statues

Chris Knight's avatar

Way, waaaaay back in 2011, I posted about how a bunch of good-hearted geeks pitched in more than $50,000 to crowdfund a statue of RoboCop for the city of Detroit.  I’ve wondered about this project at various times over the years (mostly whenever I’ve watched RoboCop, which hasn’t been too many occasions) and I certainly did wish them well.  But it still seemed like one of those great ideas that linger around but ultimately get nowhere.

Leave it to nerd-dom to prove this cynic wrong.

Behold the brand new $60,000 bronze statue of electric fuzz in stainless steel:

Click to enlarge.  Photo credit: Lee DeVito

Detroit Metro Times has more here about the RoboCop statue.  Maybe they should invite Paul Verhoeven and Peter Weller for the official dedication?  I’d buy that for a dollar!...

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Chris Knight's avatar

The people of Celeron, New York are condemning… and that may be too nice a word… a bronze statue of hometown heroine Lucille Ball.

Here is said statue:

Ye gods, what a monster!!  It looks like something out of The Walking Dead.  Makes me wonder if this is what June Cleaver would be like envisioned by H.P. Lovecraft.  That is nothing like the stunning beauty, amazing actress, comedic legend and all-out wonderful person that Lucille Ball was.

To sum up: Celeron does not love this Lucy.

The statue has been up since 2009.  No real notion as to why only now is it getting the attention it is (maybe it’s ‘cuz in recent days a Facebook page about it has been created and racked up a zillion likes).  New York Daily News has more about this bronze monstrosity.

And I can’t help but wonder if it works for ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

That’s not the most weird headline I’ve ever made for a blog post, but I must say: that it’s certainly among the most interesting! It’s not often that the worlds of archaeology, astronomy, chemistry and history come together so boldly.

The statue on the left, dubbed “the Iron Man”, was found in Tibet sometime around 1938, by Nazi scientist Ernst Schäfer. It’s thought that it represents the Buddhist god Vaisravana. The statue isn’t terribly large but given its all-metal composition it is rather heavy. Schäfer thought it would be of particular interest to his superiors because of the swastika symbol carved upon its chest (Schäfer’s expedition was to research the origins of the Aryan race). So the statue was packed up and sent to Germany and eventually found its way into the possession of a private collector.

The statue was likely carved in the tenth century, at most. But ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I guess if Philadelphia can have a Rocky Balboa statue, and if New York City has one of Ralph Kramden and if Milwaukee has the Fonz as a landmark, then Detroit should get a lasting monument to its own… hero?

(Oh yeah, I almost forgot : nearby Mount Airy – the model for Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show – has that life-sized bronze statue of Andy and Opie going fishing! So I guess the precedent has already been set for fictional lawmen. Law-cyborgs. Whatever…)

Earlier this week a flood of support coalesced across Facebook and Twitter to erect in Detroit a statue of… RoboCop. The titular “part man, part machine, all cop” hero of the 1987 sci-fi action smash-hit movie. Somebody forwarded the idea to Detroit mayor Dave Bing, who responded with “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.”...

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