Post-Concert Analysis is Coming

Yesterday’s Christmas concert went well, and I’m relieved to have it done.  I’m blessed to work with some super talented kids, and they are very dedicated to our Music Program.

I’ll be writing up a full analysis of it, as well as a gig I played with my buddy John last night, for SubscribeStar subscribers.  I should have the posted sometime Sunday afternoon.

For now, though, I am celebrating Christmas with my girlfriend.  We got each other some LEGO sets, so we’ve been building those this afternoon while watching TV and generally chilling out.

See you soon!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Yuletide Mania

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The Christmas season is upon us, and nary did Thanksgiving end did the insane scrambling of the season commence.

Regular readers know I’m a hustler—I’ve always got some moneymaking schemes going:  primarily private music lessons, but also gigging, writing, calling sporting events, staging concerts, selling t-shirts, hawking weird art, etc.  These are all fun activities in addition to being lucrative, but it’s easy for them to get overwhelming, especially when they all hit at once.

Well, Christmastime—at least the first couple of weeks of December—seems to be a time when everything comes to a head at the same time (thus today’s later-than-usual post).  This past week was particularly grueling, with a number of events requiring my attention, sometimes nearly at the same time.

For those interested in the opportunities of perils of juggling different side gigs and responsibilities, today’s post will detail how I managed to teach almost all of my lessons for the week and setup lighting and sound for a pageant; reset that lighting and sound for a play; attended play tech and dress rehearsals; played a dinner at church and will play a longer Christmas set today; rode in a parade; and successfully made it through two stagings of the aforementioned play.

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Lazy Sunday CXLI: Thanksgiving Stuff(ing)

Another glorious Thanksgiving Break has come and gone, so yours portly will have to struggle through another three weeks of work before enjoying another ridiculously generous break at Christmastime.

In keeping with the spirit of doing a lot of “rerun” posts this past week, here’s a Lazy Sunday dedicated to various Thanksgiving posts from yesteryear:

Apparently, I write a lot of posts about Thanksgiving, and I recycle almost all of them every year.  I think a good bit of that is because I am usually worn out by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, and rather than tax my weary brain with fresh material, I just reuse the treacly tripe I wrote in prior years.  Also, pageviews are way down during the week, chiefly because people are enjoying time with their friends and family, rather than wasting time at work reading the angry screeds of a portly man.

Regardless, Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: 2021 Election Analysis

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Elections all over the country on 2 November 2021 (and run-offs on 16 November 2021) came back with some surprising results—and results that, with due caution, should give conservatives hope.  Popping all those black pills was premature, but all of our problems aren’t magically solved just yet.

Winning elections is one thing.  Governing in such a way that honors the reasons voters gave you office is another.  But the results from the 2021 elections are very encouraging.

Today’s post will be slightly delayed, but should be posted to SubscribeStar by this afternoon.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Rittenhouse Remains Free!

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It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!—Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who expertly defended himself against a mob of Antifa rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was found not guilty on all of the spurious charges brought against him.  After days of agonizing deliberations, the jury—facing threats of doxing from radical activists and even MSNBC—held steady and delivered the only verdicts that made sense.

Readers of this blog will surely know the pertinent details already, but the prosecution’s case against Rittenhouse was not based on any factual evidence, but instead on a hyper-politicized Left seeking to strip a young man of his rights to self-defense.

The hypocrisy of the Left was on full display:  a group that views borders as “imaginary lines” on a map suddenly cared about Rittenhouse traveling twenty minutes “across State lines” to Kenosha, as if crossing that magical, imaginary line suddenly turned him into a bloodthirsty vigilante.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left is useless, but here I think it is warranted:  it nearly cost a young man his life.  For defending himself—and Rittenhouse would have died that night had he not fought back—he was subjected to a politicized circus of a prosecution.

An important battle was won Friday afternoon.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Into the Woods

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After a very long week—the kind of week that was absolutely brutal—I am heading into the woods for two nights and one full day without electricity, Internet access, and other comfortable amenities.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2021 Review

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Last Saturday was my annual Halloween Spooktacular, marking the third Spooktacular and the second hosted from my front porch.  I hit upon the idea of doing a front porch concert around Halloween last year, when most venues were still closed to live music, or only very slowly bringing it back.  I’d heard of other musicians doing outdoor gigs, and though, “Hey, why not turn my front porch into a stage?”

That first at-home Spooktacular was wildly successful—far more so than I thought—and I followed it up with my Spring Jam in May 2021.  That event was also successful, though the turnout was slightly lower than the Spooktacular.

This year, I suspected that the success of the first two front porch concerts might be diminished somewhat, especially as the concert was on the Saturday before a Sunday Halloween, which meant most people were trick-or-treating and throwing parties that night instead of on Halloween proper.  Several of my biggest patrons, who usually drop some serious coin at these events, were unable to attend due to other plans.

Still, I was excited for the evening, and while my concerns about lower attendance were confirmed—and the event resulted in a substantial but not debilitating loss, at least in the short-run—it was a fun night, one that also carried with it some important lessons.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2021 Preview

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It’s hard to believe, but tonight is another Spooktacular.  It’s technically the third Spooktacular, but it’s the second conducted from my front porch.  The very first “official” Spooktacular was held at a coffee shop in Darlington, South Carolina, in October 2019.  The following October, that coffee shop—along with many others—had shuttered during The Age of The Virus, or had not reopened for live performances.

As such, I decided to try something different:  instead of finding a venue to take me in, I made my home the venue.  I have a front porch that is just big enough to hold four musicians and their gear comfortably (albeit a tight comfort, like a college girl wearing yoga pants to her 8 AM class).

I’ve documented all of this elsewhere, but I will confess I am proud of myself for making it happen (with a follow-up front porch concert in May 2021, the TJC Spring Jam).  It’s not a completely original idea, but I’m glad I was able to turn a bad situation into an opportunity for everyone to have a good time.

Well, tonight is the big night, and I’m not sure what to expect.  Some of my major contributors are not able to attend this year, but my opening act, Jeremy and The Blissters (named in part for Jeremy Miles, no stranger to this blog), possess a dedicated following and should bring out a good crowd.  I’ve also heard from a number of folks who are coming tonight, so I think we will have a good crowd.

All that said, I have the inside scoop on what’s going down tonight, and big crowd or not, it’s going to be a fun time.

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The War on Halloween

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It has long been the position of this blog that Halloween gets a bad rap, especially from the Christian Right. The holiday’s association with deviltry, witchcraft, and the occult is, of course, difficult to deny, but the holiday’s name is an abbreviation of “All Hallow’s Eve”; that is, the evening before All Saints’ Day on 1 November.

Granted, the Internet atheists will claim the roots of Halloween in Samhain, the Gaelic festival of the harvest. They are not wrong, per se—the influx of Irish immigrants into the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought a peculiarly Celtic flavor to the holiday. But the holiday is a Christian, specifically a Catholic, one—the Irishmen bringing tales of Jack O’Lantern and his carved turnip (it would only later become a pumpkin) were not ancient pagans, but among the most devout believers in Europe.

Certainly the medieval Catholic Church had a habit of taking pagan holidays and replacing them with Christian observances. For some reason, Internet atheists always use these replacements as examples of Christianity’s secretly pagan roots. The argument is ludicrous.

When Hernan Cortez destroyed the Aztec temple at Tenochtitlan and built a cathedral in its place, was he honoring the bloodthirsty Aztec gods? Or was he symbolically noting that The Holy Trinity had displaced the false gods and idols of the Aztecs? It is almost certainly the latter. Similarly, when Christians took existing pagan observances and replaced them with Christian ones, they were symbolically and practically demonstrating the victory of Christ and His Church over pagan gods.

Indeed, much of the American Protestant objection to Halloween must have been due to its associations with the Papists, rather than the Devil. The mischievousness of the holiday in the twentieth century, especially the concept of trick-or-treating, probably has more to do with its more sinister modern associations.

But the latest assault on Halloween is coming from a different quarter.  No longer are conservative Christians alone in hedging their bets on the holiday.

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Saturday Morning Update; SubscribeStar Post is Coming

Today’s SubscribeStar Saturday post is coming, it will likely just pop up this afternoon. I spent yesterday afternoon driving to Athens, Georgia, and did not have time to get the post done ahead of time.

That said, it was a beautiful drive. Due to a bad wreck on I-20, GPS routed me through the backroads, taking me through the Upstate of South Carolina into northeastern Georgia. One of the highlights was driving through Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, which is on the border of the two States.

More on that in a future post. Thank you for your patience!

—TPP