Miró's Chicago

In 1963 the Brunswick corporation commissioned Spanish artist Joan Miró to design a sculpture for their new skyscraper in downtown Chicago. Unfortunately, the Brunswick corporation suffered sticker-shock at the prestigious bill they received from Miró and decided to cancel the order. The original plaster Maquette entitled The Sun, the Moon and One Star is currently owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. A full twenty years after the original design the city decided to revive the plans and place the work in its originally intended location. Miró was so proud of the work that he never bothered to name it so it was named Miró's Chicago. Not really a good set of working conditions by any stretch. The finished piece is a towering 40 foot concrete and iron monster with colorful ceramic insets in various, 80's styled, shapes. Organic shapes of the concrete base are offset by harsh linear lines of the iron crown.

In the final decades of Miró's life he had begun to explore daring color schemes and ceramic as a medium making his work much more subjective. This is in sharp contrast to some of his earlier works like the elegant Moonbird (1966) sculpture in New York, which was designed a year after Chicago and is generally viewed as one of his best works. In contrast, you might make comments about the Chicago piece like: “It looks like a bird with a fork in it's head” or “Is it supposed to be a woman?”. Those people probably don't fully appreciate the finely-tuned aesthetic language Miró worked his entire life to create. Regardless of the intentions of the artist, Miró's Chicago is one of his least aesthetically pleasing and confounding sculptural pieces on display in any large city. Houston's Persona of Birds has us beat fair-and-square for the number one spot, but Chicago certainly lacks the grace of Spain's Dona i Ocell (woman with Bird), which was finished around the same time as Chicago. Ultimately, the sculpture that almost wasn't is an interesting piece of Chicago lore, but ultimately fails to evoke the sort of passion we hope to see from our public landmarks.

Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of a good book

The tag-line for Jason Buhrmester's first-time literary entrance, Black Dogs, reads like he has set himself up for an easy win. “The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery”. It sounds like the best mystery novel ever made. The anticipation grows more when we learn that the story is based on the true-life events of a 1973 robbery involving none other than classic rock legend Led Zepplin. During a three-day concert at Madison Square Garden $203,000 is stolen from their hotel suite and no arrests were ever made in connection with the robbery. Robbery mystery? Check. Classic rock legend Jimmy Paige? Check. True story? Possibly. This back-story is better than anything CSI could ever have hoped for.

The story soon gets better with sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Patrick and his friends Frenchy, Keith, and Alex quickly scheme to rob Led Zepplin after their famous concert in New York. In addition to scheming, the boys also smoke pot, listen to Black Sabbath, and engage in sex acts with various women. An unfortunate series of self-inflicted events deteriorate the character's situations to the point where they have no choice but to pull off the most rockin' heist the world has ever seen.

Once the reader begins to realize what is going on, it is too late. You are several chapters in and nursing a wicked hangover. In this sobering state you begin to fully take stock of the situation. You may stop several times and ask yourself, “Wait, is this really a true story?” You flip the book over and examine the tag-line on the cover to re-read a critical word: “The possibly true story.” Turns out a “possibly true story” is the same as a fictional one. While Led Zepplin did loose a load of cash in New York, the Baltimore teens who rocked out so hard in order to pull off the heist are fictional. Now everything begins to make sense.

Lets get back to the gratuitous drugs and sex at the beginning of the novel. On one hand, it is perfectly understandable why this material was included, and it makes sense with the 'rock and roll' lifestyle the story is trying to portray. It also makes sense as an easy lure for 16 year old boys to keep turning pages. From a female reader's perspective it seemed a bit like a highschooler's wet dream and with one-liners like: “'No problem.' She giggled cooly, sipping her beer. I lay down next to her and by 'Ruby Tuesday' we were making out.”, it's not exactly classy. That wasn’t even the largest problem with it. We are not taking a peek into the notoriously devious lifestyle of classic rockers like Paige or Osborne. These are run off the mill deviants, retail workers, and small-time criminals we are talking about here. If we can take anything from these scenes, it's that stealing stuff and smoking pot will still get you laid.

