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Weak XXII

28 May 2025

No. 756 (cartoon)

This tastes like dog meat.

I overcooked the poodle.

Feed it to the other one and try again later.

29 May 2025

Differentiating between a Musician and a Servant

Here are a couple of things I’ll mention before I get to the subject of today’s notebook entry. (I’m stalling for time while I try to figure out what that might be.)

Frank Zappa called orchestra musicians “mechanics.” (As a former professional horn player who couldn’t improvise a note and retired in my teens, I agree.)

I listened to an interview with James Brown in which he described experimenting with unusual rhythms. When the interviewer asked what the other musicians in the band thought about that, Brown replied, paraphrasing roughly, “I didn’t give a damn what they thought; I was payin’ ’em.”

Those anecdotes came to mind when I read a profile on Marc Ribot, one of those famous musicians I’ve heard often but never heard of. He talked about how much he enjoyed playing with Tom Waits because he was treated like a colleague and collaborator and not as an employee or mercenary. As Ribot put it, “Tom understood the difference between a musician and a servant.”

Even though I haven’t got soul (I made a great trade for it decades ago), I’m more like James Brown than Tom Waits. I’m happy to provide photography to any friend who needs it, but my personal creative work is just that: mine. The idea of collaborating with anyone is anathema; that’s why I always work alone. It’s not perfect—with no editor, I miss a lot of mistakes and typos—but I wouldn’t have it any other sway.

30 May 2025

A Positive Garbage Life

I’ll begin by getting my nomenclature straight. Those mammoth, lumbering trucks that go from house to house collecting the contents of containers left on the curb might be called waste harvesters, urban scavengers, or municipal refuse haulers, but we all know what they really are: garbage trucks.

In Flint, Michigan, the garbage trucks are emblazoned with different inspirational messages. The one in the company photo reminds us, “Comparison is the thief of joy!” My favorite saying, though, was painted on the side of the truck that picked up my mother’s trash: “A negative mind will never give you a positive life.” Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One racing driver with seven world championship titles, provided that snippet of philosophy.

Imagine those poor schmucks hauling away reeking bags of rotting chicken entrails, weasel vomit, and much, much worse glancing up and being reminded that instead of driving a four-wheeled garbage scow, they too might be roaring through the narrow, picturesque streets of Monaco at a zillion kilometers an hour.

Or perhaps they don’t get the Hamilton reference, but have nevertheless overcome a negative mind to survive in a failed rustbelt city.

31 May 2025

Definitely Worth Stealing

Joey asked me to write a cover blurb for his self-help book, You Can Do It (But You Probably Won’t). In keeping with the spirit of the title, I didn’t even glance at the copy before I wrote my glowing recommendation, “Definitely Worth Stealing.”

“Are you sure it’s a great idea to put that on the cover?” he asked.

“Absolutely!” I replied.

He said he’d think about it; that was his polite way of saying he rejected it. I knew my sullied name would never be associated with his silly title; that was my great idea.

1 June 2025

BoBu

Katia stopped abruptly during our walk in the woods this morning, sat on a log, then pulled out her phone and started tippety-tapping. A minute later she announced the break was over.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“I had to order a case of Pinot Noir,” she explained. “It’s part of my Buddhist practice.”

“I don’t know much about Buddhism,” I admitted, “but if it includes having a lot of wine on hand then perhaps I should expand my nonexistent spiritual horizons.”

“No, it’s not that at all,” she responded. “One of the main tenets of Buddhism is to be free of desire, so as soon as I have an inking that I might want something I get it so I no longer want it.”

“I guess that makes you a Trustafarian BoBu.”

“I get the trust fund gibe, but what’s a BoBu?”

“Bourgeois Buddhist.”

She shrugged her best Buddhist shrug and suggested we turn around since the brief discussion about wine left her with the desire for a cocktail. I was bored with the trees, so I took her hand and joined her on the path to enlightenment.

Did Buddha say “The journey is the reward,” or was that Yogi Berra? All I know is that it sure gets thirsty on the road to illumination.

2 June 2025

Developing Stupidity

On St. Stupid’s Day last year I wrote about Andy, an art school student working on an advanced degree in photography, who had never heard of an f-stop. At the time, I thought no one could be more stupid than that, which was equally stupid of me. I should have remembered Albert Einstein’s perspective, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”

One of the Kids These Days who jumped on the analog photography bandwagon—pulled backward by jackasses—was frustrated when he couldn’t get any usable scans from the first roll of film s/he shot. (I’m not going to point out how stupid it is to use film if you’re just going to digitize it; that goes without saying given today’s theme of incredible stupidity.)

The anonymous would-be artiste missed an important step in the analog workflow; s/he didn’t know that the film had to be developed after removing it from the camera.

Yes, really.

Poseur Kids These Days ...

3 June 2025

Operatic Cheating

The San Francisco Opera is kicking off the summer season tonight with Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, but I’m not going. I’m staying away not only because I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars to hear the fat lady sing; the other reason is that I know what happens to the fat lady.

She dies.

If you, like me, would like to appear au fait with opera without going through the tedious bother of listening to any of it, here’s a plot synopsis of some of the A-list warhorses that might come up at a sophisticated cocktail party.

Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia de Lamamour: she dies.

Georges Bizet’s Carmen: she dies.

Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly: she dies.

Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca: she dies.

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi’s Aida: she dies.

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi’s La Traviata: she dies.

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi’s Othello: she dies.

Bonus points for intellectuals: you might ask your cosmopolitan friends why all the most famous operas were composed by blokes whose first name begins with the letter G.

As a blue-collar/white trash music aficionado, I’m struck that the operas all use the same theme as Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man, albeit completely different.

4 June 2025

Kickstart Toddler Soccer Shrubberies

What is it about shrubberies up against a wall that makes them so darn photogenic? If memory serves, which is increasingly unlikely, that was one of the first photographs I made when I got my eight-by-ten view camera. And here I am almost a half-century later, and I couldn’t resist photographing the shrubberies up against the Kickstart Toddler Soccer wall.

I don’t think Kickstart Toddler Soccer Shrubberies is one of my better images, therefore it’s not. The only reason I like it is that it’s a very imperfect shrubberies-up-against-a-wall photograph: the center of visual interest isn’t the vegetation, it’s a phallic white metal pole. Also, there are paint splotches on the wall, visual blemishes that almost everyone else would eliminate while processing in the computer.

And that’s the end of that thin vein, at least until I spot another shrubbery up against a wall.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart