Tag: analysis

TBT^2: Resist the Black Pill

The Portly Politico2 Comments

It was another disappointing election day last week, both locally and nationally, with Democrats doing better than anyone would reasonably expect and infanticide enshrined in Ohio’s State constitution.

But we have so much to be thankful for as conservatives.  Roe was overturned, after all, and at least we can have these political battles to protect the unborn, instead of their murder being illicitly enshrined in the national Constitution.  Trump is outperforming Biden in polls, although that doesn’t mean much at this point, nor does it mean much when election shenanigans are widespread.

Regardless, we must continue to hope and to pray—and to believe.  I’m fairly pessimistic about America’s longtime prospects, but it comes from a place of realism, not desperation (as, I’m sad to admit, it at times has).  In the meantime, God Has Given me ample opportunities to make a difference among the people in my life.  That’s all most of us can reasonably ask.

With that, here is “TBT: Resist the Black Pill“:

Read More »

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Birds (1963)

The Portly Politico1 Comment

I had the opportunity to see Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) a Sunday or two back on the big screen.  I love how these classic flicks get rereleased on their anniversaries, as there’s something different about seeing them in theaters as opposed to television.

In this case, the main difference is settling in with a massive tub of popcorn and a liter of Diet Pepsi.  The Birds works on the small screen just as well, I think, but it was still super cool seeing this oddball in such a setting.

One thing I did not realize about The Birds is that it lacks a traditional soundtrack.  The “soundtrack” such as it is, consists of electronic recordings of various birdcalls, layered together in a form of early musical synthesizer.  The early 1960s was an incredible period of experimentation with blended electronic musical samples, as the seminal Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys would demonstrate just three years later.  That album didn’t sample birdcalls (as far as I can remember), but it did see Brian Wilson tinkering with blends of unusual instruments and chord voicings that were examples of synthesizing analog sounds electronically.

The Birds was cutting-edge in this regard.  There’s no sweeping string orchestrations, or even stabbing ones, like in Psycho (1960).  It adds to the naturalistic terror of the film, as the only “music” is the squawking and chattering of the lethal, titular birds.

Read More »

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2023 Preparations

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

Yours portly is knee-deep in preparations for the annual Spooktacular, which kicks off tonight at 6 PM.  The Spooktacular has become a hotly anticipated event, and while I’ve failed at a number of enterprises lately, the Spooktacular is a marquee event that my students and their families enjoy.

As a longtime dilettante and fulltime slob, I’m not the best housekeeper.  My energies are expended on other endeavors, like this blog, my teaching, and my private lessons.  The last thing I want to do after a long day of mind-molding is clean the toilet or vacuum the carpet.

My parents’ and grandparents’ generations were neat freaks.  They’d scrub the baseboards with toothbrushes and risk their lives to second-story windows.  I scrub so poorly, my dentist regularly warns me about gingivitis.

But even I succumb to the overwhelming sense of shame that comes from having company over in an unkempt house, and as I want these people to keep giving me money to touch their kids—and as I hope to avoid my father’s dismayed disapproval at my dirty baseboards—the Spooktacular forces me to deep clean.

I’ve been doing a lot of it lately.

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

Monday Morning Movie Review: Lockdown Tower (2022)

The Portly Politico6 Comments

What would happen if a multiethnic, multiracial apartment tower in the Parisian projects found itself blocked off from the outside world, surrounded by a total blackness that consumes anything that attempts to pass through it?  That’s the premise to the 2022 French film Lockdown Tower, and the answer to that question isn’t pretty.

Fortunately, it makes for a riveting film, and while the world it paints is pretty bleak, it’s also unsettlingly realistic.

Read More »

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Last Monday I wrote about one of the best horror movies—indeed, one of the best movies—of all time, 1973’s The Exorcist.  My review barely dipped into the complex religious themes of the movie, as well many of the flick’s subtle shades of implication and visual storytelling.

Today I’m reviewing what is intended to be a modern sequel/reboot of the classic, arriving fifty years later:  2023’s The Exorcist: Believer.  Well, you’d better believe(r) that it doesn’t stack up to the original.

Read More »

SubscribeStar Saturday: The Hamster Wheel of Productivity

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

Americans are obsessed with productivity.  Our entire ethos—a witch’s brew of the Puritan/Protestant work ethic and a form of capitalism that sends the message that a person’s value is linked to their ability to produce something(s) that other people will buy—screams that if we aren’t doing something, we’re nothing.

