Earlier this fall a friend and I went to a craft fair in DC called Crafty Bastards – this wasn’t your standard, garden variety craft fair, this was some seriously nice stuff, all handcrafted by artisans all over the country. While there I found and purchased a journal made by Ex Libris Anonymous. They find interesting recycled books and salvage the covers and select pages, toss in about 75 blank pages, and bind them all into a book. Because this combines two things I absolutely love – reading books and writing/journaling – I had to have one. I perused through the stacks of journals till I found one that I simply had to have – the book/journal was titled Captions Courageous (or Comments from the Gallery). Basically, the two authors, Bob Reisner and Hal Kapplow, added their own captions to famous paintings and sculptures. The result is hilarious. After leafing through the journal, which contained a few pages from the actual book, I went online in search of my own copy of Captions Courageous. Thankfully I found a copy and quickly ordered it.

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The book was copyrighted in 1958, my copy was the 5th printing in February 1959 – not too shabby for what is really a silly little book. I curled up with my newly acquired book and a glass of wine and flipped through the pages.

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I was laughing out loud as I read through them, the authors’ captions are far funnier than the original titles and really do capture what could be happening in the paintings. And I was pleasantly surprised to see this one:

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Yeah, that’s sorta how some poetry readings go. 😉