For the lovers of the strange, unusual and bizarre, The Oddities & Curiosities Expo showcases taxidermy, preserved specimens, original artwork, horror-inspired pieces, antiques, handcrafted oddities, quack medical devices, creepy clothing, odd jewelry, funeral collectibles and much more.

Husband and wife Michelle and Tony Cozzaglio have been organizing “different” events in their hometown of Tulsa, Okla. since 2014, as well as collecting art and unusual items for personal use. That is what sparked the idea of starting the Expo and giving fellow lovers of the macabre a place to indulge.

“As small business owners ourselves, we love supporting other small businesses and independent artists,” Michelle said. “I remember thinking ‘It would be so cool to have an event focusing just on dark art and strange items!’ I could have never dreamed it would transform into what it has today.”

While they had experience organizing events that offered a more offbeat style, this was entirely new territory. They found it challenging to get their name out there as a hard-working, trusted expo that could draw both vendors and attendees, but thankfully found several venues and vendors that took a chance on them.

These days, thousands of applications are received for the Expo, which travels around the country every year. Michelle personally reviews each application in order to curate the best possible show for each location.

“Since 2017, I think we have really grown something special,” she said. “It’s a place where vendors who don’t fit in anywhere else can thrive.”

Not only is it a place for vendors to thrive, it is also a place for attendees to be in a safe space. Each event is a place where anyone can find their new favorite artist or dealer without judgment.

“Tony and I have worked really hard to provide this experience and [after] almost every show we get messages from attendees thanking us for providing a place that they felt ‘with their people’ and at home,” Michelle said. “It makes me emotional! That's the most important thing to me.”

While The Oddities & Curiosities Expo isn’t for everyone, Michelle encourages anybody to come check it out and give it a chance. There is something unusual for everyone to enjoy, whether they think they enjoy it or not.

View upcoming shows for The Oddities & Curiosities Expo here.

If you’ve ever been through grief, perhaps you can agree it’s a whole mess. I joined the grief club, not by choice, in fall of 2019 when my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Waking up to this reality felt like falling on concrete pretty much every day, too real to shake the funk where it put me. Along with my family, emotions were heightened as we experienced some of our highest highs and lowest lows, never wanting to miss any moments of opportunity to create memories together.

Call me an optimist, but there’s been hope throughout my grief journey that I’ve only come to know by actually going through it.

As soon as I realized loss was inevitable, I sought help from a grief counselor to help me navigate it. Before long, I came to understand the five phases closely aligned with grief, both through research and through personal experience. But what I realized in the course of “facing it” was how unboxable it all is. Unable to contain it to an hour-long therapy session, I’ve also realized I’m unable to label it with five stages and be set. For me, grief has brought up countless emotions. And that’s perfectly okay and even normal.

My debut EP, boxes, was inspired by the mess of boxes I inherited from my late mother upon her passing in March 2020. While it is a reminder of my loss, it is also a glimmer of the life she lived and how I’ve been blessed by it. Each box is filled with gems of every kind; photo albums, holiday decor, china sets and her gardening tools. I’ve found myself overwhelmed by all of it at times, but have come to know it as a gift to be unwrapped every time I “face it”. Loss, not unlike boxes in an attic, can bring life with it too, if we let it.

With time, I’ve wondered how to answer this question about grief: “What does healing look like?” And for me, it has so many answers. One of them, though, has been “reflection”. With a song for every [messy] stage of grief, below is a glimpse of how I’ve been healing.

Photo courtesy of Diana Ragland

On March 17, 2009, Diandra Lyle booked her first official acting job in a commercial for McDonald’s. They shot it right along the Chicago River, which had recently been dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. Just six months prior, the idea of acting professionally was nothing but a distant dream.

Lyle moved to Chicago in 2007, where she was working as a recreational therapist for a psychiatric hospital in suburban Forest Park. It was there that she was told about Second City, Chicago’s comedy club and improvisation school. She enrolled in their year-long improv program and finished just as the 2008 recession hit. That September she was laid off from the hospital.

“The acting thing was sitting in the back of my soul for some years but I hadn't really acted on it,” she said. “When I got laid off, that's when I made the decision to pursue acting full-time because I would have the flexibility.”

It was a high-risk decision for the single mother, who went from working 9-5 Monday through Friday and taking improv classes on Sunday to making the move to Los Angeles and finding stand-in work whenever possible. Fortunately, within a few years she was able to find a manager and agent and watch everything slowly fall into place.

“It's a lot of continuing to put forth the work; investing in yourself, betting on yourself, having faith that it will happen,” Lyle said. “I truly believe what's for you is for you and that's honestly my saving grace in this business.”

She knew that the entertainment industry wasn’t for the faint of heart, so she made sure to take the good and the bad that comes with being an actor. There can be years where they see nothing but success or years where work is few and far between. They are still putting forth the work, but sometimes there isn’t anything to show for it.

Just before booking her latest role as Jess Dunn on Secrets of Sulphur Springs, she was at the point in her career where she wasn’t having fun anymore. She knew she had to acknowledge it, and had made peace with her decision to step away temporarily when she was asked to audition.

Once she booked the role and found herself on set for the first time, she realized that the character was eerily similar to herself. She takes pride in showcasing a successful, single mother who is also a woman of color and a real, relatable person.

With all her hard work that she put into pursuing acting, she also recognizes that it came at a sacrifice. Her daughter, now 19, grew up with a mother who at 30 years old decided to pivot from a profession with a relatively steady income to one that had no guarantee. These sacrifices directly affected her daughter, especially when she spent two years of her childhood living with her father while Lyle got her feet on the ground in Los Angeles.

“I had to invest a lot of my time into learning the craft and taking classes and studying lines, and sometimes that would take away from my time with her,” she said. “I would not have been able to make it this far if it weren't for her resiliency and her strength because she's just been a soldier. She just trucked through it [and] never complained… I hope [and] I pray that it planted some amazing seeds into her to know that there are very few things that we cannot do in this life.”

Canadian R&B singer Myles Lloyd uses his vocal presence to create vulnerable, honest music that gives the listener a personal look into his human condition. That vocal presence is heavily felt in his sophomore album, Forever, Yours.

The eight-track release follows his 2019 album, Goodbye, which took a different approach of alienating the past and finally getting the strength to move forward.

“But how realistic is it to leave everything in the past and never think about it again?” Lloyd said. “To never wonder how life would be with a do-over? So many scenarios and thoughts can play in your head and it’s normal.”

This time around, Lloyd focuses on the real life events of physically leaving someone yet remaining emotionally attached to them. Each track bubbles in emotion that stems from love, sexual desire and the risqué parts of relationships.

“Forever, Yours is about how you can say goodbye but the memories, emotions, experiences and feelings will always be with me,” he said. “Some might think this goes into the toxic relationship realm but I just think it's real life. Some people go and stay away and some people you just can’t fully let go so you keep going back and forth to recapture that feeling."

The album opens with “Better With You”, a track just under a minute and a half. That minute and a half is all it takes for Lloyd to admit that he was wrong and is a better person when he is with them. That theme is also prevalent in “Running On You”, while tracks “Distraction” and “Monster” admit that he wasn’t always bringing out the other person’s best qualities.

The album title is a nod to Michael Jackson’s 1975 album, Forever, Michael, which was a staple in Lloyd’s childhood. The album is still one of his inspirations when it comes to making music, with its mix of soul sounds and funk elements.

According to their website, indie band Mercury and the Architects makes conscious mass appeal music. Music for free thinkers, for world changers, for life lovers, for truth seekers…

The band began with a message of staying true to one’s self. It is a message that encourages them to create authentic, unique music that makes them both new and risky yet timeless. It is a message that keeps the band going today.

“As humans in an ever-evolving world, we are always evolving as well,” TJ Ferranola said. “Honestly, sometimes to stay true to yourself, you have to make mistakes. With trial and error comes wisdom. It helps to have a great team and great writing partners. My sister Rae has been in the band since we started and my best friend LYNZI and I have been writing together for a few years now, and because of our bond and shared beliefs, it's easier to ensure that the message of our music stays true to the M&A culture we are building.”

By making sure this message is actively present in their music, it gives them the challenge to continue writing songs that are distinctively different.

“You gotta be willing to go where you’ve never been before but you also gotta stay true to who you are when you get there,” Ferranola said. “Something we like to say is ‘write the same song a hundred different ways.’ Same message, but different story/perspective/experience every time.”

Their latest single, “I Don’t Fit In”, comes from being told one has to be a certain way or think a certain way in order to be accepted or successful. It reminds listeners to speak up for themselves and remember how important it is to question everything.

Ferranola admits that there have been too many times in his career where he didn’t speak up for himself when he should have, but that he is a stronger person now because of it.

“Making mistakes has been the best road to wisdom,” he said. “It's been kind of beautiful to see how much we have grown not only as songwriters, but as people through our experiences in the music industry. It's scary to stand up for yourself sometimes, but what's scarier is looking back and realizing that you should have. That's what motivates us moving forward.”

In today’s music industry, there are still obstacles when it comes to censorship or conformity. For Mercury and the Architects, it is an obstacle that they tackle in each of their songs, proving themselves as iron-willed artists dedicated to pushing any and all necessary boundaries.

“Not only is it a challenge to be heard in a noisy world, but it's also a challenge to feel like the only way to be successful is to gain acceptance in a very polarized society,” Ferranola said. “We believe in the power of free speech, but the platforms that are available are not always the most trustworthy or supportive - depending on what you have to say or who you are in general. We look forward to the day where art truly becomes art again. Renaissance will come when the artist no longer fears social punishment and just creates for the sake of creation. The world looks dark right now because everything seems so political. Luckily it's always darkest before dawn.”

Photo courtesy of Chicago Humanities Festival/DT Kindler

The Chicago Humanities Festival started as a single day celebration of the humanities and quickly became a year-round festival of arts and ideas. They present more than 100 annual events in venues across the Chicagoland area, including a recent event to support the release of actor, comedian, writer, director and producer Bob Odenkirk’s memoir, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama.

“CHF is first and foremost a Chicago institution,” Chicago Humanities Festival Executive Director Phillip Bahar said. “Our programming often brings leading artists, authors and thinkers to Chicago. But, we’re also very much committed to highlighting the incredible voices that come from Chicago and celebrating our city’s home-grown talent and creativity. Bob Odenkirk began here in Chicago, from the stages of Second City to so many other comedy clubs. Bringing him home to celebrate his career and the city’s legacy in comedy felt like a great way to start the year. Plus, we knew it would be great fun.”

Odenkirk started his Illinois portion of his book tour at the historic Music Box Theatre with fellow Saturday Night Live alum Tim Meadows. With Meadows as the moderator, the two discussed their time working together both in New York City and Chicago, as well as some of the stories mentioned in Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama.

When Meadows asked what made Odenkirk decide to write a memoir - “What made you think that anybody cared?” - he named several show business-related memoirs that he enjoyed. He also mentioned his interactions with legendary actor, writer and teacher Del Close.

Odenkirk ran into Close in Chicago during his college years and asked to interview him. A two-hour conversation transpired from that question, where Odenkirk heard him “ramble about his career and it inspired me so much, that interaction, [that] maybe I could do the same thing for some young people.”

“He made it seem possible,” Odenkirk said. “I never met an older person who was excited about what they were going to do next. I remember looking at him as he was telling me this and thinking [that] I’ve never seen anybody his age tell me what they were going to do in a way that sounded like it might be cool or great and that they were excited about it. There was something about his excitement and I just thought maybe I could borrow that labored action and build on it to write a book.”

Another interaction Odenkirk wrote about in his memoir is with actor and comedian Chris Farley. He said there were two things that he attributed to having cared so much about Farley during the time they worked together: growing up with an alcoholic father, which he said made him empathize with those struggling with alcohol abuse, and the fact that Farley shared so much of his soul with everyone he encountered.

“Chris had an effect on everybody that worked with him,” Meadows said.

Photo courtesy of Chicago Humanities Festival/DT Kindler

Suffering daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies, four high school friends take it upon themselves to accidentally open a portal to another dimension. What started out as an evening activity of live action role playing turned into a deadly creature terrorizing their small Arkansas town.

American literature professor, award-winning screenwriter and accomplished science fiction and horror novelist Brett Riley debuts his action-packed YA series with Freaks. Friends Micah Sterne, Jamie Entmann, Gabriella Davison and Christian Allen have been consistently picked on by school bullies Kenneth Del Ray, Brayden Sears and Gavin Cloverleaf for years. Their hatred for these bullies grows into an unhealthy obsession with seeking revenge, especially once the open portal not only releases other-worldly creatures but gives the four of them super powers.

The bad news? Kenneth also stumbled into the side effects from the portal while he was lurking outside in an attempt to bully them in their own backyards.

Even more bad news? One of the creatures released from the portal, a Go’kan named Na’ul, has its eyes set on the teenagers and destroying everything they love.

The novel is chalk full of beloved science fiction tributes, from Stranger Things and Supernatural to X-Men and The Goonies. What it lacks, however, is the same amount of depth. Opportunities to expand upon the creature’s background, the origin of the book of spells and the friendship of the characters were missed in the first book of this series.

This fast-paced, easy read does leave unresolved conflicts among this friend group as well as with one of their bullies. Although they all share this new life and the repercussions of what they have done, they can not seem to put the past aside to deal with the bigger conflict of what else was let into their world.

The ending also asks the question of how well they will continue to work with one another, with careful concern over Micah. He was already exhibiting major behavioral concerns, and the trauma he experienced over the course of this novel is not doing him any favors.

The second novel in the Freaks series, Travelers, will be available August 2, 2022.

