The Virtuoso Parrot is now available from Black Scat Books! Claude-Sosthène Grasset d’Orcet (1828-1900) wrote hundreds of startling articles and stories about secret societies, hidden bloodlines, and his own idiosyncratic views of history. His obsession with finding puns and rebuses, in both ancient inscriptions and modern speech, influenced generations of occultists; it was the inspiration […]

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I’ve written fables in verse for many years, mostly so that I can work within a set of specific formal constraints. My fables are invariably made of seven couplets, in strict iambic tetrameter, with no feminine rhymes, inversions, or sprung rhythms. These constraints, mind you, are not arbitrary, but chosen for their poetic effect. At […]

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Steve Paul and Gregory Dawson put together a cabaret revue at the Rainbow and Stars in 1991.  Somehow, I ended up hosting it — with my inimitable dummy, Eddie Gray, who received separate billing.

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I trot out some French, in an excerpt from a White Knuckle Sandwich slide show.

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You should always sketch your motel room when you’re on the road.

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A love song to the viola, lamenting that the poor instrument is usually relegated to offbeats, set to viola offbeats. The viola does play a solo at the end, though.

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Ventriloquists! Thirty of them, here colorized for your enjoyment. Some of them have turned up on postcards for the “Carousel” series.

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