• Obama Head Deficit: The Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Virginia — home of over 40 giant President heads — is searching for the cash to afford one of Barack Obama. The Newport News Daily Press reports that Presidents Park has taken in only a few hundred dollars since it began fundraising in January, but the head costs $60,000. Getting it may take some time, and until then the park has only a life-size bust of Obama, which is kind of embarrassing.
(It’s even more noticeable because a nearly identical Presidents Park in Lead, South Dakota, had their Obama head ordered since the election, and on the way this month. We stopped in to check out progress in David Adicke’s Houston studio a few weeks ago. That’s our President!)
• The Need for Speed Birthplace: An artist in Ormond Beach, Florida, the self-proclaimed Birthplace of Speed, wants to build a 100-foot-long “land art museum monument” in the shape of a classic race car (Buildings that look like titanic land vehicles are always welcome roadside morale-boosters). According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the artist “has a binder full of her ideas” and wants visitors to enter through one of the car’s oversized doors and exit through the tail pipe.
• The Sphinx Raves: Apparently the abandoned Pharoah’s Lost Kingdom in Redlands, California, isn’t abandoned after all. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports that the Sphinx-fronted former amusement park is now promoting itself as an exotic locale for all-night bacchanals, and they’re worthy of the temples of Isis and Hathor. “The city says there have been 99 arrests for drug-related offenses at the park’s rave parties since January.”