The Giant Bikini Woman of Peoria, Illinois

I was pleased to discover this morning that the giant fiberglass bikini woman still stands tall in Peoria, Ill., lording over a grimy industrial strip where I first saw her on a bitterly cold day in 1996.

Travis Alber's photo best captures the scene.

The tire company she calls home has named her Vanna Whitewall, but she began life as one of several Miss Uniroyal women in 1968. Her description on the company's web site provides her dimensions (though they might want to check the math):

Manufactured in the 1960s in Venice, California, "Miss Uniroyal" arrived at our location in May of 1968 as a grand opening promotion. She was stored at our location until Uniroyal needed her at another grand opening. Due to the years of wear and tear on her body, Uniroyal decided to change to their present mascot, Bengal "Tiger Paws" Tiger. Plaza Tire acquired Vanna Whitewall in 1971. She is 17 feet 6 inches tall and weighs approximately 450 lbs. Her measurements are 108-72-108, three times the perfect woman's (36-24-26).

There are at least 11 others of her kind, according to Roadside America:

The sculptor who created the original molds for the large lady had a thing for Jackie Kennedy. She was issued with a dress, ready for shedding or donning depending on the community climate.

From the looks of a more recent photo by another Flickr user who is traveling the country in search of huge beings, Vanna's now wearing a dress. I'm surprised at the change, because she's been a beacon of immodesty at the family-owned tire business for decades.

The Huge Being List Project, is attempting to document all of the gargantuan fiberglass people in the U.S. I'm going to find out if there's still a Uniroyal woman beckoning the drivers on Highway 50 in Ocoee, Florida.

Business · Kitsch · Tourism · 2006/08/29 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

Ernesto Hits Florida as Tropical Depression

Most of Florida is under hurricane watch for Ernesto, the hurricane that weakened to a tropical depression and will hit the Florida Keys later today.

Jeff Masters' prediction:

The latest forecast models are all in excellent agreement, calling for a landfall in the Everglades tonight, a long passage up the spine of Florida, followed by a re-emergence into the Atlantic and possible re-intensification to a Category 1 hurricane before a second landfall in the Carolinas.

Riding out a tropical storm is better than riding out a hurricane, of course, but they spawn tornadoes at an alarming rate. My urge to be the first Floridian to evacuate the state grows strong.

Jacksonville · Florida · 2006/08/29 · Comment · Link

Hurricane Ernesto Eyes Florida

Northeast Florida is in the projected path of Hurricane Ernesto, a category 1 storm that Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters expects to strike Florida's west coast and move northeast across the state:

I think it is unlikely Ernesto could affect the Keys as anything stronger than a Category 2 hurricane with 105 mph winds. A hit as a tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane is more likely. If Ernesto spends another day or two traversing the warm waters along the west cost of Florida, then it could grow to a major Category 3 or 4 hurricane.

His worst-case scenario would be a carbon copy of Hurricane Charley, which was still a dangerous storm when it left the state over Daytona Beach.

Florida · Jacksonville · 2006/08/27 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

Netroots 1, Weekly Standard 0

Writing for the conservative magazine Weekly Standard, Louis Wittig draws a parallel between the underwhelming box office receipts of Snakes on a Plane and the exaggerated political impact of left-wing blogs:

Since Howard Dean's 2004 primary sprint, Web sites such as MyDD, Democratic Underground, and Daily Kos have been exalted by as a new and powerful phenomenon, capable of spinning liberal frustration into cash, volunteers, and excitement for Democratic candidates nationwide. The left-wing blogosphere has declared itself the "netroots" and proclaimed a new era of "people powered politics." The Democratic establishment has reluctantly ratified their self-image. ...

The weekend box office numbers came back in and SoaP's big debut pulled in $15.2 million, in line with what a hokey thriller without any Web buzz might have made.

For all the donations and volunteers it may generate, the left-wing blogosphere essentially performs the same function as the SoaP blogosphere.

I think it's time to start judging the netroots movement by electoral victories, not moral ones. But if Daily Kos isn't an influential force in politics, what does that say about the Weekly Standard, given the traffic drawn by both sites?

Movies · Politics · 2006/08/26 · 18 COMMENTS · Link

I Deserve a Little Credit

This week I paid off my last student loan, 15 years after I graduated from the University of North Texas, and brought an aggravating credit card debt down to $0. A five-year car loan is two payments from completion.

