Date Archives February 2009

“Steven Spielburg is unavailable.” “Then get me his non-union, Mexican equivalent!”

On Friday, my dad and I took a trip up to Hollywood to bum around and see the sights. I vaguely remember going once before when I was about 13 and not having a particularly good time, but that’s because we took one of those tours of the stars’ homes and it went a little something like: “This is Barbra Streisand’s hedge. She actually owns this hedge. If you could see through this impenetrable hedge, you would actually see Barbra Streisand’s home, but, as you can see, the hedge is completely blockading the home. We will sit here for a few more minutes until you’re completely satisfied with the pictures you’re taking of the hedge. Next, we will see a row of trees formerly owned by Clint Eastwood, and an alltogether different hedge that might belong to Tom Cruise’s poolboy. ” Booooo-ring.


They were preparing for the Sunday’s Academy Awards, and since rain was anticipated, the walkway for the stars was covered by plastic tarps. The first place I demanded to go to was the Frederick’s of Hollywood Lingerie Museum, because…well…sometimes I don’t have a very good reason to do the things I do. Unfortunately, Roadside America led me astray as the Frederick’s of Hollywood had closed the Lingerie Museum portion of their store some three years ago because people would come in to ogle where celebrities had nestled their boobs and not buy anything. I, personally, would’ve bought something from the Frederick’s of Hollywood IN Hollywood, but shopping for trashy lingerie isn’t high on my list of priorities when my dad is standing right next to me. Gross. They did have about five celebrity designed bras/corsets on the back wall, which were all pretty nifty, but a burly dude in a suit with a white earpiece who was obviously playing at being an FBI agent yelled at me when I made a move to take a picture. 2408_53774678939_6620723_n

This is the entryway to the theater where they were holding the Academy Awards. The red carpet was already laid, but it was entirely covered with plastic to keep it clean, or keep the plebes off. Even through a layer of plastic, I was pretty geeked out to be walking on the red carpet. 2408_53774663939_6852581_n



  After we’d seen all of the Oscar replicas we’d ever care to see, we wandered down the road to the mandatory Hollywood pit stop, Grauman’s Chinese Theater.   Here, we’ve got Darth Vader dancing with Wonder Woman, while Batman does his thing in the background. I find it thrilling to my childish soul that some people are making a living prancing around in costumes all day, taking pictures with tourists. 2408_53774693939_3470953_n

I like to imagine someone telling William Shatner that he’s signing it wrong, and him rebutting them not to correct him, as it sickens him. 2408_53774698939_4143505_n

My dad has teeny tiny hands compared to Steven Seagal! 2408_53774703939_5765038_n

Many ladies would compare their footprints to the legendary Marilyn Monroe. 2408_53774708939_3582020_n

I am not many ladies. You know what they say about guys with big feet, yes? They have to go to specialty shoe stores.


After we tired of being propositioned by Darth Vader, we decided to stop into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium, which is the sort of thing that’s right up my alley. Had I known that the Hollywood Museum next door had sets from Jaws, I would’ve elected to go there instead, but I still stand by my decision. 2408_53774778939_6725939_n



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Robert Ripley looked like a goddamned goofball. In every picture, he’s got that weird pedo smile, and he’s just one of those guys whom you can picture walking around, going “DURP DE DURP, I’m an adventurer, DURP DURP DURP.” He durp de durped around for thirty-five years, exploring the world, seeing places few people of his time had ever heard of, from the tombs of the Ming Emperors in China, to a town called Hell in Norway. He actually started on this course after his dreams of pitching pro baseball were destroyed when he shattered his arm during a training game. He was quite famous for his time, voted the most popular man in America, above movie stars, sports figures, and even President Roosevelt. He had fans among the rich, the poor, and people of all ages. His most famous ‘fan’, however, was a man who made it his life’s mission to try and prove Ripley was a liar–for twenty-six years, he wrote letters to people featured in the Believe It or Not! cartoon attempting to find factual errors. ‘Believe it or not’, he wrote over 17,000 letters, but never received a single reply that contradicted one of Ripley’s statements. Upon his death, his widow donated his vast collection of correspondence to Ripley, and some of it is now on display at the various Odditoriums. Ripley dressed eccentrically, collected torture weapons from Germany, was afraid to use the telephone due to a fear of being electrocuted, and had many cars but couldn’t drive. All in all, I think we would’ve gotten along swimmingly. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to be around someone who manages to look even goofier in photographs than I do! 2408_53774738939_7787086_n Do you see the skull or the kids playing chess? 2408_53774728939_3352351_n

This is a mask made from faces flayed from slaves. That may or may not be standard practice when I rise to the dictatorship.


This is an old chastity belt–my dad and I were laughing so hard about it that I couldn’t manage to take a non-blurry picture. What were we laughing about? Well, so, sure. This metal contraption will keep invading penii from breaching the hull, but after a woman has worn one of these for a number of years, would you even want to go down there? I imagine it’d smell. BAD. Like, leg just out of a cast bad. Could you crap through a hole about the size of a quarter? What are you, a Dairy Queen Soft Serve Swirl machine? 2408_53774763939_7818660_n Here, we captured our shadows on the wall. 2408_53774773939_860789_n Peta is going to splash this hoity toity fish with red paint. FUR IS MURDER, YOU SEA KITTEN! After our adventures, we had lunch at Mel’s Diner, talked smack about other family members, and stored away some energy for the second half of our day, which deserves an entirely separate post. Expect it tomorrow-ish!

Shouldn’t her name be Hera?

On Saturday, I met with Lanny at the PacSci center in Seattle to see Lucy, the fossilized remains of a homonid that lived some 3.2 million years ago. We also saw an IMAX movie, bud sadly, not the one about dinosaurs in 3-D. While waiting in line for tickets, I learned two important things. One: That day was some kind of ‘educator discount’ day. Two: If the people behind me in line were representative of our state’s educators, perhaps we should ask the question ‘Is our children learning?’ more often. The specially priced educator tickets had sold out before the people in line behind me were able to buy them, so all I heard for the next ten minutes was “TWENTY DOLLARS? I can’t believe how much they’re charging for tickets. GOD, this line is slow. Wait, what’s this? It says regular exhibits are $11. Why would it say $11 if they’re charging $20 to see Lucy? Maybe if I point out the sign, they’ll sell us the tickets for $11.” And on. And on. And on. After I bought our tickets, Lanny showed up with coffee, and we waited for our time slot to be called for the Lucy exhibit. Immediately before we entered, the rules were laid out: No cameras. No cell phone cameras. No phones turned on, period. Well…rules were made to be broken. Lucy exhibit people: I’m sorry, I know you must have spent a lot of money and time and effort on putting this whole thing together, but I’ve got to be frank. Everything before we started getting into bones was, well…boring. Way boring. When I walk away from a display knowing more about how much Lanny’s pearl-clutching ex-roommate spent on gay porn over a period of a week and exactly how much anal blood he seeped into her sheets, you didn’t engage my attention enough. I also find it really, really, weird how much you tried to emphasize how big Christianity is in Ethiopia, even going so far as to write the sentence “Christianity is the predominant religion in Ethiopia, even though there are as many Muslims.” How does that make Christianity predominant? Wouldn’t that make it equal? Are you trying to make the exhibit less threatening to the American audience? I don’t get it.


Also, what was with putting that phrase next to your big display of Qur’ans? Here is the Qur’an on stilts. Here is a Qur’an bound in leather. Here is a Qur’an on a goat. Here is a Qur’an spanning a moat.


I know what they modeled that jug after. Don’t tell me Ethiopians aren’t hip to the horns! Also, I looked pretty carefully but couldn’t find the carb on the ‘vase’. I bet Michael Phelps could.


Here are some arm band weapons and even after some discussion, we’re both confused as to how they work. I mean, I get that loads of people have thinner arms than me, but some of the holes seem even too narrow for bones to pass through, much less bones plus muscle tissue plus skin.


Hello, nightmares. IMG00044

Here I am, touching some fossilized dinosaur poop. At first, Lanny tried to be slick about her photo-taking. After a while, she just got more and more brazen. One employee even watched us taking photos but assumed the phone was some sort of measurement tool for us to compare the size of the skulls. IMG00049


    Jim-bob Duggar might say that we didn’t evolve from apes. Well, to him, I say: Vagina. It’s not a clown car.   We stood in front of the stand-up exhibit for a while, trying to figure out how to take pictures with people watching us like hawks. And then we went “DURRR this is the replica and the real one is right behind us lying in this case.” Which, incidentally, was much easier to photograph on the sly.




  We then went through the gift shop, where they sell little fragments of Ethiopia for $400 apiece. And Indiana Jones hats.


One of the male patrons was walking through the gift shop, loudly singing ‘Hakuna Matata’ which nearly made me laugh as hard as this painting, entitled “What Would Lucy Think?”:


And then we photoboothed.


  After which we did penny pressing and saw animatronic dinosaurs and had a clonebaby together and took a mini vacation in the tropics at the butterfly exhibit:

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And then we watched ‘Mysteries of the Nile’ which was an IMAX movie about a group of people who had a goal of riding the Nile all the way from its source into the Mediterranean Sea, which no one has ever done. Annnnd no one still has ever done it. They claim to have done it at the end of this film, but sending the boat by itself through some stretches of river doesn’t count. Getting out of the boat and riding camels through Sudan doesn’t count. Either you rode on the Nile the whole way, or you didn’t. And they didn’t. I really wish they’d had tickets left for Dinosaurs in 3-D instead of this film, which really should’ve been titled “Lying McBoring”. I also think it’s amazing that they supposedly have all these cameras around 24/7 for the whole journey, and yet when something exciting happens like a crocodile attack, NO ONE HAS FOOTAGE, it’s just them talking about “Oh I was scared, it was so scary, wasn’t that scary?” And then we had Mexican food and got some free sex from this guy ’cause he was giving it away.



Apparently some girl named Karalee Buttroof* is in some serious legal trouble in Orange County, and like the adult she is, gave the authorities my work cell number, which has been ringing off the hook and getting filled with vaguely-threatening messages. I, for one, am pretty impressed at the amount of information they’ll hand out over the phone, even after I’ve made it clear that I’m not the Buttroof they’re looking for.