Phone it in Friday XXXVIII: The Rings of Saturn

2 June 20231 June 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Saturn is my favorite planet (after Earth, of course). Who can resist those beautiful rings, and the clear demarcation of the Cassini Division? There’s also something otherworldly and mysterious about it. Just listen to the opening bars of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets:

Years ago I wrote a song, “The Rings of Saturn,” which has never enjoyed a formal recording. That’s a shame, because it is one of my better songs (I write with all humility). It will have to grace an edition of Open Mic Adventures soon. The header image for my Bandcamp page is the a picture of the planet.

Needless to say, I like Saturn a lot. I sometimes image what it would be like living on one of its moons, or if we’ll someday have mining colonies on the larger bits of icy space-stuff in its rings.

Well, it seems those beautiful rings are disappearing. Fortunately, as with all things astronomical, none of us will be around to see them disappear entirely.

Phone it in Friday XXXVII: Heroes of Endor

19 May 202317 May 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

LEGO has gone woke. Actually, they’ve been woke for awhile, but they released an “A-Z of Awesome” of fan-built sets to push wacky gender ideology on their consumers. A host of LEGO fans with alphabet soup “identities” built the sets (which I doubt will be made available as purchasable sets, because most of them are not that good or creative).

If child grooming among the LGBTQIA2+etc. community isn’t a thing, as our pedophilic elites insist (methinks too much), why are these queer activists pushing so hard to market “alternative lifestyles” to children? In the past we could at least isolate this indoctrination to public schools. Sure, a four-year old might see their teacher put a condom on a banana (it’s hyperbole, folks, to prove a point), but they weren’t going home and building the “4K Sex Ed Classroom” LEGO playset.

Nothing, it seems, is sacred, even my beloved LEGOs.

Now, some might say, “Tyler, you’ve gotsta stop feeding the beast.” Honestly, the sheer expense of LEGOs—which have embraced inflationary pricing and jacked up the prices on their sets even further—is probably the bigger reason to scale back the hobby. I can avoid a great deal of the LGBTQIA2+etc. foolishness, at least for now.

Honestly, though, I’m just a hypocrite. What can I say? I like LEGOs. If I avoided every product from every company engaged in civilizationally self-destructive behavior, I’d be living an ascetic life without Internet access. Naturally, there’s some happy middle ground between those two extremes, but as much as I abhor their policies, I can’t resist the the sweet, sweet hit of those little plastic bricks.

Which brings me to the real point of today’s post: I had the pleasure of building the LEGO set Battle of Endor Heroes (40623) in their popular Brickheadz series. It MSRPs at around $40, which is typical for a Brickheadz set, which charges around $10 per figurine, or $15 or a regular-sized figurine and a half-size one. This set consists of three full-size figurines from Return of the Jedi (1983)—Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Lando Calrissian—and two half-sized ones—R2-D2 and Wicket, the feisty Ewok.

Phone it in Friday XXXIV: Obi-Wan’s Starfighter

17 March 202312 March 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

After my LEGO habit hit a fever-pitch in 2022, I’ve tried to cool off a bit. I’m a grown man with important things to do!

… but the appeal of building a good LEGO set is hard to ignore, and I can’t resist a good sale. So it was that I picked up LEGO Star Wars 75333: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi Starfighter:

I’m not doing very well at putting aside childish things.

This set appealed to me right away. The prequel trilogy is obviously inferior to the original trilogy (and both are vastly better than the execrable sequel trilogy), but I always loved Obi-Wan’s little Starfighter, and his trip to that planet with the long-necked aliens. I particularly liked that I’d get one of the long-necked aliens (Taun We) and a plucky astromech droid (R4-P17).

Phone it in Friday XXXIII: Bigfoot Build!

10 March 20237 March 2023 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today’s post is a bit of a special surprise for Audre Myers, regular reader and contributor, and resident Bigfoot expert here at The Portly Politico. While visiting Myrtle Beach this past weekend, my brother and I stopped into The Gay Dolphin (not a gay nightclub, but a schlocky tchotchkes-and-bric-a-brac merchant) to poke around at the various beach-themed gifts.

