Latest on twitter:
Giant Robot in Tokyo!
Via the Flickr blog:
Did you ever want one of your toys to come to life? Well a lifesize Gundam robot has risen in Tokyo. It stands 59 feet tall (18 meters). So if you were standing on the 6th floor of a building, you would be at about eye level with it. This thing is enormous and the detail amazing. When available, it should be viewed large.
Dusk:
Dark:
(via youlookmarvelous)
Gowanus Canal Landscape (from Union Street Bridge), by Jose Gaytan.
See also, NYT feature on Gaytan’s exhibition.
Brings back a lot of memories for me. I walked, drove, and rode over the bridge here countless times when I lived in the Slope.
Poem is by me, illustration by THE Paul Pope. We enjoy the center spread. The poem and the illustration are actually somewhat vintage, being first paired in the way back machine when I was a poet about town.
But this collection is Minerva’s Wreck, and it’s brand new! Featuring many of Austin’s best creative minds, edited and created by wild man Wayne Alan Brenner, it’s a lovely book.
(via VincenzoScala)
Squandered Heritage blogger Karen Gadbois in a MoveOn.org ad supporting a real public option for health care. Recently named New Orleanian of the Year by Gambit Weekly, Karen is a real life superhero.
Karen Gadbois, armed with little more than a laptop and a digital camera, singlehandedly blew the whistle on the New Orleans Affordable Housing scandal, which she documented on her blog, www.squanderedheritage.com. The result? An FBI investigation, admiring writeups of her efforts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and new respect for the power of the citizen blogger.
But in America, even superheroes can’t afford insurance.
"
I remember how, as the night went on and the crowd grew, we were surrounded; as cops on horses, cops in riot gear, cops in cars and paddy wagons began to roll in behind and around Sheridan Square, with the firefighters and their trucks, and their hoses hooked up to hydrants and the hoses that would work. And Garland’s voice and that haunting song. I can remember thinking how glad I was that John Lindsay was the mayor, because without Lindsay holding the cops at bay and refusing to give them permission to move, there would have been a bloodbath. I mean there we were, a crowd of homosexuals, pansies, fairies, fags, and we were not letting New York’s finest trash a gay bar with impunity.
In the world before that night, we could not have done what we did. But that night we did. We finally stood up and said we have rights. To congregate. To dance. To mourn. To be left alone. Left alone to live, to love, to work, or just dance and listen to Garland sing.
"J.E. Freeman, SFGate Letters to Datebook, Friday, June 26, 2009
Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate: View from the Hill-A Presidential Invitation
What we need Washington to realize is something I heard John Berry, the highest ranking gay official in the Obama administration, proclaim at the Velvet Foundation event: “Our story is the American story!” he exclaimed, sweeping his clenched fist through the air. Seems so simple and yet it washed over me like a revelation. I guess that’s because until very recently, America has swept our history under the rug. LGBT concerns weren’t worthy of being reported on, they were only relevant to the national political framework insofar as they could whip up money or votes, and it was OK to meet with gays behind closed doors but standing up for them publicly was lunacy.
This coming Monday, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans from the across the country will attend a White House reception to celebrate the birth of our equality movement 40 years ago. In front of LGBT advocates, the White House press corps, and a national audience, President Barack Obama – among the most eloquent of national leaders in our history – will have an opportunity to make our story the American story. And if he takes the invitation to help orient America on the path toward our equality, the arc of the nation’s moral universe would further its bend in the just direction.
From Michael Jackson’s patent application for the shoes used to create the Smooth Criminal anti-gravity lean
