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For the past few months, British-American comedian John Oliver has been locked in talks with Yarra City Council, Melbourne, in what has become a labyrinthine negotiation between public art, vandalism, koala chlamydia, a polystyrene recycling machine, three giant ominous metal frogs and a bucket full of cursed dolls. Last week the negotiations reached what (I hope) will become a tipping point, because I really want these frogs to be part of my daily life.
The situation isn’t easy to sum up, but let’s take a look: in late 2021, the council unveiled a sculpture titled “Fallen Fruit” by artist Adam Stone on a street corner in the Fitzroy neighborhood. The Melbourne area, and Fitzroy in particular, has a long history of supporting public art, but this statue also had another purpose: to help slow traffic.
Alas, many locals did not appreciate Mr. Stone’s work. A kind of mash-up of Skeletor from “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe”, the Martians from 1996’s “Mars Attacks” and – let’s face it – the absolute worst fruit, the sculpture was then vandalized when someone one tried to decapitate this. The city removed the sculpture in order to – well, actually, we have no idea. They will not say what they make of it, if it has been repaired and if it will ever see the streets of Melbourne again.
When Mr. Oliver heard about the situation, he offered a solution: he would buy the sculpture for 10 Australian dollars; donating $10,000 to a Melbourne food bank and donating $5,000 to the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward at Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland (another story, which you can read here); and send to Melbourne, as a replacement, a statue of a giant alligator making a rude hand gesture.
Mr. Oliver participated in similar negotiations with Texas, but with a much simpler outcome. The beaches of South Texas are experiencing a strange phenomenon: several dolls wash up on the shore. These scribble dolls can be described as nightmarish material, thanks in part to their passage through the ocean. Judge by yourself. Mr Oliver offered $10,000 to a local sea turtle rescue organization if the dolls were returned to him.
He now has the dolls.
Which brings us to this week. Mr. Oliver’s HBO show “Last Week Tonight” (watchable in Australia on online platform Binge) usually focuses on one issue per episode, and this week it was about inflation. To explain inflation, Mr. Oliver bought three giant bronze frog statues. The frogs were doing something with their legs that’s not exactly obscene, but not OK either. Although they may be less disturbing than the banana or the dolls, there is something joyful and upsetting about these frogs. In other words, they are perfect.
Yarra Mayor Sophie Black rejected Mr Oliver’s offer to buy the banana, but she suggested an alternative: he sends the alligator statue, and the town will name its polystyrene recycling machine after Mr Oliver.
Mr. Oliver has now made another counter offer. Although he no longer wants to part with his alligator statue, he will throw away the three giant frogs, along with the original food bank and koala chlamydia service donations. The only thing Yarra has to do in return is give the polystyrene recycling machine her name, then take the bucket of cursed dolls and run them through the machine in order to “destroy them forever”.
Sounds like a good deal, right? The only problem: the dolls are not made of polystyrene. They could damage the machine.
I reached out to Yarra City Council and Mayor Black to find out if my assumptions were correct and to ask him what the negotiations were like. Unfortunately, she’s on vacation, and her office was reluctant to reveal anything — even whether or not you can put cursed dolls in a Styrofoam recycling machine. “I don’t know what the dolls are made of, so I can’t comment officially anyway,” council spokeswoman Imogen Baratta said by email.
But I remain hopeful that an agreement can be reached, especially because the corner where it all started is three blocks from my house. I pass by almost every day. I’d love to have these frogs decorating the neighborhood largely because they’re so silly and Fitzroy is so trendy (for those unfamiliar, it’s a neighborhood I once described as putting Williamsburg and Silver Lake, Calif., to shame on the hipster scale), and there’s no way anyone could ever look at these frogs and see anything but ridiculousness.
Crossed fingers.
And now this (stories of the week):
nytimes Gt