Michele Larsson put together The Big Show in 1978, in connection with an exhibit devoted to Loie Fuller at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco.  I provided music, which was mostly improvised, as I recall; Tony Gnazzo talked and rode an exercise bike; Helen Dannenberg and Michele danced.

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“The Baptistown Crawl” is a delightful and catchy tune, recorded by “Hitch’s Happy Harmonists” in 1924.  Historians remember the band as the first that Hoagy Carmichael recorded with.  This tune, however, seems to have been written by the leader, Curtis Hitch.  I transcribed it, and arranged it for viola and piano, in which form David […]

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A lament about one of our most unpleasant holidays.

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I wrote “Bimbo & Bombo” back in 2003, after a visit to the Alchemical Museum in Kutna Hora, in the Czech Republic.  I read it occasionally at readings; and toyed with the idea of illustrating it.  Finally, I did, in 2011, and presented it at a “Carousel” show.  Bimbo and Bombo travel through air, water, […]

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“H,” in German, is the name for B natural, thus allowing Bach to spell his name as B — A — C — B natural.  I expanded Bach’s musical signature for this canon.

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This was John Keel’s last book: a collection of his columns for Fate magazine.  He had promised to write an introduction, but was too ill to do it.  The publisher, Phyllis Galde, asked me if she could use the bio I had written for the Mothman issue of Fortean Times. So, I got their permission, […]

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I’ve long been intrigued by the supposed liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius in Naples. Part of the purpose of this article was to debunk the common notion of a clash between religion and science; since the “miracle” (as the Vatican is eager to stress) has nothing to do with Catholic doctrine, and the […]

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Killing time in Besançon, back in 1984, I drew a picture of the building next door.

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“Boris Vian for Anglophones” appeared in Strange Attractor Journal 2 (2005), edited by Mark Pilkington. Vian is one of my favorite writers, and his work is still largely unknown to English speakers. I tried in this article to give some idea of his astonishing output, including the less familiar works — such as his songs […]

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“The Book of Fortunatus” appeared in the first issue of the Strange Attractor Journal (2004) edited by Mark Pilkington. It’s devoted to fringe literary theories, particularly those that find more meaning in a text than the author intended. Among the subjects are Pope R. Hill, who found hidden solutions to all of the Sherlock Holmes […]

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