KGB Museum Kaput (NYC, Night's Black Agents)

Once upon the Before Times I went to NYC and visited a charming little KGB Museum down on 14th Street. I gave it a moderately glowing review. 

I’m going back to NYC after a longish hiatus and have been planning out my day-to-day schedule. Go here, buy books there, maybe find time to see Dementia 13 at the Film Forum, so on and so forth. It suddenly occurred to me: did the KGB Museum survive COVID? 

Alas, Babylon! No, it did not. 

The NY Times recorded its demise back in October of 2020. The originator of the collection, Lithuanian enthusiast Julius Urbaitis, said he was closing up shop due to, well, the world in general, alack the day, and the collection would be put up for auction. Artnet goes on to give a date for that auction: Feb 13, 2021. 

So much for a kitschy bit of New York. Mind you, it does mean that the hokey gift cup I bought for my brother that Christmas is a valuable collector’s item, being as they can’t have sold many before the business went belly-up.  

Urbaitis claims, in the Times article, that the museum “was “very successful” in attracting visitors who paid $25 to enter.” I mean, anything’s possible, but when I was there it was me and two other people. Admittedly that was early hours on a Friday. Here’s hoping it was busier on other days. 

The collection was liquidated by Julien’s Auctions out in Beverly Hills, California, which has in its time dealt with everything from Elvis to Betty White. According to the auction results most of the items went for reasonable sums – nothing earth-shaking, often in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands.

All of which brings me to two things. 

First, this is the last post this month. Next weekend I shall be enjoying the COVID-riddled fun times of NYC and will bring back exotic grimoires from long-forgotten dens of iniquity, like the Argosy and the Mysterious Bookstore. With luck I’ll find time for Hex & Co, which is a new one on me.  

Second, with all of the above in mind let’s have a Dracula Dossier scenario seed based on the all-too-short career of the KGB Museum. 

Babylon The Great Is Fallen. 

A notorious and unlucky collector of spy ephemera, mostly World War Two vintage stuff with a bit of early Cold War thrown in for fun, has been forced to liquidate his collection. The job of turning tat into cash has been given to a Californian auction house, and all signs indicate the Californians have their work cut out for them. 

However, you’ve discovered (either through your contacts or some other means) that someone closely connected with the Conspiracy shall attend the auction in person. You’re not sure why. You don’t know what they want to bid on. It’s very rare for this person to even leave Europe, never mind go to California.  

What can they be up to? Is there something genuinely valuable amongst the dross? 

• Option One: the Conspiracy bigwig is genuinely interested in one of the items, a World War Two era assassination tool that, Vampirology confirms, would actually be very useful against vampires and might have been used to kill a Conspiracy member, back in the day. It’s not clear whether the bigwig wants this killing tool for their own reasons or because the Conspiracy wants it. 
• Option Two: the Conspiracy bigwig is attempting a Yojimbo Option swindle. The bigwig is on the outs with another bigwig and is trying to make it seem as if B1 is after a genuine relic. This, B1 hopes, will lure in B2, at which point B1 will finagle it so B2 buys a fraud at eye-watering prices. This will reduce B2’s standing within the Conspiracy, which will make B1 very, very happy. Of course, if the agents were to intervene … 
• Option Three: the Conspiracy bigwig has been lured in by an Edom artefact which, by some happenstance, managed to find its way into the collection. Or so the bigwig thinks; in fact the artefact was deliberately placed there by Edom as a lure. Edom wants to flip the bigwig, and this is all part of a scheme to lure them to California, out of their comfort zone, where they can be fooled into doing something stupid/compromising. With that handy blackmail material, Edom will have enough to flip the bigwig. Enter the agents. Are they working for Edom? Are they free agents? Are they about to do something remarkably foolish and/or dangerous in Beverly Hills? 

That’s it for this week! Enjoy.   

Person of Interest: Benjamin Rucker, aka Black Herman (RPG all, especially Timewatch)

Professor Black Herman, the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Negro Magician, was born in a Zulu village, to hear him tell it, and spent his early life learning the mystic secrets of the Orient while dodging Chinese assassins, bent on revenge for his refusing to help them steal a priceless diamond from the head of a statue of Buddha. Seeing that the end was nigh, rather than deliver himself into the hands of his enemies, Black Herman drank poison and died. Many dignitaries, including the King of the Zulus, gathered to pay respects, only to gape in wonderment, as Black Herman stepped out of his coffin and back into the land of the living. Then, after a display of wonders to rival the best, Black Herman went across the seas, to try his luck at fame and fortune in the Americas.

