Man, unhappy with ex-wife, buys house next to her and puts up gigantic middle finger statue

This story is one that warms the blackened, icy hearts of the Odd News team. In Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Alan Markovitz, not satisfied with expressing his distaste for his ex-wife in just words, has bought and moved into a home that sits right next door to a house that’s occupied by…his ex-wife. That’s funny enough, but as WJBK Fox 2 points out, the cherry on top of this cupcake is an almost 12-foot high statue of a middle finger Markovitz put in his back yard, pointed toward his former love and her new boyfriend.




Oh! Oh! And also! It has a spotlight that illuminates it during the evening.

Fox 2 wasn’t able to get the ex-wife on the horn, but did speak with Markovitz. He told them that the plan was to get even with the new boyfriend, because two had allegedly had an affair while she was still married to our favorite art patron. He also told them that it wasn’t his intention for this to be public and that it only spread after his ex-wife’s daughter posted a picture on her Twitter account.

 

A private message, however, would be out of character for Mr. Markovitz. He’s quite the deal in Detroit. As this Deadline Detroitarticle summarizes in its first paragraph, “He's been shot twice, and he once was the target of a murder contract. He wrote an autobiography and bought and sold 11 local topless clubs…He once used a chimp in an act with predictably strange results.” And that’s not it.

Fox 2 asked a very good question: is this legal? Their legal analyst Charlie Langton says “Unless this city has some ordinance, that prevents these kind of fingers from being illegal of some kind – no! You could have a statue, some people might call it art, I don’t know, but there’s nothing illegal about it…I know it doesn’t look good, but there’s nothing illegal about it. Get over it!”

We highly recommend watching the story just so you can experience Charlie’s answer in an audiovisual manner, as well as the litany of people they interviewed who enjoyed this story as much as we did.