Pat the Bunny

Walt and I went to see the bunnies on display in the Civic Center park, right across from San Francisco City Hall.

Now these aren't those cute little bunnies you may see out in the fields somewhere.  These are Godzilla bunnies.  Five inflatable white nylon bunnies blown up, a couple of them, to 23' high.  That's some bunny!

It is an installation by Australian artist Amanda Parer who calls her work "intrude" and it is intended not only to delight the viewers, but also to call attention to Australia's rabbit overpopulation.  Rabbits are not native to Australia, but were introduced in 1788.  They have no natural predators, so being safe and well fed they have...well...bred like rabbits.  It's been an ecological disaster for the country. That is why the famous Akubra hat was created, to make use of rabbit pelts, but apparently they can't keep up with the exploding population.

However, they are fun to look at!  And there's not much we can do from a distance of over 900 miles to ease the pain of overpopulation.  The display will run through the end of the month, if nobody vandalizes them first.

We were in the city to go to a taping of two episodes of Says You.  Haven't seen the show taped in about 3 years, I think, and it was nice to be back again.  The taping was held in the  War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, where the UN Charter was signed in 1945.  It's a big theater, some 900 seats, and it was pretty darn full today.  Nice to see so many other Says You fans.

The taping was very good for me, to get accustomed to seeing Barry Nolan in the role of host and to realize that he is much better than he seems to be when you listen to the show on the radio because it has to be edited for time, so he always sounds rushed...and he's not. I think I put aside my grief over the death of former host, Richard Sher and will now accept Barry as the new host and go back to enjoying the show every week.

We got the "A" team this time, the long-time regulars (Carolyn Faye Fox. Arnie Reisman, Paula Lyons, Tony Kahn, and Francine Achbar), with new-time regular Murray Horwitz, replacing Barry Nolan on the panel.

They always tape two shows at a time and with all the extra stuff that gets cut out to fit the one hour time slot, the taping runs very long.  Tony Kahn (on the left in the photo below) invited me to come back stage after the show, when I heard from him a couple of days ago, but there was lots of activity around the stage after the taping and it was so late, we really felt we should not wait, but start home.

It was 10:30 before we were back in our car and midnight before we got home.  Since the dogs had not yet had dinner they were delirious to see us come in the door!

But what a delightful day we had (including lamb sliders at Max's Opera Cafe before the show!)