SubscribeStar Saturday Post “The TJC Spring Jam” is Posted!

8 June 20218 June 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Dear Readers,

I have been writing like the wind today. I have finally caught up on all SubscribeStar content from the past couple of weekends.

You can now read “The TJC Spring Jam” if you’re a $1 a month or higher subscriber.

It’s a detailed rundown of the concert, including the major tunes played, the in-depth financials, and the organization of the concert. Learn from my mistakes and successes!

Also, Sunday Doodles LXXXII is up, too!

Thanks again to subscribers and regular readers for your patience. It’s been a wonderfully quiet day at home—literally, I’ve only gone outside to check the mail and to cut some oregano from my garden—so I’ve gotten a ton of writing done today.

It’s good to restore order to the blog!

Happy Reading!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday Post “Small-Scale Entrepreneurism” is Live!

8 June 20218 June 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Hi Readers,

As you probably know, I have been playing catch-up on some posts due to the TJC Spring Jam, the final workdays of the school year, and my recent trip to Universal Studios. All of those events have conspired against timely posting of some pieces.

As such, it’s my pleasure to announce that Saturday, 29 May 2021’s delayed post, “Small-Scale Entrepreneurism,” is available now on SubscribeStar. You’ll need a subscription of $1 a month or higher to read the full post.

Also, “Lazy Sunday CXVI: Delays” is up as well.

I’ll be working on this past Saturday’s post, which will discuss the Spring Jam in more detail, this evening or tomorrow morning.

Happy Reading, and thank you for your patience!

—TPP

Delayed SubscribeStar Saturday; Universal Studios Update

5 June 20215 June 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s SubscribeStar Saturday—like last weekend’s—will be delayed. Subscribers, you’ll have two posts to look forward to next week: one detailing the perils and opportunities of small-scale entrepreneurism, the other offering a detailed rundown of the TJC Spring Jam (what was intended to be today’s post).

One reason for the delay is that yesterday I spent eighteen hours in Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. I walked around 30,000 steps, or 12.3 miles, according to my iPhone’s pedometer. Because of the hotel where we’re staying, we have Express Passes, so we managed to ride pretty much everything we hope to ride—including the new Velocicoaster, which doesn’t officially open until 10 June. We managed to get in after a two-hour wait and some technical delays. The attraction is running in rehearsal mode at the moment, so some elements might not be present, but the coaster itself is definitely complete.

More details to come in a detailed post—probably next Saturday.

Thank you for your patience, subscribers. I’ll get caught up soon!

Happy Saturday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Small-Scale Entrepreneurism

29 May 202128 May 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Last night was my first ever Spring Jam, and my second ever front porch concert. The first such concert, my Halloween Spooktacular, was far more successful than I imagined. At the time of this writing—which is actually before the concert (gasp!)—I don’t know how well the Spring Jam will go financially, but I’ll have detailed numbers, as well as an overall review of the event, next Saturday.

That said, in putting together this second front porch concert, I’ve run into a few more hiccups than last time. Most of these have been relatively minor—and one of them quite major—but they’ve taught me some lessons for next time.

Most importantly, they’ve driven home the risks and opportunities inherent in putting on any endeavor. Impresarios past and present know well the risks of producing any kind of stage or musical production. Even at the very small scale at which I am working, some risks are present.

To that end, allow me to share with you some of the learning opportunities putting together this Spring Jam has afforded me, and how these lessons can be applied to future entrepreneurial ventures of any kind.

This post will be finished later; I was slammed with the Spring Jam and wasn’t able to finish the subscriber essay. I’ll let y’all know when I have it done. Apologies! —TPP

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Adventures in Athens

22 May 202121 May 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Last weekend, whilst pitching a fit about work, my girlfriend and I were exploring Athens, Georgia. I’ve already detailed one part of that adventure, our trip to the Bizarro-Wuxtrey, a downtown comic book store with a great collection (and where I picked up Dracula: Vlad the Impaler, which I devoured liked the Count descending upon one of his victims).

The trip was a fun adventure through the famous college town and its environs. It has been many years since I’ve been to Athens, and even then it was just to the University of Georgia campus to play in the University of South Carolina marching band, The Mighty Sound of the Southeast. I don’t remember anything about it other than some vague memories of the buildings on campus, so this trip to Athens was really like going for the first time.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: An Appeal to Subscribers

15 May 202114 May 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

As my SubscribeStar page closes in on 200 posts, I wanted to take make an appeal to my loyal subscribers. You are my biggest supporters, as each month you send me a share of your hard-earned money in order to read my self-indulgent posts. Many of you have also purchased my first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard, a further show of your support, and have picked up my music on Bandcamp. I deeply and sincerely appreciate your support.

I’m not asking you to send me more money (although you are, of course, welcome to do so should the mood strike). Rather, I’m hoping to enlist your support in reaching out to potential new subscribers.

Recent events have convinced me more and more that the modern world is no place for a man like me, and I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with and disillusioned by the dehumanizing, exploitative nature of the modern workplace. Perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic, but I’m returning to a point I thought I had escaped over the last year. The thousand little indignities, briefly delayed during The Age of The Virus, seem to have returned with a vengeance, and I am weary.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Monday Morning Update, and Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

10 May 20219 May 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Happy Belated Mother’s Day, Mom, and to all the other mothers out there. I didn’t serve my mom breakfast in bed, but I’d like to think my presence was enough to brighten her day. She did go to the trouble of making a delicious banana pudding, proving once again that moms are great—at least my mom, anyway.

