Beano #1486, Jan 9, 1971

Looking at Blake when she created the bottom right image

"’Twould be one grand finale to this comedy of errors if she were found somewhere today--and had a couple of skulls herself in her gripsack!” But Allstyn realized that he too now was soaring on the wings of hypermelodramatic invention. And reined himself sharply in.

“The girl with--with the lavender gripsack?” he asked. “Forget the girl with the lavender gripsack!” I said.

[Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton, expelled from a Church of England girls’ school for drawing demons and vampires, later known as the Witch of Kings Cross, a worshipper of Pan, and a student of Aleister Crowley and the qlippoth, was BOTD in 1917.]

Beano #817, Mar 15, 1958

He’s a hidden gem!

Give a writer the bare taste of success--by magazine acceptance--and after that he’s utterly ruined! For he wants to do nothing else after that--but write more--and get more acceptances. Till, of course, Old Man Death accepts him--in the magazine called "The Grave."

[The Jane Goodall Institute wrote a stern letter to Gary Larson over this “atrocious” cartoon, but Jane came back from Africa and thought it was funny. Gary later visited Goodall’s research facility in Tanzania, where he was attacked by Frodo the Chimp.]

[When Jane Goodall was one year old, her father gave her a stuffed chimp named Jubilee, and the rest is history.]

Today is Septidi the 7th of Vendémiaire in the year 234. Vendémiaire is the month of vintage. Today we celebrate carrots.#JacobinDay More information on carrots

[Kaleb Horton on Charles Portis.] slate.com/culture/2020...

Doing god's work (i.e., checking out the bookshelves in videos)

A professional taleteller being one, of course, who can facilely expand an incident into an episode--a person into a character--a colorful objective highlight into a vivid description--a pungent remark and its answer into a dramatic conversation--

Whoa! Those are Lion Jim Thompson pbs!

when i see a shelf like this, i like to guess what's the priciest. here, i think that lion "killer inside me" goes for upwards of $300, according to addall...

[Archie comics writer George Gladir was born 100 years ago today, to create Sabrina the Teenage Witch and her cat Salem Saberhagen. Salem is sometimes orange, sometimes black, and sometimes a warlock who was turned into a cat for trying to take over the world. He may be Jewish.]

[Happy 97th birthday to silent and early sound era actor Garry Watson, the last of the Watson brood. His most noted film appearance, with a number of siblings, was MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939).]

[From the Hulu series “The Lowdown.” Tim Blake Nelson’s awesome paperback collection even includes some Richard S. Prathers!]

[Happy 84th birthday to Martine Beswick, who fought Eliza Gur in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) and Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS B. C. (1966). She was S. H. In DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971) and the Queen of Evil in SEIZURE (1974). In 2021 she narrated COWBOYS VS. PTERODACTYLS.]

Quick, burn all your Antifa membership cards. I'm havin' Pete climb the tree and take the clubhouse down. And don't do the secret handshake in public and whatnot!

Please support the kickstarter for my movie Kraven the Gatherer. Kraven gathers so much shit in this movie and his friends are all "Kraven, where are you gonna put all that stuff your apartment ain't that big" But Kraven ain't trying to hear it. He is a gatherin' fool and whatnot

And as the USFC-49 put on full speed ahead, Destiny smiled. For she knew her favorite stage would come back; and that dramas--other and many!--would be played out on it during the thousands of years yet that old Big River would be flowing down to the sea!

[RIP Claudia Cardinale, 87, star of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) and legendary feeder of spaghetti to stray cats in the Pantheon.]

Fine Autumn Day woodcut by Kayo Yamaguchi

I don't mind about being laughed at any more. Isn't it funny? Probably I'm being hated instead.

Only--will they find thus? Aye--will they! That’s the question. For all’s not gold that glitters; and everything that makes an inky black aqueous solution isn’t the pure oxy-rhodomate salt of platinum. Not--not by a damned sight!

[RIP Elaine Merk, 94. A munchkin in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), she also appeared in a few Our Gang pictures. Yet surviving Munchkin/Rascals include Valerie Lee and Priscilla Montgomery.]

[Happy 89th birthday to Asa Maynor, who made her film debut in Jerry Warren's MAN BEAST (1956) and went on to play the stewardess who tries to keep William Shatner under control in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963). She was married to Ed "Kookie" Byrnes for a few years.]

if cats had a sense of humor they would rule the world

The Raid. Photo from my collection, no date/info.

An occasional mere beating is, so they say, one of the perquisites in this delightful news game--though I claim it’s not cricket to have it done by a gink with such elephantine feet and hamlike hands as Rawleigh’s.

[RIP Marilyn Knowlden, 99, who played Jessie, age 8, in IMITATION OF LIFE (1934), Cosette in LES MISERABLES (1935), and the young Agnes Wickfield in DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935).]

kittens on the keys

But I b’en hyar in this man’s town now fur 10 long y’ar--mebbe yo’ wouldn’t b’leeve it f’m the way I talk--but we’uns from aroun’ Big River talks jest allus so--and we cain’t never change our talk no mo’n kin anybody evah im’tate us.

[Ethel Ernestine Harper, musician and educator, was BOTD in 1903. She led the Ethel Harper Rhythm Boys, which included teenage Sun Ra, won the Apollo Theater Amateur Hour in 1956, played in The Hot Mikado on Broadway, and, from 1950 to 1958, portrayed Aunt Jemima for Quaker Oats.]

[Copy Cats. From Arm in Arm (A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and other Echolalia) by Remy Charlip, 1969.]

Theez reeding lamp, reflacted, makes the tabul A sea of gold beneeth theez latter-pad. The roe of books are pirate chests of fabul The clock chimes tan exoltantly an glad.

Throo looping lines of frandship’s fairy cables My han be-4 me guides my eeger pan. I lov all rooms weeth gold-reflacting tabuls I lov the chiming hour of tan.

Again the Sheriff snorted. “Wall, hyar’s one true affair that’ll never be writ up in no book nov-el form fur no future gen’rations, ’caze ain’t no reader, in seven cantynents, ’ll ever ever stand fur invis’ble crim’nals.”

[B. B. King was born on this day 100 years ago, to play at the Regal Theater in Chicago, London of the West, on November 21, 1964.] archive.org/details/0054...

Demonic entity caught on film. Photo from my collection, no date/info.

The Dark Fritos Monster Universe:

I have a lot of books by Harry Stephen Keeler, who could not pass up any opportunity to write out a character's accent as it sounded to him, sometimes for entire chapters. This is his version of a Cockney speaking. It's truly headache-inducing.

[RIP beach movie star Salli Sachse, 82, who appeared in BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965), DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965), and THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966), before becoming a photographer and teen counselor.]

“So--To Chicago--a $2 taxicab ride in which--in any direction--proves it to be myriad-eyed--myriad-sided--myriad-tuned--a veritable London-of-the-West!”