Tag: Pontiac Dream 39

The Ponty Christmas Special

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Yes, yes—we’re already into 2024, and at this point, Christmas 2023 is a distant, fuzzy memory.  But as I’ve pointed out in other posts this holiday season, Christmastime traditionally runs through Epiphany, on 6 January.  So, why not keep the Christmas spirit alive just a bit longer—eh?

In reading Ponty’s Christmas missive, you’ll get a sense for how much he loves the intimate coziness and spirit of Christmas.  Even more, it’s hard to miss how much he loves the intimate coziness and spirit of Tina, his beloved girlfriend/common-law wife/soulmate.  Whatever they are, they are meant for each other, just like the characters in the Hallmark movies Ponty endures each December.  Nothing says, “I love you” like letting your significant other own a hotel on Boardwalk in Monopoly.

I share something of Ponty’s resigned pessimism for the future.  Like Ponty, though, it does not stem from a place of hopelessness, but rather inspires me to dedicate myself more to the people in my life.  There’s precious little I can do about national politics (or a bunch of stoner judges in Colorado), but I can do a great deal to help those around me—even if that means losing a few games of Monopoly.

With that, here is Ponty sharing about his and Tina’s wonderful Christmas and New Year’s plans:

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Lazy Sunday CCXII: Ponty Week 2023

The Portly Politico4 Comments

If the week of Independence Day was MAGAWeek2023, then last week was the unofficial Ponty Week 2023.  Regular contributor and right good bloke Pontiac Dream 39 (or 39 Pontiac Dream?)/Always a Kid for Today/Ponty sent in a trio of great pieces, and I decided to schedule them all for the same week.

So, in case you missed any of these excellent contributions from our favorite Englishman, here are Ponty’s posts:

That’s it for this ultra-British edition of Lazy Sunday.  Cheers!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Ponty’s Pen: The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

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Guest Post: The Year Before the Year After Next Year

The Portly Politico2 Comments

This week is unofficially “Ponty Week 2023,” as good old Ponty/Always a Kid for Today sent me three excellent pieces over the long July Fourth week (his third will pop this Friday).  It’s great to see one of our most steadfast and lively contributors back on the blog.

It’s interesting to think that The Age of The Virus, which so dominated our lives and thoughts for nearly two years, now seems like a distant memory, a bad dream best forgotten when one wakes up, returning to one’s senses.  That is certainly how the worst of the self-proclaimed public health czars and czarinas hope we will regard it:  a well-intentioned nightmare that we needn’t talk about any further.  They know they eroded civil liberties, wrecked the economy, and made anyone without a diaper on their face feel like crap, all over a highly survivable virus.  Better to sweep all that under the rug and let bygones be bygones.  Forgive and forget, right?

We can forgive individuals—we all had family members who hysterically insisted that flimsy paper masks would save us from ourselves—but we should never forget the heavy toll of our public health tyranny.  As Ponty points out, they’re going to try it again, and it’s going to be worse next time.

It is perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even hysterical on my part), but I sincerely believe The Age of The Virus was a test-run for the End Times Beast system.  Just as people willingly lined up for The Vaccine, which was promised to be the ticket to a normal life, people will line up to take the Antichrist’s Mark so they can continue shopping at Niemann Marcus.  What is one’s eternal soul when there is a sale on capris?

Even if I am wrong about that particular claim, The Age of The Virus was certainly a trial run to see how obedient we’d all be.  The answer, sadly, was, “very.”  Sure, we had some ructions after the first month or so of the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” but most Americans went along sheepishly with the dictates.  Yours portly wore his mask as little as possible, but even I took two shots of The Vaccine (not because I wanted to be “normal” again, but because I didn’t know any better at the time—and I should have!).

Ponty argues that inquiries into The Age of The Virus in Britain serve no purpose other than to strengthen the regime the next time around.  I think he is only missing one point:  these inquiries remind us, the sane, about what they did to us.  We should never let them get away with it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s “The Year Before the Year After Next Year”:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Guest Post: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Good old Pontifex Maximus has returned from self-imposed exile with a trio of posts, all of which I’ll be posting throughout this week and the next.  The first of these is a dual movie review of two remake/sequels of the 1995 classic Jumanji, a flick that was both fun and terrifying to a then-ten-year old yours portly.

The film was remade/reimagined in 2017 as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and followed by a sequel in 2019, Jumanji: The Next Level.  Ponty gives both films a thorough treatment, and readers will be pleasantly surprised to know that, unlike many reboots of classic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s, these films don’t flounder.

With that, here are Ponty’s reviews of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle andJumanji: The Next Level:

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PlayStation Ponty Reviews: Hogwarts Legacy (2023)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

It seems that, despite his protestations earlier this year, dear old Ponty just couldn’t keep away from the warm, chubby, sweaty embrace of The Portly Politico.  We’re all too happy to take him back into our doughy arms.

Ponty’s breaking the silence with a powerhouse review of Hogwarts Legacy, a roleplaying game based on the beloved Harry Potter franchise.

I’m not a Potterphile—I was born just two or three years too late to be in the books’ key demographic upon their release—but I certainly appreciate magic and whimsy.  That said, I don’t know my Muggle from a Hufflepuff (except that I am, apparently, both), so for all you people out there whose only frame of reference for the world is a series of children’s books about kid wizards, don’t persecute me for my ignorance.

What I do know is that this game engendered (no pun intended) a great deal of controversy upon its release because the series’ creator, J.K. Rowling, is a TERF—a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.  That means that, while she loves all the feminist foolishness a woman of her age tends to believe, she still believes that men are men and women are women.  For that, detractors decried this game as “violence against trans people,” because apparently we can’t separate a work of video game fiction—itself quite distinct from the original author’s work—from one’s personal beliefs, and because one’s personal beliefs are now deemed violence if certain mentally impaired individuals deem it to be so.

Well, there’s no use arguing with the insane.  Ponty, however, does commit a bit of violence against Hogwarts Legacy from the other direction, though purely in an editorial sense.  And before he gets to some of the bad, he does extensive yeoman’s work covering the good, too.

With that, here is Ponty’s excellent review of Hogwarts Legacy:

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Lazy Sunday CXCIX: Ponty and Portly’s #1 Picks

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Between Easter and Spring Break Short Story Recommendations 2023, I never got around to writing a retrospective of the films from the Top Ten Best Film lists Ponty and I put together.

Well, in case you missed them, here they are now:  the “best” films of all time:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Birthday to my mom!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #1: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Portly Politico9 Comments

Here we are—the end of the long countdown of best films of all time.  Ponty delivers, as always, with his clear, detailed analysis.

Boy, did he pick a great film.  This flick was a perennial favorite on cable television in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  You can pick up with the story pretty much anywhere and it is gripping.

I won’t dilute Ponty’s review further with my commentary.  He has done it so well, I cannot add anything of additional value.

With that—and at long last!—here’s Ponty’s pick:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: Hono[u]rable Mentions, Part III

The Portly Politico6 Comments

A quick blurb before getting to Ponty’s incredible post:  I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Pick up a copy today!  Even sharing the above links is a huge help.

Thank you for your support!

—TPP

***

Ponty wraps up his extended honorable mentions with this third part, and it’s the biggest one yet.

In reading through his lists, I’m struck by how many incredible films have come out in my lifetime.  The 1980s through the early 2000s were surely a golden age for engaging storytelling on the big screen.  Even crummier films from those decades are far more enjoyable (and significantly less “woke”) than much of the garbage coming out now.  I’m not suggesting there are no good films these days—quite the contrary—but those years were sprinkled with fairy dust.

Ponty leaves no cinematic stone unturned.  He told me he had spent four hours writing this list—and at that point, he wasn’t even finished!  I don’t think I’ve ever spent four hours on a blog post.  Kudos to him:  this list is a true labor of love, and we’re all the beneficiaries of his pen.

With that, here is Ponty’s third and final installment of honorable mentions:

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