Isaac and the Awkward Situations

here is a lissajous curve wave generator I made with Claude.ai

Here’s a dump of photos from the month of October!

Some very corny Halloween “poems.” They are acronyms.

These are so dumb.

Of course, they were started with these:

I had students make “ghosts in a jar” and decorate miniature bottles of poison.

Some students painted ghosts on old photos too

Photo by Sirk.

A few more bands in October 2024

Charming Disaster is from Brooklyn and put together a pleasant stage show, with a narrative journey, sound effects and cabaret folk songs about witchy things, spells, and haunted forests. There is some clever wordplay in their narrative songs.

Here’s a second illustration, a bit less exaggerated. Recommended if you like the Dresden Dolls, Marian Call, the Decemberists, the tiger lilies.

Jeffrey Lewis is an artist I have had the pleasure to see many times. This year he was touring with a band called Grasping Straws, who were his backing band. They aren’t very similar to his style, they are very psych rock, reminded me a bit of Forget Cassettes. Very Cool that Mallory added some violin to his songs in addition to vocals and keyboards. He played many old favorite songs.

My Brightest Diamond has a beautiful haunting voice. She’s collaborated with many of my favorite artists. Tim Fite, the Decemberists, and she’s on Broadway doing songs with Sufjan Steven’s Broadway show! She played a great set, solo, backed up sometimes by a backing track, but included some props and costume changes. Many of the songs had samples of Sinead O’Connor speaking, I don’t think she played any covers of her, but the whole show seemed to be a tribute to her. She explained how devastated she was to hear that Sinead passed away. I would love to see her play again with a full band. I think she played her guitar with a chord tuning because she seemed to just bang it sometimes and it always sounded great. She sang an honest sad song about how you shouldn’t date an artist, shouldn’t date your manager, shouldn’t date the muscian in your band, shouldn’t date a poet, etc, there seemed to be a reason why you shouldn’t date anybody!

I thought I’d make available my presentation I gave for “Big Read” which was sponsored by Mecca, The Shelton McMurphy House, Books with Pictures and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Shelton McMurphy House gave away 500 copies of “Can’t we Talk About Something More Pleasant” by Rez Chast, a brutally honest and humorous book about aging and dying. Perhaps to get us all thinking and talking about death and difficult emotions through laughter and comics. I’m so glad I was involved.

The pictures here are of comic Artist Lynda Barry who is a big inspiration to me. I had the thought, why not also film myself giving my slideshow/lectures that I make for my high school students. They are interesting and just as good as other YouTubers I watch. So here for your enjoyment and edification is “Super Team.” More are on their way, ok? It seems my head is VERY small and cut off for most of this presentation, oh well.

Here is one on Jazz music and how it can inspire us.

two fabulous new music videos to enjoy, both from my one man show “confirmation bias makes me happy!’