Replicas and Representations

I’m sitting at home this morning taking a vacation day, while everyone is sleeping off a hard night college 4th of July party my daughter threw last night (but for which we cleaned up). I’m listening to music (I’m down to under 1% of my over 31,000 songs at the “less than 8 plays” mark), and looking at the accumulated news chum for a theme. Then it pops at me: the following three articles are all links by dealing with replicas and representations — transforming something in the real world into something even more realistic. See if you agree with me.

• Real-Life Barbie. This one is interesting. This is not a case of finding a women who has contorted her shape to match Barbie’s. Rather, an artist has altered Barbie’s shape to match the proportions of real women. The “real-life” Barbie looks much nicer, to my eyes, then the unrealistic Barbie ever did.
  [I also think she looks a lot like one of the rabbis at our congregation (note: it's pretty obvious which one -- sorry, Barry)].
• A Council Mess. The city council in Jackson TN has a problem. The council is seated, in order L to R next to the mayor, by descending council districts. The mayor thinks this will confuse children; he wants the council seated in ascending order, because that’s the way God intended the universe to be. Now, I’m not writing about this weird belief, but rather the drawing to explain the council seating swap drawn by the government blogger in Jackson.
• Jesus Saves. Those who have lived in Los Angeles for a long time probably remember a large sign downtown that said “Jesus Saves”. The sign was on the original dormatory of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which is now called BIOLA University. When Biola moved to La Mirada in the 1960s, it couldn’t take the sign with them. It remained downtown, and when the building was finally torn down, the sign was sold off to Gene Scott (a televangelist). When his empire collapse and he sold the building, his sister took one sign, and the other remained on the building (where the new owner, who is transforming it into loft apartments, wants to keep it). So Biola had to create a replica sign on the side of a parking garage. The new sign doesn’t use neon but LEDs, and is much smaller. They hope to get the original back someday.

Music: Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan): “Meet Me in the Morning” (Song #3146 in the “Less than 8 plays” playlist, out of 31453 songs in the “Music” playlist, and 31651 tracks total)

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