Doug Skinner (born January 7, 1955) is an American composer, writer, and performer.
Skinner has written music for many dance companies, including ODC/Dance in San Francisco [1] and Margaret Jenkins. [2] He has often written for the theater: in particular, he has had a long association with the actor/clown Bill Irwin; he wrote and performed the music for Irwin's Murdoch ('81), The Regard of Flight ('82), The Courtroom ('85), The Clown Lecture ('02), The Harlequin Studies ('03), and The Regard Evening ('04). He often performs his songs in NYC clubs. In the '90s, he frequently gigged with the ukulele and vocal trio White Knuckle Sandwich.
As a performer, he has been active as actor, monologist, and occasional ventriloquist. His full shows include Pay Attention (1984), An Attractive Production (1985), and Eddie Unchained (1993). He regularly shows cartoon slide shows on Robert Sikoryak's long-running Carousel. He has also created many puppet shows and videos with performance/video artist Michael Smith.
According to the online magazine nth position, for which he occasionally writes, Doug Skinner has also played piano on the BBC, cello at the White House, and ukulele on the Joe Franklin Show . He also appeared as the character referred to as "Toilet Citizen" in the 1988 film Crocodile Dundee II .
In recent years, Skinner has devoted more time to writing and lecturing, particularly on Fortean subjects. He has contributed to Fortean Times , Fate , The Anomalist , INFO Journal , Strange Attractor Journal, Weirdo , Nickelodeon, and other publications, writing on such subjects as Richard Shaver, John Keel, the early Fortean Society, John Dee, Boris Vian, the scientific method, the cultural history of Darwinism in the US, and hoaxes. Regular features have included the column Let's Ask Skinner for Crimewave USA and the comic strip It's Fortean for the kids' paper ZUZU . His translation of the alchemical text Three Dreams, by Giovanni Battista Nazari, was published in 2003 by Opus Magnum Hermetic Sourceworks in Glasgow.
He has also been a frequent speaker at the International Fortean Organization (INFO) Fortfests and the Fortean Times UnConventions.
Alfred Jarry was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as "Forteans", and has influenced some aspects of science fiction.
Charles Cros or Émile-Hortensius-Charles Cros was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude.
Jean Moréas, was a Greek poet, essayist, and art critic, who wrote mostly in the French language but also in Greek during his youth.
Francisque Sarcey was a French journalist and dramatic critic.
Miles Beresford Kington was a British journalist, musician and broadcaster. He is also credited with the invention of Franglais, a fictional language, made up of French and English.
Richard Sharpe Shaver was an American writer and artist who achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories that were printed in science fiction magazines. In Shaver's story, he claimed that he had had personal experience of a sinister ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the claim by Shaver, and his editor and publisher Ray Palmer, that Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".
Bernard Heuvelmans was a Belgian-French scientist, explorer, researcher, and writer probably best known, along with Scottish-American biologist Ivan T. Sanderson, as a founding figure in the pseudoscience and subculture of cryptozoology. His 1958 book On the Track of Unknown Animals is often regarded as one of the most influential cryptozoology texts.
Count Jan Potocki was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a celebrated figure in Poland. He is known chiefly for his picaresque novel, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
Karl Shuker is a British zoologist, cryptozoologist and author. He lives in the Midlands, England, where he works as a zoological consultant and writer. A columnist in Fortean Times and contributor to various magazines, Shuker is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptozoology, which began in November 2012.
Alphonse Allais was a French writer, journalist and humorist.
Le Chat Noir was a nineteenth-century entertainment establishment, in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It was opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart by the impresario Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 not long after Salis' death.
John Mark Reppion is an English comics writer. He is married to Leah Moore, the daughter of Alan Moore, and he has worked with both on the comic Albion.
Dance of the Tiger is a novel by Finnish palaeontologist Björn Kurtén, published in 1978 and English translation in 1980. It is a prehistoric novel dealing with the interaction between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. A sequel, Singletusk, published in 1982, continues the story of the family.
Derek Pell is a visual artist, photographer, writer and satirist. He was the editor in chief of Zoom Street Magazine. He was editor of DingBat Magazine for 12 years, and a contributing editor to PC Laptop. Under both his name and his pen names, most notably Norman Conquest. Derek Pell has authored more than 30 books, many of which he designed and illustrated, including the Doktor Bey series, Bewildering Beasties, Assassination Rhapsody, Lost In Translation, and The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion, along with several collections of his work.
Mac Tonnies was an American author and blogger whose work focused on futurology, transhumanism and paranormal topics.
T. Peter Park is an historian, a former librarian, and a prolific Fortean commentator on anomalous phenomena. According to Chris Perridas, Park is "a foremost Fortean authority on H. P. Lovecraft and the cultural impact his writing has had on our culture through folklore."
Kickshaws is a private press run by John Crombie and Sheila Bourne.
Album primo-avrilesque is a monograph by French writer, artist and humourist Alphonse Allais. The slim volume of 26 octavo landscape pages, 18.5 by 12 centimetres, bound with card, was published by Paul Ollendorff in Paris on 1 April 1897, and was sold for one franc. The work is generally known by its French title, which may be translated into English as "April Fool-ish album".
Louis de Courbon, Comte de Blénac, Marquis de Coutré was governor of the French colony of Saint-Domingue from 1713 to 1716.