Tag: analysis

Myersvision: A Very Good Discussion

The Portly Politico2 Comments

March Bigftoot Madness marches on with another post about our favorite, secretive lug.  Thanks to Audre Myers for sticking hot on the big guy’s trail.

Audre has studied hundreds—maybe thousands—of Bigfootage on YouTube, and seems to have a discerning eye for what could be real and what’s fake.  The realm of Bigfoot is a world awash in fakery and grifters, which does much to discredit the study of this potential creature.

Audre cuts through the noise well, and while I’m still not convinced—and it may very well take (God Forbid) a Bigfoot corpse to convince most folks—she continues to make a compelling case for his existence:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Best Films: #1: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

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As far as I can tell, the very first installment of Monday Morning Movie Review—simply “Monday Movie Review” back then—was a review of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).  I wrote it on 28 September 2020, which seems like just a few days ago.  Pretty crazy to think it’s been almost three years since this blog started running movie reviews on Mondays.

Indeed, in the interest of saving time (today is my school’s big Spring Concert, and I’m chaperoning a trip to Washington, D.C., later in the week, so time is at a premium), I’m quoting extensively from that original review.  Work smarter, not harder, eh?

Growing up as a chubby kid in the 1990s, I was a huge Star Wars fan.  That was long before the new trilogy retconned/soft-rebooted everything and destroyed the legacy of classic Star Wars, and even before the prequels made the flicks even more cartoonishly ridiculous.  I’m not even a huge critic of the prequels—they were never going to live up to the perfection of the original trilogy—and I enjoyed some of the fun world-building and thorny trade blockades of Phantom Menace (1999; although that’s all a bit too technocratic for a space opera).  But the magic of the original trilogy is more than the sum of its parts, and it’s based on rich storytelling and exceptionally strong character development, with nearly every major character growing and evolving over the course of the three films.

So it is that I would argue that The Empire Strikes Back is not just the best Star Wars film, but the best film of all time.

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Myersvision: Structures

The Portly Politico3 Comments

A quick blurb before Audre’s intriguing post:  I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Pick up a copy today!  Even sharing the above links is a huge help.

Thank you for your support!

—TPP

***

She’s shown us the books and the videos, and I’ve shown you the Nanoblock build.  Now it’s time to consider what Bigfoot builds.

Prior to Audre Myers submitting this post, I had no idea that Bigfoots allegedly build unique “structures.”  I have no idea what the significance of these structure are, and I’m skeptical—they seem like they could easily be the result of thunderbolts or other creatures smashing through the forests—but I’m open to the idea that they are the result of a hairy intelligence with massive feet.

Audre presents the evidence.  Take a look, and leave a comment.  Are these the structures of an intelligent creature?  Are they elaborate hoaxes?  Or the result of natural phenomena?  Maybe it’s something other than Bigfoot altogether—gulp!

With that, here is Audre’s examination of Bigfoot “structures”:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Music Festival 2023

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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.

T.S. Eliot begins The Wasteland with the memorable line “April is the cruellest month….”  It is, indeed, one of the busiest times of the year for yours portly, and while I love work, I love intentional, deliberate work.  Hasty, panicked slapdashery is not my cup of coffee, but for many years, it was—by dent of necessity and my own personal shortcomings—a necessity.

In order to minimize that panicked rushing, I’ve forced myself to become incredibly organized.  That, too, is born of necessity:  with over twenty lessons each week, ladled atop my normal schedule of classes and my Town Council duties, requires that I keep a detailed schedule—and do a great deal of prep work in advance.

It took me into my thirty-eighth year of life to get it down—finally!—but I seem to have some semblance of a grasp on my schedule.  If I could just find time to do the dishes, I’d be thrumming along like a well-worn-but-maintained performance engine, stretching those oil changes out a bit longer than proper, but getting the job done.

As for April, yes—it’s a hard month.  March, however, is something of the rapid build-up, the grand accelerando into the end of the academic year.  After the drowsiness of January and the yawning indolence of February, March, indeed, comes in, roaring, like a lion.

For you see, dear reader, it is in March that I embark—along with forty-odd students—on an annual pilgrimage to the University of South Carolina to engage in the South Carolina Independent School Association (SCISA) Music Festival.  It’s an event that tests the very limits of my organizational and logistical skills (such as they are), but that work and preparation reap dividends in terms of musical experience for my students.  It is an event that does more to sharpen their musical skills than any other throughout the year, and is second only to our major concerts in edifying their confidence as musicians.

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

TBT^2: Hawkworld

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This weekend my older brother will be running the Myrtle Beach Marathon, which means we’ll be feasting on seafood and good times (and he’ll be running 26.2 miles, so he’ll have earned the festivities; I’m just driving him to the starting line).  I’m hoping that’ll mean a trip to Player’s Choice, an amazing comics and collectibles store that is, improbably, the anchor store (essentially) for a failing mall.

The idea of picking up three comics for $7 (as I did when I scooped up Hawkworld in 2021) seems unheard of in this Age of Hyperinflation.  I don’t know how much inflation has affected the price of used comic books, but the idea of getting three of anything for seven bucks seems like some kind of fevered fantasy these days.

I really enjoyed this comic and its storyline of a decadent empire in decline, and the message seems eerily prescient for us in these latter days of the American Empire.

Gulp!

With that, here is 3 March 2023’s “TBT: Hawkworld“:

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Myersvision: Project Bigfoot

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Good old Audre Myers has been sending me little e-mails each morning for the past few weeks, usually containing sweet little sentiments about the power of music and the like.  These are always a welcome start to my day, and I’m sure she sends similar e-mails to a number of fortunate souls every day.

She’s also been sending me more Bigfoot videos, I suspect because I a.) find them interesting and b.) am sympathetic to the existence of the big lug, even if I remain a bit of a skeptic.

After sending me the draft of last week’s Bigfoot post, Audre sent along a video of thirteen unexplained, alleged Bigfoot encounters.  Included in her e-mail was a rundown of the videos, sometimes with her reflections, sometimes referencing the relative quality of the videos in the compilation to the originals.

This cataloging and breakdown impressed me, and I asked Audre if I could reproduce the e-mail here in full.  She agreed, but offered me a sage warning:  people might start to think I’m a kook for running so many Bigfoot-related pieces.  She pointed out that belief in Bigfoot is still very much outside the mainstream (true), and that the blog could suffer from too much Bigfootiana.

I appreciated her looking out for me and the blog, but here’s thing thing:  I don’t care if people think it’s ridiculous.  As I’ve frequently stated, while I’d like to believe that Bigfoot exists, I’m undecided.

In my mind, the point of this blog—or at least of these Bigfoot posts—is to explore Creation with an open mind and a sense of intellectual curiosity and adventure.  Conventional wisdom is usually quite flawed—at worst, even dangerous—and, at best, boring.  Often boring is good—it’s safe and stable and productive.  Better to be boring and reliable than flamboyant and a flake.

But doesn’t anyone else feel like we’re becoming intellectually ossified?  Maybe cryptozoology isn’t the answer to that ossification, but at least it’s interesting and different and unorthodox.  Life is too short for banality.

Here’s what I wrote in response to Audre’s kind-hearted warning:

Thanks for the warning.  I’m not worried about being ridiculed.  Seriously, I don’t care.  I want to present the interesting, the unusual, the weird, the unorthodox.
There’s too much boring content out there, and too many conventional takes.  I want my blog to be spicy, unusual, and intriguing.  Your Bigfoot posts achieve that.
Like Kierkegaard, I want to embrace the absurd passionately.  Bigfoot may or may not be absurd, but he’s interesting!

We live in a time when the official wisdom is dishonest, debased, and demonic.  It’s time to embrace the absurdity of Reality.  Maybe Bigfoot is a part of that.  It takes a great deal of intellectual humility even to be open to the fact that there are many things we can’t know or understand or comprehend.

With that, here is what I am dubbing the first installment of “Project Bigfoot”:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Best Films: Honorable Mentions

The Portly Politico14 Comments

Before revealing our picks on our respective lists, Ponty and I are offering some honorable mentions.  These are films that, for various reasons, did not make our lists, but could have done so.

I think Ponty largely had his list worked out in advance, with tweaks and revisions along the way.  My approach was far less organized, and other than a few specific films and their slots, I largely came up with my picks week-to-week.  I stand by all of them, but I’d probably have put Krull (1983) in this honorable mentions post, if it showed up at all.  I really like the movie, but there are far better contenders out there.

Inevitably, I simply forgot about films that I sincerely love, but whose existences bafflingly slipped my mind.  I can only chalk it up to my own laziness and a lack of forethought and planning.

