The phenakistascope was one of the earliest animation devices. The back of the wheel is black; the wheel is spun before a mirror as the viewer peers through the slots from behind. I’ve drawn a number of them. In this study, the early bird still can’t get that worm.

“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 stories; Abraham Ettleson, who was convinced that Through the Looking Glass was about Judaism; Floria Benton, who argued that Isaac Asimov’s novels are studded with secret clues affirming that the earth is hollow; and a number of the more outré Baconians. I took special pride in spelling Shakespeare’s name differently each time it occurred.

This DVD was published by 2nd Cannons in 2008; it collects performances and videos that Michael Smith and I did in the ’90s. The photos of Doug and Mike when they were younger are by the inimitable William Wegman.

Our liner notes sum up the whole business as well as anything:

And you can see a bit of it here.

I joined Brian Dewan and Nina Katchadourian in this collection of songs about Roosevelt Island. The island has a long and colorful history, and has had many names over the years: Hog Island, Manning’s Island, Blackwell’s Island, Welfare Island. For much of the 19th and 20th century, it was used as a prison and hospital. We collected historical songs, and wrote some of our own. The project was originally done for the show “Romantic Detachment,” at MoMA PS1 in 2004; we then made up CDs (with artwork by Brian) and a few LPs as well.

I contributed two rounds: “Blackwell’s Isle,” a moralizing schoolroom lesson about the prison; and “Captain Manning’s Catch,” a boisterous drinking ditty about the disgraced and rum-besotted officer who owned the place in the late 17th century.

The other songs were:

A Loaf of Bread (traditional)
Patient Island (Nina)
The Fancy Peeler (traditional)
The Ballad of Nelly Bly (Nina)
Isle de Blackwell (historical, by Dave Braham and Ed Harrigan)
Brain Surgery (without anesthesia) (Brian)
The Lighthouse (Brian)
Roosevelt Island Promo Jingle (Nina)

We also performed a few gigs as The Patient Island Singers, joined by Meg Reichardt and Clare Ellis.

The Regard of Flight was a bit short, so we rounded out the evening with some of Bill’s shorter pieces, under the title of The Clown Bagatelles. The last of these was a dance piece called “The Marionette.” I played this piece hundreds of times, and always approached the final cadence with relief: we made it through another show.

I teach ukulele classes; here’s a brief clip of my students and me at a recital, at Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theater. (The clip has subsequently been removed.)

Back when I was a composition student at Oberlin Conservatory, I wrote some songs and incidental music for a puppet production of Brecht’s one-act The Elephant Calf. The score was ebullient and dissonant, with cartoonish cues, and a few mocking quotations (B-A-C-H and a scrap of Mahler). It was performed in May 1973. The puppets were made by one of my fellow students, Julie Taymor, who has since gone on to larger stages.

My occasional cartoon character Red Telephone tunes his uke, from the March 1980 issue of Ear. I signed it with his name, since I sympathized with his plight. And I redrew it a few years later, to make it crisper.

Bill Kartalopoulos and Mark Newgarden organized a program of songs about comic strips, back in June 2009. I sang several of them, some in duet with Peter Stampfel, which was a treat.

Two of the puppet-centric videos I made with Michael Smith, “Shane and Cory” and “Mr. Woodie’s Goodies,” were included in the second issue of the Dutch VHS anthology, Zapp Magazine, in 1994.