Keen and mean… a broader reality

CRISTEN POWELL (b. 1979) is one of only six women to have won a national event title on the National Hot Rod Association circuit. She started racing when she was sixteen and has set several records since, frequently reaching speeds of over three hundred miles per hour.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS (b. 1911) was born in Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She moved to New York in 1938, where she exhibited drawings and prints before becoming a sculptor. She had her first one-woman show in 1942, and in 1982 was the first woman to have a retrospective exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

RAYMONDA DAVIS (b. 1980) grew up in Dallas, Texas, and joined the army after she graduated from high school. She completed basic training at Fort Jackson and enrolled in the ROTC program at Dallas Baptist University.

KAREN FINLEY (b. 1956) performs theatrical pieces that include monologues, music, dance, and video projections. She is also a painter and a sculptor. She began performing in and around San Francisco in the early 1980s, and in 1984, after receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she moved to New York. Much of her work is political satire, and it often features nudity. In 1989 a one-woman show, We Keep Our Victims Ready, was attacked by self-appointed defenders of public morals, and a second grant that she had just been awarded by the NEA was rescinded. After a lawsuit that she brought against the NEA was settled in 1993, she received the grant.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR (b. 1958) was born in London. Her father is Iranian, and they lived in Teheran until the revolution in 1979, when they returned to England. She graduated from the University of Rhode Island and in 1983 went to work for CNN. In 1990 she was assigned to cover the Gulf War and since then has reported from war zones in Bosnia, Rwanda, Algeria, Haiti, and Somalia. Her coverage of the war in the former Yugoslavia has earned several awards. She is also a contributor to 60 Minutes on CBS. In 1998 she married James Rubin, the United States assistant secretary of state for public affairs. JANE EVANS (b. 1959) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Southern Illinois University and began working for CNN in Atlanta in 1982. She, Christiane Amanpour, and Maria Fleet were the only women who covered the Gulf War. She is now a senior producer and camerawoman for CNN’s London bureau. MARIA FLEET (b. 1958) graduated from the University of Georgia in 1980. She went to work for CNN the following year and is now a camerawoman in the Rome bureau.

ANN RICHARDS (b. 1933) was first elected to public office in 1976, when she won a seat on the Travis, Texas, County Commissioners Court. She became Texas state treasurer in 1986. Two years later she delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. She served as governor of Texas from 1990 to 1994. Lena Guerrero (b. 1957) was chair of the Texas Railroad Commission from 1991 to 1992.

The above photos by Annie Leibovitz (and their captions) are from the New York Times online.

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Today is the anniversary of MeanKids’ last post. The content of that post had to do with the pregnant wife of a popular tech blogger. I’m glad we took the site down before anyone had a chance to see the post, which reminds me of my cousin Jimmy. When Jimmy was a kid, he was a big barfer. He would probably puke if he smelled someone else’s vomit. He would certainly ralph if he saw someone barf. Jimmy regurgitated when he saw someone cleaning fish, when he saw a dead bird, when he got dog poop on his shoe, when the dog up-chucked in the car. Given his weak stomach, you might think Jimmy would have avoided sights and smells that made him puke. But in addition to his peculiar sensitivity, Jimmy also had a perverse curiosity. My Uncle Don and Aunt Karen had a lot of kids, so for years and years there were always babes-in-arms at our family gatherings. It is a commonly known fact that where there are babies there will be spit-up, and also messy diapers. More than once I spotted cousin Jimmy with his hands covering his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the base human by-products of one of those babies. And he never was able to just walk away. Rather, he would peek between his fingers until his gorge rose, and then he would retreat gagging and ultimately adding to the fragrance of a summer afternoon at Grandpa’s house.

Naturally, though we had dumped the MeanKids site, drawn the curtain, and called enough enough, there were several cousin Jimmies out there in blogland who thought themselves most clever to be able to dig through cache, find the rotting content and share it more widely. Many of these people remain to be pied.

There are several things I’d like to share this March 26, the MeanKids anniversary. These include:

A link to my favorite graphic ever to appear on the MK site… Anna Nicole Smith’s coffin (ANS took a merciless beating those six weeks. Fortunately she was dead.)

THREE STAGES OF MEAN

1. Acceptance. The humble acknowledgment that there are among us people who are beyond redemption. Dick Cheney and Robert Scoble come to mind.
2. The pie toss. A cathartic moment when the banana cream hits the face.
3. Letting go. A time of relaxation and enjoyment of the sweet success that comes from a well tossed pie.

MEAN KIDS MOTTOES

1. Not afraid to leave our own back yards!
2. DISS, yes. Disinformation? Never.
3. We take shiny-happy people with a grain of salt.
4. Two grains maybe.

Well, see you next year on the anniversary of MeanKids’ last post and Krapp’s last tape and so on.

[tags]kathy sierra, robert scoble, hugh macleod, pie[/tags]