Iggles Blog - Philadelphia Eagles Blog

Disgraceful

From the Inky:

In the small, exclusive community of Gladwyne, wealthier even than Beverly Hills or Scarsdale, neighbors recently were stunned to discover a flyer, ugly in tone, in their mailboxes...

It read: "Attention please, read if you care about your neighborhood!!! How can we prevent Aaron McKie from moving into our safe and peaceful neighborhood. His house is almost complete on Youngsford Road. Let's prevent another Iverson from moving in!"

Money quote:

But one longtime resident, Bobbie Willoughby, who was secretary of the Gladwyne Civic Association for 22 years before moving to Bryn Mawr last year, said she wouldn't want to live next to McKie.

"It's a little scary. He totes a gun, and his behavior is a little excessive, like he's out of control. I wouldn't care if an African American moved in next to me, but if he's carrying a gun and he's abusive, I really don't want it," she said.

Good Day For Philly

Not sure how long they'll all last, but kudos to Temple, St. Joe's and Villanova.  Wonder if any other city can match that threesome.

Who Says Philly Sucks?

There's a lot of carping from bitter opposing fans about how terrible Philadelphia is.  Any negative news story goes right into the "why Philly sucks" category.  Because unpleasant people don't live anywhere else...

Dallas sucks.

Depressing

The Daily News has a special section today on the town's 23-year title drought.

I'm just going to go stick my head in a bucket of water now.

Philly Aims for Foot, Misses

When people hear that you grew up near Philadelphia, their initial reaction is very rarely, "Wow, I hear that's just a really awesome city."

Very rarely, in this case, meaning "so far, never."

In fact, among the 20- and 30-somethings I hang out with, Philadelphia is best-known as the city where Santa Claus was booed, Scott Rolen was despised and the sports teams always choke.  Being the birthplace of the United States of America is somewhat further down the list.

So why -- in a city searching desperately for an identity that doesn't involve the words bitter, rusting or dirty -- would some random group of good-for-nothing art snobs get to decide that the Philadelphia Museum of Art's grounds are -- sniff -- simply not an appropriate place for one of the city's most well-recognized symbols: the Rocky statue.

To make a loooong story short, Sylvester Stallone donated the statue to the city after the filming of Rocky III, in the hopes that it would be set atop the Museum steps that were made famous in the first Rocky movie.  The Art Commission said "thanks, but no thanks," and the statue was moved outside the Spectrum, where the 76ers and Flyers used to play, in 1982. 

Finally, f i n a l l y, 24 years later the statue has found a permanent home, on the Museum's grounds, near the base of the steps.  Now all the tourists who run the steps will have a great location for taking their goofy pictures. 

I understand the statue isn't great art.  Honestly, it's sort of ugly.  But that's hardly a requirement in the art world today, anyway.  If I just typed

asdf;lkhr;ivcyhdsfxcvnmnaksdhguuwahefkasdcmncasdfnknxvcxlkjnaskjl kjhiewahfwehfkjashdfkancm,xancz.znvkjainkengdvhkjqtjkvnjhj;easdfth
mnbzcvuiyerfasdkjlvycuizxzvknetc...

for 20 pages and stapled it to a wall,  I bet I could convince some gallery to buy it by saying it captured the sense of man's frustration with modern technology in the digital age.  (If you try it, I want 10 percent, less printing costs.)

What matters here is that Philadelphia needs symbols of success.  It needs things that Philadelphians can point to and say, "See, yeah, that's the Rocky statue, it's kinda cheesy but it's pretty cool and it's ours." 

So why did this take two decades to resolve?  Why, six months ago, was the Arts Commission deadlocked on this issue, even though the mayor and the Museum had both already approved the idea? 

Fortunately, like all good Philadelphians, the art snobs choked away their lead at the end (see how easy it is?) and the pro-statue forces won out, helping the city narrowly avoid one more self-inflicted wound.  It's about time.

So now the only question is, who do we boo next?