King Kong Bundy Gone
WWE legend King Kong Bundy dies at 61
By Ryan Gaydos
Former WWE legend King Kong Bundy has died, the wrestling company announced Tuesday. He was 61.
The New Jersey native, whose real name is Christopher Pallies, was known for his enormous stature inside the ring. He was 6-foot-4 and weighed 458 pounds. People called him the “walking condominium.”
One of his biggest moments in WWE was wrestling Hulk Hogan for the title at Wrestlemania 2. He would leave WWE in the 1980s only to return once more as part of The Million Dollar Corporation faction in 1994 before he left the company a year later.
Keith Flint Gone
Keith Flint ‘suicide’ – The Prodigy legend famed for Firestarter and wild haircut dead after ‘taking his own life’ aged 49
The iconic singer, from Essex, was found dead at his home after police and paramedics were called at around 8am this morning
By Richard Wheatstone
THE Prodigy’s Keith Flint has been found dead in a suspected suicide at his home, aged 49.
The iconic Essex singer was discovered at around 8am this morning after police and paramedics were called to the property.
Officers remain outside the £1.5m rural home this afternoon but his death is not being treated as suspicious.
The Prodigy’s co-founder Liam Howlett said Keith Flint had ‘taken his own life’.
Famed for his devil-horns haircut and intense stage performances – the iconic 90s musician was performing just last month in New Zealand on a world tour set to run until May.
The Essex boy, who once dated Gail Porter, was the face of the rave band and took centre stage on their best-known hit Firestarter, the single which launched him as an icon.
Too Much Tequilaroke
Lena Waithe and The New Black Renaissance
Hollywood’s New Black Renaissance Is Thriving. But the Industry Still Has Work to Do
By LENA WAITHE
PHOTO: ROGER ERICKSON / Courtesy of Chicago Magazine
What makes me optimistic today are the people trying to rip up what it means to be black and successful in Hollywood and rebuild it afresh. People like Terence Nance, the writer and director behind HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. People like Dime Davis, who is directing four episodes of BET’s Boomerang, the TV version of a beloved movie that I’m producing. And people like Drew Michael, the stand-up comedian whose recent HBO special was almost like a therapy session; there was no audience hiding Drew and he was so vulnerable. That’s what art should be: aware of where the lines are, but coloring outside them.
Audiences are loving this new renaissance. They’re entertained, but they’re also educated. But my hope is that it no longer needs to be a renaissance, a moment or a movement. I want it to be the norm. It sometimes seems like people believe: “They have Black Panther, so they’re cool. Moonlight won best picture, so they’re good. They’ve got shows like Atlanta and Insecure, so they’re done.” But that’s not enough. White folks have everything, and we still have a lot of catching up to do. It’s too soon to be patting ourselves on the back like the problem is solved.
After all, the decision makers still don’t look like us. We’ve had a black person run the country, but never a big movie studio. Even though I’m making cool work, I still have to ask white people, “Is it OK? Do you like this enough? Do you understand this?” Until the big studio execs look like the rest of the world, that’s not going to change.
That said, people of color are a commodity right now. Every senior white executive is like: “Where’s my black TV show?” “Where’s my black Blockbuster?” And that’s awesome. But what we need is someone to be looking at it with a certain kind of intention. Don’t say, “Where’s my Insecure?” Ask, “Who’s the next Issa Rae?” Don’t say, “Where’s my Black Panther?” Ask, “Who’s the next Ryan Coogler?”
We need to find artists who are rebels—and usually the artists who are rebels aren’t the kind to raise their hands or promote themselves. We can’t count on the industry to find them. There are very few execs out there looking for the next stars and doing the roll-up-your-sleeves work of reading a bunch of scripts and talking to a lot of people to find who’s next. Until you’re hot, no one is seeking you out.
