Coming Soon to a Thermosphere Near You
January 9th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Among the results of a Nexis search for “Tom Craddick,” the most surprising was easily, “Flying banana may reach new artistic heights.”
What in the world does that have to do with Tom Craddick? Turns out, not much. It’s a story about the Geostationary Banana Over Texas project. “Not another one of those,” you’re surely thinking. Canadian artist Cesar Saez is hoping to spend a cool million to send a 1,000-foot long banana blimp into the high atmosphere. Saez plans for the artwork to, literally, fly around in circles over the state for a few weeks.
But whither Craddick? Turns out that John MacCormack, the impulsively mischevious reporter who wrote the original story for the San Antonio Express-News, did his due diligence and talked to a number of public officials about the repurcussions, both practical and legal, of Saez’s visionairy use of a fruit replica.
Excuse this bit of media navel gazing, but this sentence is hilarious, “Spokesmen for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick did not respond to questions posed Friday about the project.” As Craddick is locked in the most dire fight for his political fortunes in decades, imagine calling his office to say, “I’d like to talk to the Speaker about a giant floating banana.”
January 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I think that the “Geostationary Banana Over Texas” intervention should be opposed. I hope that someone in Congress steps up against this project. Think of the repercussions, any old joe could just throw “stratelites” into the stratosphere? To me it’s like dumping garbage into the sky, and should be seen as a violation of international law, or at least be stopped by whoever is in charge of regulating the air-space.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:06 am
[…] For instance, it wasn’t immediately clear to me why someone would want to launch a massive banana into the thermosphere, but hey, you know, it’s art, I […]