Loose Links (Monday)
¶ Can it be true? Even Teflon doesn't last forever?
¶ Thanks, Patricia (at Booklust) for the link to Gizoogle, a gangsta parody of Google that translates the returned snippets of text and throws in a few gratuitous expletives. Results for "Mozart" are quite amusing. Check it out fast, because Google can't be best pleased.
¶ Have a look at the the official Christo site for The Gates. According to this, the installation's color is an interesting burnt orange. Sadly, the reality is not. Reading ecstatic critical responses to this project (Michael Kimmelman: "pure joy.") is rapidly draining my patience with populism. See below.
¶ Fascist alert: the House allows Homeland Security to ignore the law on its own initiative. Sorry, folks, but this is how it starts. The emergency here isn't terrorism, but our response to it. In a similar vein, check out a "Men's Night Out" in Kentucky (I believe), where religion and recruiting made one Republican squirm. My guess is that this sort of thing has been going on for ages, and we're only finding out about it now because of digital cameras. (The page is a bit noisy, but at least click through the pictures. Thanks, Biscuit.)
¶ Let's face it: I disapprove of public piety.
Comments
orange is the new black
Posted by: Ms. NOLA | February 14, 2005 10:20 AM
for a less noisy version of the above link.
peace,
lim.
Posted by: liminal | February 14, 2005 10:34 AM
Thanks, liminal. About that orange, let me just say that Jason Kottke's photographs make The Gates look far more appealing than I actually found them to be, even though they necessarily lack the snapping-in-the-breeze thing. The fact that Saturday was a lot sunnier than Sunday may have something to do with this. Unsubstantiated rumor: last night at the St James Theatre, Richard Kind, the actor currently playing Max Bialystock, inserted a cute line in the middle of "Betrayed," at the moment where Max "sits through the intermission." Mr Kind ad libbed, "Oh, I don't know. What is it about the color orange?" Brought the house down.)
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 14, 2005 10:46 AM
I've not seen The Gates, and will likely not be able to given the brief period that they will remain standing (doubtful that I will get to New York during this interval). Is it, though, possible that all of the hooplah has more to do with the experience of the installation than with the aesthetic aspects of the installation itself (i.e., wandering through the Park with the folk and enjoying the people-watching)?
Posted by: jkm | February 14, 2005 09:13 PM
If anything, the gathering of crowds to Central Park is probably what The Gates will be fondly remembered for. The Times has been emphatically pro-Gates from the get-go, and the installation process did have a certain cool factor. But Joyce Purnick, writing in today's paper, pointed out how unthinkable the project actually was twenty-five years ago, when Christo first proposed it.
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 14, 2005 09:48 PM