In preparation for their own pandemic-inspired album, duo Plastic Rhino has been releasing singles gearing up to their nine-song LP, Terminus.

They recognize that in modern music, streaming services rule the music charts and playing along to their rules gives them a better chance at finding a wider audience. That is why they have released three singles from Terminus so far - “Euphoria Now”, “King” and “Bleeding Heart”.

The tracklist takes a look at the mental and physical space that Atara and Jack Glazer were in during 2020, from the highest moments to the lowest.

“Each song tells a chapter of that year, all the emotions, all the fears,” Atara said. “Every little destructive thing that happened to us in that year. On the bright side of that year though, we actually had time to put into these songs, to sit on them and let them soak, and they are most definitely our strongest and best to date.”

It has been quite a few years since Plastic Rhino released music. After releasing their album Recondition in 2015, they felt that Hollywood had chewed them up and spit them out. They were planning their wedding, working full-time jobs, creating music as ghost writers and bass players for other projects; yet they stayed creative with one another. Song ideas were always shared and tabled for another time. Once they found themselves in isolation in 2020, it was only a matter of time before they reintroduced Plastic Rhino.

“The frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, confusion and stillness that the time off brought created an insane burst of creative song ideas,” Atara said. “I started writing a horror script, and recording song parts [on] my phone almost every day. When the part would finally resonate with me, I would bring it to Jack. He started doing the same, and 13 song concepts were presented to our producer.”

The latest of the singles, “Bleeding Heart”, was inspired by their own relationship. They’ve been together for over a decade, being married for the last five years, and they’ve absolutely experienced bumps in the road. Much like the story of Plastic Rhinos, they’ve come out stronger than ever.

“‘Bleeding Heart’ is about relationships and the messed up road that you travel when you find yourself completely and overwhelmingly in love with someone,” Atara said. “The give and take of love, and how sometimes it almost feels like you are dying because of everything you are giving to the relationship. Especially if the other person isn't feeling the same way. Sometimes you bleed to make the relationship work, and piece it together with Band-Aids to get it through the rough patches. Don't give up on love even when it doesn't love you back.”

Plastic Rhino wants to be known for pushing boundaries and staying just outside the box of whatever musical genre they are trying to be placed in. They’ve experienced so much in the five years they placed the band on hold, and those experiences are the biggest motivation to keep sharing new music.

During the final stages of creating his debut EP, Tell Me How It’s Worth It, Cade Hoppe found inspiration in the form of an old relationship.

It started with an adlib lyric. “I never really liked the smell of your perfume.” As he sat at the piano, the rest of the song came pouring out.

“I had no intention of it being that when I sat down to write it,” he said. “That's the fun part about songwriting. I learn things about myself when I write songs that I don't mean to write because I figure out how I view my own feelings and actions, especially with learned wisdom like with some perspective and time.”

“Hurts” is a classic breakup song told from the perspective of the person who decided to end the relationship. Despite being the one that ended it, and having since moved on to a new relationship, Hoppe never truly grieved the loss.

He calls “Hurts” the sequel to one of the tracks on his EP, “Borrowed Time”. The song is about being in a relationship for too long and moving on mentally but not physically. “Hurts”, he said, is that natural feeling after finally ending that relationship but finding it difficult to come to terms with after some time has passed.

The concept for the music video went through several changes before landing on the final version. With his newly purchased camcorder, Hoppe filmed himself through the eyes of his ex. The clips are meant to show the relationship during the happier moments, almost changing the perspective of the original lyrics.

“You don't end things because of the happy moments, but sometimes it's hard looking back on those,” he said. “I feel like the song paints one picture; it's from my perspective about the end of that relationship with them and how looking back we were running out of time since the beginning, but I feel it's powerful to provide extra context because while you're in it it's happy. It’s everything.”

Although “Hurts” was still being developed as Hoppe released his EP, he knew that it would be the right track to release next. It felt like an evolution to him; a solid introduction to the new sound he has been experimenting with.

“The way that I look at making music, whether it's writing or producing, is like building a world,” he said. “With every song, you're pushing the limits of that world and expanding it. You put one song out and that's your sound, and then you put another song out, and a third song out, and [it can create] a triangle sound but I think ultimately I want it to be this huge sphere that's not even a two dimensional spectrum. I want it to be as three dimensional as it gets and just keep growing it to the point where a song can sound so different yet it’s still recognized as a Cade Hoppe record.”

As he continues to evolve musically, Hoppe hopes that listeners find a relatability to his songs. With “Hurts”, it is just the first track among several to make an appearance in 2022. His next single, “Morphine”, releases March 18.