Lazy Sunday CXXXIV: Best Ponty Posts of 2023

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:

TBT^2: The Hermit’s Life

Well, it’s back to classes today for yours portly, and the glorious wonder of Christmas Break has officially ended (it technically ended yesterday with a teacher workday).  Yours portly is wondering why we couldn’t have a proper Christmas Break and head back to work next Monday, but I don’t get to make those decisions.

This cold, dark time of year often makes me want to hole up with hot food and old movies.  It also seems that I come down with some manner of respiratory illness, but here’s hoping that’s not the case this year (I’m writing this post super early).  The combination means I spend a lot of time loafing around with my dog.

It’s never been clear to me if I am an extrovert or an introvert.  I am gregarious at parties and love laughing and having deep conversations.  But family members will also note that, at large gatherings, I’ll typically disappear at some point, usually to some forgotten, quiet nook of whatever house or venue we’re at, reading a book or taking a nap.  My younger brother jokes about how I manage to disappear at family get-togethers.

I’ve read that some people have a certain amount of social energy, and they need to let it restore itself.  That tracks with my experience:  after a certain point, I am ready to be home.  That said, I think my meter refills quickly—I have quick “mana regen,” in JRPG terms.  A lazy weekend is usually enough to restore me to take on another never-ending week.

Whatever the case, I think we could all use some quiet alone time now and then.

With that, here is 5 January 2023’s “TBT: The Hermit’s Life“:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXIII: The Best of 2023

The old year is waning, with just a few hours left.  What will 2024 hold?  Will yours portly expand to his greatest heights—and girth—yet?  Or will I fly too close to the sun on my beautiful hot dog wings?

The future is full of mystery, but the past is a done deal.  2023 was, like any year, one full of ups and downs.  As the old year passes away, I’d like to focus on the ups—the “best” posts of 2023.

I put “best” in scare quotes because I am basing that assessment purely on quantitative performance, not the relative qualitative merits of the posts.

These three posts had the highest views as of 15 December 2023, when I put this post together.  I also excluded pieces from guest contributors (many of which, notably those from Ponty, had higher views than the second and third pieces here).  Finally, the posts had to be published in 2023.

With those preliminaries out of the way, here are the top three best posts of 2023:

Happy Sunday—and Happy New Year!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT: Napoleonic Christmas

Somehow, I’d never reblogged this classic TPP post until this summer, when I did a retrospective look back at TPP’s Greatest Hits; “Napoleonic Christmas” came in as “Track III” on that list.  This post got picked up by a conservative news aggregator back in 2019, which caused its views to skyrocket.

I have always possessed a certain fascination with France and the French, and Napoleon is easily the most fascinating Frenchman of all.  That’s somewhat ironic considering he was a Corsican, from an island that belonged to an Italian city-state until said city-state needed to settle some debts with France and handed over the island in lieu of payment.  The Bonaparte family was from a line of minor Italian nobility, and were fiercely in favor of Corsican independence.

Funny how that works:  an Italian from a nationalistic Corsican family became the greatest political and military figure in modern French history.  We can never know what might become of a life.

As I’ve learned more about Napoleon, I disagree more with Andrew Roberts’s assessment of Napoleon in the linked video.  While Napoleon may have been responding to declarations of war by going on the offensive, he also had clear designs to stretch his influence all the way to India.  Indeed, he sought to emulate his hero, Alexander the Great.  The French also mercilessly plundered the cultural and artistic heritage of Italy in the process.

Regardless, Napoleon is a fascinating and complicated figure, and if he doesn’t earn our admiration, he certainly earned our grudging respect.

With that, here is 23 December 2019’s “Napoleonic Christmas“:

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Memorable Monday: Christmas and its Symbols

Merry Christmas, everyone!  I’ve been in the Christmas spirit far more this year than in recent years, likely due to a number of factors.  I will note that the bout of cold weather we’ve in South Carolina this December has really helped—it actually feels like Christmas.  We’ve had plenty of Christmas seasons that are hot, humid, rainy, etc., and they really dampen the sense of the season, both literally and figuratively.

It being Christmas, I’m not writing my usual movie review today, but am offering up a reblog of a post from Christmas Day 2019.  With that, here is “Christmas and its Symbols“:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXII: Christmas Concert Reviews

The major professional highlight of the Christmas season for yours portly is the annual Christmas Concert at school, a time-honored tradition that is frequently honored in the breach (leave a comment and I’ll explain what I mean by that).  It’s a huge undertaking for myself and my students, but when everything clicks, it makes for a truly magical experience.

Here are past posts about Christmas concerts from 2021-2023:

Happy Sunday—and Merry Christmas!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: “Silent Night” Turns 200

On Tuesday’s edition of Open Mic Adventures I shared my impromptu rendition of “Silent Night“; as such, I figured I’d throwback to this classic post about the timeless Christmas classic for this installment of TBT.

I’ve always loved the sweet, peaceful simplicity of this carol.  It also lends itself to multiple interpretations.  My Middle School Music Ensemble students have done it in 4/4 in a punk rock style.  One year, my High School Music Ensemble played it as a bluesy, Christmas-Eve-at-a-roadside-honkey-tonk jam in 6/8 (but, as I recall, only in practice—that might have been too bold for the sensibilities of my administration).

But the song is best presented as it was 205 years ago:  sung by a small choir on a cold Christmas night.

With that, here is 12 December 2019’s “TBT: ‘Silent Night’ Turns 200“:

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Memorable Monday Morning Movie Review: A Very Portly Christmas: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

With Christmas Break looms large, I’m taking it a bit easier with the old blog.  I’ve seen some great—and not-so-great—movies lately, but they can wait a few weeks for 2024.

Instead, I thought I’d take a look back at a timeless Christmas classic of yesteryear, a film I reviewed along with Audre Myers and Ponty during the 2022 Christmas season.

That film, of course, is 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  It’s a film that is somehow more than a mere movie.  It’s a flick that can be judged and appreciated as a movie, of course, but it’s also one that transcends the medium, and is part of the whole Zeitgeist of Christmas.  It’s hard to separate it from the very notion of “Christmas.”

With that, here’s my review from last year:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXI: Chapel Lessons, Part II

It’s another Lazy Sunday, and another look back at some of my short chapel devotionals:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments: