Regular readers will know how much I love animals. One of the more surprising changes as I approached middle-age is that I went from being aloof towards the animal kingdom to adoring animals. I’m not sure what changed or what clicked, but getting my dog Murphy was definitely a big step in that process.
Regardless, this Friday I have a couple of cute animal videos from below and above the waves:
I’ve been going through a bunch of my old stuff in preparation for moving items to the new house. In doing so, I’ve come across quite a few Star Wars action figures and collectibles.
I was a huge Star Wars kid. I loved the original trilogy and tolerated the prequel trilogy (indeed, I was super excited for the latter). I particularly loved the miniatures. I’ve sold most of the action figures in the following videos to a colleague of mine—he will take excellent care of them—but I am keeping the miniatures. They are so cool!
So, here are some recent videos featuring these fun figurines:
Dr. Wife and I took a cruise for our honeymoon aboard Royal Caribbean‘s Explorer of the Seas. The artwork impressed, delighted, and even confounded me.
As such, I put together a brief video showcasing some of the art onboard the ship. This video only captures a small fraction of the collages, paintings, photographs, mosaics, etc., aboard Explorer of the Seas. The selections were often odd, but they really fit the atmosphere of the ship, and added a touch of elegance and class to the cruise.
When I first wrote about workers needed Thanksgiving Day off, I was experiencing pretty severe burnout myself. I do still believe that the Black Friday creeping into Thanksgiving is reprehensible, but I also realize my own stress was playing a role in my analysis.
Of course, this Black Friday I’m bunduru’d with Dr. Wife on the high seas, so I’m absolutely getting a break. Indeed, I might be eating pizza covered in gravy and leftover turkey from last night’s onboard Thanksgiving feast (I assume we had one; I’m writing this post way beforehand). While I’m enjoying the Thanksgiving Lover’s Pizza, though, millions are schlepping into retail stores at 4 AM to help grannies save pennies on toaster ovens.
Well, who doesn’t love a good deal? But a better deal would be shuttering retailers all day on Thanksgiving so employees can rest up and spend time with family before being berated by penny-pinching Karens.
With that, here is 25 November 2022’s “Flashback Friday^4: Brack Friday Bunduru: Workers Need a Break“:
I’m currently reading through J.D. Cowan‘s short book The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide (those are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you), which isn’t precisely a guide on how to write pulp but, rather, an extended argument for why one should write pulp. Cowan unapologetically—indeed, enthusiastically—argues that the “low art” of the pulps provides readers what they want: action and wonder. He makes a reasonable argument for reviving this older form of writing, which features punchy writing and upright heroes: audiences want to read such stories, but “OldPub” (his term for the current publishing industry) prefers massive tomes that push approved messages. Readers lose out, therefore, on good stories, and the publishing industry is dying as a result.
That’s gotten me thinking about art and writing and what not. Last summer, a guest writer, Brian Meredith, wrote a post entitled “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Art” here at TPP. I don’t precisely agree—I think we can have (more or less) objective standards for what qualifies as good art and literature—but he does touch upon what I think is the important distinction between “low” and “high” art. Cowan argues in his book that pulps are “low art,” but that doesn’t make them worthless. But both low and high art can, I would argue, be quite bad. Just take this example from author and poet Liza Libes (Libes is an exquisite writer; she’s just sharing an excerpt from some trashy “romance” novel); no one can read that and not realize it’s awful writing (and not just because of the lurid subject matter).
But the worst art is art that is only valuable in the financial sense because the people making it are either a.) well-connected and/or b.) elevated because of some perceived victim status. We’ve had too much of both lately, and it’s why—as Cowan argues—the publishing and film industries are dying slow deaths (and, yes, yes, shortened attention spans due to TikTok and what not play a role, too, I’m sure, but people go to those platforms because they at least give folks what they want). That was the crux of this post, first written back in 2021 and reblogged mercilessly every summer.
With that, here is 25 July 2024’s “TBT^4: Modern Art and Influence“:
We have a new contributor here at The Portly Politico, a chap from jolly old England, Brian Meredith. He’s a graphic designer by trade and is Internet friends with our own senior correspondent, Audre Myers.