Matt Haughey's celebrating the demise of his own student loan and other debts:

All told, we'll be saving around a thousand bucks a month that would normally been sent away, which isn't too bad at all, especially on an annual basis ($12 grand in my pocket!). Then I started looking at all my bills as annual raises.

I feel closer to Sallie Mae than Haughey does, because she helped me stretch college out to 6.5 years without taking a job in the food service industry.

But the heady feeling of knocking off a long-term debt is great. I wish it felt as good as watching a brand-new high-definition television with no payments until January 2008.

2006/08/24 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Cry Me a News River, Dave Winer

Dave Winer boasts about earning millions in revenue last year by blogging.

Over in another part of the tech blogosphere they're having a discussion about blogs that make big money. I still think Scripting News has the record there, by a wide margin.

Last year we did $2.3 million in revenue. Expenses? One salary (mine) and about $1000 per month in server costs. A few thousand for contract programming. Pre-tax profit? Millions.

His claim to have made seven figures blogging is a stretch, since he's referring to the sale of Weblogs.Com, which wasn't an extension of Scripting News. The service also relied on the largesse of other programmers to keep it running -- me for six months and several people at UserLand Software before that. (That's a recurring theme in many of Winer's accomplishments -- share the work, hog the credit -- going back as far as Frontier and ThinkTank, for which Doug Baron and Dave's brother Peter Winer are too infrequently described as cocreators.)

But I'll agree that he's got a killer strategy for turning a high-traffic blog into bling:

People think blogs are about advertising, and I would agree, but they're thinking in terms of clicks and eyeballs, and I'm thinking of technology that's created using the intelligence of community participation. ... We will get a whole new flow built here, through persistent experimentation, refinement, listening, promoting, thinking, and looping.

I can't think of another technologist who is better at singlehandedly getting people to buy into his ideas, whether they're good ones like XML-RPC or inconsequential ones like a simple mobile RSS hack, which is being touted as something revolutionary by Jeff Jarvis, Dan Farber, Read/Write Web and Dave himself:

I've not been so excited or so sure about a new direction for mobile technology since podcasting in June 2004. I'm sure we'll look back on this as a turning point for mobile news.

Now that I'm on the outside of this phenomenon, I have to laugh at how he's able to portray mobile news reading as completely uncharted territory. If mobile developer Russell Beattie was still blogging, I'm sure he'd be asking himself, "Why didn't I think to put news headlines on a no-graphics page for easy reading on your PDA or phone? Genius, thy name is Dave Winer!"

But it's sad clown laughter, like that unreleased Jerry Lewis movie from the '70s. In six months, we'll all be arguing about whether Winer invented mobirivercasting singlehandedly, as Robert Scoble believes, or must share the credit with others.

Rss · Business · Atom · 2006/08/23 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Blogger Wants to Beat Jeremy Coon

Napolean Dynamite producer Jeremy Coon and aspiring filmmaker Rhys Southan attended the same Richardson, Texas, high school that I did (many years later). Because of this coincidence, I found Beat Jeremy Coon, Southan's amusingly bitter blog in which he details his effort to become more famous than Coon before their 10-year reunion in 2007.

I originally thought the desire to beat Jeremy Coon was just a gimmick, but a recent interview on his blog suggests otherwise. Southan found Mike Perry, Coon's former roommate at Brigham Young University. They haven't spoken since Coon reported him for an "honor code" violation -- letting his fiancé spend the night -- which resulted in Perry being expelled from school.

The interview's long, but it picks up when Perry describes his expulsion and decision to stop being a Mormon:

BJC: What was it like leaving the church? Had you had doubts before, or was it a sudden break once you were kicked out?

Mike Perry: Actually? It was a lot like dropping a class. I just stopped going. I got an extra day of the week back and a 10% raise. I had slight doubts before because of several issues, including why for the same transgression Bishops hand out different punishments. I almost got in a fist fight in the dining with my ex-fiancé's Bishop because he thought I was getting off too easily for having her spend the night (we had confessed to try and clear it up, but then continued doing it). Initially I thought he was the one who turned us in to the honor code. Another doubt I had was about there only being a single correct religion, period.

BJC: Do you wish you could have been happy living the Mormon life?

Mike Perry: Could I have been happy living the Mormon life? Ultimately, probably not. It forces you into avoiding things I think are natural, like masturbation or having sex with someone before you promise to spend the rest of eternity with them. No one wants to be surprised with a dead fish.

Movies · 2006/08/19 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

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