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Weak V

30 January 2025

No. 7,730 (cartoon)

I’m in love with everyone and everything.

You’re drunk.

Two sides of the same pancake.

31 January 2025

So Long, Marianne

I feel like a latter-day Nostradamus or Nosferatu or one of them hombres. A week ago I wrote, “The music of my youth is fifty years old, so I fear I’m up for another music lesson from another round of obituaries sooner than later.”

Yesterday I heard that Marianne Faithfull checked out. I have most of her albums; I pirated them from my friend Mark, who described her work as, Music to Kill Yourself By.

This paltry entry isn’t much of an obituary; I don’t do obits. I wrote this as an excuse to use the title of one of Leonard Cohen’s better songs as today’s subject.

1 February 2025

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Yesterday I claimed that I don’t do obituaries, yet here’s a third one in just over a week. I’m talking about the headline I saw in The New York Times, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Artist With an Indigenous Focus. (I’m grateful to the Times for deciding that the word “Indigenous” is preferred over many alternative descriptions of the people whose land we stole; that saves me a lot of polling.)

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is a fantastic name for a visual artist! I briefly thought about coming up with an Indigenous name for myself before realizing how offensive it would be for a white trash honky like me to do something that insulting. I’ve always admired the South Park writers whose job is to offend everybody. I’m thinking about the episode featuring Chief Runs-With-Premise; almost no one else could get away with that.

Let’s see, where was I? Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s death. I know nothing about her and I’m not going to investigate. Did I mention that I don’t do obits?

2 February 2025

My Last Photograph of Shelly

I said my final goodbye to Shelly months ago; I said goodbye to her cremains today. I wish she could come back for just twenty seconds to hear her groan and laugh when I told her that I kissed her farewell on the ash.

If you can’t find a single laugh at a memorial service then you’re probably dead.

3 February 2025

Between Awkward and Ugly

Lara isn’t doing well trying to meet men on the Internet, so she asked me for advice. That was a foolish request, and I was a fool to agree, but if you can’t be foolish with your close friends then what are they for?

I looked at what she posted and spotted the problem immediately.

“Lara, you’re a beautiful woman as those photographs show, but you have a problem,” I explained.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“You look human,” I replied. “let’s have a look at some of the other women in their sixties.”

I pointed out that many of them had no wrinkles after they processed their portraits through powerfully ridiculous computer filters that gave their skin the texture of melted cheese, to compliment the painted false eyebrows, oversize lip implants, and worse. It’s these modern times. Men want women who look like their rubber-covered sex robots, and don’t have a lot of interest in real women like Lara.

I wonder what happens when those pathetic guys meets a real woman who looks like a nonfictional human and not a teenage fantasy? I have no idea, but it must be somewhere between awkward and ugly.

4 February 2025

Seven Crisps, Crisp and Soggy (Diptych)

Here’s a curious culinary and semantic fact: there are no potato chips in England. Over there, the greasy, salty, and addictive taste treats are called crisps. I usually scoff at any alleged artwork that requires an explanation, but without the previous sentence, Seven Crisps, Crisp and Soggy (Diptych) wouldn’t have a punch line.

I waited months for a river of rain to head this way to soak the crisps. After the days of the constant precipitation I’d been anticipating, I discovered a fly in my visual ointment: it’s difficult to photograph in the rain, and wet strobes are fraught with comedic peril.

I abandoned my idea of an image of a romantic bowl of soggy crisps in the pouring rain, and instead did everything in the studio on a copy stand, with intentionally “bad” forensic lighting.

As Andy Warhol said, “My paintings never turn out the way I expect them to but I’m never surprised.”

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart