TBT: One Week [and One Year] Under the Usurper

27 January 202223 January 2022 The Portly Politico9 Comments

Well, it’s been one year and one week since Biden the Usurper seized the throne and assumed his reign of the federal government. Of course, he’s a senile puppet—or maybe he’s playing at senility—and rubber stamps whatever the progressives want.

I’ve really disengaged from national politics over the last year, as I find much of the wrangling fruitless. I personally advocate for radical decentralization and focusing our energy and attention at the lowest levels of government to bring about change. If economics functions on a “trickle-down” basis, politics “trickles-up”—(re)gain control of the mechanisms of power and the institutions locally, and you’re going to change—albeit slowly—the greater heights.

That said, even I am not ignorant to the state of the country. Workers are quitting their menial jobs in droves—or not returning to them after being furloughed—as they can enjoy excessively generous unemployment benefits. Prices are through the roof on everything, especially food. Farmers are facing higher prices for the inputs for fertilizer, which means food is just going to get more expensive. The supply chains are totally disrupted. And we’re wringing our hands over The Virus, which has gotten milder over time, and was never all that deadly anyway.

Police officers are arresting nine-year olds in New York City for not having vaccine passports. Masks—which don’t work at all—are a sign of the pious—the New Elect—and increase carbon dioxide levels. Companies are forcing employees to get The Vaccine, which isn’t even a vaccine in the traditional sense, but an experimental gene therapy that appears to increase dramatically the incidences of myocarditis in even the healthiest individuals—including professional athletes, who are dropping like flies.

Americans might have lost their spirit of ornery rebellion, but if their kids are getting arrested and/or discriminated against and they can’t buy stuff they want at low prices, they’ll make a fuss. They already are. The Biden Administration might not bear the responsibility for everything that is happening, but they’ve done precious little to ameliorate—and much to exacerbate—our current situation.

That’s why now more than ever, we’ve got to get serious about fixing things where we are. Grow your own food, stack cash (even if inflation eats into it), and learn to live lean.

With that, here is 27 January 2021’s “One Week Under the Usurper“:

Son of Sonnet: “The Gemini Sonnets #6”

26 January 20226 January 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today marks the sixth entry in The Gemini Sonnets, an original sonnet cycle by Son of Sonnet. I’m not sure how many more are in this sequence, but I’m think SoS should publish a chapbook!

Your generous subscriptions to my SubscribeStar page have made it possible to patronize Son’s work. As a community of artists, readers, and pundits, we should work together as much as possible to cultivate and support one another’s talents. I can’t pay Son much—yet—but I’m able to offer him something for his talents because of your generosity.

Every artist as dedicated to his craft as Son deserves both recognition and support. I would encourage you to consider a subscription to Son of Sonnet’s SubscribeStar page as a way to encourage the growth and development of an eloquent voice on our side of this long culture war. Conservatives often complain about not holding any ground culturally; now is the time to support the culture that is being created.

You can read Son of Sonnet’s poetry on his Telegram channel, on Gab, and on Minds.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Nobody (2021)

24 January 202223 January 2022 The Portly Politico10 Comments

I’ve been watching a lot of crappy movies lately, especially with the snowy weather we had in South Carolina this weekend, but each one has been more forgettable than the last. Regular reader Ponty asked me to write a review of a really bad movie, but that requires a movie to be bad and memorable. Most of the dreck I’ve watched lately has been bad and boring. The vast majority of bad films—indeed, probably the vast majority of films, period—fall into this category.

My aunt, also a regular reader and subscriber has asked me to review 2021’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. I plan on doing that soon, but I have to track down the film first. It looks like it’s on Prime Video, so I’ll have to see if there are some credentials I can borrow to watch it (or I’ll just break down and get an Amazon Prime membership).

So I was in a bit of a bind going into Sunday, with no film rising to the level of reviewable (or, I should say, with the inability to remember any details of any films I’ve watched recently). Then my younger brother mentioned that he and his wife were going to watch Nobody (2021) Saturday after their kids went to bed, and I remembered that I’d purchased the DVD from RedBox months ago, and had been meaning to watch it ever since.

Nobody was a film I wanted to see in theaters. The premise—an everyday working stiff finally cracks and takes action against bad guys—is one I’ve always enjoyed in movies (probably as a form of wish-fulfillment), and Bob Odenkirk is a comedy legend. Comedy, action, the little guy throwing punches? That’s my kind of flick.

