This Week in JPEGs

Hey, everyone. We are back this week with an all-new This Week in JPEGs. I have to apologize for the absence of this feature last Friday, but I was busy having a tooth removed. Don’t worry though, it wasn’t my tooth.

Two weeks ago, the winning entrant was titled The Golem is Falling Apart. Things have not gotten any better since then.

Few emotions are more fruitful for artistic expression than angst and despair. From Rilke to My Chemical Romance, this forlorn muse has drawn countless women into the arms of the heartsick, sensitive young fella. But only as a friend. She doesn’t see you like that.

Onward.

Indians Win The Ohio Cup

It wasn’t so long ago that the Reds and Indians would meet once a year in an exhibition game just before the start of the season. Then, Interleague Play set up a regional rivalry series home-and-home, six games played over two primo weekends on the baseball calendar every summer. Nowadays though, The Ohio Cup series is kind of a drag. The series has been cut to four measly games, played in the middle of the week, two in Cleveland and two and Cincinnati. I’m just like, whatever man.

Anyway, the Indians swept the four-game set this week, outscoring the Reds 80 million to six. Talk about despair. So I tried to zazz it up a bit with bright colors. I don’t think it really helps, though.

And screw them and their racist mascot making me try to anthropomorphize a damn letter.

Onward, deeper into the blackness.

This Bullpen, Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole

I was in Vienna something like 12 years ago. I toured a number of the art museums, and that city has a lot of ‘em. There was one piece though that has stayed with me all of these years. I have tried a million times to find it on the internet, but I can’t remember the name of the museum it was in, the artist, the title, or anything about it, really. Honestly, that mystery only deepens the meaning of the piece for me.

It is a drab stone or clay slab with wrought iron. The slab serves as the plane of the piece, kind of like a featureless wasteland. On it, there are a number of featureless stick figure-like people made of wrought iron. They stand motionless (of course), but their postures evoke a slow, belabored movement. The bit that really struck a chord for me was that none of the figures faces any other. Their paths never intersect with the paths of others.

This bullpen reminds me of that.

Bleh. Enough of all that. Let’s talk about something fun.

Strong Donkey

Left field has been a(nother) pit of blackness and despair basically since Adam Dunn left. Not anymore, though. Another Adam Du has settled in as a pretty dang good answer to this long-standing question.

Adam Duvall has slashed a real dang nice .309/.339/.673 in the month of May with almost as many extra-base hits (10) as strikeouts (11). I’mma call him Strong Donkey.