Tag: analysis

SubscribeStar Saturday: The King in Yellow Review

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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.

The artwork for today’s post is the cover of the instrumental piece “Yellow Knight,” from my upcoming release Four Mages.  The album releases on 2 May 2024, and a YouTube video for “Yellow Knight” (linked above) will go live on 14 May 2024.

Recently I purchased a copy of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a classic work of “weird fiction” that would inspire writers like H.P. Lovecraft.  It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for sometime, especially with the idea of a malevolent play that is so terrible and beautiful, it drives anyone who reads it mad.  That play, of course, is the titular The King in Yellow, the text of which—beyond a couple of snippets—is never quoted in the book.

The book is a collection of ten stories, the first four of which share the thread of the infamous play.  The rest of the book consists of stories that take place mostly in Paris, specifically the Latin Quarter, and revolves around the lives of young American art students in the City of Light.  Indeed, Chambers published In the Quarter, a collection of stories about the Bohemian lives of the Latin Quarter’s residents, a year prior to the publication of The King in Yellow.

The four proper TKiY stories are quite good, and succeed as horror stories that unsettle, more than they scare.  The hidden gems of this collection, however, are the Latin Quarter stories, which depict a freewheeling, fun-loving period in French history before the unhappy days of the First World War ruined France and the West forever.

I reviewed one of those stories, “The Street of the First Shell,” earlier this week.  Today, I’d like to examine the entire book, which really is two shorter books in one.  There are the stories clearly connected to the “Yellow King” mythos.  The rest are all stories that take place in the Latin Quarter.  Unlike “The Street of the First Shell,” however, most of the rest are comedic romances, though some are a bit heavier than others.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.  Any purchases made through those link result in a bit of additional revenue for yours portly, at no additional cost to you.

Spring Break Short Story Recommendation 2024: “The Street of the First Shell”

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Recently I purchased a copy of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a classic work of “weird fiction” that would inspire writers like H.P. Lovecraft.  It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for sometime, especially with the idea of a malevolent play that is so terrible and beautiful, it drives anyone who reads it mad.  That play, of course, is the titular The King in Yellow, the text of which—beyond a couple of snippets—is never quoted in the book.

The book is a collection of ten stories, the first four of which share the thread of the infamous play.  The rest of the book consists of stories that take place mostly in Paris, specifically the Latin Quarter, and revolves around the lives of young American art students in the City of Light.  Indeed, Chambers published In the Quarter, a collection of stories about the Bohemian lives of the Latin Quarter’s residents, a year prior to the publication of The King in Yellow.

The four proper TKiY stories are quite good, and succeed as horror stories that unsettle, more than they scare.  The hidden gems of this collection, however, are the Latin Quarter stories, which depict a freewheeling, fun-loving period in French history before the unhappy days of the First World War ruined France and the West forever.

Of those stories, my favorite is “The Street of the First Shell,” which takes place during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  It is a thrilling depiction of the privation and struggle of that conflict, and of the doomed Parisian defense against the Prussian siege.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Disco Elysium

The Portly Politico3 Comments

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.

I recently picked up the “final cut” of Disco Elysium during the Steam Spring Sale at the amazing price of $9.99 (it usually MRSPs for $39.99).  It’s a game I’d heard about since its release in 2019, but always with an air of mystery around it.  It’s a roleplaying game, yes, but totally different from the typical fantasy-inspired roleplaying worlds of, say, The Elder Scrolls series or even the sci-fi roleplaying of Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield (Ponty’s promised a review of CP2077, and I am quite excited to read it).

There have been non-fantasy roleplaying games before, to be sure, and even those that take place in the modern-ish world.  Disco Elysium, however, is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, roleplaying or otherwise, and after just a few hours of gameplay—and having not even solved the first case yet!—I love it.

It also turns out the game can be had on consoles—and much more affordably than the default Steam price.  Amazon has it on the Nintendo Switch ($25), the Playstation 4 (marked down $16.90 at the time of writing), and the XBox One ($24).  If I’d known it was on the Switch I likely would have got for that console (and may still do so), but I think the game is meant to be played on the PC.  That said, I can tell it’s quite console-friendly based on the controls.

What sets Disco Elysium apart from other games, I think, is that most of the game is dialogue—with your own mind.  And not just one, unified mind, but your character’s entire nervous system.  It is probably the closest simulation I’ve ever experienced to what goes on in my mind, although I’m not a drug-addled 70s-style super cop down on his luck.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.  Any purchases made through those link result in a bit of additional revenue for yours portly, at no additional cost to you.

Monday Morning Movie Review: A Bucket of Blood (1959)

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Thanks to Joe Bob Briggs and The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, I’ve finally experienced some film inspirado.  To celebrate seventy—yes, seventy (70)—years of filmmaking, Joe Bob and Darcy the Mail Girl hosted a special live edition of the show to honor Roger Corman.

For the uninitiated, Roger Corman is the king of the B movies.  He’s made anywhere from 500-700 films; one source of the disputed figure is that Corman himself doesn’t know how many films he’s made!  Casual fans most likely know Corman from 1960’s The Little Shop of Horrors, which was filmed on the same sets as this week’s film, A Bucket of Blood (1959).  Tonally and narratively, the two films are very similar (as a fun aside, The Little Shop of Horrors was the first flick I watched on Shudder).

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Sartorial Decline

The Portly Politico5 Comments

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.

People are not dressing well anymore.

I’ll include myself in that assessment.  When I first started teaching, I wore a coat and tie every day, although I’d shed the coat pretty quickly.  On Fridays, when teachers were allowed to wear jeans, I’d make myself wear a tie if I wore jeans, as a compromise (that also used to be my stage look—jeans, sports coat, tie).