Amid the poking, I found this guy, and knew it was destiny:

Phone it in Friday XXXII: Pat Buchanan’s Legacy

24 February 202324 February 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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.

Phone it in Friday XXXI: Kirby!

27 January 202327 January 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s the last full day of our family trip, and I’m still behind the proverbial eight-ball with posts. My apologies to those who have contributed posts for publication; I’ll get them in next week. What I have found is that posting later in the morning like I have been doing tends to result in lower views, so it’ll be best for those guest posts to go live next week when I am (hopefully!) back on schedule.

All mea culpas aside, here is a very, very brief edition of Phone it in Friday featuring everyone’s favorite little puffy pink guy, Kirby!

Phone it in Friday XXX: Blog Updates and Writing

20 January 202317 January 2023 The Portly Politico1 Comment

Ah, yes—the bleak midwinter. A time for eating frozen pizzas and warm soups, washed down with hot, black coffee. A time for turning in early at night, indulging in the warmth and comfort of fleece sheets and heavy quilts.

I see why bears hibernate right now: ’tis the season for coziness, to embrace the hygge. I certainly eat like a grizzly preparing for a few months of hibernation, but I don’t sleep off the excess fat stores. It just gets added on until another round of gastrointestinal self-denial kicks in after I gaze at my double chin too long.

It is with the spirit of the hibernating grizzly that I write this post. I love writing, but like most writers, that love is sometimes coupled with hate—or, in my case, weary indifference. It comes in waves, most of them brief, but I’m currently riding one at the moment—or flailing about frantically amid it, my head occasionally dipping below into the briny deep.

Phone it in Friday XXVIII: Christmas Concert

9 December 20228 December 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today is the day of our big Christmas Concert at school. It’s both my favorite and least favorite day of the year, because while the concert is incredibly fun, it’s also incredibly stressful. It’s worth it, though, to see the kids singing and playing and having a good time.

As I’ve grown older, fatter, and achier, I’ve scaled back a bit of the theatricality and bombast of the Christmas Concert to something a bit more manageable. Gone are the days of singing while standing on a piano (I did that once, years ago). I also strive to make the concert focused on the kids (well, and Jesus).

Still, it’s a lot to pull together, with not only my two classes (the middle and high school ensembles) but also two choirs, three dance classes, and six Foreign Language classes. I’ve completely eliminated solos (outside of soloists on songs within these classes) to streamline it as much as possible.

I’ll be doing a full write-up one Saturday (possibly tomorrow) covering it, but for today, just pray for yours portly. I’m confident it will be a good concert, I just gotsta get through it!

Merry Christmas!

—TPP

Phone it in Friday XXVII: Virtual Learning Hurricane Holiday

30 September 202229 September 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Hurricane Ian has been battering Florida, and South Carolina should be experiencing the effects of said battering today, albeit to a vastly diminished degree. The weather is calling for high winds and lots of rain, but nothing that seems (to me, anyway) particularly dangerous. I just wouldn’t recommend hanging out underneath any old trees.

Naturally, the slightest degree of inclemency prompts the shuttering of all operations for those of us in the cushier fields like education. Fear of the “L Word”—Liability—means my administration has opted to close the school today, lest some witless teen driver find himself, wheels spinning, in a watery ditch.

Of course, in this post-The Virus era—here in The Days After The Age of The Virus—there are no longer inclement weather “holidays,” as there were in The Before Times, in the Long, Long Ago. Now we can hop seamlessly online, teaching and learning from the comfort of our couches.

Phone it in Friday XXV: Spooktacular 2022 T-Shirts

16 September 202215 September 2022 The Portly Politico3 Comments

The 2022 Spooktacular is coming up on Saturday, 15 October 2022, which means it’s time to have some t-shirts made up.

This year, I’m debating between two designs:

Vampire

Spider

The white image is a vampire playing a bass guitar (which he is apparently hypnotizing). The caption on the bottom reads “Blood-Suckingly Spooky Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

The yellow image is a spider whose legs make up notes on a treble clef staff. His caption reads “Venomously Good Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

The vampire could also be made yellow (or any other color).

So, I’m asking readers for your input: which design do you prefer? I’ll probably only make one this year, and I’ll use reader feedback to decide which one to order.

Thanks for voting!