Well, that was a weird year.

January 4, 2025. Day .

Hello, people who’ve subscribed to my computer newsletter. Happy new year! Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.

Of course, no one with sense thinks it will be. But that’s not what I came here to talk about. This is my 2024 Year In Review. So: let’s get to it, shall we?

2024: What Was That All About?

It was a great year for my costly hobby of playing and singing that “rock-and-roll”, a musical genre that became mostly obsolete in the previous century.

The Stacks played more shows than usual, and got paid for it more than usual. We did a lot of traveling. We started the year in Athens, Georgia, playing a New Year’s Eve show with Mercyland and SheHeHe. In December we played in Baton Rouge and faraway Arabi. There were also some locations on St. Claude and St. Bernard Avenues in between.

A Captain of Industry

Oh yes: I invented a fake company, Global Poster, to be the fake manufacturer of my fake split-fountain-background, fake letterpress posters. That wasn’t enough fake stuff for me, so I also made a real website for my fake Mandatory Ten Commandments posters (the real state I live in, Louisiana, elected real fake people to govern, who thought they could pass an absurd, pointless, fake law mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom in the state. (Because they know what God wants.)). Anyway, here are the posters I presented — you can see them full-size at https://global-poster-la.com. Text is straight from the KJV.

I made some art.

I didn’t do as much art as I have in some years past, but I did some. I sold a few medium-to-big paintings, and a half-dozen li’l ‘uns. Those li’l ‘uns were sold at Anthony Del Rosario’s gallery, Nola ‘Nacular, as part of the all-miniature art show, the one gallery show I was part of in 2024.

I still have a lot of work for sale, take a look at thisismyhappening.com and see if you like anything.

I spent a lot of time doodling these "karaoke” pics, which were inspired by me listening to WTIX in the car, and then drawing people singing the funniest lyrics I heard after I got home.

Some people, thoughtful friends actually, have said “these admittedly charming doodles bear no resemblance to the actual practice of kara oke, or “empty orchestra”. To them I say: “You are wrong for that”. Or: “Who cares?”.

If you want one of these booklets but don’t have one, send me an e-mail.

Theatrics

I got to flex my illustration fingers when my friend Rel Farrar became a playwright. She took what has to be regarded as a sorta nutty idea and made it a reality, which is one of the best things a person can do. (At least everything I’m proud of in my life is like that.) She wrote a musical about a bunch of crawfish becoming aware of the need to take action to improve society through unionizing their workplaces and supporting each other. The message was reinforced and made more entertaining through the inclusion of a dozen or so songs by Electric Light Orchestra, with the lyrics changed to be about unionizing your workplace and supporting each other. Out Of The Boil opened September 26 at the New Marigny Theater. I got to illustrate and design all the print collateral associated with the play: posters, handouts, programs, bookmarks, etc.

The play was a trip, by the way, you can watch the whole thing here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7DOOO5JAnk

If you can join a union, please do. I’m proud of Chattanooga’s VW plant workers, who voted to join the UAW. In the South, people are taught that it’s unmanly or cowardly to bargain collectively because they don’t want to you to see the sense in it. They’re also taught the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, so, take the teachings with a grain of salt. It’s nice to see these teachings die off, even though it’s slow. (And obediently doing the bidding of the wealthy class isn’t exactly the bravest thing, either.)

All Creatures Great And Small

It was a tough year for my cat Buddy, but he’s doing great. I had noticed his left eye didn’t shine in the dark like his other eye. I took him the vet and they said “he probably can’t see out of it but he’s fine”, then they did a pressure test, for glaucoma, and said “You need to see a veterinary eye surgeon”. His internal eye pressure was too high, and it had to hurt, so Dr. Paul DaCosta removed his eye on June 27. He’s now fully healed. He can see fine from his remaining eye (I mean, I guess he can; we didn’t do an eye test cause he doesn’t know the alphabet). He seems happier. He moves faster. He purrs. He plays with his toys now, which he rarely did before. He’s 12 in human years, by the way. I thought I should stop playing with toys when I was 11, but that’s when the Star Wars X-Wing fighter toy came out. So I understand. He’s making up for lost time.

Buddy’s buddy, and mine, the next-door neighbor cat, Otter, moved with his people Nick and Kate to the state of Maine. I’m happy for all of them, but we really miss Otter. Otter was the Ernie to Buddy’s Bert. A night or two before they moved, Otter came to my place and spent the night with me. He knew something was up. I miss that cat every day. He lived here as much as Buddy does.

My father, Grady, died on April 3, after “a long illness”, as the papers say. He had Type 2 diabetes, which turned out not to be the biggest deal, because he took good care of himself, but he also had dementia, diagnosed eight years before. It was hard to see. The last time we talked though, he knew who we were. He laughed when we were joking. I wish I understood better what he was thinking and feeling then. He was a great father, and I wish I had taken his advice more. I’m amazed he let me have my way on some things where I now wish I’d just done what he recommended.

He was a really fun person. He was unconcerned with mere appearances: once he had to rent a Roman soldier costume for a play he was in, and he rode home on his bike wearing it. He joined a “barbershop choir” (imagine a barbershop quintet, but multiply it); he really liked it though he complained that it was foolishness to buy a new vest for every performance, as was required. He loved politics, and he ran for the Tennessee 3rd District seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. He came in second to the incumbent. He spent only $1,414 (he didn’t fundraise much because his candidacy was in part a protest against PAC dollars buying influence), $50 of which was his own money. He received 36,855 votes.^1 But I think he was too thoughtful and fair-minded, not really ruthless enough to win an election.

When I was a kid I developed a fear of going outside because I might swallow a fly, because I had read about a lady who swallowed a fly and died from it, I think. He told me a story about when he was a kid and he swallowed a fly (while riding a bike, I think) and it just went down his throat with a gulp and was heard from no more. It was over in a second. No problems. That was reassuring. I was also convinced that Russians were waiting in my sister’s room at the top of the stairs, and they might snatch me as I raced past the door, to my own room. This time he appealed to logic and truth, and got me to consider that Russia was more than a thousand miles away, and, even if Russians were in America, they would probably choose Washington, not Bev’s room, as a target, though Bev’s room had a door leading to an outside balcony, which made it seem like a good place to attack, to me. I saw the logic in his framing of the issue. I think I learned a lot from it.

That was 2024, then. Actually, there was a lot more: I had a terrific job (still do), I traveled to Chattanooga twice and Pensacola once (where Trey Ledford and I continued our tradition of improvising really funny songs to rapt audiences, but not recording them), and I weigh the same now as I did when the year began, but I have less hair. I voted when they asked me to, continuing my long streak of never having my vote matter much, thanks to geography and the insanity of the Electoral College and now Citizen’s United; I survived the stupid, accursèd American health insurance system, though I, like every other American, gave healthcare-denying CEOs more of my money than they deserved (that would be none). I saw Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at Tulane, and Echo and The Bunnymen at the Joy Theater. I went to a Pelicans (pro basketball) game, my first. They lost, and I caught COVID, but the halftime entertainment was a silent lady on a tall unicycle tossing bowls onto her head with her foot like you might have seen on Ed Sullivan.

I got a new (old) car, and right after that there was a solar eclipse.

That’s most of it. I’m sure I forgot many things. Oh — I took for granted that the most undeserving, malignant, hated man in America would not be elected to the presidency, and I still don’t believe the votes were counted correctly. There’s just no way. That guy? No. They had to have access to the software. Pardon me; I had to say it. You can think what you want, too.

But despite that glitch, I hope you had a good year, and the next one will be better. I resolve to draw more, to learn more about 3D sculpting (with a computer, but I bought some plasticine clay too), and to try to make more things in general. I want to fill my yard with stuff. Make it hard to mow.

With Best Wishes for 2025,

Restaurants I loved, 2024

Plume
Margot’s
Queen Trini Lisa
Osteria Lupo

Movies I loved in 2024 (with year of release):

Anora (2024)
Winstanley (filmed in 1969, released in 1975)
Starlet (2012)
Red Rocket (2020)

Note: three of those are directed by Sean Baker.
I made a list of all 114 movies I saw in 2024, but it’s too long to put here. Send me an email if you want to see the list and/or discuss it. I’ll tell you about the worst movie I saw.

Books
I didn’t keep track. Next year.

Music I listened to a lot:

The Lemon Twigs, A Dream Is All We Know (2024)
ELÖ, Time (1981) (also Discovery and Secret Messages)
Blue Öyster Cult, Cultösaurus Erectus (1980)
Tyrone Davis (“Can I Change My Mind”), Little Milton, Lou Rawls, Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Band (mostly “Make Love, Not War” and “Love Land”), things of that nature.
WFMU radio (The Station Of The Nation, The Fun 91), especially on Mondays and Saturdays.
Mercyland, We Never Lost A Single Game (2022)
My new band, which will be playing a show in 2025, promise.

Bands I saw the most:

Luxurious Faux Furs (three or four times)
Mercyland (three)
Happy Talk Band (two to four)
Sunrise:Sunset (two? at least two)
SheHeHe (two)
plus Chef Menteur, Redondo Beat, Norco Lapalco, Echo and The Bunnymen, Bob Mould, probably others

Set list from me and Trey’s house gig in Pensacola[^2]

Onions
Holes *
Eyebrows *
Snails *
Artificial Watermelon Flavor *
Splittin’ The Check *
Baby Come Back
Shake Out The Pick *
I’m Bugged At My Old Man

[^2]: Titles with an asterisk were composed and played and sung on the spot based on audience suggestions and requests. They were not recorded and were promptly lost to time and forgetfulness. The others are songs we actually kinda know.

notes Buddy Pop Grady Rhoden The Stacks Checkpoint Charlie Global Poster Nola Nacular karaoke zines Pensacola Trey Ledford fear (the concept) stories New Orleans Pelicans