Near the end of 2023, I closed out my latest music journal. That got me flipping through some older journals, and I stumbled upon a couple of pieces I’d never arranged in Noteflight.
One of them was “Snowfall,” which I wrote sometime in 2022. It’s based around an Eb whole tone scale, giving it a mysterious, mystical sound.
I’m on my way back from a much-needed trip to the mountains, and I’m phoning this one in, folks. It’s MLK Day here in the United States, which is like getting a bonus day of Christmas Break right after being off for however long it is. It honestly feels a bit frivolous so soon after Christmas and New Year’s, but I’m sure it’s what the Reverend Doctor would have wanted. He was, after all, a notorious libertine.
What would MLK have become had he lived? My suspicion—a sad, jaded one—is that he would have gone the way of race hustlers since. I do not think he was a race hustler, but I think he was starting to trend in that direction with his view on poverty, and for a man who clearly took advantage of his power to engage in some truly heinous sexual escapades, it’s not a big leap to assume he’d go full on Creflo Dollar eventually—or, more likely, full on Al Sharpton. Yikes!
Regardless, his “dream” of a nation based on judgment of character and not skin color has not exactly come to fruition. I mean, it did for about thirty years. Ever heard of Lando Calrissian? It seems like we had a good run from roughly 1980 until about 2010. Now we’ve gone from trying to treat everyone as equals to privileging certain races over others. Isn’t that what all those 1960s radicals fought so hard against? Yet they’re the very ones celebrating the new apartheid.
Well, whatever. I’m just a honkey enjoying a weekend in the mountains.
With that, here is January 2020’s “MLK Day 2020“:
After giving Ponty some love last week, I decided to do one more edition of Lazy Sunday highlighting the best-performing guest posts of 2023. This time around, it is our dear Audre Myers, author of the Myersvision series of posts, enjoying the limelight.
Again, the usual notes: these are not necessarily the best posts qualitatively—although they are quite excellent, as is all of Audre’s writing—but merely the Myersvision posts with the highest views. Note that all of Audre’s writing deserves more clicks and views, so get to it!
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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Back on Epiphany (6 January 2024) I built a Nativity from Nativity Bricks, a company that makes Christian-themed LEGO® knock-offs (I also composed an Epiphany-inspired original piano composition).
The build was very good, and the quality was as close to LEGO® as I’ve seen from knock-off bricks. Seriously, I was blown away with how excellent the pieces were, and how intuitive the instructions were to follow. Most of these cheap copycat building blocks are just that—cheap. But Nativity Bricks’ pieces actually felt like LEGO® bricks. Even Mattel’s attempt to compete with LEGO®, Mega Bloks®, don’t stack up (no pun intended—hey-oh!).
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Shockingly, I haven’t done an installment of YouTube Roundup since August 2023. Since then, I’ve uploaded a ton of content, so it’s time to catch up on some videos.
I’ve selected three videos for this YouTube Roundup, all of a different type. There’s a piece of music; a toy construction video; and something completely frivolous and fun:
Before we get to the videos, though, you should definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel. I know for many readers, “subscribe” is a dirty word—God forbid we support our favorite content creators!—but trust me, it’s totally free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
One of my favorite pieces of the Romantic period is Bedřich Smetana’s The Moldau, which depicts a musical cruise down the titular river. I’m not sure why I always reblog about it in January—the piece has a much more springtime feel—but here we are.
I’ve been composing more and more programmatic and Impressionistic music lately, and nothing I’ve written lives up to what Smetana achieves in this piece.
But I said it all best back in 2021—and reblogged it in 2022.
With that, here is 13 January 2022’s “TBT: The Joy of Romantic Music II: Bedřich Smetana’s ‘The Moldau’“:
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:
Not every musical piece is destined for greatness. Nor is every piece designed to be beautiful. Such is this case with this week’s piece, “FRANTIC!!“
I’ve watched some great flicks lately—and some truly terrible ones. The holidays hit, and I forgot about them! I guess the “great flicks” weren’t all that great after all.
My plan for 2024 is to move away from just reviewing weird horror movies, and instead getting into some of the timeless classics (some of which, of course, will be weird horror movies). I’ve been hankering for some high quality viewing. Just like food, there’s only so much garbage you can absorb before you’re ready to eat a steak. Just as my body starts craving real food after a week of eating pathetic sandwiches and bachelor chow-tier spaghetti, so does my mind crave excellence after watching the grindhouse trash on Shudder.
But that’s to come. Although I’ve nearly exhausted Shudder’s extensive library of the good, the bad, and the terrible (pretty much any horror movie made in the last five years, or any horror flick with Canadian actors), I stumbled upon a series—not a movie—called Deadwax (2018).
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:
