I drove out with a friend to Genoa, Colorado (“Ja-NO-a”. Please don’t pronounce it like the Italian city where Columbus started for the New World) to see the World’s Wonder View Tower. The Tower, once a crumbling roadside attraction off I-70, is now being refurbished in a way that is sensitive to both its small town tourist roots, and the newer idea of dusty rural American towns revitalizing themselves by creating artist colonies and commerce.
To this end, several of Colorado’s top found-object artists have been invited out to comb through the rustic collections of objects that have accreted and make art installations with them. I went out to lend moral support, and do a bit of volunteer work and I got to chat with some of the artists, about their processes and intentions, and kibbitz a little while the work was being installed. For Mark Friday and Deborah Jang, color often provided an animating spirit, possibly inspired by the bright, Mid-Mod color scheme of the refurbished tower. Cobalt Blue and creamsicle orange alternated in eye-catching patterns on the narrow steps and ascending floors, and Jang, taking note of the constant flutter of avian activity outside, adopted a bird theme in yellows and reds for her gallery. She got the most expansive room, just below the outside observation deck, and filled with natural light from the many windows.
Friday got the floor below, in a bright yellow, where the vacant, implacable stares of his figures seemed to suggest that while the visitor was observing the Wonder View, the teeming plains and not quite vacated ghosts might be observing him.
Just what the ‘wonder view’ might encompass was the subject of light hearted debate all day, among both a steady stream of visitors and the staff. The general consensus seemed to be, if the famous sunday page Ripley suggested we believe 6 States- or not- then who are we to argue? I watched Reed Weimer, Board Member, himself an artist, help Jang hang work, then listened as Chandler Romeo, also a Board Member and artist, describe the gorgeous and functional ceramics she’d handmade for the gift shop. I helped wash ancient blue glass bottles for display, and chatted with visitors, suggesting other interesting stops to the ones headed for Wyoming. Other artists involved: Phil Bender and Lonnie Hanzon, not there that day. I’ll return to this, as it’s an interesting project with major implications for the divide between embittered rural, Red America, and the ever optimistic and forward looking urban blue regions. As I toured the dirt road main street of Genoa, I asked myself: Can they work together?
The World Cup is getting more popular, partly a reflection of younger generations who are less suspicious than older ones of the world outside our borders, and partly from band wagon jumping as the US team shows more confidence and savvy in the early rounds. Racist and xenophobic tropes are less in evidence, or probably, being confined to the more marginal outlets, on both the far right and left. Soccer itself has long thrived online and in newer media, while in increasingly feeble mid sized city dailies’ shrinking sports pages, it is still being relegated to agate, in order to allow room for obsessive and largely substance-free coverage of NFL training camps. But who buys newspapers? The world is changing, and Soccer has always been on the forefront of these cultural transformations.
Hopeful reportage by skeptics about empty seats in the first few days, presumably offered by America-firsters anxious to revive against all evidence the stereotype of Soccer as a ‘boring’ ‘niche’ sport’ ( as if 3 billion people outside our borders are somehow too stupid to know when they are bored) faded in the face of record crowds. Soccer snobs’ insistence that increasing to 48 countries would dilute the quality disappeared under an avalanche of goals and minnows who refused to lay down for traditional powers. Trump-deranged ultra progressives insisted that the world would stay away, but were drowned out by the singing of the Tartan Army, and the Oranje Bus. Football is simply far bigger than the Clown King, his idiotic war, and American exceptionalism, combined. This despite FIFA’s massive price raises, the usual cash grab.
We’re now in what the English commentators refer to as the ‘business end’ of the tournament- No Scotland, some party. However, several of the minnows, such as Cabo Verde, are still around. Even Trump nemesis Iran just barely missed the knock outs, despite ICE/HSA harassment at every turn. Similarly, the idea that Trump might use the tournament and its lap dog impresario Gianni Infantino for fascist promotion, seems also to be fading as his political and military incompetence makes him more unpopular by the day among the center. The World Cup was bigger than Mussolini, and Trump, a real minnow among wanna be dictators, has had ‘nil’ impact on it so far. Even the Supreme Court, which has mostly abandoned any pretense of impartial review of American legal precedent to advance Trump’s anti democratic agenda, couldn’t find the guts to defy the overwhelming sentiment of American citizens for Birthright citizenship.
As for the actual football end of it, this is when pretenders, one by one, drop off, and juggernauts like France and Brazil march on. Paraguay begs to differ. I don’t know who will win it, but FIFA, using the USA, as one commentator said ‘Like an ATM’ will probably be back with more of their many events before we know it (The Women’s WC in 2031, e.g.), and Trump will be long gone. Americans, though still viewing it all as spectacle, and not the cultural imperative that Dutch, Brazilians and Cabo Verdeans feel pulsing through their veins, seem quite copacetic with both developments. The Cup has proven that glum, suspicious Americans are still capable of optimism and joy. And why are other countries, that MAGA insists are inferior ‘shitholes’, having so much more fun than us?
A heads up to comics fans: Super Mutant Magic Academy, a hilarious web comic about gifted teenaged paranormals by Jillian Tamaki, is coming to Cartoon Network. The treatment looks very respectful to the original, which melds teen angst and magic into transgressive humor in what reads as a biting Hogwarts parody.
The main characters are very relatable and their problems aren’t so different from normal kids’. It’s in their bizarre and uproarious reactions that the humor lies. Comics adapted by TV and movies have a spotty record of creative and/or financial success. The mainstream Marvel movies have proven that this doesn’t need to be so, and Ghost World was an alternative comic that translated very well, so I’m hoping this quirky tale will satisfy on the small screen.
#WorldsWonderviewTower #WorldCup #culturewars #Supermutantmagicacademy #roadsideattractions #arttourism
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