let each man exercise the art he knows

I was in yoga class yesterday and reflecting upon the fact that my muscles are as limber as plate glass when it occurred to me that there may not be any coffee table books on ordinary people beginning extraordinary practices—sweaty folks in shaky Ashtanga pretzels, tense kids screeching bow against fiddle string with pained moms in the background, or even smoking, indulgent "writers" sitting glazed before their monitors.

We are, as our president often evinces, in the era of the subpar. Why not create a folio of beginners who may or may not ever amount to anything? It will be like Arbus, only without the fascination factor ... or Dorothea Lange free of historical substance. Yes! I'll get on that. I'll call it Be Minus: Inept but Alive in Late-Stage America.