I watch a lot of trashy horror films, and I like a good many of them. I don’t, however, like all of them.
When it comes to Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984), I’m not sure where I stand. It’s an extremely campy film, and a thinly-veiled, tongue-in-cheek commentary on corruption in modern life and government. As much as I appreciate those elements, it’s also annoying.
Today’s tracks are 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:
Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/3WHmt9h (Amazon Affiliate link; I get a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no cost to you)
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/four-mages/1734702792
Bandcamp: https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com/album/four-mages
YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nujl75apVRTixddPAfSWgtKqmjKHmmbA0&si=eWuLqof6gNhGMsdQI 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.
Of these, I think “Pink Princess” is the best, but I have a soft spot for “The Blind Prophet,” and “Black Mage” is just so sinister and mysterious.
Which is your favorite?
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Graduation season has matriculated for yours portly. Indeed, college graduations have already been rolling on for a few weeks now, with a flurry of graduation photos and heartfelt Facebook posts accompanying the accomplishments of young people across the land. My school observed a graduation ceremony for our eighth graders last night, continuing the long-standing tradition of watering down “graduation” to apply to any milestone. Never mind kindergarten graduation ceremonies; pretty soon we’ll be having graduation ceremonies for when youngsters leave the house to head to school for the first time.
Regardless, it is a season of joy and celebration, and there is something to be said for all of that pomp and circumstance (and the constant playing of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1,” which is echoing across the land even as I write, I’d wager). Nowadays graduations are largely an opportunity for mothers to take thousands of pictures of their children (which likely explains the explosion of “graduations” referenced earlier), but they still hold certain symbolic and cultural importance.
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It seems that Murphtent (Murphy content) on my humble YouTube channel is no longer putting up the big numbers like it once did, and subscribers have settled in around 143 (at the time of writing—Wednesday, 15 May 2024). It’s also difficult to come up with new ideas for videos about a dog who basically eats, sleeps, eats grass, sleeps in a different position, eats poop, sleeps some more in some other weird spot, and complains about not getting enough to eat. Still, she’s a cutie pie, and I love her chunkiness to death—-even if she doesn’t make me Internet rich.
That said, Murphy continues to be a source of adorable haughtiness in a world full of bad news and bad ideas. This week, I’ve got Murphy sleeping in an odd position; Murphy trying to play it cool; and Murphy sleeping in a cute way.
May. It’s the superfluous final month of school. There’s not enough time to cover any new content, but too much time to launch right into exam review. The result: an odd limbo in which neither students or teachers wish to dwell. It’s the time of year when everyone is in on the game of modern education—we’d all be better off doing and being somewhere else, but we’re still going through the rituals of an industrial-era factory.
Naturally, with summer looming, I’m getting the itch to do some gaming again. Since finishing Disco Elysium a few weeks ago, I have not played any game deeply. I did purchase Planescape: Torment, the spiritual ancestor of DE, but only managed to get in about an hour of playtime. One of my students asked me earlier this week about Stardew Valley, which I played religiously for about two weeks in probably 2013. That’s a modern classic I want to dust off soon.
As for the ostensible subject of this post, my forays into SimEarth have been nonexistent since those halcyon days of May 2020, when America’s love affair with The Virus was in full swing. Being cooped up in the house got me nostalgic for the classics, but I need to revisit the planet simulator soon.
Big plans for the summer. If I play all these games as planned, my eyeballs might fall out.
With that, here is 11 May 2023’s “TBT^2: SimEarth“:
The big news rocking the blogosphere is the sudden disappearance and/or deletion of the blog Renard’s World. For the uninitiated, Renard Moreau is to WordPress blogging as Tom was to MySpace; somehow, no matter who you were or how active your blog, Renard would follow you, and you’d follow Renard.
From what I could gather, Renard was (is?) from somewhere in the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, I think), and would write mostly about blogging, as well as some stuff about blogging on Linux versus Windows or iOS. He was a WordPress loyalist, but was also quick to point out the many, many bugs that seemed to creep in with each update (I’m still not sure if people can comment on my blog, and there’s no rhyme or reason as to which other WordPress blogs are commenting-friendly or not). He also would always write, “the God/Goddess’s honest truth,” which seemed to fit into his quirky way of writing, which always featured short, terse sentences that usually double as paragraphs.
Renard was posting as usual just a few days ago—I received the typical e-mail updates as usual—but his blog vanished sometime earlier this week. As of the time of writing (a little before 9 PM on Tuesday, 14 May 2024), here is what readers will see if they attempt to visit Renard’s World:
What’s gotten everyone abuzz is that Renard had given no warning or indication that he planned to delete his blog—well, perhaps not.
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:
Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/3WHmt9h (Amazon Affiliate link; I get a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no cost to you)Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/four-mages/1734702792Bandcamp: https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com/album/four-magesYouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nujl75apVRTixddPAfSWgtKqmjKHmmbA0&si=eWuLqof6gNhGMsdQI really enjoy this album, and I hope you will, too. It’s about fourteen minutes in length, so it’s perfect listening for a short commute.
Legendary “B” movie director and producer Roger Corman passed away last Thursday, 9 May 2024, at the age of 98. His career spanned an uncountable number of films (estimates vary wildly; even Corman didn’t know how many he’d made), and he launched hundreds of careers.
Readers most likely know Corman from The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which spawned a Broadway musical and a popular film adaptation of the musical in 1986. His influence reached even broader than that one bit of comedy horror genius, and Corman worked with some of the greatest actors in Hollywood.
Last month I reviewed A Bucket of Blood (1959), a kind of proto-Little Shop featuring a would-be Beatnik stumbling into a career as a sculptor with a rather lethal methodology. The trope of the homely nerd staggering blindly (and often painfully) into stardom and/or super powers would be repeated time and again, including in Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984) Corman was not involved with that film, but his influence is evident nonetheless.
Corman was one of the greats. Hey may have had a reputation as a purveyor of trash, but he never lost money on a film (with the exception of a personal art film, which ultimately did make money about twenty years after its release!). He used every method at his disposal to cut down on budgets, even cutting films to 78 minutes so they could be mailed to theaters in four film canisters instead of five.
Rest in Peace, Roger Corman.
It’s Mother’s Day here in the United States. I’m excited to celebrate with my awesome Mom today, as well as my sister-in-law, who is also an awesome mom.
In the long annals of TPP history, it seems I’ve only written one Mother’s Day-related post, and haven’t really written about mothers at all. Considering I’m a single man, that’s probably not surprising; it might be weird if I had written more about moms.
As such, I’ve just got two posts to share this Sunday, and one is definitely a stretch:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Mother’s Day!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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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.
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The Portly Politico 