Fun optical illusion from 2017
Town in Iceland Paints 3D Zebra Crosswalk To Slow Down Speeding Cars, Stella, Pored Panda, October 25, 2017
November 2023 Film Festival Awards for Joey Skaggs Oral History Films
Thank you Baltimore Next Media (BNM) Web Fest and The NewsFest International Film & Writers Festival for honoring films #6, #7, & #8 of the “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond” Oral History Series:
Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure:
WINNER Best Documentary
WINNER Best Documentary Writer (Joey)
WINNER Best Host/Narrator (Joey)
and, cheeky as it is,
Joey Skaggs: Celebrity Sperm Bank:
HONORABLE MENTION: Best Guest Stars Richard Sher, Oprah Winfrey from “People Are Talking”, 1981
Joey Skaggs: WALK RIGHT!:
1st PLACE WINNER Best Human Interest
and
Joey Skaggs: Celebrity Sperm Bank:
GRAND WINNER Best Short Doc <15 Min.
The Earlville Opera House, Still Standing After All These Years
In 1971, Joey Skaggs saved a derelict opera house that was about to be torn down in Earlville New York. Today, 50+ years later, it is a thriving cultural centerpiece for Central New York. WBNG Channel 12 News covers its remarkable journey.
Earlville Opera House brings arts and culture to Chenango County for past 50 years, by Autriya Maneshni, WBNG Channel 12 News, November 20, 2023
The Earlville Opera House brings about 15 performers to Chenango County every year
EARLVILLE, NY (WBNG) — The tale of the Earlville Opera House is one of perseverance. It’s about how a group of volunteers came together to save an abandoned building from the wrecking ball.
In 1887, the opera house was housed in an old Baptist church. That structure burned down. After a second structure was built, half of that building also burned down a couple of years after it was built. The third reconstructed opera house was beloved in the community and this one felt indestructible. However, the building closed its doors in the 1950s due to the evolution of technology.
In 1971, the opera house was threatened to be demolished. With this threat looming on the horizon, it felt as though the opera house would disappear from Earlville for good. A young artist and social activist named Joey Skaggs decided this wasn’t going to happen. “If I hadn’t come along and decided to save it, it wouldn’t be there. It would be a parking lot,” said Skaggs. Read the rest of the article and watch the video here.
The High Cost of Dissent in Russia
Droplifting–adding objects or messages to store shelves to make a political statement–is treated as a minor irritant in the United States. Placing 5 labels protesting Russia’s war against Ukraine on grocery store items has yielded 7 years in a penal colony for artist Aleksandra Skochilenko.
If we take our freedoms for granted, we might lose them.
Russian artist jailed for seven years over Ukraine war price tag protest, by Andrew Roth, The Guardian, November 16, 2023
Aleksandra Skochilenko replaced five supermarket price tags with pieces of paper urging shoppers to stop the war
…“How fragile must the prosecutor’s belief in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public safety can be brought down by five small pieces of paper?” said Skochilenko, 33, in a final statement in court on Thursday.
“Despite being behind bars, I am freer than you,” she said. “I’m not afraid to be different from others. Perhaps that’s why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and keeps me caged like a dangerous animal.” Read the whole article here.
The Steak was Real but the Restaurant was Fake
The only item on the “To Go” menu was the restaurant itself.
How NYC’s fine-dining elite got pranked by Gen Zer’s fake steakhouse — complete with milk servers, ‘celebs,’ and wedding proposal by Hannah Frishberg, September 25, 2023
This Manhattan restaurant is a tough reservation to book — because it doesn’t exist.
The foodie gentry who gathered for their dinner at Mehran’s Steakhouse this weekend believed they’d at last gotten off the years-long waitlist for a highly exclusive, 100-year-old chop house, which finally had an available table at its Lower East Side location.
In reality, what some 140 diners experienced this Saturday evening was an elaborate prank pulled off by a 21-year-old AI startup founder — and some 65 of his friends.
The practical joke of a white tablecloth institution was born during the pandemic, in 2021, when Mehran Jalali’s 16 housemates decided to commemorate the biweekly steak dinners he’d cook them by marking their Upper East Side home as a chop house on Google Maps.
The mostly teenage roomies all left glowing reviews for the newfound institution, leading to intrigued strangers showing up at their door seeking steak.
Mehran then made a website for their solidly booked, “revolutionary steak experience” and, by the end of 2022, had accrued a 2,600-person waitlist. Read the whole article here.