Go Big or Go Home, I always say.
Posted on 11/12/2005 2:43:19 PM PST by Lorianne
A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker's pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from "Family Guy," scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead.
All are soldiers in the tattered, scattered army of the stuffed: mostly discarded toys plucked from the trash and given new if punishing lives on the prows of large motor vehicles, their fluffy white guts flapping from burst seams and going gray in the soot-stream of a thousand exhaust pipes.
Grille-mounted stuffed animals form a compelling yet little-studied aspect of the urban streetscape, a traveling gallery of baldly transgressive public art. The time has come not just to praise them but to ask the big question. Why?
That is, why do a small percentage of trucks and vans have filthy plush toys lashed to their fronts, like prisoners at the mast? Are they someone's idea of a joke? Parking aids? Talismans against summonses?
Interviews with half a dozen truckers as well as folklorists, art historians and anthropologists revealed the grille-mounted plush toy to be a product of a tangle of physical circumstance, proximate and indirect influence, ethnic tradition, occupational mindset and Jungian archetype.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Go Big or Go Home, I always say.
I want to be a Jungian Archetype when I grow up,
For now though, I've got GUMBY lashed to my rear
view mirror.
Would not wan't to be alone with this woman.
The NYT just couldn't take the word of the truckers, they had to ask academics why the truckers were doing this?
LOL! Too much.
The bunny's looking particularly sad...
Note to the NYT: If ya hafta ask...
This is the NYT's way of trying to win back both blue-collar and academic/intellectual readers at the same time. (Whew. ;-)
my old 70 ford pickup (Great runner BTW) work truck has a shakey head dog on the dash, an 8 ball on the antenae,a chrome (rusty) naked lady on the grill and a "terrorist hunting permit" and a Bumper sticker that says, "Keep honking , I'm reloading" on the back. Being a transplant to the rural landscape, I'm trying my best to be a good citizen.
Frankly, why not? This guy needs a life. And a new manicure.
Does this count?
Last summer he drove some Amish to a horse auction in Idaho. That had a good laugh at it, oddly enough.
Rebelling against all the touchy feely BS from libs and shrinks?
More than one way to...
LOL!! I have a fondness for "BOO" and "moo". I almost had a moose hood ornament a few years ago. Thank God I swerved in a different direction than the moose.
What a great opportunity for someone to create a Hillary voodoo doll with great big pins in it.
Ok ok, enough off (sorta) topic pics from me :)
Better copyright that idea, fast!
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