Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Brownsville, Tennessee, is a quiet town best known for cotton, barbecue, and being the place where Tina Turner first decided to strut so hard that physics gave up. To honor her, the city and Ford Motor Company unveiled a massive bronze statue near her old high school. The monument was meant to immortalize the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll. Instead, the statue ended up looking like the kind of thing you’d find guarding the entrance of a haunted Chuck E. Cheese.
Tina "Ronald McDonald" Turner. (News Channel 5 Nashville/YouTube)
The 10-foot monument, sculpted by Atlanta-based artist Fred Ajanogha, was supposed to show Tina mid-performance, microphone in hand, legs churning like pistons. What it actually shows is a cross between the Hamburglar’s estranged aunt and the last thing you see before Burger King’s lawyers file an injunction.
When the curtain dropped, locals went from clapping to quietly asking if the sculptor had ever actually seen Tina Turner, or had he been working from a model of a melted Stretch Armstrong all along. Twitter erupted, with comments ranging from “Is Tina in the room with us right now?” to “We don’t need another hero, just a better sculptor.”
The reveal was supposed to inspire reverence. Instead, it inspired thousands of memes, one of which successfully convinced my Facebook-psychosis-suffering uncle that Tina Turner once toured with Insane Clown Posse.
The artist said he wanted to show her “hair wild.” Mission accomplished: her hair looks like a tumbleweed lost a bar fight with a pack of ferrets on meth. Up close, the statue has the exact same expression as my dog when he realizes the vet is about to take his temperature.
Of course, this isn’t the first time a celebrity statue has missed the mark. Bad celebrity statues are like Marvel movies: nobody asked for them, and yet they keep showing up. Cristiano Ronaldo’s infamous “droopy face” airport bust continues to frighten children in Lisbon.
Hard to tell what he was doing when he posed for this. But easy to guess… (urf/depositphotos)
Lucille Ball’s “Scary Lucy” had to be replaced before I Love Lucy fans stormed the foundry with pitchforks and Vitameatavegamin bottles. And Liverpool’s statue of Mo Salah is under constant attack from angry seagulls for some reason.
This Tina Turner statue’s legacy is expected to terrify future archaeologists into thinking Tennesseans once worshipped a fast-food warlord. Just wait til they dig up a Buc-ee’s.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
