Rube Goldberg’s cartoon panel “Foolish Questions” followed a simple formula: an idiot asked an obvious question, and received a sarcastic answer. And yes, Al Jaffee did appropriate the idea for his later feature “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” Sometime around 1912, the Wallie Dorr Company published a card game derived from it. The game was as simple as the premise: players tried to match the foolish questions, from a booklet, to the sarcastic answers. The backs of the cards, appropriately, showed a man asking a foolish question.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Bottoms Up billed itself as “The Paper for People Who Drink… and Eat” and “Long Island’s Favorite Tavern Weekly.” It was edited by Ted Kay, of Roosevelt, NY; I haven’t been able to find out more about him.

The issues I’ve seen are from 1957, and run 8 or 10 pages. They consist mostly of ads for Long Island bars, restaurants, and night clubs, with occasional bits of gossip about restauranteurs, and a few photos of women in swimsuits.

Among the revelations about Long Island nightlife is the taste in music: many clubs offered dancing to a live organist or pianist, sometimes with a Solovox, a short-lived early Hammond synthesizer. Country, Western, and “Hillbilly” music seem to have been the most popular, although Latin was also represented. There were many small combos, now probably forgotten: the Viking Trio, the Rhythm Rangers, the Hi-Liters, the Versatile Trio, the Cacti’s, the Three Jacks, the Escorts, the Hipsters, the Gum Drops, the Rhum-Bops. In addition, the Shadow Box in Mineola featured “Mixologist Wally Walcott Playing the Bottles.” Shuffleboard was often offered: the Shuffle Inn in Uniondale and the Rustic Tavern in Mineola had 24-foot boards, but Jimmy Flynn’s in Hempstead had one that was 28 feet. The food ran mostly to “Businessmen’s Luncheons,” steaks, seafood, “delicious Italian cuisine,” and cocktails. Music was live, the food was simple, and you were on a first-name basis with your hosts, who often worked in pairs: Tom and Andy, Pete and Fred, Helen and Vinnie, Emily and John.

Here’s a sample page; please click on it to make it larger.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Logomachy” was published by the venerable firm of McLoughlin Brothers in 1889. As in many similar games, you make points by forming words from the letters on the cards. Less common letters are worth extra points.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Psalter in Metre and Church Hymnary, was “prepared by a Committee consisting of representatives of the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland,” and published by Henry Frowde in 1899. This is the 1909 edition.

The second half of the book is a standard hymnal, but the first half is cut so worshippers can mix and match texts and tunes. They’re given the choice of 221 tunes, and 222 texts in the same meter (all 150 psalms, 67 “paraphrases,” and 5 additional hymns).

The principle is the same as Raymond Queneau’s Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, in which the ten lines of ten poems can be rearranged, or the many children’s books that combine parts of animals. Here’s one example; here are two taken from an advertising booklet, Kellogg’s Funny Jungleland. The first is from the 1903 version, the second from 1932.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The “Pocket-Size Golf Card Game,” issued by Built-Rite sometime in the ’50s or ’60s, let you play golf by drawing cards and moving markers. I particularly like the little landscapes for the different holes, the two-color printing, and the golf balls you can punch out from one of the cards.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Black Scat Review #18 is now available! This jam-packed issue contains four pages of my comic strip “Shorten the Classics,” an excerpt from my translation of Alfred Jarry’s play The Pope’s Mustard-Maker, and my translations of poems by Charles Cros, Jules Jouy, and Laurent Tailhade.

You will also find contributions by Mark Axelrod, Angela Buck, Peter Cherches, Catherine D’Avis, Farewell Debut, Eckhard Gerdes, Bob Heman, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Esteban Isnardi, Harold Jaffe, Alexander Krivitskiy, Olchar E. Lindsann, Joel Lipman, Laura Mazzenga, Jim McMenamin, Peter McAdam, Doug Rice, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Gregory Wallace, and Tom Whalen, as well as posthumous offerings from Gautier, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. It’s all edited and designed by Norman Conquest of Black Scat Books, and available from Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Birds of the World” was published in 1961 by Golden Press. It presented 52 birds, in pairs such as Ocean Fliers, Biggest Bills, Nectar Eaters, and Funny Fishermen. The Superb Lyrebird, for example, was paired with its fellow Fabulous Tail, the Common Peafowl. Players were urged to obtain all the cards by collecting them in pairs.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Strings for musical instruments are sold in stores, but not marketed as aggressively as other products. The packaging is relatively unimportant, and the graphic design tends to the generic. Here are some examples of these delightfully liminal designs: packets containing strings for ukulele, banjo ukulele, tenor banjo, cuatro, cavaquinho, and guzheng.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Peter Rabbit Rummy,” published by E. E. Fairchild, encouraged players to collect incidents from the story of Peter Rabbit into sets. As the instructions helpfully point out, “For the story of Peter Rabbit, read the cards in sequence from 1 to 10.” There’s no date, but I’d guess they were done in the 1950s. The oddly naive artwork seems to be rendered with colored pencils, which is a nice touch.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I recently picked up a copy of a book called End Papers, by a certain A. Edward Newton, who apparently accumulated a famous book collection in the ’20s. It’s a selection of literary essays and book reviews, published by Little, Brown, and Co. in 1933. I was surprised to find in it a couple of illustrations by Jimmy Hatlo, the cartoonist responsible for “They’ll Do It Every Time” and “Little Iodine.” It’s an unexpected pairing, and no explanation is given. Maybe some magazine editor was responsible.

Here are the two illustrations, as well as the covers of some of Hatlo’s paperbacks from the ’40s and ’50s.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)