Tag: Always a Kid for Today

Day Off

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yours portly is taking the day off from blogging.  I’m enjoying time with my girl (the human one, not Murphy; Murphy is enjoying time with my neighbors).

I was hoping to run Ponty’s response to my masterpiece review of Donnie Darko (2001) today.  You’ll hear from Ponty on a different topic later this week, but I can only assume his extended tardiness in sending along a detailed critique is a tacit indication that he has come around to my viewpoint.  Indeed, readers will readily agree that the only reasonable reason he hasn’t sent his review—surely it’s not due to busyness, or illness, or spending time with Tina—is that dear Ponty has realized I was right all along, and there’s no point in challenging me further on the issue.

So with that note of brotherly reconciliation and rhetorical dominance, I bid everyone a wonderful Monday.  I’ll be enjoying a relaxing day with my girl, basking in the knowledge that I’ve once again swayed public opinion about twenty-plus-year-old movies in a positive direction.

Cheers!

—TPP

Ponty Reviews: Stray (2022)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

2024 is in full swing, and Ponty is already pitching in with his hot takes on video games.

His latest review covers the 2022 video game Stray, in which players take control of a feline protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world.

I remember when Stray hit a couple years ago.  The premise seemed intriguing, and gameplay footage and screenshots looked gorgeous.  The Blade Runner aesthetic and MS-DOS-faced robots added another level of charm.

Cats and the Internet go hand in paw, and pretty soon even the most casual of gamers—but the most ardent of cat lovers—were playing the game.  I even recall rumors that the game would be up for Game of the Year, though that didn’t happen for reasons Ponty eludes to in his review.

It’s also a favorite among couples, as most women even loosely associated or familiar with gaming love cats, some to the point of building their personalities around it.  Naturally, these cat moms flocked to the game.

I have not played the game, unfortunately, but I’d like to try it.  I do have to wonder, though—why didn’t somebody think of this concept sooner?  Given the gaming world’s love of cats, it seems like a slam dunk.  In the case of Stray, it really was!

With that, here’s Ponty’s review of Stray:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXIV: Best Ponty Posts of 2023

The Portly Politico2 Comments

After posting my best posts of 2023 last week, it occurred to me that my loyal guest contributors deserved some love.  Ergo, I decided to put together a “Best Guest Posts of 2023” post.

As I began going through the top three most-viewed guest contributions, however, I realized they all belonged to Ponty/Always a Kid for Today, one of the greatest and most stalwart champions of this humble blog.  As such, I’m dedicating this edition of Lazy Sunday to his three best posts of 2023.

Some disclaimers:  “best” is purely quantitative, based on view count.  Of course, Ponty’s work is always qualitatively excellent, too.  Also, the posts had to be published in 2023.  The numbers are based on when I checked them, which was 31 December 2023 (the perfect time to review the last year’s numbers!).

So, without further ado, here are Ponty’s three best posts of 2023:

Happy Sunday—and Happy New Year!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

The Ponty Christmas Special

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Yes, yes—we’re already into 2024, and at this point, Christmas 2023 is a distant, fuzzy memory.  But as I’ve pointed out in other posts this holiday season, Christmastime traditionally runs through Epiphany, on 6 January.  So, why not keep the Christmas spirit alive just a bit longer—eh?

In reading Ponty’s Christmas missive, you’ll get a sense for how much he loves the intimate coziness and spirit of Christmas.  Even more, it’s hard to miss how much he loves the intimate coziness and spirit of Tina, his beloved girlfriend/common-law wife/soulmate.  Whatever they are, they are meant for each other, just like the characters in the Hallmark movies Ponty endures each December.  Nothing says, “I love you” like letting your significant other own a hotel on Boardwalk in Monopoly.

I share something of Ponty’s resigned pessimism for the future.  Like Ponty, though, it does not stem from a place of hopelessness, but rather inspires me to dedicate myself more to the people in my life.  There’s precious little I can do about national politics (or a bunch of stoner judges in Colorado), but I can do a great deal to help those around me—even if that means losing a few games of Monopoly.

With that, here is Ponty sharing about his and Tina’s wonderful Christmas and New Year’s plans:

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Lazy Sunday CCXII: Ponty Week 2023

The Portly Politico4 Comments

If the week of Independence Day was MAGAWeek2023, then last week was the unofficial Ponty Week 2023.  Regular contributor and right good bloke Pontiac Dream 39 (or 39 Pontiac Dream?)/Always a Kid for Today/Ponty sent in a trio of great pieces, and I decided to schedule them all for the same week.

So, in case you missed any of these excellent contributions from our favorite Englishman, here are Ponty’s posts:

That’s it for this ultra-British edition of Lazy Sunday.  Cheers!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Ponty’s Pen: The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

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Guest Post: The Year Before the Year After Next Year

The Portly Politico2 Comments

This week is unofficially “Ponty Week 2023,” as good old Ponty/Always a Kid for Today sent me three excellent pieces over the long July Fourth week (his third will pop this Friday).  It’s great to see one of our most steadfast and lively contributors back on the blog.

It’s interesting to think that The Age of The Virus, which so dominated our lives and thoughts for nearly two years, now seems like a distant memory, a bad dream best forgotten when one wakes up, returning to one’s senses.  That is certainly how the worst of the self-proclaimed public health czars and czarinas hope we will regard it:  a well-intentioned nightmare that we needn’t talk about any further.  They know they eroded civil liberties, wrecked the economy, and made anyone without a diaper on their face feel like crap, all over a highly survivable virus.  Better to sweep all that under the rug and let bygones be bygones.  Forgive and forget, right?

We can forgive individuals—we all had family members who hysterically insisted that flimsy paper masks would save us from ourselves—but we should never forget the heavy toll of our public health tyranny.  As Ponty points out, they’re going to try it again, and it’s going to be worse next time.

It is perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even hysterical on my part), but I sincerely believe The Age of The Virus was a test-run for the End Times Beast system.  Just as people willingly lined up for The Vaccine, which was promised to be the ticket to a normal life, people will line up to take the Antichrist’s Mark so they can continue shopping at Niemann Marcus.  What is one’s eternal soul when there is a sale on capris?

Even if I am wrong about that particular claim, The Age of The Virus was certainly a trial run to see how obedient we’d all be.  The answer, sadly, was, “very.”  Sure, we had some ructions after the first month or so of the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” but most Americans went along sheepishly with the dictates.  Yours portly wore his mask as little as possible, but even I took two shots of The Vaccine (not because I wanted to be “normal” again, but because I didn’t know any better at the time—and I should have!).

Ponty argues that inquiries into The Age of The Virus in Britain serve no purpose other than to strengthen the regime the next time around.  I think he is only missing one point:  these inquiries remind us, the sane, about what they did to us.  We should never let them get away with it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s “The Year Before the Year After Next Year”:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Guest Post: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Good old Pontifex Maximus has returned from self-imposed exile with a trio of posts, all of which I’ll be posting throughout this week and the next.  The first of these is a dual movie review of two remake/sequels of the 1995 classic Jumanji, a flick that was both fun and terrifying to a then-ten-year old yours portly.

The film was remade/reimagined in 2017 as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and followed by a sequel in 2019, Jumanji: The Next Level.  Ponty gives both films a thorough treatment, and readers will be pleasantly surprised to know that, unlike many reboots of classic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s, these films don’t flounder.

With that, here are Ponty’s reviews of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle andJumanji: The Next Level:

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PlayStation Ponty Reviews: Hogwarts Legacy (2023)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

It seems that, despite his protestations earlier this year, dear old Ponty just couldn’t keep away from the warm, chubby, sweaty embrace of The Portly Politico.  We’re all too happy to take him back into our doughy arms.

Ponty’s breaking the silence with a powerhouse review of Hogwarts Legacy, a roleplaying game based on the beloved Harry Potter franchise.

I’m not a Potterphile—I was born just two or three years too late to be in the books’ key demographic upon their release—but I certainly appreciate magic and whimsy.  That said, I don’t know my Muggle from a Hufflepuff (except that I am, apparently, both), so for all you people out there whose only frame of reference for the world is a series of children’s books about kid wizards, don’t persecute me for my ignorance.

What I do know is that this game engendered (no pun intended) a great deal of controversy upon its release because the series’ creator, J.K. Rowling, is a TERF—a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.  That means that, while she loves all the feminist foolishness a woman of her age tends to believe, she still believes that men are men and women are women.  For that, detractors decried this game as “violence against trans people,” because apparently we can’t separate a work of video game fiction—itself quite distinct from the original author’s work—from one’s personal beliefs, and because one’s personal beliefs are now deemed violence if certain mentally impaired individuals deem it to be so.

Well, there’s no use arguing with the insane.  Ponty, however, does commit a bit of violence against Hogwarts Legacy from the other direction, though purely in an editorial sense.  And before he gets to some of the bad, he does extensive yeoman’s work covering the good, too.

With that, here is Ponty’s excellent review of Hogwarts Legacy:

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