Mugo or Scots would look pretty good with the slender trunk if you don’t want to go JBP. Good luck!
By "something that has shorter needles", what I really meant was something that has shorter needles
than a Ponderosa does. So, JBP, mugo, Scots, JWP are all options that are on the table. The guy who's going to be teaching me is supplying the scion material, so I'm really not sure exactly what foliage we're going to put on it. But, I'm confident that, whatever it is, it will achieve my goal of being shorter than the needles of a Ponderosa!