Clowns Kick KKK Asses- My Favorite Story This Year

Most anyone who knows me knows that there is one thing that can move me to want to commit violence- and that's white supremacy. Odd, because that is exactly what they would like to evoke- violence. I get so frustrated by the stupidity and the utter useless hate and energy that goes into thinking that one race is better, or more entitled than another.

Growing up in north Florida the place was chock full of "skinheads" - a term I put in quotes because honestly-they were just thugs who needed an excuse to hate people and honestly-it wasnt just blacks or hispanics, they pretty much just hated anybody and were always looking for a fight. If you were a woman, homosexual, old, fat, skinny, smart, religious, different, BREATHING, they would find a way to try and start a fight. Strangely enough, most of them were named Christian-which I always also thought was ironic to the extreme.

A friend sent me this link today and all I can say is BRAVO!!! Sign me up! When and where do you meet. I'd be glad to dance amongst these clowns.

Clowns Kicked KKK Asses



Here’s an excellent example of pwnage: when the white supremacist group VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK tried to host a hate rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, they were foiled by … clowns!

Unfortunately for [VNN] the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were.

Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns. http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/7704982.html

“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”


*This makes me so happy I could clap my hands like a little kid at a birthday party.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen of Knoxville, TN. I applaud you!!!

Iz the Wiz- Grafitti Great Dies

When I think of New York in the 70s and 80s I think of the dirty city filled with the homeless, trash blowing in the breeze and grafitti everywhere. Grafitti was a major part of what formed the perception of New York in those decades. The city that had been the gleaming jewel of the country since the Roaring 20s became the truly rough, tourist-not-welcome example of city life in America. If you look at movies from the era you'll see it in the backgrounds- be it a Woody Allen or a Martin Scorcese film, be it uptown or downtown, there is usually a tag somewhere to be found.

One of the greats of the genre was "Iz the Wiz", considered by most as the "longest-reigning all-city king in N.Y.C history." At one time or another Iz put his tag on subway cars running on every line in the NYC subway system more times than any other known artist.

Michael Martin — Iz the Wiz — died on June 17 in Spring Hill, Fla., where he had moved a few years ago. He was 50. The cause was a heart attack, said Ed Walker, who is working on a biography and documentary of Iz the Wiz. Mike was born in Manhattan and lived in a succession of foster homes after his mother was imprisoned for burglary. He did not know his father. He grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, and as a teenager lived in Covenant House on the Lower East Side.

Mike withdrew from the scene in the mid-1980s. He managed a grocery store briefly, then began using drugs heavily. A marriage in the late 1980s ended in divorce. He is survived by a brother, Peter Poston of Spring Hill, and a sister, Evelyn Poston of East Stroudsburg, Pa.

Mr. Martin learned he had kidney failure in 1996, which he assumed was a result of working with aerosol paint, and for the rest of his life he was on dialysis. His financial situation was dire. “He never made the connections he needed to make to be appreciated in the art world,” Mr. Sar said.

Martin started tagging walls at the young age of 14, using Scat or FCN (French Canadian National-even though he wasn't Canadian). He graduated to subway cars early in his "career" specializing in the A line-the longest in the subway system.

In 1975, in the 68th Street Station of the Lexington Avenue line, Mike saw a poster for the Broadway play “The Wiz” with the slogan, “The Wiz Is a Wow.” It had a certain ring. “He said, ‘If the Wiz is a Wow, why can’t Iz be the Wiz?’ ” his friend and fellow graffiti artist SAR (real name, Charles Sar) recalled.

With the graffiti artist Vinny, Mr. Martin mounted an intensive throw-up campaign on the A line. In the late 1970s he branched out to other lines, spray-painting top-to-bottoms (graffiti displays extending from the top of a train to the bottom), burners (complicated works intended to dazzle the competition) and fully realized scenes, like his homage to John Lennon, painted after Lennon was shot to death in 1980. It was a two-car scene with a portrait of Lennon and a graveyard filled with tombstones.

“He was an artist, but also a bomber, recognized as a person who made himself seen by everybody,” said the photographer Henry Chalfant, using the graffiti term for a prolific artist. “At the same time he appreciated the aesthetic side of it. He didn’t do wild style” — complex, interlocking letters — “he had a simple, readable style with great color and interesting forms within the lettering itself.”

Iz's work enjoyed surprising longevity in the days before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began cracking down on graffiti. Elaborately painted cars could run for months or even years. Artists would often gather at certain stations to watch their work and keep an eye on the competition, much like their counterparts did in 15th-century Florence.

After a respite from his work Iz jumped back into graffiti in the 90s, painting cars, but also taking part in the legal graffiti movement, expressing himself on walls set aside for the purpose. He was one of the first artists to work on the Phun Phactory, a 200,000-square-foot industrial building in Long Island City, Queens, that artists began covering with graffiti in 1993. It is now known as the 5 Pointz Aerosol Art Center, or the Institute of Higher Burnin’.

