My translation of Pierre-Henri Cami’s playlet, “The Man in the Iron Mask,” is included in the first issue of The Black Scat Review.  You read it first on this site; now read it with other interesting material in a magazine.

Black Scat Books will also publish a series of booklets collecting the Captain Cap stories, by the great comic writer Alphonse Allais, in my scrupulous translations.  The first volume includes much on the Captain’s political career, as well as recipes for his favorite cocktails.

Having been awarded a certificate for my performance in last year’s “Filthy Song Night” at the Jalopy Theater, I will make an appearance this year to pass the torch to the next generation.  That’s on Dec. 21, and it’s a unique night in the theater.

I will also be performing my traditional birthday show at Jalopy on Jan. 4.  I will be joined by David Gold and Brian Dewan.  And you, of course.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Ah, we have another “Old Maid.”  This one is undated, and published by E. E. Fairchild.  As the box says, it features “Characters from Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales.”  It appears to be a revised version of this one.

And here’s the Old Maid.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Mutt and Jeff discuss taxes, in this daily strip from 1926.  Jeff has it all figured out.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  From The Mutt and Jeff Cartoons, Book 11, 1926.)

The “New Testament Game,” published in 1899 by The Fireside Game Company, was a variation on the popular game of “Quartets.”  The deck contained 52 scenes from the life of Jesus, divided into groups of four, which the player then collected.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Readers of Raymond Roussel’s penultimate work, Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique, are faced with a problem. The work is built on a system of nested parentheses, and they’re hard to negotiate. Some readers have built machines, or used card files; I found it easier to make a map, which I could then check to find my way back after a digression.

You’re welcome to use it, of course, but I recommend making your own, since it helps orient you.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We have here another early edition of “Authors”; I found it without a box, so can offer no information on date or publisher.  Dickens seems to be sporting unruly hair and beard in this portrait.  The other writers in the pantheon this time are: Longfellow, Irving, Cooper, Scott, Holmes, and Burns.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I know that people occasionally strap on wooden feet to hoax bigfoot tracks, but had never seen any until I found this pair at the flea market.  They measure 19 inches, and are roughly carved from a knotty wood (I assume pine, but someone else may know better), and are untreated.  They show some cracking and water damage.

The previous owner put picture wire on the backs, so they could be displayed.  But you can see, on the toes and heels, holes showing they were once screwed onto something else, presumably so they could be worn.  I suspect that they were not just a woodworking project, but were used.  The man who sold them to me said he bought them at an estate sale in upstate NY, where they had indeed hung on the wall, but had no further information.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  Thanks to Mark Pilkington for the photos, which, by the way, you can click to enlarge.)

This early edition of “Authors” dispenses with the writers’ portraits, offering instead these colorful and decorative designs.  The authors represented are Ouida, Thomas Carlyle, Wilkie Collins, and George Eliot.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Black Scat Books has just released my translation of Isidore Isou’s “Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara,” as the eighth of their elegant little chapbooks, “Absurdist Texts and Documents.”

Isidore Isou is little known to American readers, and few of his writings have been translated.  In the late 1940s, he founded a new literary movement, Letterism, devoted to reducing poetry to letters and phonemes.  He and his associates took to the clubs of post-war Paris to declaim their creations, often at high volume.  You can see them interviewed by Orson Welles here: that’s Isou in the middle, with Maurice Lemaître to his right, doing the talking, and Jacques Spacagna to his left.  (The club performance that follows is by Gabriel Pomerand.)

Tzara was one of Isou’s artistic heroes; in this article, he recounts his sad, hilarious, and embarrassing behavior at Tzara’s funeral.  My translation (plus introduction) is published in a limited edition of fifty copies, and available from Black Scat Books.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Our old friend Mark Pilkington is in town, on a visit from London.  We had planned to organize a second film festival, and show some of his film work, with other material.  However, his planned talk at that fine institution, the Observatory at Proteus Gowanus, has been canceled, due, as you might guess, to the hurricane.

So, we’re turning the afternoon over to him, to talk about his book Mirage Men, and his research into the ways that military and intelligence operators have shaped and exploited the UFO culture.  It will be at 2 pm, Sunday, Nov. 11, at The Jalopy Theater, 315 Columbia St., Brooklyn.  Departing from our usual practice, we will charge $10; we’ll turn it over to Jalopy for their hurricane relief fund.

Here’s more from Mark:

In his book Mirage Men: An Adventure into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs, author Mark Pilkington details his experiences in the UFO community, and his discoveries of the ways in which military and intelligence operators have shaped and exploited beliefs in UFOs, ghosts, monsters, vampires, and elements from folklore and conspiracy theory to create an armory of supernatural weapons of mass deception, capable of manipulating consciousness on a grand scale. He traces the inspiration for these toys, tools and techniques to a range of sources which include fiction, cinema, stage magic, advertising and occultism, and uncovers the ways in which they have–for many of its intended and unintended targets–altered their very perception and understanding of the world around us.

Mark Pilkington is the author of two books – Mirage Men: An Adventure into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs and Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science’s Outer Edge and has written for Fortean Times, the Guardian, Sight & Sound, The Wire, Frieze, The Anomalist and a host of other magazines and journals. Mark also runs Strange Attractor Press, editing and publishing its occasional Journal, and organizing events and exhibitions.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)