Our eighth event, “Remembering Keel,” took place on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  We had somewhat of a small crowd, thanks to the World Cup (which we certainly didn’t anticipate when we reserved the space months ago).

Doug opened the ceremonial ullage: for this occasion, we chose John’s favorite drink, a diabetic protein shake. 

Lisa read a piece John wrote for his hometown paper when he was 15, and excerpts from some of his work for men’s magazines in the ’50s; and joined Doug in reading a brief proposal for a film, “Nudists from Outer Space.”  Doug read from a proposal for a sequel to John’s first book, Jadoo; Anthony read a bit from John’s novel Three Women.  Our guest, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, read another proposal John submitted to the National Lampoon when Ratso was editor.

The audience was also treated to a promotional song for Jadoo; a clip from one of John’s radio shows for the Armed Forces Network; a film from the ’60s, featuring John as a drunk in the Museum of Modern Art; and video interviews with George Kuchar and David Letterman.

Of course, the day before the anniversary of John’s death, my computer, printer, and scanner all stopped working.  But that’s to be expected.  That Keelian chaos can’t be stopped by something as paltry as death.

So thanks to all; and extra thanks to Anthony and to Geoff Brady for audio and video preparation.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

I’m happy to inform you that you can now savor that notorious lipogrammatical curiosity, Gadsby, simply by following this link.  Gadsby has long had an almost mythological status among linguistic buffs (and Oulipo fans); most of its original printing was lost long ago, but luckily a microfilm proof copy still sits in a public library (in California, I think, but I couldn’t find out).  And now you can study this oddity in a digital format, just by clicking that link — and fly off to a magical fictional microcosm, a world of words tightly bound by an unusual, arguably arbitrary, and disturbingly strict formal constraint.  Do it today!

(Post by Doug; thanks to A. A.)    

Yet another fish game has come our way; this one, “Go Fish,” was published by Oriental Trading — no date, but it looks like a recent addition to the canon.  The sea bass is joined in this version by the octopus, marlin, shark, dolphin, angel fish, sea horse, manta ray, and clown fish.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Do you want the hostile hospital or the hospitable hospital?

the non-simile: the glass is as clear as glass

The Devil’s tail is so prehensile
That it can wield both pen and pencil.

I was in Rome during a Scotland-Italy soccer match; the city swarmed with stocky Scots in kilts and singlets. One commandeered the Spanish Steps for a rousing tune on the pipes, as his countrymen roared their approval, patriotism, and team spirit. As soon as he’d finished, however, one man near me turned to his wife and remarked, “Ah, he’s a crap piper.”

Stop making two thermodynamic systems in thermal equilibrium with a third, but not with each other! There are laws against that sort of thing!

a new sport: pillow polo

My sister was scornful of me for drinking seltzer, which she said was “bitter.” I was puzzled by this, until I realized that she never drank anything that wasn’t sweetened.

hyperbolic litotes: not too earth-shatteringly magnificent

I always enjoy hearing a newscaster stumble over the phrase “Iranian uranium.”

On one of my visits to my family in Oklahoma, my mother wanted to visit a bison preserve. We drove through miles of empty prairie, to reach a fenced-in area of more empty prairie. We didn’t see any bison. A guard told us they were off somewhere else, and that they had all come from the Bronx Zoo.

Most people sleep at 3 a.m.;
I guess I’m just not one of them.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

What better way to mark our 100th graphic lagniappe here than with “Piggy Bank” (Ed-U-Cards, 1965)?  The graphics for this game consisted of pennies and nickels — and, of course, the Silver Pig that you put them in.

Children learned an important lesson here.  If you saved 100 pennies, you would have a dollar.  But an Ed-U-Card game cost only 29 pennies… 

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We seldom find unfettered science:
It takes instructions from its clients.

Make a Gideon Bible with a flipbook on the bottom of some of its pages.

Today I faced a bottleneck on a crowded sidewalk, because one of my fellow citizens refused to walk to the right. “I always pass on the left,” he snarled, “I got a rule.”

truth thru hurt, hurt thru truth

Have pity on the cormorant —
He’d like to be a swan, but can’t.

On one of my visits to my family in Oklahoma, I took them some fresh bagels from NYC.  My father and sister refused them, because they weren’t soft and sweet. My father delivered a tirade against all chewy foods. My sister scornfully informed me that there was a company in Oklahoma called Entenmann’s, whose baked goods are “so soft.” My mother did eat one, but only after cutting it up and frying it in margarine. “That softens it up,” she explained.

internet/internment

a bell whose clapper is another bell

Perhaps we can find a way to use discarded electronics as fuel.  How satisfying it would be to open the hood of the vehicle, and shovel in unwanted phones and laptops!

 trail + map = trap

A knight can use a suit of armor,
But it’s not helpful to a farmer.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The sketch is by Giuseppe Novello.)

