"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
April 25, 2013 1:00 PM   Subscribe

A giant foam head was found floating in the Hudson River by a Marist rowing crew team early Tuesday.

"I don't think it's causing any space issues ... we'll just hold on to it until someone says, 'Hey, you have my head.' "
posted by dirtdirt (64 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
More like: look upon my Styrofoam, ye rowers, and wonder!"
posted by shothotbot at 1:04 PM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


OK, if there's not an item on this year's Scav Hunt list that includes "find gigantic foam head in botany pond," something has gone horribly wrong.
posted by phunniemee at 1:04 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


Another sad victim of the giant foam mob.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:06 PM on April 25, 2013 [8 favorites]


Previously: "So, like many of you, I’m sure, I have this huge styrofoam version of my head sitting in the garage." -- Ken Jennings
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:07 PM on April 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


I figured it out !
posted by Think_Long at 1:09 PM on April 25, 2013


Oh, man, that's where it got to. It fell out of my pocket while I was down on the beach. Sorry about that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:10 PM on April 25, 2013


Someone wasn't smart from the very beginning.
posted by The Whelk at 1:12 PM on April 25, 2013


Is it missing several left feet?
posted by shakespeherian at 1:13 PM on April 25, 2013 [5 favorites]


I hear Marist is getting ahead this year.
posted by crazylegs at 1:14 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


Reminds me of J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned Giant."
posted by naju at 1:14 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]






It looks like Hugh Grant.
posted by chavenet at 1:17 PM on April 25, 2013


When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that my head fell off, and then I fell into the surf and was swept away. And did you help? Hell, no! You were too busy counting footprints in the sand!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:17 PM on April 25, 2013 [19 favorites]


Student Body Finds Head
posted by Kabanos at 1:18 PM on April 25, 2013 [23 favorites]


Shit, Naberius. You beat me to it!
posted by brundlefly at 1:21 PM on April 25, 2013


Bodyless head in headless river.
posted by The Whelk at 1:24 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


Should we...should we worship it? I'm thinking maybe we should worship it. You guys, I'm gonna worship it and see what happens.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:24 PM on April 25, 2013 [36 favorites]


Look on my works, ye mighty, and go tubing.
posted by arcticseal at 1:25 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


"You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:27 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


At first I read that as Marxist rowing crew, and thought "What, do they only row to the left?"
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:27 PM on April 25, 2013 [11 favorites]


Don't bring it inside the city walls, it's full of tiny foam Greeks!
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:27 PM on April 25, 2013 [18 favorites]


Well they do control the means of propulsion.
posted by Kabanos at 1:28 PM on April 25, 2013 [13 favorites]


metafilter: who[m] it belongs to
posted by Quonab at 1:28 PM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


How long would fiberglass be viable submerged in a river? I like the idea that it was from a long time ago, and had just recently been knocked loose by something, but also wouldn't it be more eroded by this point?

I fear this might be one of those things where I never find out an answer.
posted by codacorolla at 1:30 PM on April 25, 2013


Has anyone checked on the well-being of Minnie Driver?
posted by nathancaswell at 1:30 PM on April 25, 2013


Troy Aikman?
posted by hillabeans at 1:31 PM on April 25, 2013


Ooh! Now there is video of the head..
posted by dirtdirt at 1:32 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


No one knows ..who they where or what they where doing
posted by The Whelk at 1:33 PM on April 25, 2013 [5 favorites]


Hey!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2013


Hey!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2013


It's the Monkees!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2013 [8 favorites]


I just wanted a little head...
posted by sexyrobot at 1:36 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


Back when I was in college, our rowing team always got all the head, too.
posted by perhapses at 1:36 PM on April 25, 2013


Ok, if there isn't a "Head of the Hudson" regatta next year, someone screwed up!
posted by madajb at 1:40 PM on April 25, 2013


I initially read it as Maoist rowing crew- artifact of the Cultural Revolution?
posted by readery at 1:43 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


I initially read it as Maoist rowing crew- artifact of the Cultural Revolution?

Well, he was the Great Helmsman.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:45 PM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]




How long would fiberglass be viable submerged in a river?

You've heard of fiberglass hulled boats?
posted by notyou at 1:53 PM on April 25, 2013


Cannon said he has reached out to some local theater groups via social media but hasn't heard back.

Wait, does that mean he posted on facebook about it rather than just picking up a damn phone?
posted by FatherDagon at 1:55 PM on April 25, 2013


he posted on facebook

I see what you did there.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:58 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's a Face of Boe!
posted by wenat at 2:01 PM on April 25, 2013 [3 favorites]


Finally proof that Atlantis does exist. Obviously Atlantan sculptors have been using foam for hundreds of years as it is quite easy to sculpt underwater. Y'see what happened was they were reenacting that awful Green Hornet movie when...
posted by Gungho at 2:02 PM on April 25, 2013


"The second I saw that head I thought: Mardi Gras float," the reader wrote. "Many of the floats have Greek themes, and the Gulf Stream ocean current goes north along the East Coast. I would bet that head was part of a float that washed out to the ocean during the [Hurricane] Katrina flood and floated on the current up north."

The idea that it floated all the way from New Orleans kind of breaks down once you realise the Hudson River, like most rivers, flows toward the ocean.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:05 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is merely an artifact from the random tears in reality occurring between New York and New Orleans. I'm hoping to find a shimmering doorway that leads to fried oysters.
posted by The Whelk at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


Damn you guys are funny.
posted by gwint at 2:15 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


The idea that it floated all the way from New Orleans kind of breaks down once you realise the Hudson River, like most rivers, flows toward the ocean.

The Hudson river is tidal at Poughkeepsie. It flows away from the ocean half the time.
posted by goingonit at 2:16 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


The Hudson river is tidal at Poughkeepsie
As the story mentions.
posted by beagle at 2:21 PM on April 25, 2013


I just adore the last line:

"We're open to suggestions," Cannon said. "Maybe have the art students build a body for it, I don't know."

Also, I want to be "an antiques dealer 'with a knack for figuring out what things are or used to be...'" With business cards.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:22 PM on April 25, 2013


Don't let's start this again.
posted by mollweide at 2:24 PM on April 25, 2013


The Hudson river is tidal at Poughkeepsie. It flows away from the ocean half the time.

The River The Flows Both Ways.
posted by The Bellman at 2:29 PM on April 25, 2013


Back when I was in college, our rowing team always got all the head, too.

Really? The eight big men and their tiny, little cox?
posted by The Bellman at 2:29 PM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


Katrina? We have hurricanes and parades that feature floats too. My first thought is hipsters though. They gotta be in on this somehow.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:31 PM on April 25, 2013


My first thought is hipsters though. They gotta be in on this somehow.

No, they were only into the foam head before it got big.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:33 PM on April 25, 2013 [28 favorites]


Depending on how you want to stretch your undoubtedly well conceived dentition of whatever you mean by hipster, it could be a declaration of love for Hot Chip.
posted by codacorolla at 2:38 PM on April 25, 2013


Marxist rowers! That claim alone makes me doubt their story. The coxswain is symbolic of the capitalist mindset. Do not fall for their bourgeois tall tales comerads.
posted by humanfont at 3:05 PM on April 25, 2013


We're all in the same boat comrade.
posted by The Whelk at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


Explorers have found these heads throughout the land, but none dare speculate as to their purpose.
posted by migurski at 3:16 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


I teach at Marist. I can assure you that the lack of an X in the name can be taken to indicate there is no trace of communist thought among the student body. None. (It weirds me out.) ok, so most of my students are in advertising...

I'm supremely disappointed in my students that they didn't bring this up with me today.
posted by gusandrews at 5:30 PM on April 25, 2013


I think they should add this to their next nationally representative poll. It would be a great way to survey the entire country, and would be a nice final item:

"And our last question:
So we found this giant floating foam head in the Hudson the other day? Please tell me if you have any idea where it could have come from."
posted by chortly at 7:32 PM on April 25, 2013


I'd say art school project. I love to scour thrift stores for "bad art," which is why I have a two foot tall bust of David with creepy eyes sitting on/staring from my bookshelf.
posted by bendy at 8:23 PM on April 25, 2013


Is anyone else seeing the last or second to last scene of a movie here? Perhaps it's one where the protagonist somehow ended up many decades in the future and only was able to get back by activating a device on some exact geographic point, which happened to be on the head of a statue built in the image of some dystopian warlord. He and his new friends have to hold off the oncoming hordes and have just enough time to have a tearful farewell before the portal closes and takes the head with it... Or something.
posted by SackofKickass at 7:41 AM on April 26, 2013


Elizabeth has to be more careful when opening tears is all.
posted by The Whelk at 7:56 AM on April 26, 2013


In my grittier, more derivative take on your film, SackofKickass, I'm seeing our time traveler and his future friends struggling upriver toward the place where the giant head and the portal is rumored to be (the acquisition of that info costing our hero his love interest), until one morning, just as the sun rises over the eastern bank, he awakens to the giant head drifting downstream toward him. It bobs and twists and jostles with other flotsam (a giant shin and foot, a jagged bit of rib cage), arriving on the bank a few yards from his camp.

There's no finding the portal, now. There's no going home.

The morning silence is broken by the too-near growl of the Horde's War Horn.

--Fin--
posted by notyou at 8:49 AM on April 26, 2013


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