Tag: YouTube Roundup

Phone it in Friday XCIX: YouTube Roundup LCIX: Okra!

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Yours portly has been making some adjustments to his diet lately.  With the wedding coming up, I want to lose a few pounds so I’m not quite so chunky in all those wedding photos.  I also want to feel better and to improve my health overall.

To that end, I’ve been doing a lot more cooking at home.  It being summertime in South Carolina, my local Piggly Wiggly has tons of delicious, mostly-local produce available, so I’ve been eating copious amounts of veggies and fruits.

A local farmer is supplying fresh okra to the store, and it is very tasty.  Okra grows in long pods full of tiny (and easily edible) seeds.  It can be fried, roasted, pickled, etc.; all of these methods result in deliciousness.

Okra, for the uninitiated, is often served fried in the South, and fried okra is a favorite Southern side dish.  When prepared as such, it’s chopped into little medallions or coins; breaded; then dropped into hot oil.

As I’m looking for something healthier and easier, I’ve opted to roast my okra.  I looked up a simple recipe online and got to it (Robin would be proud)!

The recipe is super simple:

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit
  2. Coat a baking pan with some oil
  3. Arrange your okra on the pan, and season to taste (I do a spritz of oil spray across them, then do a little salt and pepper, and sometimes oregano and a little garlic powder)
  4. Put in oven for about 7.5 minutes
  5. Remove from oven and toss okra for more even browning
  6. Return to oven for another 7.5 minutes; remove and serve hot

One pound of okra is anywhere from 120-140ish calories (the Internet has different estimates), so you can eat a lot of okra.  One night this past week, I served fried eggs and tomatoes over a bed of okra (about 0.7 pounds of okra), along with some cheese and meat, and the entire dinner was roughly 450 calories for a massive plate:

Obviously, you could serve two or three people an ample portion of okra as a side with this same recipe, and often I’ll split it into two servings.  But it’s been a great food for the summer and for weight loss, and it’s easy to prepare and very filling.

I made a short YouTube video the first time I roasted okra, which I’d like to share today:

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Phone it in Friday XCVII: YouTube Roundup LCVII: Roll Trilogy

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Over the course of the last two years I’ve composed a ton of music.  I treat composing the way the Native Americans treated the mighty bison:  I don’t waste anything.  That means I probably release a lot of “filler” tunes, but I find that pieces I think of as throwaways compositions are sometimes the most popular.

I do not know if the pieces shared today fall into that category.  But for whatever reason, I like writing pieces with “Roll” in title.  These are always based, in part, on food.

The first of these was “Orange Roll,” an odd little piece in 5/4 time.  The “Orange” comes from the fact I used an orange pen to compose it; the “Roll” came from the rolling feel of the melody.

Later, I wrote “Tomato Roll,” a clarinet duet in 5/8 time.  I wrote the piece mainly because I spent way too much time drawing a detailed tomato in MS Paint as a way to illustrate a concept to my Economics students during a couple of days of online learning.

Finally, I recently composed “Crunchy Roll,” which is a bass guitar in 3/4 and 4/4, but with lots of odd timing.

But enough of my yakkin’—let’s boogie!

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Phone it in Friday XCVI: YouTube Roundup LCVI: Mass Transit

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Somehow, some of my most popular content on YouTube has been very short videos of public transportation.  No, they aren’t people behaving badly on mass transit; they’re literally just videos of various modes of transport.

Perhaps I’ve tapped into some strange niche.  Or maybe the algorithm just liked that I was posting videos from more populous regions during my recent trip to Indianapolis.

Regardless, here are some trains and planes (no automobiles, sorry) for your enjoyment:

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Phone it in Friday XCV: YouTube Roundup LCV: Brass to the Future Plays “The Stars and Stripes Forever”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Fifteen years ago today, on 4 July 2010, my old brass band, Brass to the Future, played an outdoor concert in a park in my hometown of Aiken, South Carolina.  It was a bit of a “guerrilla” concert, in that we did not ask permission, but just showed up in the park and started playing for our fans.

In the spirit of Independence Day, I’m featuring rare footage from that concert today.

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Phone it in Friday XCIV: YouTube Roundup LCIV: Ewok Summer Trilogy

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I’ve been experimenting a bit with stop motion animation—and I use that term quite loosely—with some of my LEGO figurines.  On a whim, I filmed a little Ewok minifigure proclaiming it’s “Ewok Summer,” and from there I experimented with a couple of other YouTube shorts.

I edited all of these “in-camera,” meaning that I just clicked “pause” on my iPhone’s camera mid-recording and hit “record” again.  The last of the three was the most involved, in which I tried to click “pause” and “record” in a rhythm.  You can tell when I lingered on a shot a bit longer than intended, but for a hyper-amateurish effort, I like how the third one materialized.

Finally, the music in the second and third videos is a track called “Hey Sailor”; it’s a royalty-free YouTube track.  I haven’t figured out yet how to put my music into these videos, but eventually I will and I’ll do so.

Now, on with the Ewok Summer Trilogy!

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Phone it in Friday XCII: YouTube Roundup LCII: Murphy vs. Steps

The Portly Politico6 Comments

My old bull terrier, Murphy, turns twelve this Sunday, 15 June 2025.  I adopted Murphy when she was eight, so we’ve been together for nearly four years.

After a bit of a hiatus, I have some fun new Murphy videos.  She is doing very well for her age, but the old girl is slowing down a bit.  She can handle stairs fine, but sometimes she has to do them at her pace.

So, settle in for a couple of videos of Murphy in her battle against steps (and canine aging):

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