04 May 06 Nipples or no nipples, mermaid not wanted
AP WELLINGTON, Fla. - The big-busted, bronze mermaid statute “The Siren” is not welcome here anymore.
The life-size sea temptress, the marquee exhibit at the Wellington Community Center’s inaugural Art in Public Places program, drew media attention last summer because of her top-heavy bust line. The sculpture appeared on CNN and had a mention in Playboy.
“Unfortunately, they didn’t want her back,” artist Norman J. Gitzen told the Palm Beach Post. “They were tired of the bad publicity.”
Gitzen added nipples to the statue last month while it was on loan to the Palm Beach International Sculpture Biennale at Wellington Green. The city warned Gitzen to remove them before returning the mermaid.
But then he received a call from Paul Schofield, Wellington’s community services director, telling him “The Siren” was no longer needed.
“It didn’t matter what decision I made. There was going to be some controversy one way or another,” said Schofield, whose department oversees Art in Public Places. “Did publicity play into it? No.”
That was the actual news headline.
So boobs are ok, as long as they don’t have nipples.
She is a big girl isn’t she.
15 Apr 06 Porn star’s offer to Bin Laden
Italy’s most famous porn star Cicciolina has offered herself to Osama Bin Laden.
The 55-year-old actress said it was about time somebody tackled the terrorist and claimed she could be just the woman for the job.
Speaking at an erotic fair in Bucharest, Romania, Cicciolina said: “It is time someone did something about Bin Laden, and I am ready to do it.
“I am ready to make a deal, he can have me in exchange for an end to his tyranny. My breasts have only ever helped people while Bin Laden has killed thousands of innocent victims.”
The blonde porn star, whose real name is Anna Ilona Staller, pointed out that Bin Laden could learn from Saddam Hussein’s mistakes.
In the 1990s she offered herself to Saddam Hussein if he gave up dictatorship of Iraq, and added that if he had taken up her offer “who knows what might have happened.”
Talk about taking one for the team.
26 Mar 06 Dueling Banjos
Love the country folk.
02 Mar 06 Boy, 12, gums up pricey DIA artwork
You might think that a museum wouldn’t have to tell visitors not to stick chewing gum on the art. But you would be wrong — as the Detroit Institute of Arts just found out.
At the DIA on Friday, a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay,” damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum’s collection and a landmark picture in the artist’s output.
Though the picture, acquired by the DIA in 1965 and worth an estimated $1.5 million, is expected to make a full recovery, ….[.continue.]
Darn kids these days have no respect for anything.
Let’s take a look at “The Bay”
Wait, that is worth $1.5 million?
The kid was suspended for putting a piece of gum on that?
So I guess the kid wasn’t on Ritalin or anything else that would allow him to “appreciate” that “great”, um artwork.
Becky Hart, assistant curator of contemporary art tried to explain to him the museum’s role in preserving cultural and visual history. “I knew that probably wouldn’t make any sense to him, so I asked him what kind of music he liked.
He said he liked rap, so I said, ‘Well, you know what rock ‘n’ roll is,’ and he did, so I said, ‘Can you imagine if somebody had messed up the beat in rock and roll so you didn’t have any rhythm in rap.’ And he looked at me, and he got it immediately.”
Um yeah, ‘messing up’ rock n roll is like putting a piece of gum on that thing.
25 Feb 06 The Beginning of the Universe
Monument represents heaven and earth
In Northern Iraq there is a place called Lalish where the Yezidis say the universe was born. I drove south from Dohok on snowy roads through an empty land, seemingly to the ends of the earth, and found it nestled among cold hills.
I went there because the President of Dohok University told me to go. “I am a Muslim”, he said. “But I love the Yezidis. Theirs is the original religion of the Kurds. Only through the Yezidis can I speak to God in my own language.” [.continue.]
Wow, a very interesting article. I have never heard of the Yezidi before this.
“72 times Muslims tried to conquer us,”
Impressive that the religion itself hasn’t been lost to Muslim influence.
“All people in the world should be brothers,” he said. “You are always welcome here for the rest of your life.”
I just wish more people in Iraq and actually around the world was more like this. And to think this place exists in Iraq, with all the conflict that continues in the region. One moment of perfect beauty, indeed.
