Welcome to 2012.  According to the prophecies, this year will be the end of the Mayan Empire.  All things must end.

Anthony Matt and I have recently restored some home movies by John Keel.  For updates on this project, check the tribute site that I maintain at www.johnkeel.com.

I will be doing a show on my birthday, Saturday, January 7.  I’ll sing my songs, aided by David Gold on the viola.  We’ll also do a couple of pieces for viola and piano.  It’s at Jalopy Theater, 315 Columbia St., Red Hook, Brooklyn; directions are on the Jalopy site.  Opening for us will be the Whiskey Spitters.  They’re at 9:00; we’re at 10:30; it’s $10.  Many of you have already received an e-mailing; but here it is again.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This isolated card is from an early “Authors” deck.  Most later versions were less generous with the engraving; and Cooper didn’t always survive revisions to the canon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

December 25 is the birthday of Robert Ripley, the creator of “Believe It or Not,” and an inspirational figure to us here.  To mark the occasion, here’s a photo of him at the dinner table.  He was rather flamboyant.

It’s also the birthday of Isaac Newton.  American readers, it occurs to me, may be unaware that he was the favorite character of the French cartoonist Marcel Gotlib.  As Gotlib explained, “Why Isaac Newton?  For a very simple reason: this inspired genius revolutionized the science of his time, basing his immortal theory of universal gravitation, mark you well, ON NOTHING MORE THAN RECEIVING AN APPLE ON HIS HEAD!…  That is the most gigantic gag there is, and, for this alone, its author deserves to pass into posterity as the patron saint of the humorous comic strip.”  Newton often strolls through Gotlib’s strips, always at the right moment to get hit on the head with something.  And nobody could draw Newton like Gotlib.

Happy birthday, Ripley and Newton.

(P.S.: You may want to see the animated Newton.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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)