Photography with Joe

  Not a TikTok Breakout: The Agony Behind Real Fame Scholx Thoughts and Reflections – May 21st, 2025 The Physical Risks of Fame: The Beatles in Hamburg, 1960–1962 “Fame is a furnace. If you come out unburnt, you probably weren’t in it.” I. In the Red-Light Laboratory of the Gods There’s something almost mythological about it now: five young men, half-cultured, half-feral, stumbling into a neon netherworld called Hamburg. August 1960. They were unpaid apprentices of the Dionysian arts, boys on the cusp of something terrible and transcendent. The Beatles didn’t arrive in Hamburg as legends. They arrived as hired noise. Their venue: the Indra Club—a dive with sticky floors, suspicious wiring, and the scent of last night’s regrets. Their task: play until the drunks forgot they were miserable. Or until the band did. And yet, this was the beginning . The grindhouse where greatness is born, but never guaranteed. Their world wasn’t studio-polished. It was viscous, physical, and in...

Wednesday, March 16 2016 My foot had healed, with minor swelling. What has it been two or three weeks? Only one really bad week of utter, terrible crippling pain. For those weeks only death was wished for, as ever pain killer I could find keep me some what fuctioning. Then, slowly the distractions of watching Television and Digital video Disks and s few attempts at reading (failed bccaue of the pain.)       Now the pain is always their, but a single round of pills will end it. My thumb is still not functioning, but it no longer hurts to exist. For the first time in weeks  I feel more or less well!                        World Events  I was reminded that the world has only a few short months to exist before Trump rules us all and the missiles fly. What, we have until November, maybe March of next year to exist? The odds are I will not be here for the main event, but I may stay around for that - ...