Happy New Year.  It’s cold here.  We offer you a round to sing as you shiver.

Here is old man Janus, the double-faced gatekeeper, gazing in the mirror and realizing how much colder he’s grown.  Given the subject, I’ve set it as a crab canon (that is, palindromic) — except for that flickering between F sharp and F natural.

Please click to enlarge; more info on crab canons will follow.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

As a postscript to our survey of “Old Maid,” I’d like to add these alternate rules.  They’re tucked into a 1945 deck (a later edition of the one we posted here as #25, back on 9/18/08).  I assume somebody at the company bridled at the stigmatization of the Old Maid, and so decided to make her the most desirable card, rather than the least.

BACHELOR GIRL GAME

NOTE: Rules for playing the conventional Old Maid Game will be found on one of the cards in the deck.  The following rules are for another and more modern Old Maid Game, “Bachelor Girl,” to be played with the same cards.

Game may be played by two to eight players.  If 2-3 or 4 are playing, deal six cards to each player.  If 5-6-7 or 8 are playing, deal five to each.  After dealing, place the remainder of the deck face down in the center of the table.

The dealer plays first.  If two cards in your hand match, place them face up in front of you, then place another face up, and draw one from the deck.

The player at your left plays next and so on.  When it is your turn to play, if you haven’t a pair that match in your hand but others have laid down cards which match ones held in your hand, you take their cards and lay them with yours in front of you.  The Old Maid or Bachelor Girl card is wild and you may take another player’s card and match it with the Bachelor Girl if you have it in your hand.  Anyone may take Bachelor Girl by putting the other matching card down in its place.

If a player lays down a card and some one else has the matching card in front of them, the player first noticing the error may take both cards and add them to the cards already in front of them.

When a player lays down the last card in his hand he does not draw from the deck since in laying down the final card in his hand he has won the hand and all the other players give the winner the cards remaining in their hands.

To add your score you count five for each pair in front of you and one for each single card.  If the winner of the hand gets Bachelor Girl from one of the other players it adds ten points to his score.

The player getting 100 points first is the winner of the game.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

We close the year with a final “Old Maid” (at least for a while).  This one’s from Whitman: no date or copyright, as is traditional.  And a fine breezy design, I think.

Here’s the Old Maid:

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Henri Salvador, the great Guyanese singer/songwriter, died this year (back in February), and we never marked his passing here.  I wanted to salute him, briefly, before this dismal year evaporated for good.

He had a long and active career in Europe and South America, but never crossed that baffling cultural divide to win much of an audience in the U.S. (although he apparently did appear on the “Ed Sullivan Show”).

There’s much to say about him: the early tropical tunes that Jobim cited as a crucial influence; the many collaborations with that incomparable provocateur, Boris Vian; the impressive arsenal of vocal styles, including an inspired gallery of funny voices; the surprising comeback in his eighties, still in great voice.  You can find more by rooting through the www or YouTube.

But here, I wanted to mention that he was also a connoisseur of modernist music and literature, and a member of the ‘Pataphysical College.  I wanted to recommend Stanley Chapman’s translation of “‘Pataphysics?  What’s That?”, a 1959 radio dialogue with Vian, published in 2006 by the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics.  And, above all, I wanted to translate this cheery repudiation of artistic purity:

“I am in favor of all cross-breeding of ideas, all mingling of opinions.  To achieve great works, all copulations are allowed, from country to country, even the most reprehensible.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)     

And here’s another specimen of “Black Peter”: a Danish one this time.  In this one, players match black and white sketches of couples from different countries.  I’ve chosen to post the cover this time, since I thought you’d like a splash of color.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

I’d like to add a couple of images to my earlier post about Cami, particularly since he’s now so obscure, and since so few images are available.  The first is a photo of the man himself, taken from a 1964 anthology of his work:

And the second is one of his cheerfully naive illustrations, taken from a rare copy of his novel Les Nouveaux Paysans (The New Peasants).  Here we see a conscientious farmer examining the teeth of one of his cattle.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

To our earlier post (10/21/08), illustrating the classic axiom, we add this variant.  It’s from 1902, from Underwood & Underwood; the caption reads “Try our sausages!  Made while you wait!– you can see just what you’re getting!”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Black Peter is a Christmas tradition in several European countries; he accompanies St. Nicholas, and punishes the bad children.  He was usually depicted as an African or Moor, and portrayed in parades and pageants by a Caucasian gent in blackface and fanciful “exotic” silks and trappings.  Due to changing racial and cultural mores, he’s now usually shown as a chimney sweep.

He’s also the subject of a card game, which is apparently much like “Old Maid.”  In this version, from Obchodní Tiskárny, the players match scenes from folktales.  I found it in Prague a number of years ago; it has instructions in both Czech and Slovak.  There’s an anomaly here; an illustrator is credited: Ludek Manácek (with hacheks over the e and n; I discovered that Czech diacriticals are beyond my computer ken). 

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

Pierre-Henri Cami (1884-1958) is all but forgotten today.  But in the ’20s, his work was popular in France; he was translated in Vanity Fair; Chaplin called him the “greatest humorist in the world.”

His preferred form was the short and stupid play: an unstageable drama that moved swiftly from one gag to the next.  He’s been called the French Tex Avery, and it’s not a bad comparison; he has the same directness, disdain for realism, and boldly illogical logic.

In later years, he took to writing novels and drawing cartoons, often with disappointing results.  He also took to recycling his gags, which didn’t help.  His career petered out; by the time he died, he had been forgotten.

But his early work is still cherished by his admirers; and it still champions a unique gallery of ingenious idiots: the knight who takes his castle doors with him to the Crusades, so they can’t be forced open in his absence; a Noah who saves all the fish from the flood; the farmer who serves his pigs aperitifs to stimulate their appetites; the poor family who can’t afford masks for Mardi Gras, and make do by disguising their voices.

I’ve translated for you here one of Cami’s historical dramas.  As usual, there’s an untranslatable pun embedded in it; my best course, I think, is just to mention that “black butterflies” (papillons noirs) are “melancholy thoughts,” and let you take it from there.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) [Read more →]

The Piatnik Company, of Vienna, produced this game, “Famous Cities,” sometime in the ’50s.  The English edition seems to have been handled by Benno Products of London.  The young players were expected to collect cities in sets of four.  Besides such familiar metropolises as Paris, Berlin, and Rome are some less obvious choices, like Örebro.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)