SOUNDTRACK: THE POP UPS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #13 (April 23, 2020).
When my kids were little I tried pretty hard to introduce them to interesting children’s music. I often wonder if I ruined them by not just letting them enjoy Raffi. Because they don’t like much of what I listen to these days.
I’m not sure how long The Pop Ups have been making music, but this is sure a fun (and informative) children’s band.
The Pop Ups (Jason Rabinowitz (on the keytar) and Jacob Stein) sing the theme song to the wonderful NPR podcast Wow In The World and perform at Wow in the World live shows. In their Tiny Desk (home) concert, they save the earth from an asteroid, explain sound waves through a sing-a-long and a keytar, and encourage us all to invent and create.
Before the first song Jason introduces the greatest instrument in the world. The guitarino? No, the keytar. Then he talks about the kind of sound waves a synthesizer can produce: a square wave, a sine wave and sawtooth wave. “Synthesizer” is a song about making these sound waves–and you are encouraged to dance around and make those waves yourself.
Then Jacob wants to see if we can stump Jason with sounds the keytar can’t make: saxophone, whistle, marimba, organ? Nope, it can do them all.
The next song, “Meteor” introduces a puppet, Doctor Bronc the Brontosaurus. Dr. Bronc saw a meteor in the sky so he created a laser to shoot at the meteor. If everyone turned off their lights for one day, it would save enough energy to power the laser. The moral: “You can save the world when everybody tries!”
The final song “Inventors” introduces us to a woman I have never heard of. Mary Anderson in Alabama saw that snow was piling up on the street cars. She figured there was something that could clean off the snow and so she spent much of her time coming up with windshield wipers. Which we still use today!
Young inventors will help solve the problems that our generation made for you.
It’s sure inspirational, and a useful piece of history.
[READ: April 26, 2020] “Little Donald’s Sneeze”
I love any cartoon that is going to mock trump. It’s especially excellent if you can use his own words against him (which isn’t hard because he never stops saying stupid things.
I particularly enjoyed this cartoon because of its old-fashioned look. Since I can’t find the original cartoon this is based on (or maybe it’s just based on the general style of Winsor McCay’s strip), I can’t tell if Kuper did all of the art himself or if he judiciously used the original panels.
I also don’t know what’s at the header originally, but this one pretty succinctly describes the man who is killing people with his deceit.
The header of this cartoon lays it out clearly: He just simply couldn’t stop lying / He never told the truth!
Why is it that cartoonist knows this but news reporters can’t seem to catch on and actually believe him when he says things? (more…)
I Just Read About That... 