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Weak VI

5 February 2024

No. 2,418 (cartoon)

Everything is beautiful.

Your first time on this planet?

In my own way, yes.

6 February 2024

Colleen’s Homemade Soup

Colleen invited me over for homemade soup and wine. I was dubious about the soup since she’s not exactly sure how to boil water, but who can screw up opening a bottle of wine?

The wine was fine—how could it not be?—but I was suspicious about the soup.

“If I didn’t know better,” I began, “I might wonder if your homemade soup didn’t come out of that empty can of Chef Luigi Wong’s Split Pea ’n’ Stuff Gourmet Soup on the counter.”

“It’s homemade if I stirred it,” she explained unapologetically.

I used to say that there’s nothing like homemade soup, but there is something like Colleen’s; just ask Chef Luigi Wong.

7 February 2024

SINE WHEN TAKE TOLS OUT

Colin bought a nice little compound on the outskirts of Santa Fe, complete with a dilapidated outbuilding that appears to have been abandoned decades ago. A handwritten piece of paper on a rusty clipboard still hanging on a nail inside the door demands, SINE WHEN TAKE TOLS OUT.

What the author lacked in literacy s/he made up for in typography. The N in WHEN is reversed as if it were from the Cyrillic alphabet, and each character on the brittle, yellowed paper was painstakingly drawn as an outline.

Colin claims that he’s going to mat it and frame it under glass after he restores the building. I doubt that will ever happen, but, like most unrealized intentions, it’s a nice thought.

8 February 2024

Mojo Nixon

Mojo Nixon died only five days after his two-thirds-of-a-century birthday; how can this be?! If someone like him can die at that age, then anyone can die at any age.

Think about it.

Or not.

I gotta go; the distressing implications will take a while to sink in ...

9 February 2024

I Shot an Arrow into the Air

I found myself in El Prado, New Mexico, this afternoon. Hold it; that sentence was even too lazy for me; I simply must start over ...

I agreed to join Diane on a little road trip to the Millicent Rogers Museum in El Prado, New Mexico. I didn’t say I’d pay fifteen dollars to see a fifteen-cent show, so I stayed in the parking lot while she perused the tedious exhibits she later described as, “very disappointing.”

The patch of sunlight on the peak of Mount Mucho Grande—or something like that—was too photogenic to resist while I waited for her, so I made a nice snapshot after sticking something in the foreground. It wasn’t a bad photograph, but it wasn’t a very good one, either, so what to do?

If it was a great photograph, I would have given it a dry title, something like, Utility Pole, El Prado, New Mexico. That wasn’t the case, so I called it, I Shot an Arrow into the Air. That’s a very obscure reference to an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring a telephone pole in the desert.

The great title on an unexceptional photograph wasn’t a bad idea, but I’ll never reproduce the image again. One glimpse of it as another cautionary tale was enough. After all, a cow pie covered in chocolate icing and whipped cream with a maraschino cherry on top is still just crap.

10 February 2024

Carl Scheffler and Herbert Hoover

“Was that the science teacher?” I asked. “I never took his class.”

That was my response when Dr. Wiles called to report that Carl Scheffler died today. Death news is one of the ways I stay in touch with my high school friends from Interlochen, so I welcomed the call even though I had no idea what stranger died ... until I did.

Ah, him. Scheffler was the gym teacher charged with getting a herd of pudgy “gifted youth” in shape. I see that I already penned my remembrance of him on 2 May 2007. How convenient!

Thirty-five years ago today, my high school physical education teacher walked into the locker room to make a solemn announcement.

“John Edgar Hoover died today,” he reported gravely.

Most of the lads were indifferent, but not me. I clapped. I cheered. I expressed unrestrained glee after hearing about the demise of a nasty, little dictator.

“That’s not a very Christian attitude,” my instructor chastised.

I just smirked a teenage smirk, since I knew that would bother him as much as his reactionary, moronic politics irritated me. Too bad I didn’t know then that Hoover was a cross-dresser; that would really have thrown a succulent glob of trichinosis on his moral bacon.

11 February 2024

The Bad Art Network

I was surprised to discover that I’ve never mentioned The Museum of Bad Art here before. It’s widely regarded as being in the top tier of fourth-rate institutions, but such accolades are beside the point. The name itself is its raison d'être.

That’s why I was surprised to learn that there’s a similarly named venture, The Museum of Particularly Bad Art. I’m not sure how I feel about this. There’s certainly enough bad art to fill ten thousand large galleries with bad art from ceiling to floor. But what about the names?

We already have The Museum of Bad Art and The Museum of Particularly Bad Art. I can think of dozens of substitutions for “particularly” and “bad” without even glancing at my thesaurus. I’m no longer involved in propaganda, but such a race to the bottom sure smells like an impossible branding exercise.

“Is there an art museum that doesn’t exhibit at least a few stinkers?” I ask.

“Of course there’s not,” I answer.

And that brings me to my latest stillborn project, The Bad Art Network. I’d charge museums around the world, say, five hundred dollars a year to be an institutional member. And if, say, the Millicent Rogers Museum refused to pay up, I’d have to come up with some form of legal extortion, such as shaming them by putting them on a list of Institutions in Denial. I figure that kind of bad publicity is worth five Franklins a year to avoid.

I’m sure The Museum of Bad Art and The Museum of Particularly Bad Art would become charter members; maybe I’ll go through with this.

Mañana ...

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart