We’ll have a few examples of “Authors,” that curious game about collecting writers.  This one has no indication of date or publisher.  The canon is conventional: Scott, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Whittier, Poe, Tennyson, Dickens, Stevenson, Irving, and Emerson.  Shakespeare is rather plump and peevish in this version, and his hair is curlier than I remember.  All of the backgrounds are this cheery pink.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Théophile Gautier’s 1865 novel, La Belle-Jenny, is a boisterous, Romantic tale of conspiracy and intrigue, all of which fails.  Couples are parted; lives are ruined.  Near the end, Arthur Sidney, the character most to blame for all of this, sums up what he’s learned:

Aimez quelqu’un ou quelque chose, un homme, un enfant, un chien, une espèce de fleurs, mais jamais une idée, c’est trop dangereux.

Love someone or something, a man, a child, a dog, a kind of flower, but never an idea, it’s too dangerous.

We have another specimen of “Old Maid”; this undated and anonymous deck has a holiday theme.  In addition to the elf, there are a wreath, a gingerbread man, a smiling tree, and various animals with Santa hats.  All are in this plain, rather clumsy style.

And here’s the Old Maid.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Don’t sing from the heart; use your lungs.

splilt

Maybe your snap judgment
Was just a crap judgment.

Asemic acrostics: Many enthusiasts have found acrostics in Shakespeare and other writers; we can also find acrostics that do not spell out words, giving us a hidden message without linguistic significance.

a pen that forms a line by eating away the paper

Be still, my spleen.

My carrot has a stick in it.

re-usable garbage bags

dirtergent

Simplified Scrabble: Each player gets one tile. Each rolls the dice, then advances the tile the number of spaces indicated. The first to reach the end wins.

Unicycle, bicycle, tricycle — where will it all end?

(Posted by Doug Skinner. The picture is anonymous, from an old children’s book.)

This sushi themed deck was, apparently, published by Accoutrements.  The number cards show sushi in multiple, the face cards show a larger roll.  The Joker is represented by wasabi and soy sauce.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The glum protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel, Mary, sinks so low that he works as a movie extra:

“Nothing was beneath his dignity; more than once he had even sold his shadow, as many of us have.  In other words he went out to the suburbs to work as a movie extra on a set, in a fairground barn, where light seethed with a mystical hiss from the huge facets of lamps that were aimed, like cannon, at a crowd of extras, lit to a deathly brightness.  They would fire a barrage of murderous brilliance, illumining the painted wax of motionless faces, then expiring with a click — but for a long time yet there would glow, in those elaborate crystals, dying red sunsets — our human shame.  The deal was clinched, and our anonymous shadows sent out all over the world.”

The poor man even has to suffer the indignity of seeing himself on screen:

“And at the present moment Ganin felt not only shame but also a sense of the fleeting evanescence of human life.  There on the screen his haggard image, his sharp uplifted face and clapping hands merged into the gray kaleidoscope of other figures; a moment later, swinging like a ship, the auditorium vanished and now the scene showed an aging, world-famous actress giving a very skillful representation of a dead young woman.  ‘We know not what we do,’ Ganin thought with repulsion, unable to watch the film any longer.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Letter-Grams” was published in 1938 by Milton Bradley.  There have been many crossword card games, but few with such an appealing and chubby typeface, or with such a decorative back.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I had always thought “imitation butter” was margarine; that is, a spread that imitates butter’s oleaginous properties, and could be substituted if butter was unavailable, or too expensive.

This simple gag item, however, reminds me that butter has other qualities as well: in this case, the shape and color. Greasiness is immaterial, because it’s not meant to be consumed, but to be used as a “fun provoker at the table.” The dinner table, as I recall from my childhood, is not much fun, so the idea is inviting.

Unfortunately, it comes without instructions. I suppose that you substitute the imitation butter for the real, and the fun then follows from a fellow diner’s predicament when he discovers its properties. But when do you do this? Is it, for example, when your alcoholic father, once again, abuses your mother so mercilessly that she runs from the table in tears, and he then turns on you? Is that the time to provoke the fun? Or do you spring it earlier, so that the fun can derail the tirade?

My family is all dead, and they’ve conditioned me to avoid dinner tables, so the question is hypothetical; but instructions would still be welcome, just in case.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

While thumbing through a scrapbook of lodge emblems, I found this anthropomorphic frog, who apparently represents some of the activities of the Knights Templar — that is, the Masonic order, not the original 12th century group.  Frogs can symbolize many things; I can’t say what he means here.  But I like the Templar Frog; and in my ideal world, we could follow his adventures in picture stories, preferably with gold ink and embossing.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The H-Bar-O Rangers” radio show began in 1932, presenting the adventures of Bobby Benson and his friends, and extolling the merits of H-O cereal.  This card game was published sometime around 1933.  The back shows a lovely drawing of Bobby riding the range with Sunny Jim, the sponsor’s mascot, who was to be phased out of the program shortly after this.  I like their blue and red horses.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)