In this piece, “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Art,” Brian makes an essentially semantic argument: if we glorify pieces we like or appreciate as “art,” we conversely consider “bad” pieces as “not art.” Ergo, we cannot have “bad art” if art is definitionally whatever we define as “good.”
As Brian noted in an e-mail to me: “I would like to make it clear that my intention was to write something about the use of language rather [than] about art itself and in particular the commonly-accepted assumption that the very idea of art confers status.”
It’s an interesting argument, and one that I think has its merits. I disagree with the underlying premise, in that we can create things broadly termed “art” that are, indeed, quite poor in quality, either because of aesthetic choices or merely a lack of craftsmanship on the part of the artist. There can be “art” of varying qualities.
But I think Brian is correct when we look at “art” as a term of social categorization—as a form of judgment. In that regard, anything that we think is worthy of praise—even if from an objective or technical standpoint it is not very good—could be elevated to the status of “art,” as his argument is that society uses the term “art” almost exclusively as a term of praise. As such, if enough rubes agree that, say, an ashtray is a work of art, it is merely laudatory “art,” and not “bad art,” which—again—cannot exist in this usage of the word.
That explains why there are plenty of poor craftspeople whose work is lauded as “art” because they are well-connected (as I have written about before on this blog).
Ultimately, this subjective, linguistic/definitional argument results in the kind of postmodern garbage we see coming out of art studios today. I do not think Brian would agree with the sentiment he points out—he seems to be a diagnostician, not a physician, of this problem—but its existence is certainly real. As such, because lay persons exclusively use the term “art” in a laudatory context, the result is that we do end up with a great deal of bad art, even if definitionally that’s impossible.
It’s an intriguing semantic argument, but like most semantic arguments, it seems like it too easily devolves into postmodern nonsense. Again, I don’t think Brian is advocating for that, but is merely diagnosing the problem.
With that, here is Brian Meredith’s “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Art”:
The state of modern art is not exactly a pressing concern in a nation wracked with attempted assassination attempts and listless, anxious youths. At this point, I suspect most of my readers will realize that modern art is something of a joke played on the rich and gullible to separate them from their money. It’s also an attack on Beauty, one intended to demoralize us.
What I learned shamefully recently is that modern art was also a CIA psy-op. That’s not some wild-eyed conspiracy theory; it’s so well-documented and mainstream, even the BBC wrote about it—in 2016 (see, I’m late to the party)!
I’m actually not opposed to government funding for the arts, but whenever the government gets involved with anything, there is the risk that the government will pervert and distort what the art is supposed to be. One very real risk is that “art” will devolve into propaganda. That’s fine if we’re fighting the Second World War and need to inspire people to fight Hitler and the Japanese; if we’re trying to demoralize our own populace with nastiness, it’s not.
The other, related risk is that the government will fund art that we don’t like, personally or collectively. The government is ostensibly “of the people,” but when everyone allegedly is in charge, no one is. The functionaries responsible for handing out National Endowment for the Arts grants are likely doing so based on qualities of the artist—race, regime-approved ideology, gender, etc.—rather than any actual technical skill. So we end up with patronage not of skilled artists, but well-connected or demographically-approved artists. The results are predictably terrible, and we’re all flummoxed as to why we spent $2 million of taxpayer money on it.
A healthy government that actually cared about its people would fund art that promotes Beauty and Truth. If we had such a government, I’d be all for government funding of the arts. Indeed, we probably do have that at the local and State levels. I personally love that the City of Columbia, South Carolina subsidizes the South Carolina Philharmonic. Many Republicans and/or conservatives would balk at that, but it is a worthwhile investment to keep classical music alive in—let’s face it—the “Sahara of the Bozart,” as H. L. Mencken cruelly (and, I think at the time, unfairly) labeled the South.
I feel like I’m contradicting myself a bit here, so to distract from that—and to get on with the post—here is 27 July 2023’s “TBT^2: Modern Art and Influence“:
During The Age of The Virus I took up painting as a little hobby, and came to enjoy it. Let me emphasize the word “hobby“—I am not a skilled painter, and while I have sold a few of my works (mostly to family members), it’s been an overall money-losing excursion.
I attempted to sell paintings at the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival last October, and managed to unload a single painting. Of course, the little girl who purchased that painting loved it; it was a strange, whale-like creature that she took to be the Loch Ness Monster, and she adored it. It’s one of the few paintings I failed to photograph, so I can’t show it here, but that’s immaterial—it was sweet seeing that little girl’s face light up.
