Marc loved spoofs, especially spoofs on the hollowness of procedural pomp and ceremony. Two stand out among Marc’s collections of funny newspaper clippings. “A plague of plaques” reports on a Parisian prankster who audaciously posted fake commemorative plaques around the city: “On April 17, 1967,” reads one, “nothing happened here.”
Similarly, “Leading the blind” describes a university student who impersonated an absent professor on the first day of class by lecturing grandly but nonsensically about obscure philosophers and calculus. It’s easy to see what Marc found funny in these charades: individuals who dared to seize the authority and prestige of an “official” status, as might jesters snatching the king’s crown for one delicious moment.
