Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Today I’m featuring the third track from my latest album, Spooky Season III. It’s called “Curious Little Ghosties,” and it’s similar in style to last week’s selection, “Dancing in the Graveyard.” According to my music journal, I jotted down the main melody for this piece on 5 September 2024.
This blog is not one to shy from controversy, so yours portly is going to come out and say it: 2024’s Joker: Folie à Deux is an excellent film.
Yes, yes—critics and audiences have panned it. That is an indication that it’s not just the smarmy critics panning a flick that audiences love, but that it’s actually an unenjoyable slog. Indeed, much of the criticism I’ve read or watched of the film describes it as bleak and hopeless.
Having seen Joker 2 (as I will call it for the rest of the review so I don’t have to type out that ridiculous title), I can say it’s good because it’s bleak and hopeless. Indeed, that is the entire point.
Spooky Season III is out now on all streaming platforms (including Spotify)! Pick up the digital download at Bandcamp, and take 20% off any Bandcamp purchase with this promo code: spooky (code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024).
With so many good Halloween posts this past week, I figured I’d do another round of Spooky Season Prep posts this weekend. Here are three good ones from this past week to keep the haunted vibes flowing:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Hauntings!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
Yours portly was pretty on the ball this week with posting, but by Friday, I was wiped out. You see, dear readers, it was Homecoming Week at my school, and your friendly neighborhood Port has to step up big time to meet the demands for high production values.
I was planning a post for SubscribeStar Saturday about the Vance-Walz VP debate, but I’ll have to forestall that for another time.
For now, I’m dashing off—after a good night’s sleep—on another footloose adventure, with Murphy in tow.
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
It’s been a busy week for yours portly, as it’s been Homecoming Week at my school. So I’m going to keep things short today and offer a couple of YouTube Shorts. One features Murphy being cute; the other features yours portly smacking the bass:
Ah, yes—Spooky Season is back! I love this time of year, so much so that I’ll say if you don’t, you’re a buzzkill.
Indeed, there’s a weird kind of “horseshoe” overlap where extreme progressives—who are notorious buzzkills—meet with extreme Christian fundamentalists, where both end up denouncing Halloween. Look, I’m probably a Christian fundamentalist by most standards, but, c’mon—I love fun. I’m pretty sure God Does, too.
And what’s more fun that getting candy and running around in the dark dressed in some kind of hilarious costume? Well, probably a lot of things if you’re nearly forty, but I can at least appreciate the spooky aesthetic of Halloween.
Anyway, you get my point—this time of year is fun. I don’t know if ghosts are real (probably not, if you believe in the Bible), but I don’t see any harm in speculating wild about the topic.
With that, here is 12 October 2023’s “TBT^4: Things That Go Bump in the Night“:
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Last Wednesday I posted “My Neighbor’s Halloween Movie Recommendations” to a great deal of fanfare. It was a solid list, leaning a bit more heavily towards the classics. Naturally, I knew our English correspondent, Pontiac Dream 39, would have some thoughts on the list.
As is often the case, I was right. Ponty offered up his top three picks in the comments section. Always on the lookout for easy—uh, I mean, quality—content, I asked the good bloke from across the pond to consider putting together a more extensive “explainer” of his choices.
Happily, he obliged. Few writers put together a movie review better than good old Ponty, especially when he either loves or hates a film. In this case, his love for these three flicks—and they are all, assuredly, classics—shines through, as does his acumen for writing a crackerjack film review.
With that, here are Ponty’s Top 3 Halloween Picks for 2024 (I’m hoping if I add “for 2024,” it means he’ll do more next year!):
Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III! Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.
Today I’m featuring the second track from my latest album, Spooky Season III. It’s called “Dancing in the Graveyard,” and it’s actually the first piece I composed for the album. The tiny manuscript that would morph into the full piece dates to 3 September 2024:
The instrumentation choices I made for this piece would impact that of several other pieces on the release. I love the mischievous sound of the oboe; it seems to depict ghoulish ghosties and happy haunts nicely.
Sequels can be a dicey proposition. The mentality with most sequels is “the same, but bigger”—build upon what made the original film successful and lovable, but with more of it. That formula seems to work in terms of generating cash, but tends to leave audiences leaving with the sensation that what they saw was “good, but not as good as the original.”
The Exorcist III (1990), which ignores the events of the (so I have heard) disastrous Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), is certainly “not as good as the original,” but it is still very good. It’s a film that takes a few viewings to drink everything in, but it’s worth the effort. Indeed, I’d argue it is an underappreciated masterpiece.
Spooky Season III is out now on all streaming platforms (including Spotify)! Pick up the digital download at Bandcamp, and take 20% off any Bandcamp purchase with this promo code: spooky (code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024).
The spooky season is here, my friends! To help you get ready, I decided to look back at some classic posts highlighting the fun and the fright of this magically mysterious time of the year:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Hauntings!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
The Portly Politico 