Of course, that is the peril of list-making of this sort:  I imagine if Ponty and I made these lists ten different times, we’d come up with wildly different selections and orders each time—at least, I think I would.  Sure, The Thing (1982) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) would still be on the lists, as would some others, but who knows what might be floating through my mind a second, third, fourth, or tenth time around?

Have no fear, though—if the long list-making has been wearying t o you, Ponty and I have no plans to do more for awhile.  He’s hoping to spend some time working on his novel, and there are tons of movies—good, bad, and trashy—that I’ve been sitting on for several months now, and I’m eager to get back to reviewing whatever random garbage I consumed that week.

Perhaps one day we’ll take another stab at it—or maybe Audre Myers will grace us with her Top Ten picks.

But enough of my endless yammering and boring speculations.  On to the movies!

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Phone it in Friday XXXII: Pat Buchanan’s Legacy

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It’s a true Phone it in Friday today, as this post is (slightly) late, and I’m going to keep it brief due to time constraints.

Patrick J. Buchanan, the great writer and political analyst, officially retired from his decades-long career in journalism a few weeks ago.  His influence in conservative politics is hard to overstate.  Even though he spent much of his career since the 1990s as the alternative paleoconservative voice in an increasingly interventionist and neoliberal Republican Party, that disciplined commitment to his values and the original vision of the American Founding made him one of the most impactful political figures of our time.

I wrote more extensively about Buchanan’s legacy in a piece for American Patriot Radio entitled “Pat Buchanan’s America” back in 2017, in the early months of the Trump administration.  Trump, in many ways, was the political apotheosis of Buchanan’s views on trade, immigration, and the culture wars.  Put more simply:  no Buchanan, no Trump.

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Myersvision: My Very Large Friend

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Some of my favorite guest posts on this blog are those from our dear Audre Myers, who always brings a certain wide-eyed innocence coupled with the wisdom of experience.  It’s a curious combination, and one that I respect when it exists, as it is rare.  I admire Audre’s ability to remain excited about learning and the world around her, while still staying rooted in Reality.

But my favorite posts from Audre are the ones she writes about Bigfoot.  I am agnostic on the existence of our hairy friend, but as I tell Audre, “I want to believe.”  

One of my major critiques is that, with all the alleged Bigfoot footage (Bigfootage?) out there, we still haven’t gotten a good look at the big lug.  In our age of hyper-documentation of every bit of life’s minutiae, how have we not caught this beast on camera in glorious hi-def video?  Surely some eccentric, Elon Muskian billionaire could pepper the forests of the world with high-end recording equipment or even non-lethal traps and bag a Bigfoot.

But so far, we just have grainy photos.  Even the Bigfoot YouTubers don’t do themselves any favors, padding out their videos with lots of long, boring shots of their own backyards, pointing to broken twigs as some meaningful sign of a disturbance.  No way it could be a wild cat, or a bear, or a stray dog; nope, it’s gotta be Bigfoot.

Yet we’re constantly dredging up horrid monstrosities from the depths of the ocean, the kinds of creatures that we thought only existed in science-fiction stories or in prehistoric times.  The woods are quite as impenetrable as the blackest depths of the murky deep, but there are plenty of forests and hills and dales in the world that are impenetrable to humans.  Perhaps Bigfoot has retreated to his natural, dwindling habitat in these still-inaccessible regions of the globe.

Audre mentioned some Bigfoot books, and I hope she will share some reviews of them in future posts (more homework for her, mwahahahaha!).

With that, here is Audre telling us all about her very large friend:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #2: The Truman Show (1998)

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Ponty picked an impressive film for his slot, one that I wish had made it onto my list (it may end up as an honorable mention!).  The Truman Show (1998) is a powerful, surprisingly dark comedy about materialism, consumerism, and mass media, exploring what happens when we take reality television to its logical extreme.  What’s fascinating is that this film largely predates reality television, outside of the trash that aired on MTV at the time.

I won’t spoil Ponty’s review (he considerately offers a spoiler alert, but if you haven’t managed to see this flick in the twenty-five years since its release, you’re way outside of the “no spoilers!” statute of limitations), but he touches upon many of the troubling implications of enslaving an unwitting human in an artificial world and broadcasting the results of this forbidden experiment to the world.  I, too, wonder how Truman would live outside of the show; a part of me suspects he might go back to the only world he’s ever known, though I hope he never did.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 1998’s The Truman Show:

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