I will be appearing on Bob Sikoryak’s long-running series “Carousel,” at Dixon Place, on Thursday, Oct. 19. Dixon Place is at 161A Chrystie St. (NYC), and the show is at 7:30. I’ll join other cartoonists in showing cartoons on the wall, and sing while Bob paints. There’s more info here.

My cartoon “Musical Instruments” continues to appear every month in Le Scat Noir. I also often contribute stories and translations.

You can also find three pages of my comics in the first issue of Dagger, available here.

I will do a set of my songs at the Red Room (NYC), on November 16, along with Doug Roesch and his band the Town Street Criers. The Red Room is at 85 E. 4th St., above the KGB Bar. The show starts at 8, and there’s no cover charge.

My next translation of Alphonse Allais, Long Live Life!, is nearing completion, and is slated to spring from Black Scat Books before the end of the year. A collection of my short stories is also in the works. Watch for both!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Norman Conquest of Black Scat Books sent me this spiffy ad for The Zombie of Great Peru, written by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois and translated by the undersigned. Read the ad! Buy the book!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Famous Paintings,” published by the Cincinnati Game Company in 1897, offered a variation on the popular “Authors”: the players accumulated four paintings instead of authors. The paintings are reproduced in rather muddy brown, with a dark purple border, and show the artistic taste of the late 19th century. Here, for example, is a painting by Rosa Bonheur, who specialized in animals, and whose reputation has fluctuated over the years. Her painting “The Horse Fair” still attracts admirers at the Met.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Doug Skinner Songbook is now available! This elegant oversized paperback contains 46 of my songs, including such favorites as “Buenas Noches, Little Roaches,” “Love Me Unconditionally,” “My Pal Satan,” and “Bloated Plutocrats on Parade”! They’re “chillingly zany” (New York Times); they’re “scathingly witty… lullabies etched in acid” (Metro Magazine), and now you can add them to your music rack! It’s 116 pages, and it’s published by the intrepid Black Scat Books. And it’s available on Amazon. Pick up a copy, and rev up those vocal cords!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Underground Press Digest was an obvious, although peculiar, idea. It featured “condensed” articles from the then active underground press: a sort of countercultural Reader’s Digest for the busy young radical.

It was published by Robert W. Farrell, who had published comic books in the ’50s (including Captain Flight, Strange Fantasy, and Wonder Boy). By the time he put out Underground Press Digest, he was working for Eerie Publications, which put out black and white horror comics, much like the more upscale Warren.

The first issue is dated January 1971, and contains 66 pages. In addition to the articles listed on the cover, there are also comics by R. Crumb, Joel Beck, and Marcia Resnick. And “Adams,” who apparently drew for the Rat, and is otherwise a mystery to me.

There was another issue published in March, but I think it quietly folded after that. (You can click on the image to see it bigger.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

True Weird was an exuberantly trashy magazine that offered articles on historical oddities and mysteries. It lasted three issues: November 1955, February 1956, and May 1956. Among the topics were the Count of Saint-Germain, zombies, werewolves, Nostradamus, Rasputin, haunted houses, the Bell Witch, and Patience Worth. Most of the material had been rehashed many times in similar books and magazines, and the True Weird treatment firmly favored sensationalism over accuracy.

It was published by that impeccably colorful publisher, Joseph Weider, who started out as a bodybuilder, and specialized in magazines for men. Among his efforts were Muscle and Fitness, Mr. America, Men’s Fitness, Fury, Senior Golf, Jem, and Monsieur. He was occasionally in legal trouble for publishing smut, and for making exaggerated claims for his dietary supplements. The editors of True Weird are listed as Ward Semple and Charles A. Smith. I can’t find much about either of them online, except that they worked on Weider’s other magazines. Maybe that kept them busy.

After three issues, True Weird changed into True Strange. No explanation was given. Is strange better than weird?

Both True Weird and True Strange are remembered for their wildly pulpy covers. Here they are, as well as the back cover of the first issue. The first two covers are by Clarence Doore, the third by John Martin. All can be enlarged by clicking.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We have another “Jeu de 7 Familles.” Again, there’s no date or publisher, but it has the same box and back as the last example. This deck is devoted to “Cinema”; you see here the grandmother of the camera operator family. Nice jazzy ’60s art, with simplified figures and bold off-register colors.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The “Picture-Word Game” was created by Edward W. Dolch, and published by The Garrard Press in 1941. Each card contained a word and its picture on one side, and just the word on the other. The instruction sheet explains that the cards teach “the 95 nouns which careful study has found to be of widest use in well-known readers.” Two games are suggested: “The Go-Together Game,” in which children classify things that go together; and “The What Is It Game,” in which they compete to read the word sides correctly.

Edward W. Dolch devised many “Learning Games” and educational books. I simply like the blunt simplicity of the drawings.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Chansons de France was published in 1928 by Librairie Plon. J. B. Weckerlin arranged the traditional songs, and M. B. de Monvel provided illustrations. The music is set within the pictures, standing out from the delicate colors.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Le jeu de 7 familles” (the game of seven families) is a popular French children’s card game. It never caught on in the US, for some reason. The deck contains seven families, each comprising parents, grandparents, son, and daughter. The objective, naturally, is to collect all six of one family. The decks often have a theme; this one, which I guess is from the ’60s (no date is given) is devoted to aviation: balloon, helicopter, dirigible, rocket, airplane, glider, and parachute. Each family, when reunited, can be fitted together into a sort of frieze. My scanner is too small for all six, but here are the father and mother of the dirigible family.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)