Given that we all enjoyed a fun, busy Sunday, I’m a bit behind on the blog, and plan on returning with more substantive posts tomorrow. I’ll likely pick up with a belated Monday Morning Movie Review, but on Tuesday.

Maybe if I follow that logic to its natural conclusion, I’ll end up doing Lazy Sunday on Monday, and SubscribeStar Saturday on Sunday. TBT will be on Friday. Not since the French went to their absurd ten-day-a-week calendar has such belabored calendrical tomfoolery been afoot!

In all seriousness, the blog has been doing pretty, with fairly consistent daily pageviews and a small uptick in readers leaving comments. Work and my illness late in April have eaten up some of the time I can dedicate to writing, but summer break is fast approaching, and I’m hoping to resume work on my next book, a collection of the first fifty editions of Sunday Doodles, and begin working on a planned collection of new, original short stories.

I’ve also finally hit ten subscribers to my SubscribeStar Page! That’s an exciting milestone. If you’ve been thinking about subscribing but haven’t done so, take a few minutes and do so now. The $1 a month subscription comes out $12 a year—the cost a single three-topping Stuffed Crust pizza from Pizza Hut. I’m not saying my writing is as good as a Stuffed Crust pizza, but seeing as there are nearly 200 posts on my SubscribeStar page already, it’s plenty of brain food to chew. And think of the calories you’ll save giving up one pizza!

SubscribeStar Saturday: Fat

8 May 20217 May 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

In 2011 I undertook what I call my “Weight Loss Odyssey,” which saw me go from around 285 pounds or so down to—at my absolute lowest—172 pounds in about eleven months. I’m not sure if that’s too fast, but it proved to me that, with the right mindset and loads of self-discipline, losing weight is easy.

Well, the concept behind losing weight is easy. Like most things in life, the solutions are straightforward; they’re just unpleasant, or difficult in their implementation. I’m no nutritionist, so take that into consideration, but my method is simple: consumer fewer calories than you need to maintain your weight.

Your body burns calories just by existing, and the heftier you are, the more calories you burn by default. There’s a handy weight loss calculator that makes it easy to figure out the maximum calories you should consume to meet your weight loss goals within a certain timeframe (it also warns you if your goal is dangerously unhealthy; my twenty-six-year old 113 pound drop in weight loss was, apparently, safe).

Lately I’ve been eating way too much. I could offer a host of excuses, but it really boils down to self-indulgence. I enjoy eating. Food is good, even the crummy stuff I like to eat.

Ultimately, though, it’s all a matter of self-discipline, and the benefits—not just physically, but mentally and spiritually—are well worth the effort.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Bric-a-Brac

1 May 202130 April 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

This week I’ve been thinking and writing about home, as well as the idea of self-sufficiency. Home is certainly a space that serves a utilitarian purpose: a place to sleep, a shelter from the elements, a piece of land for growing food.

But the concept of “home” encompasses far more than the practical. There is a distinct difference, both aesthetically and spiritually, between a cookie-cutter, white-washed apartment complex flophouse and a home. Anyone who has moved out of such a space, only to move back into one, realizes how depressing such places are.

Naturally, many enterprising and decorative sorts have turned divorced dad domiciles into homey spaces. For many people, especially young people, such complexes are necessary, and I don’t mean to demean anyone living in one (I lived in such a place, once, and it suited my needs at twenty-two; it would be a nightmare for me now). But it’s those little decorative touches that really help bring a home to life.

I’m not much for decorating myself, but while washing my dishes, I was contemplating some of the odds and ends I have over the sink. My kitchen sink has a window over it, facing into my mudroom, which ages ago was a screened-in back porch. Now the mudroom is closed in, but the window remains. On the sill I keep a number of little figurines—bric-a-brac: some unpainted plastic Chaos Marine miniatures from Warhammer 40K; an Energizer Bunny sticker dispenser; a pewter figurine of an Imperial Ordinator from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; a folk-art figurine made from nuts, bolts, and washers, holding a sign that reads, “Visit Stone Mountain”; a little Jack O’Lantern stress ball; and an icon of St. Thomas Aquinas, a gift from an aggressively Catholic colleague.

What I realized is that these little figurines aren’t just the nerdy detritus of my youth, accumulated on my kitchen windowsill; they’re fun little expressions of home—and of liberty.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Concert Postmortem

24 April 202123 April 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

My poor health recovered, I tested negative for The Virus, and the Spring Concert was a smashing success. I managed to get back to work Wednesday, giving me time to build—for the first time since the 2019 Christmas Concert—my Frankenstein’s Monster sound system, rehearse my students, and wire up a ton of microphones, amps, keyboards, and the like.

After every big concert, I spend part of a class period conducting a “concert postmortem,” my pet term for reviewing the highs and lows of the previous night. It’s a good opportunity to discuss elements that could be improved for the next concert, but also to allow the students to bask in the glory of their performance a little longer.

Not surprisingly, this process tends to work better with high school students, who have developed politeness filters and know how to phrase suggestions diplomatically. They’re also veterans, so they understand better the realities of live performance, and don’t have unrealistic expectations. Middle school students tend to either be over-awed by the experience (one student Thursday evening exclaimed, “That was awesome!”) or very critical of small errors. That’s why we frame these discussions as “constructive criticism,” which helps the students understand the purpose is to build each other up and point out areas where we can all improve.

Regardless, I’m letting readers in on that process a bit with a general “concert postmortem,” including our finalized set list.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.