—or may have ended up as a snack for the hungry koi.  Gulp!

We did not see Milkshake or Brownie, the two younger koi we introduced the prior weekend.  I consulted with Microsoft’s CoPilot AI, which seemed to think that the two babies were playing it safe and resting down below.  That said, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

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Open Mic Adventures CLXII: “I Found Love (Cindy’s Song)”

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Last week I made a big deal about how I’m shifting Open Mic Adventures into New Music Tuesday, and how it’s inaccurate to call these features “Open Mic Adventures” because they’re not really at open mics—blah, blah, blah.  All of that is true, but this week, I have a bit of a conundrum:  what do I do if I don’t have any new, original music, but have a cover of a song?

Well, my hasty solution is to use the old “Open Mic Adventures” label for those pieces that covers, as 1.) anytime I feature a cover, it’s me playing it, even if it’s not at an open mic night; and 2.) I don’t want to further muddy the waters with some other title, like “Saxophone Covers Tuesday” or whatever.  What a nightmare!

So, here’s how it’s going to be going forward:

  • Any performance that is a cover of someone else’s work will be an Open Mic Adventures
  • Any live performance will also be an Open Mic Adventures
  • Any original music—whether electronic or me playing a piece I’ve composed—will fall under the new New Music Tuesday feature

Shew!  Hopefully that’s all sorted.

With that tedious business out of the way, let’s get to this week’s piece!  A potential client is booking a saxophonist to play the BeBe & CeCe Winans song “I Found Love (Cindy’s Song)” for their wedding.  The piece will play as the bride walks down the aisle.  At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the official booking (fingers crossed), but I recorded a quick, abbreviated version of the piece on my alto sax Sunday afternoon [read my full guide on buying a budget sax if you, too, want to start your saxophone empire—TPP].

Here’s my humble attempt at noodling out this smooth gospel/R&B classic:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Days Later (2002)

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The next film in the 28 [Unit of Time] series, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hits theaters this weekend, and yours portly is hoping that Dr. Wife and I can squeeze in a matinee showing this Saturday.  It also seems that Shudder has a couple of the earlier films on its service, including 28 Days Later (2002), which I stayed up late last night to finish watching.

I wasn’t sure I had seen this flick before, but several of the key scenes did click with me (like the father getting a single drop of infected blood in his eye, causing him to go made with the Rage virus).  I have seen it, but I’d forgotten most of the major plot points and the ending.  With the new film releasing this weekend, it was a good opportunity to refresh my memory (Shudder also has 28 Weeks Later [2007], which I watched recently as well).  I’d forgotten what a great film it is.

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Lazy Sunday CCCXLXII: Koi

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Now that I’m a Koi Boy (lol), I’ve been slamming out some more koi- and aquatic-life-related posts.  More will come—be warned!  Mwahahahahahaha!

Uh, I digress.  Here are some recent pieces about these beautiful fish (and/or their aquatic chums):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Gig Defeat

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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.

The past couple of weeks have been quite busy as Dr. Wife and I began the arduous process of moving furniture, personal belongings, and various bits of bric-a-brac and knick-knackery to our new home.  As such, I’m playing a bit of catch-up with these subscriber-only posts.  Apologies for the frequent delays over the last few months, and thanks for sticking with me.  —TPP

Back on 20 December 2025 I wrote “Christmas Gigging,” an optimistic post about how fun, easy, and profitable Christmastime bookings are for musicians.  Christmas music abundantly available and instantly recognizable; it’s also fairly easy to learn a lot of it quickly.

I was booked to play saxophone at a Christmas party that night, way down in Summerville, South Carolina.  I’d booked the gig through GigSalad, one of several booking services available to musicians, birthday clowns, jugglers, comedians, and all the rest of us carny folk.  Over the years I’ve used the service, I’ve only closed 5.4% of all gigs I’ve quoted to clients (or 5 out of 93).  To be fair, I’ve received a whopping 776 leads over the years, which means I’m only sending quotes to just under 12% of the leads I actually received.

Many of those unquoted leads are due either to scheduling conflicts (lots of nursing homes booking during the day on weekdays, for example, or gigs too far away to make after work).  Some are instances of potential clients never responding to basic questions about their needs (I don’t like to send a quote for events like weddings, for example, without at least touching base with the client about what they want).  Still others—more than I’d like to admit—are simply me not responding until it’s too late.

Regardless, even with gigs that are quoted, the vast majority—well, 94.6%, as you can see—go unbooked.  Only a handful of those are because the client has booked another professional; they’re mostly due to people never responding to quotes at all—and most of those never even look at the quote (GigSalad indicates when a potential client has seen a quote and/or message).

But I digress.  I had a bout of good luck with GigSalad in December, managing to land two gigs within a week of each other.  The first client was very pleased—I played for his proposal to his girlfriend—and the client for the Christmas party seemed pretty eager for me to play.

I had a bit of a bad feeling about this gig.

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

TBT^16: The Joy of Romantic Music II: Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”

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Other than a quick piece I dashed off earlier this week, I haven’t had much time for composing.  However, my koi pond adventures have inspired me—just in time to reblog this post about one of my favorite pieces of Romantic music.

That the piece is about a river is appropriate—while my koi are swirling about in a murky pond, the watery imagery is a source of inspiration for the piece that is slowly taking shape in mind.

I actually have an idea for the cover art for the album that will feature this imagined piece.  I took a picture of these cool little koi tea cups that Dr. Wife got me for my birthday on one of the pianos at school:

Regardless, I’ve always loved this piece, ever since I read about it in Roger Kamien’s Music: An Appreciation, Brief 8th Edition (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you) and listened to it with my students.

With that, here is 9 January 2025’s “TBT^4: The Joy of Romantic Music II: Bedřich Smetana’s ‘The Moldau’“:

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Midweek Koi Pond Update

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I’ll be weighing in soon on the capture of the Venezuelan dictator Maduro soon over at Free Speech Backlash.  The quick version:  it’s the Monroe Doctrine, baby!  More to come.  —TPP

Yours portly has found a new obsession:  the koi pond that came with our new home.  I’ve been so passionate about tending to this pond, Dr. Wife bought me a book that is apparently the authority on all things koi (that link is an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of the proceeds from any purchase made through that link at no additional cost to you).

The previous owners constructed a very nice pond; from what I can tell from my research, they built a textbook pond for koi.  The problem right now is that the water is incredibly murky, so we can only see the koi when they surface to feed.  It being winter, our koi don’t eat often—they largely hibernate when the water temperature gets below 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Currently, our water temperature is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

To that end, I’m looking to purchase some Japanese Trapdoor Snails (JTSs).  These snails are amazing:  they are cold-hardy, so they survive through winter; they give birth to live young, so they reproduce slowly, virtually eliminating the risk of overpopulation; and they are living vacuum cleaners for muck and algae.  However, Fishy Business in Columbia, South Carolina still doesn’t have any in stock.

I’ve been having late-night conversations with Microsoft’s CoPilot AI about stocking the pond, in addition to doing research on my own.  CoPilot brought up ramshorn snails, which I have read about as well.  Unlike JTSs, they lay eggs, so overpopulation is more of a concern; however, koi and the rosy red minnows I added to our pond will often eat the eggs and/or baby snails, so the population should stay in check.  I’ve ordered around twenty of them from a seller on eBay (apparently, you can purchase live snails from randos on the Internet) and will introduce those when they arrive next week.

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New Music Tuesday I: “Herald”

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Now that it’s 2026, it’s time to make a few changes to the blog.  One of those overdue changes comes to the long-running weekly feature Open Mic Adventures.

According to a hasty review of my records, I ceased playing open mics—and, indeed, most live gigs outside of private bookings—in 2025.  I simply lacked the time and energy—and interest.  I much prefer rehearsing my students so they can play live.

That’s been one of the big changes in my life in recent years.  I enjoy playing live, but as I get older, going to open mic nights and playing songs I wrote a decade (or more) ago lost its luster.  It’s also amazing how once I got engaged (and now married), my desire to show off in coffee shops plummeted.  If I’m going to play to impress anyone—always a dubious proposition—it’s going to be for Dr. Wife.

That’s all to say that I’m not ending Open Mic Adventures, per se—there’s always that chance I’ll get that itch to play and get some good video in the process—but that I’m shifting it into something more accurate:  New Music Tuesday.  The “Open Mic” appellation ceased to be accurate for most of 2025, as I featured more and more of my original electronic compositions.

Of course, good ol’ WordPress.com makes it easy to put together these weekly, multimedia posts.  One thing I’ve come to love about WordPress.com is how intuitive it is to upload all sorts of media.

For example, here is today’s featured track, “Herald,” uploaded as a beautifully lossless WAV file using the “Audio” block:

I found this brief piece scribbled on a red tardy slip I had in my desk. I apparently wrote it down on 8 August 2023, and finally put it into my music composition software this morning.  It’s a very simple, quick piece, indicative of the kinds of etudes I was composing at that time.  As such, “Herald” is a brief piano fanfare, suitable for players at most levels.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Gremlins (1984)

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Over the glorious Christmas Break Dr. Wife and I sat down to watch one of my favorite childhood flicks, Gremlins (1984; that’s an Amazon Affiliate link to a Blu-Ray of the film, along with Gremlins 2 and The Goonies; I received a portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you).  She had never seen it before, and as it is a Christmas movie (at least, it takes place at Christmas), I thought we should give it a watch.  I also knew that she would love Gizmo, the plucky Mogwai (she did).

I remember a similar scenario many years ago with my older brother’s first wife:  we all sat down and watched Gremlins, which she had never seen before, and it was a delightful experience.  Dr. Wife was feeling under-the-weather when we did our viewing together, but she thoroughly enjoyed it.  I did as well, even though I did not enjoy wrapping Christmas presents (poorly) while we watched—ha!

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