The Christmas season is technically still in full swing until Epiphany on 6 January 2024, but I know everyone is now looking ahead to the new year. Still, yours portly isn’t one to let a video go to waste, so here’s my rendition of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s 2024!
Hard to believe it, but The Portly Politico has been going nonstop for five years at this point—and the roots of this blog go all the way back to 2009. The blog is now at roughly 1825 consecutive days of posting—or something like that. Shew!
I don’t know what 2024 holds, other than a presidential election, but here’s to a great year!
Monday Morning Movie Reviews will be back—at long last!—next Monday, 8 January 2024, God Willing.
In the meantime, enjoy New Year’s Day!
—TPP
The old year is waning, with just a few hours left. What will 2024 hold? Will yours portly expand to his greatest heights—and girth—yet? Or will I fly too close to the sun on my beautiful hot dog wings?
The future is full of mystery, but the past is a done deal. 2023 was, like any year, one full of ups and downs. As the old year passes away, I’d like to focus on the ups—the “best” posts of 2023.
I put “best” in scare quotes because I am basing that assessment purely on quantitative performance, not the relative qualitative merits of the posts.
These three posts had the highest views as of 15 December 2023, when I put this post together. I also excluded pieces from guest contributors (many of which, notably those from Ponty, had higher views than the second and third pieces here). Finally, the posts had to be published in 2023.
With those preliminaries out of the way, here are the top three best posts of 2023:
Happy Sunday—and Happy New Year!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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The new year is just a couple of days away, so it’s time for yours portly to lay out his best-laid plans for 2024, all the better that they might go astray.
2023 was a pretty good year, with a new book and three new musical releases (here, here, and here). I also started dating a flight attendant, which means I get a lot of Biscoff cookies for free. I also taught approximately 619 lessons over the course of the year—shew!
I have a few plans for 2024. I hope to expand my YouTube channel further, and to enmesh it more thoroughly with the blog. I also want to resume work on Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book.
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It’s that time of year again, when every blogger, YouTuber, commentator, content creator, etc., looks back wistfully at the dying year, reviewing the highs, the lows, and the creamy middles.
In the grand tradition of this blog, it’s time to review The Worst Posts of 2023.
Somehow, I’d never reblogged this classic TPP post until this summer, when I did a retrospective look back at TPP’s Greatest Hits; “Napoleonic Christmas” came in as “Track III” on that list. This post got picked up by a conservative news aggregator back in 2019, which caused its views to skyrocket.
I have always possessed a certain fascination with France and the French, and Napoleon is easily the most fascinating Frenchman of all. That’s somewhat ironic considering he was a Corsican, from an island that belonged to an Italian city-state until said city-state needed to settle some debts with France and handed over the island in lieu of payment. The Bonaparte family was from a line of minor Italian nobility, and were fiercely in favor of Corsican independence.
Funny how that works: an Italian from a nationalistic Corsican family became the greatest political and military figure in modern French history. We can never know what might become of a life.
As I’ve learned more about Napoleon, I disagree more with Andrew Roberts’s assessment of Napoleon in the linked video. While Napoleon may have been responding to declarations of war by going on the offensive, he also had clear designs to stretch his influence all the way to India. Indeed, he sought to emulate his hero, Alexander the Great. The French also mercilessly plundered the cultural and artistic heritage of Italy in the process.
Regardless, Napoleon is a fascinating and complicated figure, and if he doesn’t earn our admiration, he certainly earned our grudging respect.
With that, here is 23 December 2019’s “Napoleonic Christmas“:
Longtime readers will recall that I adopted my chunky dog, Murphy, through The Bull Terrier Rescue Mission, a group dedicated to finding home for members of this comical, stubborn, oft-misunderstood breed. They do really remarkable work through a system of volunteers, and really go to great lengths to get these dogs to their new homes.
On Thursday, 14 December 2023, I received a message from the executive director checking in on Murphy. I hear from him about once or twice a year, so didn’t think much of it. He then asked if I’d be able to help transport a dog to Eastover, North Carolina, on Saturday, 16 December 2023, as part of the pup’s journey north. After making sure my schedule was clear, I agreed to lend a hand.
The dog’s name was Mavis, and her ultimate destination was a family in the New Jersey/New York area. I was the second leg of her journey. A couple from around Savannah, Georgia, drove a considerable distance and handed her off to me at a Krispy Kreme in Florence, South Carolina (a decidedly sweet and delicious place to pick up a sweet puppy). My task was then to drive her to Fox’s Pizza Den (naturally, I loved this route) in Eastover, North Carolina, where a young man would continue Mavis along her freedom ride.
I’ve never done this kind of canine transport before, but I was thankful for the opportunity, and that God opened up the door for me to be part of Mavis’s journey home. Saturday, 16 December 2023 was literally my last free Saturday of the calendar year, so it worked out perfectly.
Christmas may have been yesterday, but as every traditionalist wag will be quick to point out, it’s AHKTUALLY still the Christmas season, through 6 January 2024, Epiphany (it’s also Boxing Day). So, why not continue the fun with some Christmas carols!
This week, I’m featuring a short video of myself playing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” on piano. It’s a jaunty and rousing carol. With lyrics from Charles Wesley and George Whitefield and music from a Felix Mendelssohn cantata, this carol was destined for yuletide greatness.
I’ve actually featured this piece in Open Mic Adventures before (“Open Mic Adventures XIV: ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’“), so we’ll see how this version stacks up to last year’s rendition.
Merry Christmas, everyone! I’ve been in the Christmas spirit far more this year than in recent years, likely due to a number of factors. I will note that the bout of cold weather we’ve in South Carolina this December has really helped—it actually feels like Christmas. We’ve had plenty of Christmas seasons that are hot, humid, rainy, etc., and they really dampen the sense of the season, both literally and figuratively.
It being Christmas, I’m not writing my usual movie review today, but am offering up a reblog of a post from Christmas Day 2019. With that, here is “Christmas and its Symbols“:
The major professional highlight of the Christmas season for yours portly is the annual Christmas Concert at school, a time-honored tradition that is frequently honored in the breach (leave a comment and I’ll explain what I mean by that). It’s a huge undertaking for myself and my students, but when everything clicks, it makes for a truly magical experience.
Here are past posts about Christmas concerts from 2021-2023:
Happy Sunday—and Merry Christmas!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
The Portly Politico 