The booster comes a bit early today, as we’re going toget screwed get our taxes done. To that end, enjoy the QTBS while I’ll be suffering through the indignity of getting depantsed in public…
– Because nothing says, “Hey, we’re in Denver” better than a demonic stallion with a giant blue horse cock.
– We need a new setting for Google Maps: CFS or Common Fucking Sense directions. In the options box, you can pick to avoid tolls and avoid highways, but that’s it. I had it print up directions for me for a recent trip when it sent me on about nine turns in about a four-block area like I was trying to avoid Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane while I was hauling moonshine. Turns out, if I had stayed on the first road I was on, I could have found my highway on ramp without a problem, but it would have taken me about two extra blocks worth of driving. Look, I like saving gas as much as the next guy, but ease of use counts for something too.
– Speaking of the Dukes of Hazzard, tip of the cap to the first person who can (without looking it up) name the two substitute Dukes who showed up in 1982-83 when Bo and Luke (Tom Wopat and John Schneider) were holding out in a contract dispute.
– From the“Scumbaggery has no bounds” file: Apparently the hot new industry in collections is hitting up the relatives of the dead to pony up. The tone of this piece is more than a little disturbing in that it seems like the writer says, “Hey, this is a neat idea and it’s pretty natural.” I imagine the guys who created this firm to feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to go to the funeral, shake the change out of the dead guy’s pockets and then hit on his widow. Hey, she’s single again, right?
–So stealing is… gasp… wrong? Look, I’ve had this argument about a million times when I was working with student media. The kids would get a great shot of something, put it up on the web and several scummy local TV stations would copy the image, give the kid no credit (or in one case spell his name wrong) and then post it to their website. The best instance I had of this was when we were the only ones shooting an event in which Chelsea Clinton came through town. No fewer than six places stole the photo. He called them up and their reaction was the same each time: But this is great for your portfolio! You’re being published in a professional media outlet. Uh… No… you’re stealing, dude. In five of the six cases, they pulled the photo. The sixth paid him a freelance fee. The world would be so much nicer if people didn’t steal stuff.
–Totally sweet waste of time, but it at least has the illusion of being ecofriendly!
– If you haven’t been following the drama in Oregon, the student newspaper went on strike earlier this week after an attempt by the paper’s board to install a non-student publisher as a form of oversight. The price? $80,000 and this was with the paper on rocky financial ground. The staff issued four edicts to the board and threatened a walk out unless they were met. Their last act before walking off the job was to issuethis editorial, which is amazing. The paper staffagreed today to come back to work after this was thwarted and after one issue of the paper was published using mainly wire copy and such. Once again, it’s the kids who have the guts and a better understanding of reality than the administration under which they work.
Thanks for letting me share your air. Be back next week.
Doc
Wow, talk about deja vu’.
A motel in my hometown went through the same controversy years ago. They have a statue of a rearing ‘stallion’ in the parking lot right next to the main drag through town. When it was first ‘erected’, it was definitely a stallion. Boy, was it a stallion! No one really said much about it except a few pre-teen boys who took every opportunity to bring attention to this statue’s ‘horsehood’.
Things like florescent paint, shaving cream, spray foam insulation…you get my drift. Well, the townspeople finally got tired of the shenanigans and told the owner to remove the horse. He told them to go pound sand and they got into a two ot three year pissing contest. Eventually, the horse was removed to Sweden for a gender modification. It’s now back at the motel, sporting a big nothing.
Most of the locals are farmers and ranchers, the type of folks who have seen most of their animals ‘get busy’. Hell, some of them help out when they’re needed. To them, this whole affair was embarrassing, not because of the statue, but that it was such a big deal. The town has one of the largest rodeos in WA state as well as one of the most controversial horse races in existence. You’d think that these people could care less if a damn statue of a horse was a stallion, a mare or a gelding.
Now generations of 12 year old boys will have nothing to do on a Saturday night, except smoke crack.
Hee! Our Blue Meanie is getting national attention! My problem with the fella is less about his equipment and more about the really creepy eyes. And that he’s blue. Neither of those things go well with horses, imho. (Doctor Manhattan, yes, horses, no.)
That said, I think the campaign to get rid of him is yet another of those “I hate the public art because it doesn’t fit my sensibilities, so nobody else should evereverever get to see it!” situations. Public art is inherently in your face. Deal with it. (That said, I think the anti-horse folk have approached it with the right sense of humor–rather drastically unlike my last experience with public-art-haters:Triangle Prudes
denver airport seems to sport some weirdass art.
and i would get state maps from AAA and make my own route. oh, the trip to clinto iowa via interstate(WITH CONSTRUCTION) will take 5 hours. pfft. state highways from madison WI. got there under 4 hours. saw much wildlife at dawn.
On stealing, I’m a librarian – you’d be shocked by the number of kids (and their professors) that try to circumvent fair use. In most cases, all they have to do is properly cite the source. In many cases, they can’t do it the way they want to, but there is another way to do it that is “squeaky clean” – but they don’t want to jump through one more hoop.
On the mustang – is this the same kind of logic where a top-watched Disney movie and spin off cartoon features a boy cow, complete with udders?
Coy and Vance Duke, played by Brian Cherry and Christopher Mayer, came into Hazzard (and left a few months later) in a 1965 notchback Mustang.
DAMN! Major props to Sarah on this one! I forgot about the Mustang. I doff the lid to you, T.O.S.
“Love it or loathe it, though, “Blue Mustang” is doing what art is supposed to do — get attention.”
The New York Times’ Kirk Johnson, everyone, showing us the understanding of art and culture necessary to write a front page story.