Tag: Audre Myers

Guest Post: By Special Request

The Portly Politico28 Comments

Our dear Audre Myers really is the gift that keeps on giving.  After her excellent (and very well-received) post about the Idaho Bigfoot, she sent me a clip of audio of the Bigfoot’s “call.”

My intense love of music, coupled with my growing interest in Bigfoot and cryptozoology, prompted me to ask Audre to consider writing a piece “about the haunting song of the Bigfoot.”

Audre made some noises about doing her best, and I sat back, knowing—like the bloated editor I am—that she would pull through with another excellent post.  I was right.

With that, here is Audre with “By Special Request”:

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Myersvision: Last Tango in Halifax

The Portly Politico17 Comments

Audre Myers is perhaps my most Anglophilic contributor, probably even more Anglophilic than Ponty, and he’s actually from England!

As such, it was only a matter of time before she graced us with a delightful, tea-and-crumpety BBC dramady about rediscovering lost love in old age.

There’s something befuddlingly adorable and quintessentially English about two stodgy geezers falling in love.  Perhaps it’s the notion that we can always recapture some sliver of our misspent youths when in the throes of being in love.  Nothing quite so takes us back to the possibilities (and follies) of youth quite like tumbling head-over-heels for someone else, especially when they tumble into you, willingly and excitedly.

Two fogies canoodling also gives us some hope that it’s not too late for us after all—gulp!

With that, here is Audre’s review of Last Tango in Halifax:

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Lazy Sunday CLXXII: Myersvision, Part I

The Portly Politico26 Comments

Good ol’ Audre Myers—if it weren’t for her and Ponty, I’d have to actually write something now and then!

Audre e-mailed me about a month ago asking if she could could contribute reviews of television (i.e., Netflix) series, not just films.  Naturally, I agreed—enthusiastically!

Since then, she’s been churning out these little gems on the regular, and there are more on the way.  I dubbed the series Myersvision, and this Sunday we’re looking back at the first three installments:

  • “Myersvision: The Final Table” – A high-end, international cooking competition with chefs and judges at the peak of their craft?  Sounds like something I’d watch while eating a bowl of Spaghetti-Os.
  • “Myersvision: Baking Impossible” – Continuing along the food themed, Audre’s second submission was a baking show that combines baking and engineering.  Might we be driving on gumdrop roads soon enough?
  • “Myersvision: Blown Away” – This show sounds like it’s something The History Channel would air, but way classier—and glassier—hey-oh!

Happy Sunday—and Happy Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Myersvision: Eye on Idaho

The Portly Politico32 Comments

I’ve been clamoring for some beefy Bigfoot footage c/o our very own Audre Myers, and she’s satiated my cravings for all things cryptozoological—for now.  If ever there were a better creature to represent manly, protein-rich snack foods, it would be Bigfoot—the perfect, hairy spokescritter for beef jerky.

Perhaps our insatiable lust for marketing is one reason why the great ape-man has been so aloof.  Why reveal yourself to the modern world, a world in which everything, including one’s own identity, is a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, collateralized, and mortgaged?  Better to pee naked and free in the forest than to put on a tie and punch in at eight o’clock for a shift in the cubiclized salt mines.

I imagine Bigfoot would be put to use doing more blue-collar work—lifting heavy objects, for example.  But perhaps Bigfoot is smarter than we realize, if he’s managed to conceal himself from us for so long.

The other, obvious alternative—that he does not exist—is one I’d rather not entertain.  Although dear Audre alleges that I like “to gently tease… and poke” her because of her “98% belief in bigfoot,” my interest in the topic—and my interest in her interest in the topic—is entirely sincere.  Audre is a fascinating individual; her nearly-complete belief in Bigfoot is one of the qualities I find to be the most interesting about her!

But I digress.  Audre’s shared up some tantalizing Bigfoot footage, straight outta Idaho.  Read on:

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Myersvision: Baking Impossible

The Portly Politico25 Comments

This time of year seems dedicated to the sweetest of pastimes:  baking.  We all love toothsome sweets, and the triple threat of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas provides an ample casus belli for our bellies to consume large quantities of goodies.

But some take their passion for baking to another level entirely.  For those of us who view baking as popping break-and-bake cookies into the oven and setting a timer, we can’t comprehend how bakers are able to do that with sugar, flour, and water.

Baking combined with engineering is the premise for the show Audre Myers is reviewing this week.  If you want a cake with the structural integrity of an earthquake resistant building, then this series is where you’ll find it.

With that, here is Audre’s review of Baking Impossible:

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Myersvision: Blown Away

The Portly Politico11 Comments

Reality television certainly has its low points:  randy twenty-somethings hooking up in the hot tub; grown people humiliating themselves for cash; Sanjaya on American Idol.

Despite the format’s reputation for racing to the bottom, it does work well to highlight higher pursuits.  There are so many unusual and intriguing jobs and skills out there, and there is a deep satisfaction—and profound fascination—that comes from witnessing a master practice his craft.

