Tonight I will appear in the first of three performances (get tickets to tonight’s performance, the Saturday matinee, or the Saturday night performance) of Catching Icarus, a play one of my former students wrote. It’s a two-act play that takes place in a Waffle House in Dillon, South Carolina. It’s a cast of four characters. I play “Brett,” the father of a young man who is struggling with addiction and loss.
It’s quite gripping. It’s also been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
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Today’s post marks the 365th day of consecutive posts. On December 31, 2018, I wrote “2018’s Top Ten Posts” to look back at the year (I downsized a bit this year, only looking at “2019’s Top Five Posts“).
At the time, I was enjoying—as I am presently—the glory of Christmas Break. The blog had largely been dormant following a blitz of posting during the Summer of 2018, with only occasional posts here and there, such as transcriptions of my various “Historical Moments” mini-talks. Over the Christmas season, I was trying to get back into writing. I wasn’t in the custom of churning out 600+ words on a daily basis, so it took a bit more effort to sit down and write a post.
I never intended to keep a 365-day streak going. At first, I didn’t even realize WordPress tracked such activity. But I noticed (probably with this moderately popular post) that I had a three-day “steak,” as WordPress calls it.
So I decided to try to write something everyday for the month of January 2019. January tends to be a slow month in the school year, with everyone groggily easing back into intellectual activity during the grayest month of the year. I also find the cold intellectually stimulating—the bracing bite of mid-winter always seems to get the creative juices flowing.
Somewhere—I think it was in one of the Civilization games, but I can’t seem to find the exact quotation—I heard a pithy saying, something along the lines of “Genius is a combination of pressure and time.” It’s one of those expressions that instantly rings true.
Years ago, a coffee shop in a nearby town (it’s now become a hip, upscale dining spot—and it axed the live music) used to host a quirky songwriting competition. The premise was simple—every month, participants would pay $5 entry fee into a pot, and a “secret judge” would pick a winner, who would win that evening’s pot. Sometimes there would be a small “second round” of the top three contenders for that evening (I won once, back in January 2014, when I believe I debuted “Greek Fair“; I was surprised, but also thankful that I wouldn’t spend $5 a month for the rest of the year).
It’s crunch time here at Portly HQ. As such, today’s post will be very brief.
I’ve been writing a lot about Christmas and music lately—’tis the season, after all. You can catch up on yesterday’s post about “Joy to the World,” as well as Sunday’s look back at my Dokken album reviews from Christmas 2018.
One reason for the Christmas music focus is that my students have their big Christmas Concert this Friday. It’s always a great deal of fun, and we try to go for a homemade Trans-Siberian Orchestra vibe (if only I could get the administration to spring for some laser lights and pyrotechnics).
As an independent musician and a music teacher (I also teach history), I find myself playing the role of concert impresario quite a bit. One lesson I’ve learned is that the money people—the producers—will always have their notes and revisions, often last-minute. Your well-oiled, tried-and-true concert formula can often get totally upended with changes. Learning to roll with the punches is hard, but necessary.
I don’t know what it is about Fridays that seem to delay my daily posts. It happens on Saturdays, too, especially if I’m out of town, but it seems I keep getting behind on Fridays.
It’s likely because my Thursdays are usually slammed. Not only am I teaching a heavy course load at my day job, I also have three private music students about twice a month on Thursdays. I then head to a local coffee shop for their weekly open mic, an institution for musicians and music-lovers in my region’s scene. By the time I got home last night, I was worn out, and didn’t have two spare neurons to rub together.
Thus the profusion of “Phone it in Friday” pheatures—er, uh, features—I’ve been writing of late (here’s the original, and II, III, and IV). But this edition will take on whole new dimensions of self-reference: it’s a “Phone it in Friday” about Friday itself.
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The vicious plague that has swept through my family—and to which I succumbed late Tuesday night—seems finally to have run its wicked course. After being unable to keep down even water, I am finally getting back to normal thanks to plenty of rest and ginger ale.
Being sick makes me appreciate my health even more. It also helps me realize how much abuse I put this portly frame through—the bad diet, the long hours, the endless sitting.
But I’m sure all of that hard-won wisdom will dissipate by the end of the weekend, and I’ll be back to eating Wendy’s 4 for $4 meals and staying up too late. Oh, well—at least today the blog reaches 300 days of posts!
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It’s been a pretty wild week; by “wild,” I mean that I’ve spent most of my time during the day working, only to stay up too late playing Heroes of Hammerwatch ($11.99 on Steam), a grinding rogue-like, with my brother and friends. Talk about burning the candles at both ends. I also just finished grading a massive stack of quizzes—just in time for a massive stack of tests to rise in their place.
Grading papers is a bit like the mythical hydra in that regard—lop off a few heads, and dozens take their places. It is easily my least favorite part of the teaching profession.
Regardless, the wild week is going to end on a spooktacular note: tonight I’m dusting off the keyboard and, for the first time in a few months, playing one of my legendary (and legendarily poorly-attended) coffee shop concerts.
I recently started playing piano for Wednesday night and some Sunday services at my little Free Will Baptist Church. My church has about thirty or forty attendees on a good Sunday morning, so it’s slim pickings for pianists.
The little old lady who had been playing is very feeble, and she managed to miss more accidentals than a seventh-grade clarinet player due to her failing hearing and eyesight. As such, she was eager to pass off the monkey’s paw of church piano playing to someone else.
As such, I’ve gradually improved my sightreading. More importantly, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to reacquaint myself with some wonderful old hymns—and to learn some for the first time.
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Continuing with a recent theme, today’s SubscribeStar Saturday post is all about what I did this weekend—well, at least this Saturday.
After a long, productive week at school—which saw my team of super nerds win their Quiz Bowl regional competition on Thursday—I woke up before the dawn to head back to school. I signed up to proctor the SAT, the dreaded standardized test that is part of the grand kabuki theatre of higher education admissions.
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When I was in college, I formed this ridiculous pseudo-band with a suitemate of mine (who has, apparently, now gone down some dark roads) called Blasphemy’s Belt, which my bio on another band’s website refers to as an “electro-pop humor duo.” I can’t remember how we came up with the name—our music wasn’t particularly or purposefully blasphemous (or good), and while we wore belts, they weren’t outrageous (just to keep our pants up)—but it was apparently catchy enough that people picked up on it.
The Belt never performed live, other than for an annoyed roommate, and a highly grating pop-up concert (at least, that’s what hipsters would call it nowadays) on our floor’s study room, but we generated enough buzz to get people to vote for us in a “Best of Columbia” survey in The Free Times. We didn’t win anything, but it was an object lesson in how enough hype can make people believe you have substance when you really don’t.
That’s my self-indulgent way to introduce some literal navel-gazing—at Democratic hopeful and wealthy scold Tom Steyer‘s virtue-signalling, sanctimonious belt.
The Portly Politico 