Since The Age of The Virus, everything has loosened up.  I happily wear polo shirts—tucked in!—to work most everyday, aside from the six weeks of frosty winter we sometimes get in South Carolina.  Fiddling around in an un-air-conditioned football pressbox in August is far more pleasant when I’m not wearing a long-sleeve button-up with a goofy tie.

Indeed, teachers can now wear jeans, so long as they are of a darker hue, any day of the week.  My female colleagues avail themselves of this privilege fairly shamelessly.  As I descend elegantly into middle age, I’ve adopted the uniform of my people:  five-pocket workman’s slacks with a tucked-in polo or short-sleeve button-up shirt.

What has stirred my sartorial ire is not form-fitting jeans or polo shirts, but the prevalence of pajamas—yes, outright pajamas—among the general population.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

McDonald’s: A Vision of Our Dystopian Future

The Portly Politico11 Comments

Ever since The Age of The Virus, I’ve noticed a general decline in the quality and value of dining and amenities.  Every restaurant, hotel, airline, and putt-putt golf course used The Virus as an excuse to trim out all of those little “extras” that we did not consider as such, those little dashes of additional service or product that made visits to these places memorable.  Things like peanuts at corporate steakhouses, or regular cleaning of your linens at hotels (apparently, towels aren’t even a given anymore).  Meanwhile, prices at all of these businesses have increased, far outstripping “official” inflation numbers.

We all know that is true; furthermore, we all know it already.  But what if we look at the lowest common denominator, the dregs of these businesses?  What if we look at fast food?

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty Praises Donnie Darko (2001)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

After much cajoling, dear old Ponty has delivered his magnum opus—the long-anticipated review of 2001’s moody, depression-inducing Donnie Darko.

I’ve gotsta hand it to old Pontifex Maximus:  he sure knows how to write a review.  Even yours portly—who, as readers know well, is never wrong in his reasoned, intelligent assessments—is regarding his position after reading Ponty’s review.  I may even give DD a second (or is it third or fourth, at this point?) chance.

I won’t spoil anything, but Ponty explains filters out the mud and the grey and brings some light to this otherwise dismal film.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2001’s Donnie Darko:

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Ponty Praises: Ghost of Tsushima (2020)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly has been giving Ponty a bit of ribbing about writing his rebuttal to my Caldecott Award-winning review of Donnie Darko (1999).  Please know, dear readers (and dear Ponty) that it’s all a spot of fun; I know Ponty is a busy man.

Indeed, he’s been busy replaying 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima, a samurai action-adventure epic.  Just reading through his review, I was blown away by two things:  how realistic the trees in the game look (you’ll see what I mean below) and the love and dedication with which Ponty approaches his reviews.  Game journalism might be rigged in the mainstream publications, but not here at The Portly Politico.  With Ponty’s in-depth analysis, you’re getting the best video game reviewing and analysis of our time.

That might sound like hyperbole, but TPP is blessed to host some great writers.  Ponty’s video game and film reviews always deliver.  In this case, I’m eager to pick up and try Ghost of Tsushima myself… but I don’t have a PS4 or PS5!  Here’s hoping for a port to the Nintendo Switch or the PC.

In the meantime, I can live vicariously through Ponty’s thirteenth-century samurai escapades—and so can you!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima:

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Myersvision: The Face of Bigfoot?

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Audre’s convalescence has coincided with a revival in her bigfoot scribblings, and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m chiefly pleased because Audre is doing better, but I’m also thrilled she’s sending along Bigfoot content (“Footent?”) again.

This week’s submission involves a very lifelike—but, I would argue, clearly manipulated—image that purports to be a close-up photo of the big lug.  The picture looks very much like a person—indeed, I have worked with and seen people who look like the creature in the photo (no offense intended).

Audre has more to say on the matter, and dips into the often discouraging world of online Bigfoot investigating.

With that, here is Audre on the face of Bigfoot:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: History of Evil (2024)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Political allegory is a tricky thing.  For every 1984 or They Live (1988), there are thousands of crappy, one-dimensional morality tales.  It takes seriously talented, subtle writers to pull it off, regardless of the medium.  It takes a hack to write an annoying screed that preaches at the audience.

In modern film, the screeching moralizing typically takes the form of putting woke buzzwords into the mouths of characters in iconic franchises.  No one will ever forget (or forgive) bitter diversity characters like Rose Tico, the character perhaps most synonymous with Rian Johnson‘s obliteration of Star Wars as a profitable franchise.  Brie Larson’s turn as Captain Marvel (2019) did much to sour audiences on what was once the unstoppable juggernaut of Marvel Studios.

At least one could argue (albeit, I think, incorrectly) that those films were essentially apolitical summer blockbuster fodder, with few DIE hires tossed into the writers’ rooms to throw in “The Message” for “modern audiences,” to borrow parlance from The Critical Drinker.  I think they were intentional subversions of classic heroic archetypes, but what do I know?  I’m just a hardworking chump with alleged “privilege.”

I digress—even if one could make that argument about the aforementioned films, it is significantly harder to make about a great deal of modern, socially-conscious horror flicks.  It’s always ladled on thick (almost every horror film made in the West—and every single horror film made in Sweden—features a lesbian relationship), and it’s always very clear that White Men Are Bad, or that Orange Man Bad.

History of Evil (2024) takes that trend to its logical conclusion, and throws out any sense of allegory or metaphor.  The entire film is an extended riff on the basic premise that all white, male characters are villains (even the one that seems good) and all brown, female characters are heroes.

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