HippiesEatBabies

 Seth Abramovitch — A public monument to the Soviet Armed Forces in Sofia, Bulgaria was vandalized spectacularly over the weekend. The statues of the Second World War soldiers were painted to resemble such candy-colored figures of capitalist iconography as Superman, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus, Captain America and The Joker. The spray-painted writing beneath it says the hack now puts the statue “in step with the times!”

Today, Bulgarian Minister of Culture Vezhdi Rashidov denounced the act as “vandalism…We are the only ones led by some kind of destructive force when it comes to monuments of socialism.” The kid in red on the skateboard just thinks it’s awesome. [sofiaecho.com, photo via AP]

By PATRICK HEALY Kristoffer Diaz is the winner of the 2011 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” his satire of professional wrestling and the ethnic stereotypes and political imagery of that industry, The Times has announced. The award, created in 2009, recognizes an American playwright whose work recently received its professional debut in New York; “Chad Deity” was produced Off Broadway in 2010 by Second Stage Theater, drawing mostly positive reviews. (The play was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama that year.) Previous recipients of the Times playwright award, which comes with a cash prize of $5,000, were Tarell Alvin McCraney for “The Brothers Size” and Dan LeFranc for “Sixty Miles to Silver Lake.”

The selection committee included the Pulitzer-winning playwrights Richard Greenberg, James Lapine and Lynn Nottage, as well as Times writers and editors. The committee chairwoman, Sylviane Gold, said in the statement announcing the award, “The play appropriates both the comedy and cruelty of professional wrestling in order to explore the complex dance America does with its minorities.” She added, “We were floored by its swaggering language, vivid theatricality and sheer energy.”