Or, to be slightly more accurate, Benjamin Rucker was probably born in Amherst, Virginia, in 1892. He tried a number of different professions before taking up the magician's wand, but by 1906 he was well on his way. He's known to have worked with Harry Kellar, but it's his alleged association with huckster, herb doctor, and fellow Virginian Prince Herman that he's best known for. It's not entirely clear whether Rucker worked with Prince Herman or not, but Rucker said he did, and he took on Herman's stage name after Prince Herman died unexpectedly in 1909.

Rucker, then only 17, was set to conquer the world, but there was a problem: he was black, in a world where that mattered more than anything. When he worked with Prince Herman, he could perform in the South; now he was a solo act, segregation laws confined him to non-white audiences, unless he was performing in the North. So he set his sights on other audiences, and by 1918 was at the height of his talent. An absolute master of stage magic, he also mixed in a healthy dose of hoodoo and herbal remedies; for, as Rucker himself put it, he was a man who knew how to spend $1 twice over and still have change left, and fortunetelling with a healthy dose of herbal remedies were where the money was.

Hoodoo, for those unfamiliar with the term, is not voodoo. Hoodoo is an American variant on West African folklore, also known as conjure, root doctoring, or rootworking. It blends herbal remedies with Moses-as-conjuror; the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the core texts of this spiritualist movement. A hoodoo worker makes talismans, oils, candles and incense, to minister to every possible need or ailment. Though hoodoo has a strong element of ancestor worship, it lacks the loa that vaudon sanctifies, and also lacks the Catholic overtones of voodoo.

The man who not only can foretell the future, but also supply every possible remedy to human frailty, can make a great deal of money, which is exactly what Benjamin Rucker did.

Things went from good to better. He bought a brownstone in Harlem, NYC, where he saw all his clients. He performed across the country, and when the performances were over, he used his hoodoo skills to counsel his audience. He became a devoted friend and counselor to Marcus Garvey, leader of the Back to Africa movement, and Garvey was far from Burcker's only friend and confidante; Black Herman was probably the best-connected hoodoo man and performing magician of his day. He was an Elk, a Freemason, a Knight of Pythias. He donated to churches and worthy causes, funded scholarships, was a friend to poor man and intellectuals, politicians and power brokers. Everyone wanted to be on good terms with the man who knew how to twist the skein of fortune any way he wanted.

HIs signature performance piece was a living burial. He picked a spot, which he called his Private Graveyard, and lay in his coffin on display for all to see; it cost ten cents to check his pulse. Then he was buried, but when his coffin was disinterred a few days later he stepped out, none the worse. He used his miraculous recovery as a kick-off for his stage performance, emerging from the coffin to lead a parade to the stage. It was his boast that he returned to a venue once every seven years - a picturesque way of saying he was constantly on tour.

Things didn't always go his way. In 1927 he was arrested and sent to Sing Sing on charges of fortune telling and selling medicine without a license, but he only spent a brief time in jail. His supporters claimed a prison cell couldn't hold him; he'd walk out of there any time he liked. He wasn't in jail long in any event, and the 1929 stock market crash didn't hurt his fortune much; whatever financial losses he might have suffered were soon made back again, by telling more fortunes and selling more conjure medicine.

He died young. In 1934 he collapsed at a friend's home - some stories say it actually happened on stage - suffering massive cardiac failure. He was only 44 years old.

Even then, his admirers and well-wishers didn't believe it. Professor Black Herman, dead? The man who'd stepped out of the coffin more times than a man could count? No, never; thousands went to the funeral home to see his body, laid out in state. His assistant, Washington Reeves - later to take on Black Herman's stage name - charged money to view the corpse. But this time it didn't step out of the casket; Benjamin Rucker had enraptured his last audience.

From a gamificiation viewpoint, a hoodoo stage magician who performs throughout the 1920s and 30s, all across the United States, is a perfect NPC for Trail or Call of Cthulhu. However with that mysterious death, can he be anything other than a Timewatch agent? You can almost picture the funeral home, after everyone else is left, as Black Herman walks out of the grave one last time, and into Time itself.

With that in mind:

Recruitment Drive: TimeWatch intends to pick up Rucker at the funeral home in 1934 but, when the agents get there, he's not in the coffin any more. Instead, an aged and scarred Rucker appears at his brownstone in Harlem, witnessed by his employee and protégée Washington Reeves, who he tells to go to the funeral home and give a message to whoever he finds there. Clearly Rucker's been time travelling, but on whose dime? And was his reappearance an attempt to contact TimeWatch, knowing that TimeWatch agents would have to be in Harlem on that date? Or is this some elaborate trap?

