LEGO® Star Wars™ 2023 Advent Calendar Part I: Days 1-8

The Portly Politico4 Comments

For the past couple of years or so I’ve been treating myself to a LEGO® Star Wars™ Advent Calendar.  I enjoy the ritual of building each day’s tiny set, and it’s cool getting some unique builds and minifigs (the name of the little LEGO® people).

I seem to recall the calendars being around $20 on sale.  This year, the full-price MSRP was something like $46, which is outrageous, but I got mine on sale for about $33. That’s honestly not terrible for a LEGO® set, which is essentially what this calendar is.

Of course, yours portly never lets anything go to waste, and I’ve turned my calendar into an opportunity to churn out YouTube content.  As such, I thought I’d catch everyone up on the first eight days of Advent calendar fun.

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Open Mic Adventures LIX: “Listless Chorale”

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Okay, I’ll admit—this week’s Open Mic Adventure is a bit of filler.  Even the best albums have some filler, right?

I really have been trying to up the content game a bit lately, but in an effort to work ahead on the blog a bit, I’m digging deep into some compositions that are really more exercises for me than intended for general consumption.

Still, I thought this piece would give a bit of an insight into how I go about composing, specifically when I write chorales.  I like to try to challenge myself to link together a single note across multiple measures in one or two of the voices, morphing the other voices around those pedal tones.  The challenge comes in trying to find chords that fit these pedal points.

“Listless Chorale” is one such attempt.  I’ll confess, I’m not totally pleased with the outcome—thus the “listless” in the title, as it feels like it’s not really moving anywhere—but you might find some beauty in its harmonies.

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Lazy Sunday CXXX: Chapel Lessons, Part I

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Sometimes I fill in for our chaplain at school, which I always treat as a humbling opportunity to share some bit of biblical wisdom with our students.  I can only pray these seeds fall onto fertile soil and bear fruit:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Boring Politics

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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.

Has anyone else noticed how boring politics has become?  I don’t mean to imply that nothing is happening—I mean, we had a Speaker of the House fired for the first time in American history a couple of months ago—but it all seems so… dull.

If everything was hunky-dory, it would be fine for politics to be boring.  Indeed, it would be great—we want to live in a world where the issues that face us are so miniscule, we can elect boring people to administer boring, predictable law and order.

But the opposite is the case.  Everything sucks.  Our government is wildly oppressive.  Our institutions can’t pave the roads adequately, much less govern the country.  People aren’t allowed to say anything reasonable in public without losing their jobs.  Inflation is through the roof.  Wages are stagnant.  China owns everything.  Our leaders want to drag us into wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that involve ancient clans battling over ancient grievances.  Peaceful protestors—actual ones, not progressives robbing their local Wendy’s—are in federal prison without trial because they were invited to walk through the Capitol Building.

In spite of all of that, politics is boring.  I think I know why.

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Phone it in Friday XLIV: Christmas Concert 2023

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today is the day of our big Christmas Concert at school.  It’s incredibly fun and incredibly stressful, but if everything has gone according to plan, it should go smoothly.  It’s worth it to see the kids singing and playing and having a good time.

As I’ve grown older and, arguably, more professional (and almost certainly more ornery and ill-tempered), I’ve scaled back a bit of the theatricality and bombast of the Christmas Concert to something a bit more manageable.  Gone are the days of singing while standing on a piano (I did that once, years ago).  I also strive to make the concert focused on the kids and Jesus.

One big change this year is that our Dance and Choral students won’t be performing, because they had their performances as part of the Middle School Play last Friday.  The Foreign Language Students will still get up there and belt out Christmas tunes in various languages.

I’ll be doing a full write-up one Saturday (possibly tomorrow) covering it, but for today, just pray for yours portly.  I’m confident it will be a good concert, I just gotsta get through it!

As a preview, here’s what my students are performing:

  • Middle School Music Ensemble
  • High School Music Ensemble
    • “I Wish You Love” by Icelandic jazz songstress Laufey
    • “On Christmas Day”—a piece that one of my students wrote and arranged himself!
    • “O Holy Night“—the best Christmas song ever written

Merry Christmas!

—TPP

TBT^16: O Little Town of Bethlehem and the Pressures of Songwriting

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My students have their big Christmas concert tomorrow, and while we’re not performing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” on this year’s program, there’s quite a bit of pressure to get everything sounding and looking good!  Like most folks, I don’t like stress, but it’s amazing how it forces us to get stuff done—and to make it even better!

The story of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is relatable to songwriters, but I think speaks to all of us who have had to create or complete something with a ticking clock and high expectations.  “It takes pressure to create diamonds,” they say, and the frantic, last-minute composition of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a testament to that principle.

With that, here is 15 December 2022’s “TBT^4: O Little Town of Bethlehem and the Pressures of Songwriting“:

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Open Mic Adventures LVIII: “Kartofelsalat”

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Amid last week’s chaos I managed to squeeze in a little composing one night.  I was messing around with yet another waltz in my music journal, which I then edited quite a bit once I got into Noteflight and started putting in the notes.

I did not start out with German potato salad (the meaning of “Kartofelsalat”) as what I hoped to portray musically.  I was just scribbling around, and when it came time to assign my little piece a title, “Kartofelsalat” popped into my head.  It perhaps makes sense:  it sounds funny, it’s vaguely German (this waltz has a bit of a German flare to it), and it’s a mix of various musical ingredients, much like the delicious side dish.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Napoleon (2023)

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Hollywood is in a weird place right now.  All of the major franchises and studios are bombing at the theaters.  The Marvel Cinematic Universe used to be a money-printing machine; now, it’s dropping like Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame (2019).  Disney is sinking faster than The Little Mermaid‘s hometown.  Star Wars is exploding as if a couple of proton torpedoes hit its reactor core.

At the same time, there have been some major prestige films that have done well with critics and audiences alike.  Oppenheimer (2023) became a cultural phenomenon due to its release alongside Barbie (2023).  Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is earning accolades.

Now there’s another nearly-three-hour-long flick charging cinemas, and it’s quite good:  Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023).

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