Such is the case with this week’s edition of Myersvision, in which regular reader and contributor Audre Myers shares with us a show about the intense, difficult, beautiful craft of glass-blowing.

With that, here is Audre Myers’s review of the Netflix series Blown Away:

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Myersvision: The Final Table

The Portly Politico25 Comments

Sometime last week Audre Myers, a regular contributor of movie reviews and delightful miscellany to this site, sent me an e-mail asking if she could submit reviews of entire series of shows, not just movies.  Audre actually did just that some time ago when she submitted a review of a season of Stranger Things, which I highly recommend you read.

Regardless, I of course told her yes—enthusiastically!  I have a pretty open submission policy here, and I’d let an author as seasoned as Audre write about paint drying (she could probably make it entertaining!).  Naturally, a Netflix series fits the bill.

Thus, I’m dubbing Audre’s Netflix/television reviews “Myersvision,” since I have a mania for turning everything into a series.  Whenever Audre sends these along, I’ll schedule them under that title.

For the first installment, we have a review of a cooking show featuring the best of the best—not just self-promoting nuisances like on Chopped from Food Network (although they make some pretty awesome stuff on that show, too, there’s just usually one or two contestants who are ostentatiously self-confident and, therefore, annoying).  I think readers will appreciate the twist to this show’s grand prize.

With that, here is Audre’s review of the Netflix series The Final Table:

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Midweek Myers Movie Review: Signs (2002)

The Portly Politico10 Comments

Ah, the early 2000s.  A chubby young Portly was still sweating his way through high school (and, from 2003-2006, college); America’s love affair with patriotism was in full swing; and M. Night Shyamalan was bringing The Twilight Zone-style stories to the big screen.

M. Night could do know wrong in those days.  He’d scored a major success with The Sixth Sense (1999), the film that spawned the instantly iconic line “I see dead people.”  Then his twists became progressively more schlocky and insulting, starting with The Village (2004).  For many years, he was, like the intro to the television show that inspired his stories, spiraling, before mounting a comeback in the last decade.

But he was enjoying his salad days in the early aughts, and this week’s film is an example of Shyamalan during his early peak.  I remember seeing this flick at the movie theater in the mall in Indianapolis, Indiana, on a church music trip, and found it quite enjoyable as the chubby, sweaty young man referenced in the opening paragraph of this introduction.

Well, enough of my puffing. Here is Audre Myers‘s review of 2002’s Signs:

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Lazy Sunday CLXVII: More Movies, Part XXXI: Midweek Myers Movie Reviews, Part II

The Portly Politico1 Comment

When putting together this weekend’s edition of Lazy Sunday, I thought that surely my longtime reader, contributor, and Internet friend (eFriend, perhaps?) Audre Myers had submitted more than these remaining two Midweek Myers Movie Reviews.  I’m sure she has submitted film reviews prior to the institution of this semi-regular, roughly-twice-monthly feature, but I’m too lazy to go scouring my vast archives for them (it is Lazy Sunday, after all).

But these are two pretty good ones, and while I usually like to feature posts in triplets for LS, I figured—as my beloved Meat Loaf, my God Rest His Soul, once sang—two out of three ain’t bad:

  • “Midweek Myers Movie Review: Finding Neverland (2004)” – According to Audre, “Finding Neverland is the story of how J. M. Barrie came to write his best known play, Peter Pan.”  High Britishness, indeed, albeit with Johnny Depp in the main role.
  • “Midweek Myers Movie Review: Hidden Figures (2016)” – Audre offers up a review of a movie that, while not necessarily historically accurate (NASA was fairly progressive on race even in the 1950s), at least sounds entertaining.  You’ll also learn that a “computer” is not just a beige machine to which we chain ourselves for eight hours a day.

Thanks again to sweet Audre for all of her contributions.  Here’s to more movie reviews to come!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: Things That Go Bump in the Night

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s the so-called “spooky season” again, which naturally turns my mind to things not seen.  Lately, I’ve been pondering the pre-modern mind, and how differently pre-moderns saw the world.  It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around it.  What must it have been like to fear God—naturally (as in, without the scientistic arrogance we moderns seem inculcated into at an early age)?  To suspect mercurial forces at play in every tree or lonely bog?

There’s so much we don’t know; so much we can’t see (even if it’s caught on video).  Ironically, for all of our assuredness about how the world works, we find ourselves in an age of constant epistemological confusion, one in which we seem incapable of knowing what is True or not.

Heady contemplations, indeed.  The possible existence of Bigfoot or any other number of odd creatures, corporeal or otherwise, is not insignificant:  if supernatural beings exist, God Exists (or, more probably, because God Exists, there are all manner of spirits and angels and the like at work, just beyond our perception).

Spooky stuff!  With that, here is “TBT: Things That Go Bump in the Night“:

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