Iz the Wiz sought fame, and found it, but not on gallery walls. His work appeared on the old dusty brown subway cars known as coal mines, and their replacements, called ding dongs for the bell tone that chimes when the doors close. Painting one of those, end to end, Mr. Martin once said, “was like sex in a can.”

*the majority of this blog entry was excerpted from a New York Times piece, published 6/30/09 - thanks to William Grimes*

Coolest Use of a Segway

Hands down this is the coolest use of a Segway I've ever seen.

Herb & Dorothy Vogel- Eyes that See

I can't claim to be an art collector. Yes, I have a couple things that I am terribly proud of, and adore, but when it gets into "collecting" I just can't run with even the small dogs, much less the big ones.

But, as my mother used to say "we do what we want to do." In the case of Herb and Dorothy Vogel this unlikely couple chose to collect modern art.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. "Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment," recalls Dorothy.

In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece.

Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

I'm just sad its not playing in Atlanta yet. If it hits your neighborhood make sure to check it out.

How's Your Eye? Ask the Munsell Hue Test

How's your eye for color? Is it as good as you think it is? I found this test on ye olde Internet today and while my eye is pretty good, its not as good as I thought it would be. I got a 12. Being a bit of a color snob, while I didn't expect perfect, I would have liked to have been single digit.

Of course, I'd like to blame it on my computer screen. But honestly-blue/green colors have always been a weird point for me. My exhusband constantly swore that my piece-of-crap car was green and it was as blue as could be to my eyes.

What is this thing? This is an online version of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100Hue Test which is used to separate persons with normal color vision into classes of superior, average and low color discrimination and to measure the zones of color confusion of color defective people. This test has been used in one form or another for over 40 years.

So-take a swing at it and let me know how you do.

Food From a Younger Land- Before the National Highways

I was born in the 70s. The world was already changing like crazy, we went from transistor radios and record players to Walkmen and CD's in a matter of years. From there it was bye-bye glass soda bottles and hello Evian water (which I drank until I realized Evian was "naive" spelled backwards). Diet Coke didn't exist when I was born- which is frankly unthinkable to me.

I remember the days in Jacksonville Beach, FL. when we thought going out for pizza was pretty exotic, and believe it or not I never experienced the wonder that is cilantro until the mid-nineties when I moved to the teeming cultural metropolis that is Atlanta.

So, what am I babbling about? I've been doing a lot of thinking in the last 24 hours. All this brain activity has been started by a book reading I went to last night. Mark Kurlansky, the author of "Salt" and "Cod", has written a fantastic new book called "Food From a Younger Land" that has me thinking about the past, the present and the future of how this country eats.

Kurlansky has uncovered a pot of gold in the form of a long shelved WPA, Federal Writers Project called "America Eats". Originally intended to be a treatise on the traditions and ingredients of American food, the project was abandoned shortly after the beginning of WWII. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. Once the war broke out, all of their efforts were collected into boxes and stashed at the Library of Congress where they were destined to be forgotten.

Enter Mark Kurlansky. Years of sorting through boxes of writing has brought together a picture of our country when things were simpler. He doesn't make it look like never-never land-he completely acknowledges that it wasn't always easy. Yes-there were good things, but bad as well- racisim, ingredients like possum, and serious issues with poverty and fear.

One of the questions posed after his reading was what he thought about the "local food" movement surging through America. I was really impressed by his response-yes-its great that we're thinking locally. But, if I can get cherries from Mt. Ranier and cranberries from New England completely out of season why should I turn away from them? So True.

I will say this-get this book. It will get you thinking. It will get you cooking. It may even change the way you live.

Quimby the Mouse & The Talented Andrew Bird

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Quimby the Mouse is not very nice, but the magical Andrew Bird is playing his violin in the background, so what's not to like.

Check out the "This American Life" with Ira Glass that this clip was excerpted from last week.

Magical Feat of Engineering - The Millau Bridge

Amazing how in this time when the world seems to get smaller every day that something so phenominal could have slipped past me. I know the Sears Tower has been bought by the British and its name will soon change. I know that Somalian pirates are ravaging the seas like days of olde, and I suspect that I can even find out what Oprah had for dinner last night if I put my mind to it. So imagine my surprise when I discovered today that for nearly four years people have been literaly driving through the clouds in their cars.

Connecting Paris to Barcelona, the Millau Viaduct is part of the new E11 expressway and an absolutely magical feat of modern engineering. At its tallest point it is 787 feet high. It is taller than the Eifel Tower, and spans an impressive 1102 feet, making it the highest bridge in the world. I can only wonder what John A. Roebling would have thought if he was still alive.

One of my favorite trivia factoids about the bridge is that it is not, and could not be straight. It has a slight 20 km curve which apparently remedies the sensation of floating that would be induced if the road was straight. Absolutely fascinating. It also has a light incline of 3% to improve visability and reassure drivers.

This is officially going on the "must experience before death" list which includes things like learning to fly a helicopter, visiting every state in the United States (which I've nearly completed) and to publish a book. Hmm. Maybe someday I'll have to do a blog entry on that interesting little list.

Meanwhile, I'll be dreaming of flying through the clouds from the safety of my own little car. What will man think up next?