The Ullage Group undrapes its seventh event, “Not Dirty, Just Spicy.”  We will examine the curious genre of the risqué and titillating, but not quite smutty: saucy postcards, suggestive songs, spicy pulps, and other specimens of the sub-obscene.  Doug Skinner will demonstrate the sustained double entendre.  Anthony Matt will speak on the phenomenon of stereoscopic stag parties of the 1950s, and show several examples of 3D pinup photography.  Lisa Hirschfield will take us to task on the old-fashioned art of spanking.  It’s at Jalopy Theater, 315 Columbia St., Brooklyn; on Sunday, May 16 at 5:00 pm.  Admission is only $5.  Directions to Jalopy can be found here.  Recommended for furtive, sniggering adults.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The picture above is from the “improper” issue of Life, February 24, 1910; where it carried the caption “Hers.”)    

You too can make your dreams come true: just leave the house without your pants.

Don’t ridicule the mockingbird.

To sell your story,
Make it gory.

I’m tired of being downtrodden; I want to be uptrodden.

It’s difficult to understand
Why we don’t live in Wonderland.

So much trouble could have been avoided, if Jesus had only said, “Non serviam!”

Idleness is its own reward.

You say you had no surgery?
I’m sorry, but that’s perjury.

cynics about civics

Yes, my glass is half-full; but it’s all backwash.

We wander through the clover,
And then suddenly it’s over.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I don’t know what game this policeman adorned; I found him loose in a box of stuff in a flea market.  But the back identifies the maker as “Fairchild”; that’s something at least.  He’s crisply drawn in that American Socialist Realist style, and I think that uncolored stop sign is a nice touch.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper) is the simplest of dishes: boil and drain pasta; mix in grated cheese, ground pepper, and a bit of the cooking water; and serve.  It’s a standard dish in Rome; traditionally, it’s made with pasta secca (usually spaghetti) and pecorino romano.

It’s not the most nutritious supper (I suggest a side of vegetables), but it’s quick and tasty.  It reminds me of Rome, a city I find endlessly fascinating (see earlier posts to track my Rome jones).  And its simplicity is appealing: it uses only three ingredients (four, if you count the water), and depends on their quality and proportion.

Most intriguing, though, is the fact that whenever I describe it to someone, he or she almost always tells me that I’m wrong.  My corrector has never heard of it, has never tasted it, but still insists that it needs oil, or sauce, or something, and that I must be in error.  And I always have to explain that I didn’t make it up, that generations of Romans have eaten it that way, and that it’s perfectly fine.  I point out that my corrector is free to make it differently, or add things — there are no cacio e pepe police — but that there is, in fact, nothing wrong with the old recipe — or even with adding cheese and pepper to spaghetti, whether it’s traditional or not.

It might make sense to sample something before finding fault with it.  But homo sapiens don’t work that way, do we?

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

I have a particular affection for games that celebrate regional culture.  I wish I knew more of them.  “Dutch Blitz,” published in 1960 by the Daystar Company in Flourtown, PA, is a Pennsylvania Dutch deck.  One side carries simple illustrations of farm equipment; the other has numbers with a traditional design.

“Dutch Blitz” is still in print — and, apparently, distributed mostly in Pennsylvania.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Uh oh, here comes a human being.

Don’t buy that stuff;
You have enough.

There’s a snafu with this tofu.

When I was a kid, and learned that the real word for “potty” is “toilet,” I wondered what other lies I’d been taught.

You know, it is possible that play is more ennobling than work.

I’d like to find those beads that bought Manhattan; I bet they’d be worth a fortune now.

the gateway to the getaway

That glittering finery
Can’t mask the swinery.

I’m not just puking; this is the oral history of my lunch.

Classical skepticism (including Forteana) is unavoidably marginal in American society; it has no place in the long, tiresome squabble between blind faith and dogmatic scientism. Which side are you on: conservative religion or conservative science?