Of course, the brightening of little girl’s faces doesn’t put cornflakes on the table, so I’m officially proclaiming my foray into painting as a possible commercial endeavor a failure. As a hobby, though, it’s something I still enjoy doing, and I’ll do some light sales on the side for anyone interested. Otherwise, I’m not going to push it aggressively as a possible revenue stream.
For those that are interested, I use these little canvasses for my paintings (note—that link is an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a small portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you). Like everything, they’ve gone up in price, but they’re a pretty good deal for small (5″x7″), thin canvasses, and they’re easy to use. There’s also an adorable 3″x5″ variety, which I am excited to try. I like the idea of index card-sized paintings.
With that, here is 23 February 2023’s “TBT: Little Paintings“:
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Last Saturday I attended the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival in Westminster, South Carolina. The festival is in its fourth year, and it was a bustling, fun event—a good model for how small town festivals should be.
There were some hiccups over the summer, with vendor packets (my own included) getting lost in the mail and the festival’s website disappearing for a couple of weeks. The event organizers weren’t responding to e-mails, and I thought for awhile that maybe the whole thing had been shuttered.
Fortunately, that was not the case, and the festival organizers got everything working again. I paid my vendor fee using some Discover Card cashback, and went up to Westminster after school on Friday, 13 October 2023 (spooky!).
My neighbors went up ahead of me, on Thursday, 12 October 2023, and picked up my vendor packet for me during the day Friday. We stayed in adjacent campsites at Chau-Ram County Park, a beautiful park near waterfalls—and just $25 a night!
I made a critical error, however: I should have taken off last Friday. Because I was unable to attend the festival Friday, the vendor organizer put me down a little side street. I was super close to the main strip, but just far enough away that most folks didn’t even realize my tent was there.
Needless to say, it was not a strong sale’s day. Indeed, I only sold one painting, to a sweet little girl who loves the Loch Ness monster. She purchased a painting I’d done of a strange aquatic animal, which she liked because it resembled Nessie.
I shared my vendor spot with the wife my neighbor’s family, and she was selling really cool crochet hats. I figured she’d do a killing, as the hats were really well done, but she did not make a single sale.
In that regard, the festival was a disappointment. As for the festival itself, though, it was an absolute blast.
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Ah, yes, Bandcamp Friday has returned, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book! After a long hiatus over the summer months, this celebration of indie musicians is back.
The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.
In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.
To celebrate, I have a brand new release: Spooky Season! Spooky Season is a collection of seven new compositions with a spooky, autumnal vibe, perfect for pumpkin-spiced living and ghostly vibes. These tracks won’t hit streaming platforms until October, but you can purchase them now via Bandcamp!
Spooky Season is just $5, and includes full scores and individual parts for every track—a $28 value!—plus a bonus track. It’s also crammed with videos, handwritten manuscripts, and other goodies.
Currently, my entire discography of eleven releases is $18.39, a savings of 50%, which is not bad for eleven releases. That’s $1.67 per release—not too shabby! To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.
You can also listen to a ton of my tunes on YouTube (and it’s free to subscribe!).
I’m also selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase. They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.
I’ve also joined Society6, a website that lets artists upload their designs, which can they be printed onto all manner of products (like this throw pillow, or this duvet cover). Why not get a bookbag with a mouthy droid on it?
I only get 10% of the sales made there, but some of the stuff looks really good—I really want these notebooks with my “Desert View” painting on it (now SOLD!). Some of them are straight-up goofy, like this church doodle I made celebrating the presidential pardon of Roger Stone (the description for the piece is “Anger your friends with this doodle commemorating the presidential pardon of America’s most dapper political operative“).
I have a few new paintings in the works, and hope to be attending the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival to try to hawk some of my works. We’ll see how that goes!
My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.
My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.
Finally, after I finish Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book, I’ll be uploading those doodles to Society6 as well. I have high hopes (perhaps naïvely) for this book, but we shall see. The doodles are some of my best work—and in glorious color—and without notebook paper lines!
Thanks again for your support!
Happy Friday!
—TPP
The Portly Politico 