The Ullage Group’s eighth event will be a change for them.  John A. Keel, author of Jadoo, The Mothman Prophecies, and other books on unusual topics, died in July 2009.  Some of his friends and fans, including Doug Skinner, Anthony Matt, Lisa Hirschfield, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, and probably others, will mark the anniversary of his death with readings, audio and video clips, and other memorabilia from his long and sometimes unbelievable career.

It will all take place at the Jalopy Theatre, 315 Columbia St., in Brooklyn, Sunday, July 11, at 3 pm.  As usual, we charge a pittance (a $5 pittance), just to cover our expenses.  More info on Jalopy can be found at www.jalopy.biz, and about John Keel at www.johnkeel.com.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)    

“Card Game of Flags of the United Nations” was published by Russell — no date, I’m afraid.  That’s a commendably descriptive title, I think.  The countries are divided into a number of categories: Veto Countries, Island Countries, African Countries, etc.  The “CC” indicates that Mexico is one of the “Costume Countries.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Just do your work and don’t be lazy,
Like Giambattista Piranesi.

The only drawback of vegetarianism is always being preached at by ghouls.

All human speech is monkey chatter;
It makes no sense; it doesn’t matter.

A woman recently upbraided me for writing a song that didn’t rhyme. I tried to explain that not all verse needed to rhyme, but she didn’t listen. “It could have rhymed,” she snapped, “if you’d spent more time on it.”

The swan looks graceful on the lake;
Don’t drink the water in her wake.

Why are you taking a shower? That won’t pay your rent. What do you really do?

Although Filippo Marinetti
Wrote diatribes against spaghetti,
He still was known to fill his belly
With great amounts of vermicelli.
For strict consistency eludes
Those men containing multitudes.

Project: a phenakistascope made with bas-relief clay modeling, so it looks like claymation when spun. Or: simple basswood carvings (maybe painted).

My family kept feral cats in the yard. My mother refused to spay or worm them, since she believed they wouldn’t hunt mice if she did. Sometimes they hid under the car, and were killed when she pulled out of the driveway. She once told me brightly, “I’m surprised I don’t run over more of them.”

colliding calliopes

For all philosophy’s palaver,
We still end up as some cadaver.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The sketch is by Thackeray.) 

One of the unpleasant aspects of cinema is its passivity.  The movie is blasted at you, and there’s nothing to do.  You don’t have enough room to move, enough light to read, or enough quiet to carry on a conversation.  Alcohol — even a harmless beer — will be confiscated.  Food is available, but little that appeals to adults.

There are a number of gambits you can use if you do happen to find yourself trapped in a theatre.  One, of course, is to sleep.  In the classic radio show “Vic and Sade,” the writer, Paul Rhymer, has Vic defend the practice to Sade:  “I had a good time.  My dreams were pleasantly embroidered with the speeches of the people talkin’ on the screen.  ‘I adore you, Everett.’  ‘Try to understand, mother, that I can’t live without Cynthia.’  ‘Hands off that girl, Bernard Breen, or I’ll forget you only got one leg.’  The theatre was dark, my chair was comfortable, an’ the sweet breezes from electric fans bombarded me deliciously.  I got value for my twenty-five cents.”

Another technique was suggested by Robert Benchley, in the essay “Block That Plot!”, from his collection After 1903 –What?:  “In order to play the game it is necessary to come into the theatre in the middle of the picture…  The idea is to take a quick look at the characters on the screen, listen to what they are saying, and reconstruct what has gone before, along the most improbable lines…  You’d be surprised how often it works out to make sense.  At least, it keeps you guessing.”

Following these examples, I have some potentially useful suggestions for ludic interaction with the dialogue.

You could, for example, feign paranoia, and take each line as a personal message to you from God, or from some cartel of conspirators.  Along similar lines, you could imitate the remarkable Louis Wolfson, whose mental illness made him so hate his “mother tongue” that he had to translate all English words that he heard into cognate forms in other languages.  Or, you could adapt the exercise in Aleister Crowley’s LIBER III vel Jugorum, and slash your forearm with a razor whenever you hear the word “I” (or another word of your choosing).  This has nothing to do with Crowley’s original purpose, but will help to pass the time.

Devotees of General Semantics might also try de-Aristotlizing the dialogue by suppressing the verb “to be,” and rephrasing it all subjectively — silently, of course, so as not to wake your neighbors.

You could also work your visual imagination by picturing to yourself what the scene would look like if all the actors were fifty years older, or bears, or robots; or what might happen if a small pig trotted across the set, or ice crashed through the ceiling, or one of the actors started yawning uncontrollably.

I hope these ideas will be useful in your hour of need; best of luck.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)