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Burlesque Activitay.

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Cricket and I went on another activitay. This time we went to the Upper West Side to watch some burlesque.

Burlesque, in case you don’t know, is when lovely ladies take off their clothes for you. However, do not confuse this with stripping. With stripping, it’s about taking your clothes off and getting the customer hot and bothered so he gives you money. With burlesque, the titillation is nowhere near as important as the entertainment value. Some of these girls looked real regular, with no fake parts and large hips, etc. Also, they wear g-strings and pasties, so you never see the, ahem, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, if you will. And sometimes the nice ladies do comedy or sing as well, it’s a full-service show. The particular show we saw was hosted by a great woman named (I’m not making this up) World Famous *BOB*. Here is a picture of World Famous *BOB* and her giant gazongas, Snookie and Pookie. They were additional characters in her show, like enormous fleshy puppets. We got to know them very well. She was wearing the pink evening ensemble you see in that first picture.

And here’s a picture of World Famous *BOB* with her pink-tinted toy poodle, Movie Star. She spoke at great length about Movie Star. I feel like I know this dog now.

There were a whole bunch of acts, and they did two numbers each. One woman, Minnie Tonka, did a number to “You Spin Me Right Round (Like A Record)”, she had pasties that she attached records to and they spun! That got a lot of cheers. One girl, Tansy, did a lovely striptease as Snow White from Disney, with a little birdie on her finger, so now I can’t imagine it without copious amounts of nudity and tassel-twirling. The headliner, Nasty Canasta, did a classic fan dance, but using a box fan (clever), and another woman, Darlinda Just Darlinda did a great number where (this is going to sound demented) she kept acting like she was smelling her pits to a classic French song. But, you know, like a lady. It was a hoot. In October there’s going to be The Golden Pastie Awards at the Highline Ballroom, and I may go to that.

http://highlineballroom.com/bio.php?id=2029

Posted in Activitays, New York, Random Art Bloggery | 2 Comments »

Museums. (Musea? Museii? Whatever.)

Monday, July 11th, 2011

This past weekend I went to two museums. One was the Museum of Sex and the other was The Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically to see the Alexander McQueen “Savage Beauty” exhibit. First, the Museum of Sex. It was okay. I’m going to make an analogy: Often places that specialize in sexual material are skeezy, like a middle-aged man with scruffy gray five-o’clock shadow and a dirty trenchcoat that doesn’t cover his knobby knees rubbing his hands together and chuckling softly to himself. That kind of gross. The Museum of Sex, however, more resembled a New York lady with oddly-shaped glasses who goes to gallery openings and gives lectures on women discovering their sexual selves in front of a giant painting of rockets. It was a lovely museum, although quite small. There were three exhibitions: Sex in Cartoons (lots of R. Crumb and Tom of Finland), Sex in Film (lots of…sex in film), and The Sexual Lives of Animals. Cricket and I saw an exhibit in London called Sexual Nature which was all about the sex lives of animals, so we thought that this would be the same. We were wrong. The one in London was all tongue-in-cheek, charming and naughty. This one was more ANIMALS BE DOING DURTY THANGS. There were life-size paper-mache sculptures of the animals doing the no-no acts, but in the interest of good taste I only took pictures of the placards near the art. There was this one:

This one:

And my personal favorite:

I’m surprised Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum haven’t outlawed Mallard ducks. If I were them, I would.

By the way, the funniest thing I saw there was a security guard who was clearly hired from some big agency and was profoundly displeased about working at MoSex (as the kids call it) with a black and shiny gold tie that read “I LOVE JESUS” over and over and over. It was his tiny little protest. Cricket and I were like, oooh honey, you need to find another line of work.

In somewhat keeping with the sensual theme, I went with Neenernator to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition. Alexander McQueen was a brilliant fashion designer who recently died, and this was a big retrospective of his work. I was vaguely familiar with this clothing and accessories, but now I think he might be my favorite designer. He was extremely concerned with taking the normal lines of the body and reshaping it – making different parts look longer or shorter or thinner or fatter, putting things in the incorrect place. Artists like Lady Gaga and Bjork really liked his work. McQueen stated that some of his influences were Tim Burton, The Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe. You’ll notice there’s a lot of references to death in his work, as well as S&M. At best, his clothes were uncomfortable to wear, and at worst they were probably a bit painful. I’m going to show you some of the more impacting pieces.

At the end of most fashion shows, they finish with the wedding dress. I love the fact that McQueen used antlers in one of his. I was told by my mother that under no circumstances was I allowed to ever get married with antlers on. She never lets me do anything.

One of the things McQueen was most well-known for was the lobster shoe. It is a ballet-shoe with a crazy-tall heel and the front bit protrudes out, making it look like a lobster claw.

Here’s a tattoo someone got of the lobster shoe. Hardcore, dude, hardcore.

My favorite dress that changed the perceived silhouette of the body was a dress I called the Christina Hendricks dress, because, well, it puts padding where one would have it if one was Christina Hendricks. Here two pictures of Christina Hendricks:

And here’s the Christina Hendricks dress:

My favorite dress was the horse dress. It’s molded to look like a nude woman on top, and then the bottom flares out and has horsehair hanging below. What makes this dress so great is the bottom flounces like the ponytail of the snottiest cheerleader in your high school.

And if you watch this video from 2:59 to 3:09, you can see the skirt-flouncing in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gY5DXrb48&

My second-favorite item was the jacket made from the skin of a Thompson’s Gazelle with gazelle horns coming out of the shoulders. You don’t need to wear makeup or earrings or anything with that, the horns do all the work for you.

There were also some stellar accessories on display. Like the face disc:

And the metal jaw:

And let’s not forget the external metal skeleton corset or the feathered ear things:

But, not surprisingly, I was drawn, once again, to wearing dead things as ornament. Specifically McQueen’s dead bird phase. At one point I turned to Neenernator and said, “IMMA GO KILL A DUCK.”

So, today I went on the internet and looked up dead birds I could purchase. It turns out that whole dead bird skins are kind of expensive. I wanted to buy this Grey Peacock Pheasant skin, but it was $300.

And since I have less than no idea what I’m doing, I decided to go with some starling skins that are a mere $7.00 each.

We’ll see what I make of this. I have been inspired. I may very well go and see the exhibit again. I recommend you see it too. It closes August 7th.

Posted in Activitays, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Nature, New York, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

Activitays with Cricket.

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Cricket and I tend to stay indoors and be little homebodies, so lately he has been insisting we get out of the house and do things. “Activitays”, he calls them. I send him emails of goings-on with titles like, “Possible activitay?” (or, if I’m sure he’ll be into it, “ACTIVITAY!”). So this past weekend, we made a day in the big city. In early afternoon we went to the Pompeii exhibit that’s on right now in Times Square. Even though it’s expensive ($25) and it’s got unnecessary cheesy special effects (Really? Do I need a constant rumbling soundtrack blasting out of speakers everywhere? Really? I get it. Volcano. Everyone died. Ominous. Oogy-boogy. I get it.), I recommend it. The thing I found most astonishing about the large quantity of artifacts was how similar they are to the things we have today. The anchors looked the same. They had loaded die for cheating and games. They had scales with weights for measuring and plumbing with valves. It’s amazing how advanced civilization was so early on. That was all in the pre-Vesuvius-erupting section. Then they let us into the post-Vesuvius erupting section, where all the casts of the bodies were. The most crisp and realistic-looking one was definitely the dog.

For anyone who doesn’t understand what we’re looking at, here’s what happened: Pompeii was blanketed in a thick layer of suffocating ash and toxic gases from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. This ash lay twelve feet thick over all the bodies of the deseased. Eventually, the ash hardened and the bodies decomposed, leaving body-shaped cavities in the now-hardened ash. These cast were all made of the negative space left behind, which apparently looked like this.

It was definitely worth going.

After that, Cricket and I headed over to the Highline. It’s been open for a while now, but I haven’t had a chance to walk it. The Highline was an elevated train track that had been sitting abandoned above the avenues on the west side of New York. Instead of tearing it down, they turned it into a park. Yay! Recycling in a positive way! It goes from 30th Street to 14th Street, and we walked the whole thing. Aside from having lovely plants all along the edge, there was also some art. At the base of the northern part was a small amusement park installation by Friends With You, and art group that I like a great deal.

Then, as you progress downtown, there’s a series of birdhouses which are, much to my dismay, kind of dumb. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, even though there was copious amounts of food and water and shelter, there was, in fact, no birds. Perhaps because it was mere inches from the walkway where thousands of people are traipsing by, I don’t know. I do know that if I was a bird and massive hoardes of giant loud monsters were thumping by on their giant feet all damn day, I wouldn’t set up residence there. I’m just sayin’.

Further down the Highline widens out and there’s an awesome piece of art there. There’s an overhang with a long strip of those small-paned windows that were so popular in industrial buildings back in the day. Now, according to the placard nearby, the artist went on an 11-hour boat trip on the Hudson and took a picture of the water every minute or so. I’m not sure if the artist took the dominant color or the color of the pixel in the center, but he did one of those two things and each pane of glass is assigned a color in the order they were taken, left to right, top to down, in rows. It’s so beautiful. Here’s a small piece of it.

Right across from the windows was a man selling homemade popsicles, and in front of him was a big block of ice. I said to Cricket, “I must have whatever that block of ice is associated with,” so when we got up to the front of the line, we just gesticulated towards the block, as if to say, “Please, do…whatever it is you do with that and give it to us, thank you.” The popsicle man then took a planing device with a cup at the end, like a diesel cheese grater, and he went skkkskskkhhsksshhh across the surface and filled the cup with shaved ice, and then he poured homemade rhubarb sweetened juice over the whole thing. Fabulous. If I ever have a fancypants backyard party, I will have a shaved-ice guy because it looks cool and it is delicious, which is a great pair.

Cricket and I purchased a Time Out magazine and looked through it, so hopefully there will be more exciting activitays to come.

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Birds of Prey Day.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

For weeks now I’ve been looking forward to going to Birds of Prey Day in Brewster, NY. It’s on a farm and the poster said there would be 100 birds of prey there! You know what that means: OWLS. I was so excited I didn’t know what to do with myself. Cricket and I drove up to Brewster (a 45-minute drive) and OMG I’M GONNA SEE A MILLION OWLS!!

Okay, so it was a bit of a letdown. There were indeed about 100 birds of prey, but they were mostly eagles and hawks and falcons. In fact, this was predominantly run by a falconer’s association, so people were walking around with scary killer birds on their arms like it was no big deal. There was this bird:

And this one:

And this and this and this and also this:

And this adorable baby goshawk who was soft and warm and precious:

And they’re beautiful, but I really dig owls. Owls are my bag, man. What I learned there is owls are not for having. If you’re a member of the falconer’s association (which I could never be because I live in an apartment and you need to have a falconer’s outdoor area which must be approved by the association) you can slowly (over seven years) work up the falconry ladder getting to bigger and more dangerous birds, but at no point can you have an owl. You cannot buy an owl. You cannot acquire an owl. There are no owls to be had. I was very forlorn. It seems my dream of owl ownership is slowly fading away.

But not all was lost! There was a wildlife rehabilitation group there and they had some owls! Granted, they didn’t have the ones I really wanted to see (Eastern Screech or Saw-Whet) but they had this lovely one that was trying to catch a bit of a snooze, I think it’s a Barred Owl:

And a grumpy-pants horned one who gave me some serious stink-eye.

I love how because their eyes work independently in a lot of ways (pupils dilate and contract, eyelids blink) it looks like there are two separate expressions on their faces.

The best owl experience of the day was a with a wee tiny fellow. He was a short-eared owl, and he was a seething tiny puffball of rage in a wooden holding thing. I asked the nice rehabilitator man if he could pull out the little guy for me so I could get a shot of him and he said, “No, and I’ll tell you why. That bird is new, he’s wild and he’s feisty. But I’ll take a picture of him if you’d like.” I handed him my camera, and the man walked up slowly to the box, snapped a photo as quickly as he could and pulled his hand out of there. I found it great that this large, six-foot-one man was wary of this itty-bitty tiny smootchie demon-beast. Here’s the photo.

Evil Death-Bird…of DEATH! And Cuteness! But mainly DEATH!

There was also a wolf at the Birds of Prey Day, and that was kind of exciting. The wolf handlers were really nervous about having the wolf be around so many kids, but I was psyched. “Wha…? There might be a mauling? I don’t want to miss that! Lemme get my funnel cake and I’ll be right there!” However, this was the most mellow wild animal I have ever seen in my life.

The wolf handler asked the audience if anyone had a really fragrant perfume or lotion and someone did, so she poured it on the ground, and the wolf rolled around in it. He does that to mask his scent from his prey. So now, before his prey is taken down, it will be wondering why the forest smells like Bath and Body Works.

Posted in Activitays, Nature, New York, Stuff | No Comments »

A bunch of stuff.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

1. I’ve seen some neat things in my travels around the city recently. Bryant Park is getting its annual overhaul (plants go here, skate rink goes into storage, lawn gets rolled out, etc.) In the area where they keep the lawn mowers and rakes, I noticed that it is guarded by a similiar owl to the one that hangs out at the Herald Square park near my job. Here’s the owl guarding my park at work:

And here’s the owl guarding the fertilizer and lawn chairs.

He’s right at eye level. I have ignored the bible’s teachings and thought about stealing this guy many a time. However, I suspect that he is bronze and therefore very heavy, and also getting arrested and going to Riker’s Island for attempted owl theft, then getting shoved in a cell with someone who has a stellar collection of human heads in their fridge, that does not appeal to me. So Mr. Owl gets to stay there…for now.

2. There’s a store on my route to work called Zara and they have these rad chrome ants in their window display. They’re big and they’re shiny and they’re awesome.

3. There’s this ad on the Metro-North for The Weather Channel that is just awful. First of all, the wording is ridiculous.

Here are the words on the ad:

At the Weather Channel,
we’re delivering more than just the weather.
We’re connecting people with their passions.
The ultimate-lifestyle-media brand,
on tv, online and on mobile…
connect here.

Okay, first of all, no. You can try to get all deep and whatnot, but you’re just there to tell me if it rains. That’s it. Sometimes the people in advertising take themselves waaaaaay to seriously. Yes rain? No rain? That’s is all there is. Stop it.

Second, that lady’s face is TERRIFYING. If you look long enough, it looks like she has a deformed mouth with two rows of teeth, like a freakin’ shark. Also, could she open her mouth a little wider? What is she doing, trying out for The Mummy movie? Here, look for yourself:

Posted in Advertising, New York, Stuff | No Comments »

Chris Hardwick.

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

I am a big fan of a standup comedian named Chris Hardwick. Chris, in addition to being a delightful standup arteeste, hosts a variety of shows on G4 and has a website (http://www.nerdist.com/) and has a podcast that I listen to and apparently has written a book and talks at comic-cons, etc. I found out that he was performing on Friday (yay!) in Brooklyn (boo!), so I bought tickets for Cricket and m’self and we trundled off to deep dark Hipsterville to enjoy comedy. I wanted a good seat, so I got there at 5:39 p.m. (doors opened at 6:30). Aaaaaand I was the only person there. Like, the only person on the whole block. In fact, since this was in the heart of Hipsterville (everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I passed had one or some of these: a fedora; a beard; tight pants that ended way too high on the leg; a bicycle; argyle; dorky glasses; a guitar; stupid hair; a sullen expression) I could not find the theater because there was no sign or indication of its location. When I eventually found the damn place, I parked myself outside and immediately regretted getting there so early since the building next door was a seafood supply warehouse and, every time the wind shifted, an odor of “rotting clams in the sun” wafted past me. Eventually other Hardwick fans showed up and I was pleased that they were total stereotypes of the gamer/computer nerds: pudgy, dorky people who were somewhat uncomfortable in their skin and therefore stood around poking their fingers at their iPhones/Droids. Even though I would classify myself as an art/animal nerd, I felt like these were “my people”.

I don’t know if everybody does this, but if I like a product that someone is making that they spend their own money on and give away for free (like podcasts) I often send them something. You know, a “thanks for making this, please continue to do so” kind of thing. So I brought a card with some money in it and a print of my pirate tugboat drawing. The show was terrific, and except for the girl sitting next to me who smelled like she had rolled around in dry cat food, it was a great experience. Afterwards, you could go and meet Chris, so a big ole line formed and I waited my turn to say hello and give him my baggie with the stuff in it. Now, I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but I hate being in this situation. I call it the 100% situation. The person you want to meet, the person you admire, he or she has 100% control of the situation. You already know how cool or interesting they are. They need to prove nothing. YOU, on the other hand, have exactly two seconds to not appear boring or crazy or weird. You have zero percent control. And no matter what I do in this moment, I give the impression of being “off”. Always. ALWAYS.* When I got to the front of the line, I just tried to be gracious. I think I gave the impression of being soft in the head, which is better than being a stalker or whatever (“I need a snippet of your hair to finish my doll!!!”). Chris gave me a hug and thanked me for being there, he could not have been sweeter. I actually felt a little odd hugging him because…you know when you watch men on TV, you assume they’re about six feet tall. And then you see them in person and you’re like, whoa, not what I expected. Chris is about 5′ 7″, but he has the proportions of a much taller man, which means he has a small head and a thin frame and itty-bitty hands. He is what my mother would call “fine-boned”. When I hugged him, I was scared I would crush him like a wee robin in my hand. But no one was smothered, he got my package, all was well. Here’s a picture of him all normal-like:

And here’s a picture of him dressed as Princess Leia.

*An example of me meeting important people and failing: At my old company, there were two elevator bays – one that went to all the floors, and one for the executives to go straight to their floor. I, being a peasant, rode on the all-floors elevator. One day, the CEO of all of North America gets on with me. Just him and me, all alone in that tiny enclosed space. I was so nervous I would say something stupid to him (“Ha ha! Your skin has some damage, I see. Is that from teenage acne, or smallpox, perhaps?”) that I turned around and shoved my face into the corner, Blair Witch-style. No joke. I have no idea what he thought I was doing. I must have looked insane. Not good with the first impressions, I am.

Posted in Activitays, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Macy’s Flower Show 2011.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Flower show, people! Very exciting! I don’t know if they had a cohesive theme this year like they have had in years past; it seemed a bit hodge-podge. But I’m not complaining. As always, all kinds of plants with bright colors and textures, oh, it makes me so happy.

The entrance was a bit eh in my opinion, all fake flowers slapped all over the walls. And in the window boxes were plants with cakes in the middle representing the different fairy tales.

I gravitated towards the succulent window as usual, and the wee succulents were delightful. If I lived in a desert climate, I would pour all my money into my garden for sure.

So, whoever was in charge this year was not afraid of the spookier plants, because as you came in and turned into the bag section – blammo! – you were confronted with giant freaky pitcher plants dangling in your face. They were so big and had so much presence when I almost bumped into them I said, “Excuse me,” to them.

Nearby these monster pitcher plants was the aye-aye of the plant world. The were a thick, fleshy, reddish, pointy plant covered with whitish fur. It looked like someone with white back hair got a bad sunburn.

That wasn’t the ickiest part though. It was the petals creeping out of the pods. All I could think about is every horror movie where they show a door, and sloooooowly dirty fingers with jacked-up nails come around the edge of the door, and you know OH DEAR GOD HORRIBLE DEMON A-COMIN’ and then you cover your eyes with your hand (if you’re me).

And then cactus cactus cactus.

All kinds of cactii. I love cactii and succulents so much because I think they look like totally alien creatures, very Dr. Seussian. And there’s such a variety of sizes and shapes! I never cease to be enthralled by them and their wackiness.

Also, orchids. Really stellar ones this year.

And, of course, no flower show would be complete without a picture of a papyrus plant with the little sign written in Papyrus font.

Additional flower show photos: woman exhausted and sleeping next to the jewelry section.

And the panderingest pandery thing ever: the jewelry case totally devoted to the look of former Princess Diana’s ring, now Kate’s ring. Here’s a pic of the ring.

And here’s the case.

Posted in Nature, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff | 1 Comment »

I made a thing.

Monday, March 14th, 2011

We here at Publicis New York have a window case that is two feet high and nineteen feet long, and living in it presently is a timeline of the company. It’s been the same timeline in the same design for at least three years now, and my boss (the CMO) has grown weary of it. He asked me to redesign it, so I promptly starting rummaging through my research books. A while back I saw an article called “Cutthroat Capitalism” in Wired Magazine and I thought it was a terrific marriage of positive and negative space, so I cut it out and put it in my book.

I wanted little ornate headers and footers to incorporate into the document. I remembered B. had recently sent me a link to the calligraphy on the bottoms of maps that was fascinating, so I looked at that as well.

So, combining some of the elements from both of those documents, I spent three days redesigning the timeline. The beginning part looks like this:

Here are some details where you can really see the things I pulled from my research.

Some of the pictures given to me were really low-res and pixelated, so I converted them into art. Like the radio announcer guy, I made him into stripes where the thickness depended on the amount of light and dark, and then for the bus, I traced it in Illustrator and made decisions about what I wanted knocked out and what I wanted solid. See, solutions to problems. When God gives you lemons (or low-res images), you make lemonade (or graphic icons). We’ll see if my boss likes it and I can continue on in this style.

Addendum: Alas, it was shot down. Too “wacky and dark”. But I don’t care. After shrieking into a pillow, I decided I’m going to keep working on it and add it into my portfolio. Always with the lemons / lemonade thing, I am.

Addendum to the previous addendum: It’s back! The head person likes it! She wants a deep red background, but other than that, I’m good! Hurrah!

Posted in Advertising, My Art/Design/Business, New York | No Comments »

Iceland and The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Monday, March 7th, 2011

I had lunch yesterday with B. who is going to Berlin this summer. On his way home he plans to stop off in Iceland just in time for puffling-rescue season. Brace yourself, this is a lot of cute coming up. Puffins live in Iceland, and they all have babies around the same time. Near the end of summer the parental puffins are done with the parenting thing, so they leave. The baby puffins, called pufflings, emerge and try to fly off into the North Atlantic. Unfortunately, the lights of people nearby throw them off their game, and many of them fly into town. Since they need water to take off from, they are hopelessly landlocked and would most likely die, either from starvation or being eaten by a cat or dog. However, for many generations now people go into the nooks and crannies of their villages, collect the pufflings and bring them home for the night. The next day, they are released into the ocean to fly or swim away as intended. It’s a whole lotta cute. Here’s a video about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn1Ym3TQdiI

So B. might get to fling ornery baby waterbirds into the ocean like a quarterback. I am envious.

Now, The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. I go every year. Here’s a previous blog entry I’ve done. The dogs, as always, were spectacular. The owners/handlers were, as always, extremely weird. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Here is my favorite breed of dog, the Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound). So pretty, like a giant hairy cloud.

In order to keep the long-haired and/or long-eared dogs from getting shmutz on their fur-ends, the groomers have come up with a myriad of preventative devices and techniques. This is a Yorkshire Terrier getting its fur wrapped up in plastic bags and rubber bands.

And this is an Afghan wearing a snood.

I’m not a big Chihuahua fan. I’m not opposed to them either, I just don’t care very much one way or the other. This particular chihuahua, however, was extremely sweet. I could learn to love him.

Aside from the actual judging of the beasties, the other main activity is grooming. I’ve been in Supercuts that had less equipment than this event. There’s the dogs that should have smooth, straight fur:

And then there are the dogs that should have floofy, puffy fur.

The most astonishing thing to most people is how the dogs don’t bite or nip or anything. Mostly they just lay there and take it.

The most impressive example of this was the woman who, with a flashlight and an electric razor, was carefully shaving a Boston Terrier’s genitals. I am not making that up.

This groomer was great. She was grooming her Shih-Tzu in the middle of Madison Square Garden in her petticoat and bra. I guess she didn’t want to get her show outfit dirty, but have we learned nothing from The Jersey Shore? This is the ideal time to wear the shirt before the shirt.

There was also people-grooming stations. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.

The dogs have a lot of time to kill, so they nap, and play with small squeaky toys, but these two Shelties just stood there. Occasionally they would say something to each other. They were like the twins in The Shining.

And here’s a plethora of shots I found around the internet taken by other people.

Posted in Nature, New York, Stuff | No Comments »

London, Part 5.

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

So Cricket and I were on the subway, and while he was reading the paper, I caught a glimpse of this article. I bolded the important part, the part that made me make a snorting noise in the middle of a crowded subway.

Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber today lost the first stage of his latest bid to overturn a conviction for the killing of five of his relatives. Bamber, who has always protested his innocence, has served nearly 25 years for the 1985 killing of his family in Essex. He has twice lost appeals against his conviction and remains one of 38 killers who have been given a whole-life tariff. The bodies of Bamber’s parents, Neville and June, his sister Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons were found at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy. All had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. A total of 25 shots had been fired, mostly at close range. At first, suspicion fell on Mrs. Caffell, who suffered from mental illness and was found holding the murder weapon. Then, attention turned to Bamber after a blood-stained silencer was found in a cupboard in the farmhouse.

Here’s what it sounded like to me: “At first, we thought it was Miss Scarlett with the lead pipe in the conservatory, but it turned out to be Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the lounge.” I love England. They’re so…British-y.

MUSEUMS. We went to a lot of them. Let’s take the Natural History Museum first. If the museum was empty it would still be amazing, because whoever built it included natural history elements into the actual building all over, in both the interior and exterior.

It’s like going to atheist church. At one end of the giant hall, a dinosaur skeleton (see picture above). At the other end, a sculpture of Charles Darwin. I felt like there should be a choir singing hymns about evolution and survival of the fittest.

Once again, England kicks our American butts because their museums are free and you can take pictures. Here is a coelacanth (pronounced see-lah-canth) or, as I like to call it, the “Seriously, That Is Way Too Many Fins, No One Needs That Many Fins”.

Here’s the interesting story. This is an OLD breed of fish. Like, they thought it went extinct 65 million years ago. Then – poof! – someone fishing found one off the coast of Africa in the 1930s, and they’re back! This particular specimen is from 1964, so it has lost its deep-blue color. Also, and I found this adorable, it has little mushrooms growing on it.

They also have a phenomenal amount of dead stuffed things. My favorite last time I visited was the pangolins. My favorite this time was still the pangolins.

I will never get to see a pangolin in the wild, so this was thrilling for me. Plus, one of the pangolins on the tree looks like a zombie with his little stubby pangolin arms outstretched in front of him. Evil zombie pangolin.

Aside from more dead things than you can shake a stick at, they have a stellar mineral wing. I do enjoy a good mineral. Here’s a pic of the mineral wing.

Rows and rows and rows of neatly labeled rocks. I was so happy. I learned the difference between a pebble and a cobble. Here’s a cobble full of pebbles.

And did you know pumice is just frothy lava? It’s like lava meringue.

I want these agates. I want them real bad. Especially the one on the right.

The Natural History Museum has a terrific insect area, but I didn’t have time to visit it. However, I did get to enjoy its entrance. It has that great big ole beetle over the door, but I love how the many-eyed spider looks like he’s welcoming you in. “Oh hello!” he says. “Come on in! I made crumpets.”

Museums have specialty exhibits, and those you have to pay for. The Natural History Museum has an exhibit on right now called “Sexual Nature”, about the sex lives of animals. Really.

I couldn’t take pictures in there because it was dark in an attempt to be romantic (really, they had Barry White playing in the background), but I don’t know, seeing taxidermied animals posed in states of copulation doesn’t get my motor going. I did get a shot of how foxes have sex, which was totally different than I expected. They just back up into each other, ending up looking like a dog with two heads. Very interesting.

Also, around the exhibits and informative plaques were TVs playing Isabella Rossellini’s “Green Porno”. If you’ve never seen this, clear an afternoon, take some magic mushrooms, and hunker down for some of the weirdest television programming you’ve ever experienced. Here’s one just for a taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BckqviVaWl0

Cricket’s favorite Green Porno episode was the salmon. I was partial to the duck one. You really must see them all.

To finish off my Natural History experience, here is a giant slice of a very old sequoia (with Cricket standing next to it for scale):

And here is a life-size accurate sculpture of a gulper eel. I made a painting on a gulper eel, but it’s different when you see one up close and personal. I didn’t realize their mouths were tetrahedronal. I was very excited. People around me were concerned.