The 25th issue of Black Scat Review is now out and ready for you to read! This one is subtitled “Lewd, Nude, and Rude,” and contains three of my contributions: “King Merrimack,” in which the eponymous monarch and his physician Celso receive a boorish visitor; “The Noble Apothecary,” my translation of a 1664 story by Jean Donneau de Visé, concerning love, jealousy, and enemas; and “English Etiquette,” my translation of a brief passage from Casanova on the finer points of relieving oneself in public.

You can also savor the work of Mark Axelrod, Thomas Barrett, Sebastian Bennett, Norman Conquest, R J Dent, Dawn Avril Fitzroy, Eckhard Gerdes, Alexander Krivitskiy, Amy Kurman, Hélène Lavelle, Marc Levy, Olchar E. Lindsann, Clément Marot, Lilianne Milgrom, Alison Miller, T. Motley, Angelo Pastormerlo, Gerard Sarnat, Valéry Soers, Gregory Wallace, Tom Whalen, and David Williams. The whole thing is edited and designed by Norman Conquest (with contributing editors Farewell Debut and Nile Southern), and available on Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Not many card games are based on traditional rhymes, but there have been a few versions of “The House That Jack Built.” Here’s one published by Arrco, probably in the ’50s, but apparently too marginal to be copyrighted or dated. For an earlier version of Jack’s misadventures, look here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

My new annotated translation of “Loves, Delights, and Organs,” by Alphonse Allais, is now available from Black Scat Books. Allais was a peerless humorist whose wild imagination, and fascination with technology and language, made him a favorite of Alfred Jarry, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Eco, and generations of writers. The Pataphysical College named him their “Patacessor,” and Oulipo recognized him as “an Anticipatory Plagiarist.”

As critic Jean-Marc Defays put it: “Allais comes across as a very modern writer, and his work as an experimental enterprise which is exemplary in many ways… it is also quite possible to invoke such writers as Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges.”

My translation faithfully hammers into English the 47 stories in the 1898 original, and adds six more from the same period. Hooray!

The 24th issue of Black Scat Review is now available! The theme of this one is “Funhouse.” In it, you can find my short story “The Potato Farm,” as well as delightful verbiage and artwork by Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, David Berger,  Norman Conquest, R J Dent, Muriel Falak, Eckhard Gerdes, Richard Gessner, Alfred Jarry, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Mantis, Kate Meyer-Currey, Bob McNeil, Lillianne Milgrom, Lance Olsen, Paul Rosheim, Nile Southern, and Jim Yoakum. The editor is the tireless Norman Conquest, and you can pick up a copy on Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

My new album, It All Went Pfft, is now available on Bandcamp! It includes 20 songs, plus the eponymous piano piece. The selections are:

1. Oh Dear, Oh Dear
2. Let’s Not Leave the House Anymore
3. Laughter
4. A Different Point of View
5. A Few Essential Principles
6. Bread and Honey
7. Get on the Grid
8. We Are Not a Pretty People
9. Amerigo and Isabella
10. Fa La La La La
11. Son of a Gun
12. Let’s Ridicule the Nightingale
13. What Could Be More Interesting Than That?
14. Your Parents
15. Listen to the Birds Cry Ouch
16. James
17. Uncle’s Ankles
18. When a Snowman Melts
19. Not Much to Brag About
20. It All Went Pfft
21. No More

I wrote, arranged, and performed the whole business: I sing, and play ukulele, keyboard, psaltery, melodica, cuatro venezolano, xylophone, bulbul, ocarina, Marx Violin-Uke, ‘cello, tambourine, and bells.

Doug Roesch recorded tracks 1, 6, 10, 15, 19, and 21, and plays guitar on them; David Gold plays viola on tracks 1, 6, 10, 15, and 21.
Brian Dewan recorded the rest of them.

Happy New Year to anyone reading this! Here are a few updates.

My book on anomalous and paranormal music, Music from Elsewhere, is now slated to be published by Strange Attractor Books in May. Here’s hoping there are no further delays…

I was invited to give a presentation of this material in February, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in conjunction with an exhibit on art and the occult curated by Robert Cozzolino. Given the worsening pandemic and the apparent collapse of the airline industry, I assume it will take place over Zoom.

My new album of songs, It All Went Pfft, is now finished, and I hope to get it up on Bandcamp soon. Brian Dewan did the recording, although I’m also including a few tracks recorded several years ago with Doug Roesch.

And I’ve started work on an album of my instrumental music, to be called An Afternoon in the Arboretum.

My next translation of Alphonse Allais for Black Scat Books will be his classic collection Loves, Delights, and Organs: Amours, délices et orgues, named after the three words in French that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural.

Another book for Black Scat is also planned for later this year: Vanity Fare, an anthology of memorable oddities from the vanity press.

The next issue of Black Scat Review will include my short story “The Potato Farm.” You can read a teaser here.

And let’s hope 2022 is better than last year…

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Parker Brothers published several editions of “Authors” over the years. This one is a “nickel edition”: undated, but probably from around 1900. It’s a small deck, with only 21 cards, and a simple design in black and white. In addition to Oliver Wendell Holmes, shown for some reason in profile, the pantheon contains Tennyson, Cooper, Howells, Longfellow, Scott, and Hawthorne. The box shows a pleasant gentleman catching up on his reading, although he does seem to be holding the book at an odd angle.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Shorten the Classics is now available from Black Scat Books! This book reduces 52 great works of literature to one cartoon page apiece: not by summarizing them, but by cutting them off early. See what happens when Helen rejects Paris, the acorn misses Chicken Little, Adam and Eve eat the serpent, Leopold Bloom sleeps in, and Samoan women tell Margaret Mead to mind her own business. Tragedies are prevented, lives are saved, and the world becomes a better place. And you can find it on Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The 23rd issue of Black Scat Review is now available! It’s devoted to “wordplay,” and includes several pages of Doug Skinner: my translations of two poems by Raymond Queneau (depicted on the cover) and four pages of my upcoming comic book Shorten the Classics. Also on board are the stellar crew of Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Kevin Brown, Norman Conquest, Brian Coughlan, John Crouse, S. C. Delaney, Paul Forrestal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Penelope Gerdes, Joseph Harms, Amy Kurman, Opal Louis Nations, Angelo Pastormerlo, Steve Patterson, Derek Pell, Agnès Potier, Paul Rosheim, Gerard Sarnat, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson. You can find it on Amazon. When you find it, buy a copy!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Both ventriloquism and 45 rpm records were long staples or entertainment; both are less popular these days. 45 rpm records by ventriloquists, however, were always somewhat of a rarity. Here are seven examples of this curious genre. (Please click on them to enlarge them).

Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews starred in the BBC Radio show Educating Archie, from 1950 to 1960. It’s remembered now mostly for its supporting cast, which included such veterans as Harry Secombe, Julie Andrews, and Benny Hill. Max Bygraves played Archie’s tutor; these two songs, “Dummy Song” and “Lovely Dollar Lolly,” were taken from the show. The B side offers two solo numbers by Bygraves, “Cowpuncher’s Cantata” and “You’re a Pink Tooth Brush.”

Billy Earl, a ventriloquist in Nashville, released this single of a live performance with his chicken puppet, Henrietta. Henrietta sings the mildly bawdy “Chicken Song” to an enthusiastic crowd.

Keith Harris had several TV series on the BBC, including The Keith Harris Show in the ’80s. This record features his characters Orville, a green duck, and Dippy Dragonaurus. Orville is a sort of falsetto child, and Dippy is firmly in the Goofy-Mortimer Snerd-Beaky Buzzard-Eccles line of cheerful idiots. The A side is “Come to My Party,” and the B side is “Thank You for Telling Me ‘Bout Christmas.”

Shari Lewis had a long career in all fields of show business. This record showcases four off her puppets: Lambchop, Charley Horse, Wing Ding, and Hush Puppy. The first side includes “Favorite Song Medley” and “Waiting’ for the Robert E. Lee,” and the second “Back in Your Own Backyard” and “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella.”

The French ventriloquist David Michel performed for decades with a penguin puppet named Nestor. He’s now 76, and apparently still working. This record has two songs, “Le Chibidibidi” and “Une Petite Fille, un Pingouin.”

Señor Wences also had a long career, including numerous TV appearances and commercials. He continued performing up until his death at 103. This rec0rd, from 1959, includes songs based on two of his catchphrases, “Deefeecult for You–Easy for Me” and “‘S-All Right?–‘S-All Right!”

And lastly, Paul Winchell, who had great success as a ventriloquist in the ’50s, and later turned to doing voice work for cartoons. He was also an acupuncturist, and held several patents, including one for an artificial heart. This record, on his own label, features both his dummies: Jerry Mahoney sings “When You Come to the End of a Lollipop,” and Knucklehead Smiff sings “Run, Little Rabbit.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)