You’ll need some torque
To pop that cork.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I folded up this series too soon; here’s another “Fish” game.  This one was published in 2009 by Fundex Games.  The other marine animals in the deck are: Puffer Fish, Purple Tang, Angelfish, Clown Fish, Yellow Tang, Whale, Shark, and Seahorse.  All are in vibrant colors, and look to me inspired by animation design.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

There is no God, I’m glad to say:
Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray!

What, exactly, do people get out of watching an eating contest?

Life can be so very painful
When employment isn’t gainful.

Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words add insult to injury.

When I was a teen, my father tried to interest me in chess. I didn’t like it, particularly; and mentioned I found Bobby Fischer creepy when he said, “I like to watch them squirm.” “Oh,” my father said, “he probably meant the abstract movements of the chess pieces.”

stakeholders / snake-handlers

Maybe those bees would like these posies.

It’s not that I dislike holidays in themselves; I just think it’s strange when everyone does the same thing at the same time.

There has been some talk of a Reagan monument on the mall in D.C. I propose a large inflatable head, tethered above the Reflecting Pool, gazing at itself.

Of course, in this country, we think that baseball is for adults, and books are for children.

It’s not true that all is vanity:
Let’s not overlook insanity.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Bobby Edwards (seen here in a self-portrait from 1917) gave his own history of the “Greenwich Village Epic” in that quintessential Village journal, The Quill, in the November 1917 issue:

“Down in dear old Greenwich Village,” or, as the Bard sings, “Way Down South in Greenwich Village,” originated in Polly’s about four years ago. Lucy Huffaker, Jack McGrath and Polly herself concocted a verse to which George Baker improvised music. The ravages of time have nearly destroyed the original version and, as I remember it, it was not a parlor song, though very funny.

About a year later, the troubadour, who was then confining himself to Italian, improvised a few verses at the Dutch Oven to entertain Ernest Holcombe, Harry Kemp, A. Boni and others. Whereupon the Bard, elated at the applause of his distinguished audience, sang the verses day and night to everyone and added more until the rhymes to village were exhausted.

In the meantime low persons made vulgar parodies in imperfect meter. These Bacchic efforts were not incorporated into Mr. Edwards’ repertoire. But a Village publisher at the time scented folklore in the Village, and being so thrilled by his discovery he overlooked the lack of subtlety in these bucolic imitations of the true version and published a leaflet confusing these spurious verses with the innocent compilations of the Bard, to whom credit for the whole mess was generously given. Much opprobrium thereupon descended upon the innocent head of the Bard.

After that the Village Orpheus sang only his own stuff and sternly resented any interpolation or even suggestion.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The Greenwich Village Epic,” aka “Way Down South in Greenwich Village,” or “Down in Dear Old Greenwich Village” is often quoted in books on the Village.

It’s usually credited to a famous Village character of the ’20s, Bobby Edwards, “the Troubadour of Greenwich Village.” (I’ve been assembling material on him, by the way; I hope to post it here soon.) In fact, it was a collective creation, a genuine folk song of the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, it was written by George Baker, the manager of the essential hangout Polly’s, and extra verses were added by many others. The first version I’ve found is in The Song Book of Robert Edwards (1917); the second is in Frank Shay’s More Pious Friends and Drunken Companions (1920). Both of these credit Edwards and Baker. Clement Wood included his own verses in two memoirs of the Village, written for Haldeman-Julius’s “Little Blue Book” series: Bohemian Life in N.Y.’s Greenwich Village (#1106, 1926) and Greenwich Village in the Jazz Era (#1336, 1929). Wood, by the way, credits the song to Albert and Charles Boni, Louise (Casey) Murphy, and himself, and grouses that it’s “called a Bobby Edwards song.”

Wood also calls it the “national anthem” of the Village. Typically, it’s satirical; and the satire is directed at the Village itself.

Nobody seems to have collected all of these verses in one place, so here is a first attempt at a complete version of the Epic. There may be other verses out there, but these are the ones I’ve found so far. There’s also a free adaptation by Tuli Kupferberg; you can easily find it on YouTube, so I haven’t transcribed it here.

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