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

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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.

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October 2023 Bandcamp Friday: Spooky Season II Out TODAY!

Special Note:  I will be donating 10% of all gross sales for TODAY, Friday, 6 October 2023 from my Bandcamp page to the Music program at my little private school.  That includes my new album, Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids, which released today.  It also includes purchases of my full discography (just $20.89) and merchandise.  If I make 50 sales of any kind today, I’ll double the donation.  If I make 100 sales, I’ll triple the donation.

To celebrate another Bandcamp Friday, I have a brand new release:  Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids!  It’s ten tracks and nearly fifteen minutes of music, so it’s 3.5 times longer than Spooky Season.

Like Spooky Season, Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids features full scores for every part, as well as around 130 MBs of bonus content—videos, pictures, and even some live performance footage.  It’s my most feature-packed release ever, and it’s only $5!

Also, look at this sweet album cover:

Bigfoot - Album Cover

It’s the finest quality MS Paint can provide!

Speaking of my last release, Spooky Season, a collection of seven new compositions with a spooky, autumnal vibe, hit streaming platforms on Sunday, 1 October, but is also available for purchase via Bandcamp!

Spooky Season is just $5, and includes full scores and individual parts for every track—a $28 value!—plus a bonus track.  It’s also crammed with videos, handwritten manuscripts, and other goodies.

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

Currently, my entire discography of eleven releases is $20.89a savings of 50%, which is not bad for eleven releases.  That’s $1.74 per release—not too shabby!  To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.

You can also listen to a ton of my tunes on YouTube (and it’s free to subscribe!).

I’m also selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase.  They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.

I’ve also joined Society6, a website that lets artists upload their designs, which can they be printed onto all manner of products (like this throw pillow, or this duvet cover).  Why not get a bookbag with a mouthy droid on it?

I only get 10% of the sales made there, but some of the stuff looks really good—I really want these notebooks with my “Desert View” painting on it (now SOLD!).  Some of them are straight-up goofy, like this church doodle I made celebrating the presidential pardon of Roger Stone (the description for the piece is “Anger your friends with this doodle commemorating the presidential pardon of America’s most dapper political operative“).

I have a few new paintings in the works, and hope to be attending the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival to try to hawk some of my works.  We’ll see how that goes!

My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.

My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.

Finally, after I finish Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book, I’ll be uploading those doodles to Society6 as well.  I have high hopes (perhaps naïvely) for this book, but we shall see.  The doodles are some of my best work—and in glorious color—and without notebook paper lines!

Thanks again for your support!

Happy Friday!

—TPP

TBT^16: The Joy of Autumn

This year is the first time I’ve noticed a pop cultural excitement for autumn.  Sure, people love talking about “sweater weather” and Spooky Season, but this year it’s everywhere.  I’ve witnessed dozen of memes all gleefully proclaiming the arrival of fall before August even had a chance to expire.

The pumpkin spiced everything trend is also back in a big way, and marketers have gone all in to cater to single women with disposable incomes.  In this case, lump me in with the single women.  While I haven’t bought gallons pumpkin spiced lattes (now trendily abbreviated as “PSLs”), I certainly appreciate pumpkin flavoring.

Besides, who doesn’t love the festive rotundity of pumpkins?  They’re so round and jolly—the charismatic, carotene-rich cousins to the lumpy squash.

So it is that I happily greet the start of autumn, even if that does make me a girl.

With that, here is “TBT^4: The Joy of Autumn“:

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Open Mic Adventures XLVIII: “Skeleton Dance No. 2”

I’m hosting a FREE online listening party for Spooky Season on Sunday, 1 October 2023, at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time.  You can RSVP here.

After the unusual success of “Skeleton Dance No. 1” on YouTube, I knew it was time to compose “Skeleton Dance No. 2.”  As is often the case with sequels, “Skeleton Dance No. 2” is far more developed and fleshed-out (no pun intended) than its predecessor.

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Open Mic Adventures XLIV: “Skeleton Dance No. 1”

Ah, yes—another Tuesday, another edition of Open Mic Adventures in which I thwart Ponty’s dreams and feature a super short, experimental piano miniature instead of a gutsy, flabby live performance.

No worries—there will (probably) be more sweaty, robust live performances soon.  But as we endure the heat and misery of August, I’m already looking ahead to the coolness and fun of Halloween.

So, what better way to get in the spooky mood than with a little skeletal gyrating?

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Ponty Pans: Halloween Kills (2021)

Halloween might be over—noooooooo!—but the Halloween film franchise will never die—or End, as the latest installment claims.  If you’re like Ponty and myself, you try to watch at least the 1978 John Carpenter classic at least once a year, preferably on Halloween.

Unlike Ponty, I haven’t seen the plethora of sequels, besides—of course—Halloween II (1981) and the unusual Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  I’ve also seen the “soft reboots” since 2018, thought I haven’t seen Halloween Ends (2022) yet.

As Ponty points, I, like many others, will.  I’ll also see Halloween Ends Again or whatever comes out next.  Heck, I’ll probably see Halloween Ends Again III: Season of the Witch: The Musical, with an original score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, including that annoying Silver Shamrock jingle.  These franchises know how to hook in suckers like yours portly, who will never hesitate to drop a $1.25 RedBox coupon to sample some tasty trash.

But I digress.  Ponty asked to take a stab—no pun intended—at reviewing 2021’s Halloween Kills, a film I reviewed last November.  Ponty assiduously avoided my review, so it’s interesting (though not entirely surprising) that we walked away with some similar reflections on the film.  “Evil dies tonight!”—ugh.  How could anyone miss that braying mantra?

Regardless, Ponty’s review goes far deeper than my own, delivered with his own brand of acerbic and longsuffering wit.

On a lighter note, he also includes some pictures from his and Tina’s Halloween festivities.  Well done on the decorations, Tina!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2021’s Halloween Kills:

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Memorable Monday: Happy Halloween!

It’s Halloween!  Sure, it’s also Monday, probably the lamest possible day for such a mirthful holiday, but let’s hope that just improves Monday, rather than drags down Halloween.

For newer readers, Memorable Monday posts are the equivalent of the weekly TBT posts, in which I republish an old post, adding on an additional layer of commentary.  The key difference is that Memorable Mondays are far rarer than TBTs, as the former only pop up on special occasions or holidays (like today!), while TBTs are every Thursday.

That brought up a bit of a mild conundrum:  this post has been reblogged twice as “TBT: Happy Halloween!” and, last year, as “TBT^2: Happy Halloween!.”  I didn’t want to copy-paste those posts and the original and make them part of Memorable Monday, because it would throw off the exponent (in 2023, it’d be “TBT^4” if I reblog these posts on a Thursday).  I also wanted to avoid some unwieldy future title like, “TBT^4: Memorable Monday: TBT^2: Happy Halloween!”

Of course, that’s all tedious, mildly autistic, inside baseball.  I’m sure some of you can relate to this desire to maintain an excessive sense of order to everything, but others are probably wondering, “What does this have to do with Halloween?”

Well, not very much.  Let’s just say I’m excited to spend the evening watching spooky movies and handing out candy with my dog.

With that, here is 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:

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Lazy Sunday CLXIX: Even More Halloween Hijinks: The Musical

Happy All Hallows’ Eve Eve!  It’s the day before Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year.

Naturally, I needed to highlight some spooky posts, but I did many of those back in “Lazy Sunday LXXXIV – Halloween Hijinks” and “Lazy Sunday CXXXVII – More Halloween Hijinks.”  So I decided to go with some Halloween posts with a more musical flair:

Happy Halloween!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2022 Review

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 2022 Spooktacular is in the books, and it was the best one yet.

Yes, yes, people always say that—“you’re the best Music students I’ve ever had!”; “that was the best concert ever!”—but in this case, it’s true!  As far as Spooktaculars go, the 2022 one was the best so far.  The musicians, the sound, the crowd—everything was on-point to make for a great evening.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #8: Halloween (1978)

Just in time for the Halloween season, Ponty pulls out one of the all-time classics from perhaps my favorite director.  You can’t have Halloween without Halloween (1978).

I particularly love how Ponty opens his review discussing the impact of music in film.  Horror soundtracks now seem to be riddled with clichés, like sustained dissonant chords and screechy violin glissandos.  But John Carpenter and others were composing actual music that sounded creepy without resorting to silly gimmicks.  What kid doesn’t sit down at the piano this time of year and try to pick out that theme?

Well, I won’t give much more away; it’s an excellent, lovingly-crafted review.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 1978’s Halloween:

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