Lileks is unimpressed:
Time was a sculptor looked at a big slab of stone and saw the figure within he would liberate with hammer and chisel; time was, people gathered to see a monolith pass because it was a gift from Egypt, and stood for the power of another culture your culture had managed to subdue. Plus, it was cool; it was exotic. Time was, you valued something for what we could make of it, not the fact that you could just drag it somewhere else and say “now walk under it, and think things about big rocks.” Feh.
I have to confess, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, either, but if I had gone to watch, it would have been to see the vehicle, not the rock.
Generally speaking, if I can make it, it’s not really art.
The emperor’s new clothes look fab-u-lous.
And I gather its transporter makes 15 gallons per mile…
Now, if this were an asteroidal object somehow soft-landed on Earth. I’d be rather more impressed.
I don’t want to hear one more freaking word about my “carbon footprint.”
Huh, looks ugly too. At least it’s paid for by private sources according to the “FAQ”.
This is not just a rock. It’s a rock in captivity. Think how rare that is. Los Angeles is filled with city kids who have probably never seen a rock.
The New Orleans Zoo has a hill. It’s not much of a hill, but it’s the only hill in New Orleans and may be the only hill some kids have ever seen. I’m not sure, but I think they may have built the hill just to educate their young ones.
But I have to wonder about the economics of this. Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to just to bus people out to Vasquez Rocks?
So LA now has a Pet Rock™?
I think a lot people just want to go see, “What the Rock — is — cookin’!”