You may be inclined to think the Ocean's Eleven style assembly of would-be theifs is a clever plot driver. It could be argued that Mr. Buhrmester came to this same conclusion after watching 2007's Ocean's Thirteen when it arrived with his other Netflix selections. By the third installment of the Ocean's series, nearly every one of Buhrmester's readers been thoroughly desensitized to this approach. It could still work, but where Ocean had a group of well-prepared, interesting, and skilled people from around the world Patrick has a group of seemingly inept local misfits with the only interesting thing that defines them is highly amplified distortion and extended guitar solos.

Despite everything that is going on around them, there is very little growth from these characters. The uninspiring descriptions used at the start of the book are as true at the beginning as they are at the end. The person best suited to this novel is someone who will enjoy anything where Jimmy Paige makes an appearance. Connoisseurs of grit will be disappointed by the detail, mystery lovers will be let down by the mystery, and everyone else will probably continue reading hoping for more sex and drugs.

The Green Hornet

Many of us have fond memories from our childhoods of the dashing superhero, classic villains, and observant detectives. The most common place to find these characters was often the local comic book shop. Within the next year there will be an influx of movies adapted from comic books such as The Avengers, Captain America, Cat Woman, Batman, Tin Tin and Superman. However, where is this new fad going? Are these movies examples of Hollywood gone sour, or can the child-hood inspired superhero win their way back into the hearts and minds of a new audience? When one thinks of comic books that are successfully adapted for the big screen they may think of Batman, Blade, Spider Man or Men in Black. However, the recent movie Green Hornet does not immediately spring to mind as a movie which will go down in history as a great adaptation of a once famous comic book.

The Green Hornet is based upon an American radio and comic book masked vigilante created by George Trendle and Fran Striker. The story begins predictably with a prelude of the main character, Britt Reid, who as a child has an ambition to be a super hero. His father, the owner of the major newspaper in his city becomes disappointed in him when he continuously gets in trouble at school for trying to stop fights. This then leaves the son feeling like a failure throughout his life growing up to be surrounded by women and wild parties, now played by Seth Rogan. Meanwhile the city has a new mob boss in town named Chudnofsky, played by Christoph Waltz who is most notable for his role as the villain in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards. However, in the Green Hornet he doesn’t seem quite scary enough to be the villian. The first scene sees him being introduced to a new drug dealer and club owner Crystal Clear, played by James Franco. Clear makes fun of him for not being ‘scary’ throwing such insults as  ‘Disco Santa’ and ‘passed his prime’ while all the while pronouncing his name incorrectly. Chudnofsky becomes extremely upset by this so pulls out his double barreled gun shooting four guys in two shots leaving just Clear. He then continues to ask how he could be scarier, asking if his gun is scary enough and going into details on how it was made. It’s as though Chudnofsky is experiencing a midlife crisis. He then leaves the club blowing off a bomb inside, pulling the typical bad-ass move of not looking back when an explosion goes off.

Just as anticipated something unfortunate happens leaving Britt to run his father’s company and ‘clean up the streets.’ At first Britt rebels against this by chopping off the head of his father’s statue and firing everyone who worked for his father. However, knowing he cannot work alone he befriends Kato, an employee of his father. This friendship leads to the beginning of the green hornet with several more explosions and other ridiculousness. At one point they are driving around the top floor of a skyscraper with the entire back of their car missing. Anyone over the age of eight might suspect this scene would not end so well in real life.

Adaptions of comic books to movies do not need to be ‘realistic,’ however there is fine line between a childhood hero fantasy and pure absurdity. After the movie was finished it was hard to determine whether the director wanted to impress, alienate, or directly insult its core audience. At times it seemed that the movie was trying to be the next greatest superhero and other times it had the mental capacity of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. It will probably make millions for Hollywood as a big budget blockbuster full of an impressive cast and explosions. However, it wasn’t a reminder of the comic books many of us read as children. So here is hoping that the new movies, based on adaptions of comic books, will be much more impressive and allow new generations to enjoy the heroes of the past.