My older brother has covered this topic much better on his Substack, The Highlight Zone, but I wanted to tackle it here.  His piece largely examines the curse of productivity from the academic’s perspective, but I suspect its specter haunts us in every facet of our lives.

Before getting to the bulk of my thoughts on this topic, I’ll share another source, from the YouTuber Horses:

Horses and my older brother are socialists of some degree or another.  I am not—strenuously not.  But if conservatives want to win hearts and minds, we should probably listen to the legitimate concerns our ideological opponents are making, because they are diagnosing and addressing a real problem.  Their solutions might not work—they may even be abhorrent—and I suspect no change in the form of government, no tweaking of government policy, will solve the problem, because it’s not a problem of government policy, or even economic policy.

Rather, it’s a problem of the heart, of the soul, of the mind, of the culture.  I doubt there is any one solution to this cult of productivity—this worship of the pagan goddess Efficiency.

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

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Exorcist (1973)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

On Sunday, 1 October 2023, I had the opportunity to catch 1973’s The Exorcist on the big screen.  It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the film, if you can believe it; it debuted the day of Christmas the year my Dad graduated from high school.

That was astonishing to me.  I’m thirty years younger than my Dad (to the year), and was born twelve years after the film’s release.  That said, it was very much a part of the Zeitgeist of the early 1990s.  To be clear, I did not see the film at that tender age—thank goodness!—but it was spoken of in hushed whispers as “the scariest movie of all time.”  I vividly recall my older brother telling me how he stayed up late to watch the film (he was probably a young teenager at the time) on television, and how it scared him so much, he couldn’t sleep.  Powerful stuff!

I saw the film years later—I don’t recall when or how old I was—and while I found it creepy, I didn’t understand all the hubbub.  Yes, it was an excellent film, but “the scariest movie of all time?”  C’mon.

Then I saw it on the big screen.  That experience changed my assessment of the film and its horror substantially.  In the dark, in the theater, the film’s incredible cinematography and effects demanding my full attention, left an indelible mark upon my mind—and, perhaps, my soul.  I get it now:  The Exorcist is terrifying.

Read More »

SubscribeStar Saturday: Pee Dee State Farmers Market Plant & Flower Festival

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

Festival season continues apace; ergo, my reviews/travelogues/retrospectives/self-indulgent recaps of said festivals roll on as well.  If my use of the word “ergo” hasn’t turned your stomach, read on.

Last Saturday, 30 September 2023 I attended the Pee Dee State Farmers Market, which was hosting its annual Plant & Flower Festival.  I learned about the festival from, of all places, YouTube ads, featuring our long-serving Commissioner of Agriculture, Hugh Weathers.  Commissioner Weathers has held his office since 2004, and I’ve seen his name most of my adult life on gas station pumps (there’s a little inspector’s sticker that bears his name), but I’d never seen him until these commercials.

That uninteresting fact aside, I needed to pick up some pumpkins for carving, and I figured buying some Certified SC Grown pumpkins was the way to go.  There was also the added bonus of taking in another festival on a crisp, autumnal morning.

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

Monday Morning Movie Review: Threads (1984)

The Portly Politico9 Comments

Other than a trip to the Pee Dee State Farmers Market (more on that this Saturday), I spent most of Saturday playing Civilization VI and watching horror movies on Shudder.

Just when I think I’ve exhausted Shudder’s extensive offerings (seriously, I watch it so much, I find myself rewatching movies I’ve already seen, sometimes multiple times), they throw me a total curveball and deliver up something fresh—and genuinely unsettling.

A side effect of watching a ton of horror movies is that one becomes desensitized to them fairly quickly.  I’m still not a fan of gore-for-the-sake of gore, but I’m accustomed to it.  As such, I like horror that is unsettling, and there’s not much of that these days.  A lot of modern horror is snarkily self-referential, and Shudder seems to love to show lots of feminist horror.  Some of that is actually okay, but does every horror movie have to be about the loss of personal identity when a mother raises children?  Come now.

So it was refreshing to watch the made-for-television film Threads (1984), a stark depiction of the aftermath of a series of atomic detonations in England.

Read More »