That's it for now. Enjoy!

NYC Book Expo

I just flew in from the New York Book Expo and boy are my arms tired of that joke.

I was there courtesy of the Bermuda Book Store - highly recommended if you ever happen to be in town - and as it was my first visit I had no idea what to expect. I was advised not to even think about going on the weekend when it's open to the public, as the place turns into a madhouse. A fun one no doubt, but still, madhouse.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly and came away with a few factoids, one of which is that apparently we have hit peak ebook. Or something along those lines anyway; according to those who have crunched the data, sales peaked at somewhere around 34% of the total market. The book is not dead - it can eternal lie, after all.

What seems to be happening these days is people buy several different versions of the same thing - ebook, audio, and physical. Among other advantages, with the advent of new tech like Alexa this allows people to enjoy the experience seamlessly, because each interconnected device can track where the other left off. You read the ebook, shut it down, go to sleep, wake up the next day and activate the audiobook precisely where you stopped reading the night before, that sort of thing. Presumably for the book you use the same old standards the ancients did, which in my case is a bit of torn-up newspaper or moth-eaten bookmark.

There was much talk of author buzz, and here's where I regret not bringing some of the con tchotchke home with me, as I naively assumed the expo's website would have the data. Not so, or if it does it's so well hidden that not even the wisest of the Keebler Elves can find it.

So I only have what I can remember, as the physicals are being shipped home to save on suitcase space.

Stay With Me by Ayolami Adebayo is my take-home - a signed uncorrected proof, no less. Set in 1980s Nigeria, this story is about newlyweds Yejide and Akin, whose lack of success in having a child has complicated their relationship. Akin swore never to take more than one wife, unusual in a polygamous society, and Yejide holds him to this. However their families are not so understanding, and one day they turn up on Yejide's doorstep with a second wife in tow, so determined are they to get grandchildren. This starts a war of the wombs between Yejide and the unwanted outsider, with devastating consequences for Yejide's marriage.

There are two other books that I did not take home; I left them in New York with some friends, having read them both myself during the Expo. I figured it was good to spread the love, not realizing that I would be relying on memory alone for titles and authors. That was silly of me.

I'm strongly tempted to rant about the ill-designed Expo website or its reliance on its app, which never worked for me. But I shall resist.

The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is a modern-day retelling of the Monkey King saga, set in a California high school. Genie - Eugenie, but there are dozens of those at her school, hence the abbreviation - is doing everything she can to get into an Ivy League college far, far away from California, but her smooth progress is interrupted by the arrival of an exchange student, Quentin, who introduces himself as the (disguised) Monkey King. He's been sent to Earth to seek her out, so she can help him deal with over a hundred Demons newly escaped from Hell. Though Genie resembles his monkish companion from Journey To The West, it transpires she's a reincarnation of a completely different yet vital character, but to say more might count as a spoiler. Lots of fun, great action scenes, a thoroughly believable main character in Genie Lo. F.C. Yee in person rather resembles Quentin as he's described in the novel, which I suppose shouldn't come as a shock. Highly recommended, though not as highly as this next one:

Saints and Misfits, by S.K. Ali, tells the story of Janna Yusuf, a young Muslim woman struggling to cope with the usual assortment of teenage woes plus one other: she was sexually assaulted by a young man who everyone in her community thinks is a saint. She doesn't know what to do, who to tell, whether to tell at all. I was attracted to this book partly because it was something new in my experience, a young adult story about Muslims told by a Muslim, in a thoroughly engaging, charming and, best of all, funny way. I read it in a day because it's just that good, a true page-turner. No, there's no demons, spells or supernatural things. Cthulhu is as far away from this book as it is possible to be. I recommend it because it's wonderful, no other reason. Though I suppose if you were looking for a BubbleGumshoe setting that is unique, entertaining and charming, you could do far worse than steal a few ideas from S.K. Ali.

Now, as I'm a cunning man I also prepped a longer post in advance, which shall follow shortly. However this is all I have to say about the Expo, for now. If I think of anything else I shall add it as an addendum. In fact there's at least one addendum I desperately want to add, as it concerns a publisher of reprinted World War One stories - Henri Barbusse and the like - which Dulce Et Decorum Keepers and players will find interesting. However that's in the pile of stuff that's being shipped home, so it will have to wait for another day.

Enjoy!