That gentleman of the pen, Danny Hellman, published this comic strip in his anthology Typhon, in 2008. I originally drew it for performance, which is why the dialogue is not contained within the balloons. Here’s how it begins.

How did I ever end up in a movie? I don’t even watch movies.

However — I was appearing, yet again, in Bill Irwin’s show The Regard of Flight, and casting agents noticed me. I auditioned for a movie called Three Men and a Baby (as one of the three men, not as the baby). I didn’t get that part, but was eventually assigned a small part in Crocodile Dundee II. I emerged from a toilet stall during a tense moment, retreated, and then emerged again to say “He’s gone.”

I have no idea if the movie was nice, since I never got around to watching it.

The curious thing is that friends and family (especially family) saw the fact that I delivered one line in a movie as much more important and interesting than anything else I did. For me, it was just a lark, a chance to earn a few bucks. My fellow citizens often mystify me.

A round on a trenchant scrap of Yeats. Hear, hear!

A funereal snippet, to illustrate a point of physical comedy in a performance with Bill Irwin, at the Walter Reade Theater (NYC) in 1999.

Having long been a fan of both Richard Shaver and Fate magazine, I was happy to play a part in putting him on the cover. My article for this issue, “What’s This?  A Shaver Revival?” can be found here. Or, to be more precise, the beginning of the article: you have to buy the issue to read the whole thing, as is only proper.

In 1977 and 1978, I drew a comic strip for a paper in Oakland, CA, The East Bay Review. It was called “Art For Art’s Sake,” and took a cast of anthropomorphic creatures through the Bay Area arts scene. It seems pretty jejune to me now, in my dotage, but the discipline of meeting deadlines was salutary; and people told me they enjoyed it. It careered through both continuity and isolated panels; here’s one of this and two of that.

Back in 1981, while touring in Florence, I picked up a facsimile copy of this peculiar alchemical work. I was fascinated, and started a translation. Then, many years and moves later, I found my notes, and realized that I should either discard it or finish it. So, I Googled Nazari; and found that the book had not been translated; and that, in fact, a publisher of alchemical books had put out a request for someone to do it. I contacted him, he sent me money; and the result was published in 2002 by Adam McLean, of the Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, in Glasgow, in a limited edition of 300.

It’s perhaps best known for its woodcuts, particularly the three-headed dragon below. And here’s a bit of the passage in which our narrator encounters that beastie.

I’ve often performed this song on the ukulele. I recorded it with an obbligato for baritone uke; in performance, David Gold has joined me on viola. Here’s how it begins:

A brief crab canon. I notated it in the style of a baroque puzzle canon; that saves ink.