Robocop-location-w-robocop

It all started with a not-serious Tweet to the Detroit mayor, but the thing about ideas is that once they’re out there, they’re out there.  You can’t just stuff them back in your mind like memories of swim lessons with your uncle.  The idea of a Robocop statue in Detroit is the world’s now, and the world demands that it happen.

Now DetroitNeedsRobocop has come up with a real plan: a Robocop statue as part of The Imagination Station, “a blighted Roosevelt Park home turned public art project co-founded by Jerry Paffendorf and Mary Lorene Carter.”

They’ve started a Kickstarter page and so far have raised $8,775 of a $50,000 goal.  Nine grand might not seem like much, but in Detroit, it’s enough to buy four houses, with enough left over for a gun to protect you from the corpse dogs.

Although Mayor Bing dismissed a city-financed landmark, he said he will entertain using public land for a donated statue.
“We recognize and respect public art, and are receptive to the varying tastes and preferences for such,” mayoral spokeswoman Karen Dumas said. “Should the opportunity present itself to receive a donation of this, or any other works of public art, we will consider acceptance and appropriate placement. Until then, we continue working to make the tougher but necessary decisions that will positively impact financial stability, public safety and overall quality of life.” [DetroitFreePress]

Enter the Kickstarter group…

None of us have ever made a giant solid metal permanent sculpture before. It turns out to be a pretty expensive process (who would have thought?), but not too much for the world to fund. After talking to numerous sculptors and metal workers, the current game plan is this: We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we’d like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal.  [Kickstarter]

This news is great, unless you’ve been trying in vain to raise money to feed rashy, underprivileged orphans in the same city, and now that the prospect of a statue dedicated to a silly 80s action movie comes along, suddenly everyone’s wallets fly open.   Frustration is understandable, but if this proves anything, it’s power of a clever idea.  So put your rashy orphans in Robocop costumes and film them doing the dance from Thriller and stop bitching.  The internet will not only finance your new orphan cages, we’ll get Lobster Dog and the Golden-voiced Hobo to show up at the groundbreaking ceremony.  And then we will film a porn parody of it, This Ain’t Rashy Orphan Cages: A XXX Parody, regrettably toplined by Evan Stone.

[They've even brilliantly incorporated the Robocop rap, which I've included below]