Nicholas Zinner

There’s an old episode of HBO’s “The Kids in the Hall” where comedian Dave Foley steps out of an emergency room wearing blood-soaked hospital scrubs and declares, “I’m a bad doctor.” He goes on to explain that he got to where he is by coasting on charisma and shrugs, “I ask for another man’s urine and they give it to me.” He ends the skit by saying he has to tell a family that the patient didn’t survive the operation (“The hardest part about being a doctor, I think,” he says). Thumbing through Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitarist Nicholas Zinner’s photo book, I Hope You Are All Happy Now, recalls Foley’s shortcomings as a doctor. Yeah Yeah Yeahs were never a particularly good band, nor is Zinner a talented photographer.

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Page after page of identical shots of audiences from around the world and backstage pics of pills, condoms and trashed hotel room antics seem a desperate act from Zinner to prove he’s a rock star. “I ask for pills and condoms and they give them to me.”

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Other photos of smeared landscapes — seemingly taken from moving cars — represent pictures that would normally be considered the screw-ups that should be deleted to make room for better shots. Clearly having no understanding of how to frame a shot, how to use light, shadows or capture an interesting image, Zinner is the last person on Earth who should have been given money for a project like this.

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Frame after frame of messed-up beds, YYY vocalist Karen O’s painful-on-the-eye poses, Har Mar Superstar taking a wiz, or Conor Oberst smoking a joint are obnoxiously self-congratulating. Are indie celebs really that desperate for attention when not on stage, coasting on charisma and publishing irredeemable photos of their lives? It’s the hardest part about being a rock star, I think.