Lazy Sunday CXLIX: The Gemini Sonnets #3 and #4

23 January 202221 January 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’m continuing the retrospective of Son of Sonnet‘s entries in the ongoing The Gemini Sonnets series. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s “ongoing”—he may end it at the sixth one (debuting this Wednesday), or he might keep it going. He’s a poetic enigma, a mystery man cloaked in romanticism, so who knows?

What I do know is that he’s written some good poems. Here are two of them:

“Son of Sonnet: ‘The Gemini Sonnets #3’” – This poem seems to deal with a toxic or codependent relationship, in which one party has a “hold… upon my throat,” that of the narrator’s, ending with a vow to “stop at nothing ’til this war is won.”
“Son of Sonnet: ‘The Gemini Sonnets #4’” – It appears that this poem is a response to the narrator or #3 (now I’m thinking I should go back to #1 and #2!). The respondent blames the narrator from #3 for his choking—“A swollen tongue’s the thing that chokes your throat”—rather than the respondent. Is the narrator in #3 rejecting God? Is God the narrator of #4? Read it and let me know what you think.

You can read Son of Sonnet’s poetry on his Telegram channel, on Gab, and on Minds.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: By the Light of the Laptop Screen

22 January 202221 January 2022 The Portly Politico4 Comments

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.

Rest in Peace to Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, who passed away Friday at the age of 74. I’ll be writing a full obituary about Loaf next week, but I wanted to take a moment to remember his legacy here. Few musicians have had a greater impact on my vocal and composition than Meat Loaf and his frequent collaborator, songwriter Jim Steinman. In a series about songwriting, it seemed fitting to acknowledge his influence. Indeed, today’s song, “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” owes much to the rock ‘n’ roll-meets-Broadway style of Loaf/Steinman.

Today marks the third installment of the six-part Behind the Songs miniseries for SubscribeStar Saturday. In this series, I’m going to reveal the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP. I’ll go track-by-track, in order, detailing the inspirations behind these songs.

This week’s tune, “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” is something of a companion to “Hipster Girl Next Door.” The two songs are part of what I call my “two-part coffee shop trilogy” (I wrote another song, “Sweet Little Ukulele Player,” that was something of a third part, but I seldom play it, and I don’t think it rises to the level of the other two tunes).

Like “Hipster Girl Next Door” and “Greek Fair,” “By the Light of the Laptop Screen” has becoming something of a fan favorite. A graduating senior used it (to my delight and, given the lyrics, my chagrin) to accompany his graduation slideshow—while receiving his high school diploma!

There’s also been rich speculation about who this song is about. Today, I reveal all.

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

Supporting Friends Friday: Andrea the Illustrator

21 January 202217 January 2022 The Portly Politico9 Comments

As I’ve surely mentioned elsewhere, one of the joys of blogging is the opportunity to discover the work of other bloggers. There are a lot of blogs out there, and in the few years I’ve been writing daily, I’ve been fortunate to stumble upon some real gems.

One particularly adorable gem is children’s book illustrator and writer Andrea Benko‘s blog, Andrea, Children’s Book Illustrator. She very smartly obtained the URL “edoodless.wordpress.com” (yes, there is a second “S” in the URL; some scoundrel took “edoodles.wordpress.com” and is doing nothing with it), and that’s what she does: doodles.

TBT^2: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony

20 January 202215 January 2022 The Portly Politico4 Comments

One of the many benefits of teaching music is (re)discovering beloved favorite works. During last week’s round of distance learning, I had to pull out some of the classics. If we’re going to sit on a Google Meet call, let’s listen to some music, not just talk about it.

I really love programmatic music—instrumental music that tells a story, often accompanied by program notes explaining (usually very briefly) what the listener is supposed to hear in the musical “story.” Students often like to imagine their own stories when listening to instrumental music, which is great, but I find that programmatic works give students (and myself!) some guideposts to follow.

Fortunately, Ludwig von Beethoven provided some handy ones for us in his Sixth Symphony, quite possibly my favorite symphony, and certainly my favorite of Beethoven’s. It’s the so-called “Pastoral” symphony, as it depicts a pleasant trip to the country (besides the roiling thunderstorm in the fourth movement).

It’s also unusual in two respects: instead of the standard four movements of the classical symphony (a fast opening movement, a slow second movement, a dancelike third movement, and a fast fourth movement), Beethoven includes five; and the third, fourth, and fifth movements all flow seamlessly into one another, without the customary pause between each.

It is also long, especially by the standards of the classical symphony (the Romantics, however, would have easily matched Beethoven for runtime), clocking in at nearly forty-five minutes (the typical classical symphony averages around twenty-five-to-thirty minutes, but forty-five would have been the upper limit for the time). But that length is in service to Beethoven’s vision, and he fully explores every theme in this symphony.

Here is a particularly excellent performance—the one I showed, in part, to my classes last week—by the Berlin Philharmonic, under the direction of Bernard Haitnik:

With that, here is 4 February 2021’s “TBT: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony“:

Midweek Mad Scientist Movie Madness II: Metropolis (1927)

19 January 202217 January 2022 The Portly Politico8 Comments

Since the first installment of Midweek Mad Scientist Movie Madness two weeks ago, I’ve watched several more films from Mad Scientist Theatre, a collection of mostly bad, mostly public domain films. As with any such collection, the appeal is in the handful of renowned classics, and some of the hidden gems.

The first three flicks on the very first disc are all silent movie classics. I’ve already reviewed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which both debuted in 1920. I appreciated and enjoyed both films for different reasons, and both were very well done, although quite different, films.

The third film is 1927’s Metropolis, perhaps the greatest silent film of all time. I took a modern German history course in college, and we were supposed to attend a screening of Metropolis for class. For some reason, I did not attend, which was very out of character for me (I only missed class twice in college: a session of Human Geography because my saxophone sextet had its recital that morning, and a rehearsal of the University Band so I could play The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion the night it was released). I guess we were never tested on it, but when I found out there was a robot woman, I was kicking myself for missing the flick.

Now, some twenty years later, I’ve finally watched this classic of Weimar Germany’s wild cinematic scene. I wish I’d gone to see it in college!

As with Jekyll and Caligari, you can watch Metropolis for free on YouTube (although, apparently, the film won’t be back in the public domain in the United States until the end of this year):

As you can see, it is a long film—depending on which cut you see. Apparently, there are dozens of different cuts and restorations, and no one knows for certain which is the “definitive” version. One of my readers asked me which cut I saw, and I have no earthly idea (sorry, cinephiles). It’s whatever version Mill Creek Entertainment decided to put on this collection. I do know the film felt long in parts—although I was glued to the screen for most of it—but it didn’t feel like it was two-and-a-half hours long.

What I can say is that Metropolis is worth seeing, not only because it is an important film in the history of cinema (and the height of German Expressionism), but because it is a good movie with an important message: the head and the hands must work together through the heart.

Getting Medieval… with LEGO

18 January 202216 January 2022 The Portly Politico7 Comments

This weekend I embarked on the ultimate in childlike self-indulgence and built the largest, most detailed LEGO set I’ve ever encountered: The Medieval Blacksmith (#21325) set. This bad boy is part of the LEGO Ideas series, which allows LEGO fans to submit ideas for sets. If the set gets 10,000 votes, LEGO reviews the build and, if they like it, they turn it into an official LEGO set.

These are premiere sets, and are often quite expensive. I managed to pick it up on sale at Target and had a gift card, so against my better judgment, I treated myself to Medieval Blacksmith for the princely sum of roughly $145.

Readers must understand: that kind of splurge is very out of character for me. But sometimes a deal is too good to pass up, and I’ve been drooling over this set ever since it was announced some months ago on LEGO’s website.

I’d say I got my money’s worth with this one. Around 2 PM Saturday I set to work on the behemoth, taking breaks of varying lengths for meals and to walk Murphy. I stopped building around 12:15 AM Sunday morning, just before the first bits of icy sleet began to fall from the winter storm (which I dubbed “Winter Storm Randy”). I resumed building Sunday morning around 10 AM and wrapped up before noon.

In total, I’d say I spent a solid eight hours of actual construction time (that includes probably half-an-hour looking for a single missing piece on my hands and knees, which at the time of writing I still have not found). Normally I’d never have the time for such an endeavor, especially in one stretch, but with a gloriously open weekend and the Korean series Squid Game, I set about building the blacksmith’s shop and home—all 2164 pieces of it.