Big-Ass Statues

So I see that the Statue of Liberty is reopening. Perhaps if I were from someplace like Iowa or Nebraska I’d be excited. But as my friend and fellow Tulsa expatriate Sarah explains, I’m from the home of gaudy statues :

Before anyone jumps all over for me for complaining about my new home and pining for my old one, let me clarify: I love New York, and I?m not pining for Oklahoma necessarily, just its ions. Here?s a good reason why: Oklahoma is building a 17-story bronze statue of an American Indian with an eagle on its shoulder. It will be taller than the Statue of Liberty. Let me put that in all caps for you, just to drive it home: 17-STORY BRONZE STATUE OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN WITH AN EAGLE ON ITS SHOULDER, TALLER THAN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. The good people of Oklahoma rejected it twice already, once as an offer to put it atop the capitol dome, but now it’s being done with private funds. The only way I would be in support of this monstrosity is if it produced giant saltwater tears and they put it by the highway.

Seriously, I grew up in Oklahoma, and I have love for my heritage, but in the same way you have love for a sweet but loserish family member. You can make fun of it, but you have to stand up for it if anyone else does. It?s sort of a depressing state history, all Trail of Tears and stealing land, and then, when it became government-sanctioned to take the land, some douchebags even stole it again, and we apparently thought that move was cute enough to nickname ourselves after it. All you hear about while growing up in Oklahoma is our sad land-stealing tear-trailing past, and it makes you cry when you learn it in elementary school, but then the weird part is that everyone sort of twists it into our badge of honor, like the kitschification of America after September 11, as if crying eagle statues are going to be something awesome to rally around.

Until the 17-story reminder of early-American genocide is unveiled, Tulsa still has the Golden Driller :




…and the praying hands :



As tacky as the Tulsa statues are, they all pale in comparison to this proposal for a giant statue of Abe Lincoln (link from here) :
Davis grew up in Gaffney, S.C., a town known for the production of peaches. He said his town’s landmark is a huge water tower painted to look like a peach.

His better-known examples include the St. Louis Arch, Paris’ Eiffel Tower (which was intended to stand for two years and is now more than 100 years old), Chicago’s Sears Tower and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

“Mount Rushmore is in the middle of nowhere,” he said, “That site averages 5,480 visitors per day, and the weather is horrible there in the winter.”

Davis said Lincoln’s claim to fame is the fact that the city was both named for the future 16th president and christened by him with the juice of a watermelon.

Therefore, he proposes turning the image from a Lloyd Ostendorf painting into a towering 305-foot monument that tourists could spot miles away as they drive Interstate 55. To illustrate the size, Davis said the toe of the statue’s boot would be taller than a 6-foot man.
. . .
His dream includes an elevator to take visitors to the top through one leg of the statue and a flight of stairs that would ascend the other. Space inside the barrel standing next to the statue could be used for an I-max theater, an art gallery of Lloyd Ostendorf prints highlighting Lincoln’s admirable qualities, a “watermelon restaurant” or a shopping mall. The pile of watermelons at Abe’s feet could house a huge children’s inside playground.

And if you think that’s funny, wait til you see the guy’s PowerPoint presentation …







I wish this statue wasn’t such a pipe dream. I’d plan my next vacation around getting to see a giant Abe Lincoln pouring one on the ground for all his dead homies.

Word.


posted by greg on March 30, 2004 @ 11:32 am

7 comments

  1. I can’t look at the Oral Roberts hads without being reminded of a joke: One day the hands fall apart. Administrators at Oral Roberts U desperately start soliciting bids to restore them to their original position, but all of the estimates are in the thousands of dollars and will take weeks to do.

    Finally, they get a bid for $500.25, which promises same-day service. They can’t believe their luck, so they quickly accept. The bidder uses the $500 to rent a helicopter, which he then flies over the hands. While hovering over the hands, he drops a quarter, and the hands SNAP to a close to grab the falling coin. Problem solved!

    Comment by Charles Kuffner — March 30, 2004 @ 6:31 pm

  2. When I was a kid, one time my family’s van was parked sort-of near ORU, and there was a handprint on our windshield. I asked my daddy what it was, and he told me “it must have been the praying hands.”

    So for years afterwards, I thought the praying hands could go underground and come up at will in other parts of the city.

    Comment by dAnimal — March 30, 2004 @ 6:47 pm

  3. Another comment–I think Texas needs a big big statue, right across highway 40 from the “biggest cross in the western hemisphere.”

    My statue would be a giant demon drawn in a cartoony Kim Deitch style, that would dwarf the cross on the other side of the highway. The demon would be looking at the cross and drooling evilly, and would be the color of dingy rust (so that if people tried to graffiti his feet, it would blend in with the decor and only make him look more evil. Anyway, that’s what I would do if I had 100 million dollars.

    Comment by dAnimal — March 30, 2004 @ 6:59 pm

  4. I forgot to close my parenthetical comment with a parenthesis. I suck.

    Comment by dAnimal — March 30, 2004 @ 7:00 pm

  5. I live in NY and typical of most New Yorkers, I have never been to the Statue of Liberty. I was on a drinking cruise one night when I was in college and I went out on the deck for some air and there it was right in front of me: The Statue of Liberty. It was huge! I toasted her and that was the closest I ever got to it again.

    Post more pictures of big statues. I loved them. We don’t have that here except for Liberty which you can only see on clear days if you are near the shore. I think it’s closer to NJ but we won’t talk about that.

    Comment by BlondeSense — March 31, 2004 @ 6:53 am

  6. OK…I just got back from Europe…home of beautiful architecture and impressive monuments and I just received word that in my home town of Tulsa we are constructing a big ass statue of and Indian that will end up being taller than the statue of Liberty. I personally find this very humiliating because I already get a lot of flack from people because I am from Oklahoma, and apparently other people in the world still think that we drive covered wagons and have cowboy and indian fights on the range. So all I want to know is why in the hell we are trying to make our state stand out even more by sticking a big ass statue of an Indian right on top of it. I mean we already have a big ass driller and big ass set of praying hands what more could you ask for?

    Comment by HILLARY — July 12, 2004 @ 1:45 pm

  7. I personally think the statue would be great. And to you missy, if Europe is so great go live there you filthy anti-American, Communist, Hippie. I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free. Be proud or go live in France where Democracy is hated.

    Comment by ShaunyP — July 12, 2004 @ 6:09 pm

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