Winter 1709
Winter Is Coming: Europe’s Deep Freeze of 1709
In the first months of 1709, Europe froze and stayed that way for months. People ice-skated on the canals of Venice, church bells broke when rung, and travelers could cross the Baltic Sea on horseback. This freakish winter ultimately claimed the lives of a vast number of Europeans and disrupted two major wars—but to this day, there is no conclusive theory for its cause.
BY
IT HAPPENED LITERALLY overnight in the first few days of 1709. On January 5, temperatures plummeted—not, perhaps, a surprise in European winter. But 1709 was no ordinary cold snap. Dawn broke the next morning on a continent that had frozen over from Italy to Scandinavia and from England to Russia, and would not warm up again for the next three months. During the worst winter in 500 years, extreme cold followed by food shortages caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in France alone, froze lagoons in the Mediterranean, and changed the course of a war. Shivering in England, the scholar William Derham wrote: “I believe the Frost was greater … than any other within the Memory of Man.”
French Freeze
The country most affected by the terrible cold was undoubtedly France. The year 1709 had already started badly. French peasants had been hit by poor harvests, taxes, and conscription for the War of the Spanish Succession. The cold snaps of late 1708 were as nothing to the crash in temperatures that took place over the night of January 5 to 6. In the following two weeks, snow would fall and thermometers in France would drop to a low of -5°F.
In the absence of weather forecasting, the authorities had no time to prepare for what became known as “Le Grand Hiver,” and thousands succumbed to hypothermia before measures could be taken to help them. Animals were not spared either: Numerous livestock froze in their pens, barns, and coops.
Frieze LA Destroyed
Frieze LA diary: Leibovitz’s photo finish, Destroyer smashes it and a mushroom-powered rocket (doesn’t) take off
Plus, Suzanne Jackson’s modest gallery revival
Destroyer playing at the opening for Friedrich Kunath’s monograph, Sincerely Yours at Blum & Poe Photo: Max Williams
Destroyer smashes it at Blum & Poe
There’s a certain candor in Friedrich Kunath’s paintings, which often have text crossing lush, romantic landscapes like an aerial banner with no airplane, that pairs well with music. For the launch of his monograph, I Don’t Worry Anymore, which includes contributions from a substantial cast of characters—the poet Ariana Reines, the novelist James Frey, and the former tennis player-turned-art collector John McEnroe—Kunath invited the Canadian troubadour Daniel Bejar, aka Destroyer, to perform in front of one of those dreamy landscapes. The upstairs gallery at Blum & Poe was packed (whether there were more people there to support Kunath or to see Destroyer, we may never know) and Destroyer’s songs felt exactly right: romantic without being mawkish, funny without being inane. The musician and the painter were a pairing no DJ could have mixed better. “This is big for me,” said Kunath, who was a huge fan of the musician. Bejar played a mix of old and new songs while propped on a stool on top of a bear rug with a camel sculpture in front of him. “I want to thank Friedrich for letting me out tonight,” he joked. “It’s nice to get out of Canada once in a while.”
No Pads
America Afraid Of Penises
French Director Gaspar Noé on America’s Fear of the Penis
“The fear of the penis in the United States still shocks me,” he said. “In many ways, the Western world is turning Victorian.”
By Noel Ransome
Near the end of my chat with Gaspar Noé, I ask him why he’s so comfortable with pushing narrative boundaries in film. He replied he doesn’t believe he’s pushing anything compared to what came before. So I remind him of cinema’s growing sensitivity to controversial representations of sexuality in 2019. The French director—whose latest film Climax (which is co-produced by VICE Studios), is a journey with a dance troupe lured into hallucinogenic states to the point of injury and death—decides to answer in the most Noé way possible.
“The fear of the penis in the United States still shocks me,” he lets out during a phone exchange. “In many ways, the Western world is turning Victorian.”
If you’ve ever seen a film by Gaspar Noé, it would be downright disappointing not to hear the word “penis” leave his mouth. The director is famed with his ability to unsettle viewers with equal parts beauty, sexuality and terror. You’ll see it in works such as Irreversible , Love, Enter the Void, and now in Climax set for a March 1 limited release—zero penises guaranteed.
It takes a special kind of mind to come up with films that explore the dark depths of the human psyche. And thankfully, I got a chance to listen to the ideas that a mind like that will throw at you when questioned. Whether it was drugs, directing or “the penis,” Noé was a man comfortable speaking about it all.
Bring Back The Shit Stick!
U.S. plush toilet paper use wiping out Canada’s forests, flushing away the future: report
The report gave failing grades to the leading toilet paper, tissue and paper towel brands for using only virgin fibre pulp, mostly from Canada’s old boreal forests
The voracious use of toilet paper in the United States — with the average American using almost three rolls each week and major manufacturers spurning alternative fibres — is destroying Canada’s forests and causing widespread environmental damage, two international environmental groups say.
A report on tissue paper use gave failing grades to the leading toilet paper, tissue and paper towel brands for using only virgin fibre pulp, mostly from Canada’s old boreal forests.
“Forests are too vital to flush away,” says the report, called The Issue With Tissue, released Wednesday by Natural Resources Defense Council and Stand.earth, international nonprofit environmental organizations that cooperated on the study.
Always Have An Off-site, Air-gapped Backup
Humanity’s 30-million-page backup plan is heading to the moon
When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off on Thursday night, it carried humanity’s entire backup plan with it. It was headed to the moon, the world’s ultimate cold-storage unit.
The Arch Mission Foundation (AMF) created the Lunar Library, a 30-million-page long compendium of humanity’s greatest cultural offerings, encoded it on a specially designed disc meant to last a billion years, and sent it to the moon to keep it safe. The disc is being carried to its final resting place on the moon’s surface aboard Beresheet, the Israeli spacecraft (and Google Lunar XPrize contender) that was carried to space by the Falcon 9, CNET reports.
The Lunar Library contains a vast archive of human history and civilization, covering all subjects, cultures, nations, languages, genres, and time periods. Everything from the contents of Wikipedia, to a compilation of human languages, the Rosetta Project, books selected by Project Gutenberg, as well as genome maps, 60,000 analog images of pages of books, photographs, illustrations, and documents, and much of the world’s greatest art, music, literature, and scientific knowledge. It’s all encoded on a disc that is composed of 25 nickel discs, each only 40 microns thick, made for the AMF by NanoArchival.
Warhol Still More Famous Than Brady
Cassettes Still Rock (and hiss)
It’s cool to spool again as the cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia
Sales are soaring and current stars are releasing tracks on the format… but is anyone actually listening to them?
Pause. Stop. Rewind! The cassette, long consigned to the bargain bin of musical history, is staging a humble comeback. Sales have soared in the last year – up 125% in 2018 on the year before – amounting to more than 50,000 cassette albums bought in the UK, the highest volume in 15 years.
It’s quite a fall from the format’s peak in 1989 when 83 million cassettes were bought by British music fans, but when everyone from pop superstar Ariana Grande to punk duo Sleaford Mods are taking to tape, a mini revival seems afoot. But why?
“It’s the tangibility of having this collectible format and a way to play music that isn’t just a stream or download,” says techno DJ Phin, who has just released her first EP on cassette as label boss of Theory of Yesterday.
“I find them much more attractive than CDs. Tapes have a lifespan, and unlike digital music, there is decay and death. It’s like a living thing and that appeals to me.” Phin left the bulk of her own 100-strong cassette collection in Turkey, carefully stored at her parents’ home, but bought “20 or 25 really special ones” when she moved to London. “I’m from that generation,” she says. “It’s a nostalgia thing – I like the hiss.”
Social Media Boys
Dragon Aurora
Nasa releases picture of mysterious ‘dragon’ aurora rearing its head in the sky
by Jasper Hamill
A view0 of the mysterious dragon aurora snapped in Iceland on February 18 (Photo: Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng)
NASA has released incredible pictures of an unusual ‘dragon’ aurora roaring silently in the sky over Iceland.
The stunning natural wonder was caused by particles emited from the sun which smash into the atmosphere to cause a dramatic light display.
Nasa wrote: ‘Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don’t exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland earlier this month.
‘The aurora was caused by a hole in the Sun’s corona that expelled charged particles into a solar wind that followed a changing interplanetary magnetic field to Earth’s magnetosphere.
‘As some of those particles then struck Earth’s atmosphere, they excited atoms which subsequently emitted light: aurora.
‘This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer’s mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground.
Wi-Fi For The Brain
Neuroscientists Say They’ve Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication
by PETER DOCKRILL
Scientists think they’ve identified a previously unknown form of neural communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if they’ve been surgically severed.
The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and gap junction connections.
“We don’t know yet the ‘So what?’ part of this discovery entirely,” says neural and biomedical engineer Dominique Durand from Case Western Reserve University.
“But we do know that this seems to be an entirely new form of communication in the brain, so we are very excited about this.”
Lagerfeld Gone
Legendary Designer Karl Lagerfeld Has Died
Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most prolific and widely popular designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has died in Paris. He was 85.
Lagerfeld was creative director of Chanel, the French house founded by Gabrielle Chanel, for an era-defining, age-defying 36 years. Upon assuming the reins in 1983, Lagerfeld swiftly revived Chanel, reinterpreting the house founder’s iconic tweed skirtsuits, little black dresses, and quilted handbags. He did it via the lens of hip-hop one season and California surfer chicks the next—he was a pop culture savant—without ever forgetting what the revolutionary Coco stood for: independence, freedom, and modernity.
In more recent years, as the company’s fortunes grew and grew, Lagerfeld became known for the lavish Grand Palais sets he conceived for the six Chanel collections he designed a year. There was a rocket ship, a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, and a supermarché stocked strictly with Chanel-brand products. Florence Welch sang on the half-shell at the Spring 2012 show. Most memorable of all was the improbable giant iceberg from Scandinavia that Chanel shipped across the continent for the Fall 2010 show. Lagerfeld also pioneered the concept of the traveling pre-season show. The Karl caravan has landed variously in Versailles; West Lothian, Scotland; Dallas; Seoul; and, spectacularly, Havana, Cuba.
LORDS OF CHAOS, Mayhem Dissed
Call for Lords of Chaos film about suicide and satanism to be banned
One of the most controversial films ever made has been approved for release in the UK despite featuring self-harm, suicide and burning of churches by members of a satanic black metal band.
Official film classifiers in the UK and US are understood to have been so concerned about the release of Lords of Chaos that it was reviewed at the highest levels.
Church groups have, however, called for it to be banned following controversy over the role of online self-harm images in the death of Molly Russell, 14, who took her own life after viewing such images on Instagram.
The film, based on the real-life Norwegian black metal band Mayhem,contains explicit violence, including two murders and the burning…
Motility Re-dated
Discovery of the oldest evidence of motility on Earth
Previously, the oldest traces of this kind found dated to approximately 600 million years ago: the Ediacaran period, also characterized by a peak in dioxygen and a proliferation in biodiversity. Scale bar: 1 cm. Credit: A. El Albani / IC2MP / CNRS – Université de Poitiers
An international multi-disciplinary team coordinated by Abderrazak El Albani at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) has uncovered the oldest fossilised traces of motility. Whereas previous remnants were dated to 570 million years ago, this new evidence is 2.1 billion years old. The fossils were discovered in a deposit in Gabon, where the oldest multicellular organisms were found. The results appear in the 11 February 2019 edition of PNAS.
A few years ago, geologist Abderrazak El Albani and his team at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) discovered the oldest existing fossils of multicellular organisms in a deposit in Gabon. Located in the Franceville Basin, the deposit allowed scientists to re-date the appearance of multicellular life on Earth to 2.1 billion years—approximately 1.5 billion years earlier than previously thought (600 million). At the time, the researchers showed that this rich biodiversity co-occurred with a peak in dioxygenation of the atmosphere, and developed in a calm and shallow marine environment.
In this same geological deposit, the team has now uncovered the existence of fossilised traces of motility. This shows that certain multicellular organisms in this primitive marine ecosystem were sophisticated enough to move through its mud, rich in organic matter.
Nippy Hot Rod Tractors
Police impound tractor after it was reported for drag racing motorbikes
‘Pretty nippy’ tractor weighs around 5.5 tonnes and has up to 175hp
By Thomas Cock
Police in Wiltshire seized a five-tonne tractor after being told it was racing against motorbikes.
The farm vehicle was impounded after it was found to be using red diesel – duty free fuel only to be used for agricultural purposes.
Police also said the driver could not produce valid insurance at the time.
They tweeted a picture showing a New Holland T6 175 tractor.
This model is listed online as having up to 175hp and weighing around 5.5.tonnes.
One twitter used described it as “pretty nippy.”
The tractor had a large sticker on it saying “seized by police – no insurance”.
God Bless Testosterone
Local powerlifter lifts vehicle off man trapped underneath after accident
By: Alan Campbell
YPSILANTI, Mich. (WXYZ) — A local power lifter is being hailed as a real life super hero, after his quick actions helped save a man pinned under a rolled over vehicle.
Ryan Belcher, works out and trains at the gym 5 days a week. It’s his life, and a place he credits for giving him extra strength on a day he needed it the most.
“I just lifted and started pushing the vehicle as hard as I could,” Belcher said.
Belcher isn’t your normal power lifter.
“What’s weird is it’s easier for me to not know the weight,” he said.
It was around 4:30 Thursday afternoon when Belcher heard something outside his workplace on the 2600 block of Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti.
“I just hear a big smash and, as I look out, a crowd of people are coming and this vehicle is flipped upside down and my first instinct was to just take off out there,” he said.
MAGMA
Yellowstone volcano: How scientists ‘intensely monitor’ rising column of HOT MAGMA
THE YELLOWSTONE volcano has been “intensely monitored” by a team of scientists and volcanologists concerned by a 400-mile-long plume of hot magma that is rising beneath the surface of the Earth.
By CALLUM HOARE
The Yellowstone volcano has erupted three times in history – 2.1 million years ago, 1.2 million years ago and 640,000 years ago. Scientists have previously revealed that, should an earthquake occur, it could take less than two weeks before a catastrophic reaction event with the potential to wipe out three-quarters of the US is triggered. Now, it is the job of geologists to “intensely monitor” a large area of molten rock directly below the surface of the supervolcano, it was revealed in a documentary.
“We can reconstruct a 3D picture like an MRI scan by recording thousands of earthquakes.”
The documentary then reveals how the mapping system of more than 150 seismometers has identified a 400-mile-long magma plume rising from the Earth’s core.
Should this reach the surface, there could be catastrophic effects.
The last eruption of Yellowstone produced around 2,500 times more volcanic material than the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens.
Little Sis I Got Your Back
Steamboat Coming
Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser Is Gushing at a Record Pace
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Late last year, Jeff Carter happened upon Steamboat Geyser, the tallest active geyser in the world, just before it erupted. “It was so much louder, and higher and stronger than anything I had seen, almost frightening,” he said. “People around us were so emotional, just cheering and roaring,” Mr. Carter said. “This old fellow who had it on his bucket list was so verklempt when the geyser erupted, it was neat.” All but dormant for years, Steamboat is erupting fairly frequently these days and more people like Mr. Carter are getting to witness it.
While Old Faithful is a global icon of punctual eruption — it usually erupts every 90 minutes or so — it is the exception among geothermal features. Most of Yellowstone National Park’s 1,000 or so geysers are far more irregular and unpredictable. Many geysers, like Steamboat, are quiet and then suddenly rouse. Steamboat sometimes jets water to heights of 300 to 400 feet — far higher than Old Faithful’s top height of 185 feet…
Fifth Estate Fashion
Extra! Jeremy Scott makes news (literally) on the runway
NEW YORK (AP) — CHAOS! HORROR! PANIC! BABY, IT’S HOT! Designer Jeremy Scott has always liked to make news, but with his latest collection he did it literally, drawing design inspiration from New York’s tabloid headlines.
Chromatically speaking, Scott’s runway show Friday evening at New York Fashion Week was a very disciplined collection in all black and white; Scott usually uses a riot of bright colors and large cartoon graphics in his clothes.
Here, garments were emblazoned with an artist’s versions of the New York Post and the Daily News — on dresses, trousers, jackets, jumpsuits and much more. Some of the most striking items: dainty, elegant chiffon party dresses printed with tabloid headlines.
“A MILLION LITTLE PIECES” Backstage
Why There’s Magic to ‘Proper Indie Filmmaking’
BY ASHLEY LEE
Photo Source: Courtesy Tiff
On the first day of production for “A Million Little Pieces,” Aaron Taylor-Johnson was completely naked. Per the instruction of Sam Taylor-Johnson (his director, screenwriting partner, and wife), the actor began dancing for the camera, spinning wildly with vacant eyes before falling out a window.
“I wanted the audience to know, very quickly, exactly who he was, without repeating imagery we’ve seen before,” explains Sam Taylor-Johnson of introducing the film’s drug-addicted character. “I said, ‘You’re a broken human being, and your behavior has to be so raw and without any boundaries or sense of self. So, your nakedness, you have no sense of it being right or wrong. You have no shame. You have no anything, really.’ Of course, when we shot it, it’s like, ‘Oh, god.’ ”
Asteroid Space Station
Scientists want to build a space station INSIDE an asteroid and use artificial gravity from the rapidly spinning space rocks to mine valuable minerals
- It is possible to bore into the middle of an asteroid and mine from within
- Mining on the surface of asteroids is impossible as the gravity is insufficient
- Inside the asteroid would allow it to use the artificial gravity from its spinning
- Experts say the real-life applications of this technology remains unproven
An asteroid would need to be made of solid stone and spin one to three times a minute to provide enough gravity to resemble that of the Martian surface. Visualisations of the potential project have not been created and it may look like anything from a simple cavern to a complex spacecraft similar to the International Space Station (stock image)Space stations of the future may be built inside distant asteroids, scientists claim.
One team of researchers found it would be possible to bore into the middle of a distant space rock, erect a space station and mine valuable minerals from within.
They proved it would be mathematically possible, with the right asteroid, to put a cylindrical space station inside a rock several hundred feet wide.
Experts say the logistical possibilities of this concept remains an issue and that it is at least several decades away from becoming a reality.
Some scientists rebuffed the research and claim not enough is known about the physical composition of asteroids to guarantee building a space station inside a huge rock would not cause it to fragment and break apart.
Les secrets du Chateau
Secrets of the Chateau Marmont
As the ultimate movie-colony clubhouse turns 90, Mark Rozzo prowls among the bungalows and crannies off Sunset Boulevard where mega-stars and ne’er-do-wells, from Garbo and Harlow to Lindsay and Britney, have whiled away nearly a century of enchanted evenings.
by MARK ROZZO
Photograph by Nikolas Koenig/OTTO.
In the late 1920s, as Hollywood was booming and Beverly Hills was sprouting a bumper crop of movie-colony mansions, the stretch between them was little more than sagebrush and scrub. It was known as No-Man’s Land. Winding through it was a forlorn trail with a presumptuous name: Sunset Boulevard. Where this unpaved road met Marmont Lane, catty-corner to an oasis-like complex of villas in mid-construction called the Garden of Allah, the attorney and developer Fred Horowitz became mesmerized by a barren hillside. One day in November of 1926, the story goes, he rolled up to the unpromising site in a town car, pulled out a snapshot he’d taken in the Loire Valley of the Château d’Amboise (where Catherine de Medici and Henry II of France shacked up in the 16th century), and, in a title-card moment from a silent movie, shouted: “YES.”
Horowitz had found his spot. Here, on the north side of Sunset, he would build a brawny, earthquake-proof, seven-story, Manhattan-worthy apartment house in a fairy-tale French Gothic style: thick, buff-colored walls, spiky turrets, steep roofs, arched windows, raftered ceilings, and a vaulted colonnade, with the two flanks of the building folding in upon a grassy courtyard, all adding up to a veritable fortress of luxury, taste, and fantasy. His California castle—“distinctively furnished and decorated,” as the early ad copy put it—would have state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms. Promising Park Avenue-style discretion and privacy, it would be a sanctuary for New Yorkers moving West and for movie machersdesiring East Coast polish. Horowitz toyed with names: Chateau Sunset? Chateau Hollywood? He went with Chateau Marmont. It sounded French. Along with the Garden of Allah, the Chateau Marmont turned that faceless frontier into what would become the Sunset Strip.
Taco Art @ SXSW
Holy Guacamole! A Group of ‘Taco-Loving Creatives’ Is Building a Pop-Up Museum Devoted to the Mexican Snack at SXSW
The pop-up promises to “deliver true Instagrammable goals.”
Avocados. Courtesy of Tacotopia.
The pop-up museum trend shows no sign of dying out as the latest Instagram trap is set to touch down in Austin, Texas, just in time for the SXSW film, music, and media festival, which runs from March 8 to 16. It’s called Tacotopia, and it’s already threatening to go on a six-city tour to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
“The exhibit is part of a larger movement encompassing interactive and experiential art,” the press release helpfully points out for anyone who’s been hiding under a rock since Refinery29’s 29 Rooms and the Museum of Ice Cream ushered in this strange new age of ball pits and thematic odes to avocados, dreams, feminism, pizza, and rosé.
But this particular iteration doesn’t even pretend it’s there for anything more than to “deliver true Instagrammable goals” via larger-than-life immersive installations, according to its website. It will include such attractions as a foam pico de gallo ball pit, a “Señorita Needs a Margarita” lime swing, and a staircase leading to “Churro Heaven.”
It all feels vaguely sacrilegious: the jumping off point for the whole affair is a character dubbed the Goddess of Tacos, a cross between the Zapotec Goddess of Life and Ushnishavijaya, the Buddha Goddess of a Long Life. Tacotopia plans to work with local artists in all six cities to create unique installations for each stop on the tour.
Sullivan on Sex
The Nature of Sex
By
Photo: Yukipon
It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but earlier this week, four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected. For this, they were given a rousing round of applause by the Trump supporters, religious-right members, natural law theorists, and conservative intellectuals who comprised much of the crowd. If you think I’ve just discovered an extremely potent strain of weed and am hallucinating, check out the video of the event.
I’ve no doubt that many will see these women as anti-trans bigots, or appeasers of homophobes and transphobes, or simply deranged publicity seekers. (The moderator, Ryan Anderson, said they were speaking at Heritage because no similar liberal or leftist institution would give them space or time to make their case.) And it’s true that trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, as they are known, are one minority that is actively not tolerated by the LGBTQ establishment, and often demonized by the gay community. It’s also true that they can be inflammatory, offensive, and liobsessive. But what interests me is their underlying argument, which deserves to be thought through, regardless of our political allegiances, sexual identities, or tribal attachments. Because it’s an argument that seems to me to contain a seed of truth. Hence, I suspect, the intensity of the urge to suppress it.