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Weak XXXV

28 August 2019

No. 2,945 (cartoon)

You don’t have a single good word to say.

Good word.

That’s two.

29 August 2019

John Fahey and Nobody

Dr. Batlan told me that John Fahey died. This was news to me, even though he passed the great divide in 2001. He added that he wrote the definitive biography of Charley Patton before he left us. That made sense; he couldn’t have penned it inside a cramped coffin.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“Nobody,” Dr. Batlan lied.

In fact, ’twould appear that Patton was a famous somebody, but I wasn’t patient enough to learn more about an influential musician born in the nineteenth century. I just can’t keep up with billions of people, but I don’t lose any sleep over my ignorance.

30 August 2019

Dodgy Business

Sandra works at an Internet matchmaking company. Her job is to tweak the computer coding to ensure that no one falls in love there, since if they do the corporation loses two clients at once as well as their service payments and advertising revenue.

Sandra assures me that the business of peddling the snake oil promise of elusive love is as profitable as it is dodgy. It looks like she has a job for life; what a thing to happen to a nice person ...

31 August 2019

Black Mask Revisited

Once upon a time in the sixties, Black Mask, the Dadaesque art group, published one of those shrill, angry tirades against the links between art and bourgeois culture. Here’s an excerpt ...

We assault your Gods - - We sing of your death. DESTROY THE MUSEUMS - - our struggle cannot be hung on walls.

They were right. Their struggle wasn’t hung on the Hirshhorn Museum’s walls, it is under glass in a climate-controlled display case. Bourgeois curators got the last laugh; I appreciated the joke.

When it comes to art and politics, I agree with Samuel Goldwyn. “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”

1 September 2019

National Gallery of Olde Art

The National Gallery of Art’s east wing houses blue chip “contemporary” art from the last century or so. The main building houses olde stuff from previous centuries. I found the former predictable and the latter predictably boring.

The thing that struck me most was the sight of mostly black guards protecting representations of white European culture. I walked through dozens of galleries without bothering to wear my glasses or even to slow down. I was about head outside into the swamp air when I spotted the first thing I liked: a huge room filled with the signifiers of wealth. The ancient oil paintings and the precious antiques were all wrapped in plastic.

I liked the installation. I’m not sure what the curators intended, if anything. Were the artifacts rotting? Mummified? The ambiguity made it interesting.

2 September 2019

How to Read The New Yorker

My friends who subscribe to The New Yorker complain that they’re never done reading old issues of the magazine when a new edition appears. I figured out how to solve that problem decades ago: enjoy the cartoons and skip the rest. Simple, no?

I’m staying at Dr. Poticha’s place during a visit, and a couple of articles that the editors use to fill the space between advertisements and comics distracted me. One piece talked about Vija Celmins, a highly acclaimed artist I’ve never heard mentioned before, and Iggy Pop, who is, well, Iggy Pop.

I tried to read both articles, but didn’t get very far. I read a lot about Celmins lovers over the decades, but gave up when I discovered there wasn’t a single reproduction of her work. And then I learned that Pop enjoys swimming, yawn ...

I (re)learned my lesson and went on to enjoy the cartoons.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart