This Belongs in a Museum
Bringing you museum-approved grammatical errors and typos since 2010.
Oh, and sorry - I DO NOT FOLLOW BACK!
Today is Hugh Hefner’s 87th birthday. I don’t like the guy or what he stands for, but he is connected to Chicago so there’s that. My grandfather went to Steinmetz High School with him (they also had the same birthday…R.I.P. Stosh), and once while working at one of my many house museum jobs, I gave a tour to his daughter Christie and first wife Millie, who was a nice little old lady. Oh, I also love wax museum statues so here’s one from Madame Tussaud’s in Las Vegas..and who knows…Hef is so old, he might literally be made out of wax in real life. Or this isn’t even a statue, it’s actually him!!! Aaaannnddd Hef is such a narcissist he has the world’s largest collection of personal scrapbooks. They number in the thousands - every single day of his life has been documented like he’s Jesus or something. If he was your crazy uncle, they’d probably be thrown out in the dumpster, but you know this shit will end up in the HUGH HEFNER MUSEUM someday.
Because Black History Month ends tomorrow and this week’s theme seems to be all about wax, I believe this is the perfect time to tell you about Oran Z’s Pan African Black Facts and Wax Museum. Located in the middle of a strip mall in south Los Angeles, this sprawling museum isn’t just full of famous black figures cast in wax (like President Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall above). No, it’s also home to thousands of Black Americana artifacts, everything from slave shackles and once-popular “Mamie” cookie jars to a flag signed by Barack Obama and an African-American reference library. There are old advertisements, Negro League baseball memorabilia, postcards, toys, sheet music, KKK paraphernalia and even antique Kente cloths. If you’re lucky, the owner Oran Z. Belgrave (who also happens to be the inventor of the World’s Fastest Hair Weaver, which has its own museum display and is available for purchase in the shop of course) will give you a personal tour. According to Oran Z, he is ”just a collector…I present the figures and the facts, and it’s up to you to interpret what’s important. I collect everything African-American. If it’s for blacks, against blacks, I collect it all.” This whole thing began decades ago when Oran Z collected cookie jars and play dolls of African-American design. His collection grew to include African-American documents, books and wax figures. In December of 1999, his collection became a museum, bankrolled with his highly successful hair-weaving product. The museum quickly outgrew its original 2,000-square-foot space and adjacent 14,000-square-foot storage. Now six shipping containers sit behind the building housing separate collections, including “Holocaust of Black America,” with a partly reconstructed slave ship and racks of black mannequins shackled to wood frames. He hosts field trips and community events where children can learn more about African culture, and hopes many of his exhibits will travel across the country to be displayed in schools. Unfortunately, his museum might be forced to move or close due to a redevelopment and gentrification plan. ”I guess they don’t think it’s a good idea to have a black museum owned by a black man located in a black neighborhood on Martin Luther King Boulevard,” says Oran Z.
After a fire at Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum, London, 1925.
(via evilgalprods)
Everyone knows this blog covers wax museums from time to time, not because I like them or anything, but just to highlight their awfulness. Well, I have sad news to report. The World’s Worst Wax Museum is set to close after fifty-something years. The people of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk in England can say cheerio to the flock of tourists who visited Louis Tussauds (named after the great-grandson of Madame Tussaud). The hundreds of questionable showbiz wax figures mostly date from the 1970s and 1980s, and are some of the worst waxworks ever created. But the museum has become a bit of a cult favourite due to the “worst” label, so I’m sure there are a few people out there who are crying tears of wax. The museum’s items will be sold off at auction. I don’t care either way, but I really wish I had the money to buy the WAX ABBA. Money, money, money…must be funny…in a rich man’s world.
Oh, in case you couldn’t figure out who’s who, here’s some help.
From the top (l-r): Elvis Presley, Prince William, Prince Charles, Bob Hope.
Barack Obama may be a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln” but no one beats America’s 21st President Chester Alan Arthur in the metrosexuality department. Known as Elegant Arthur because of his expensive taste in clothing (he owned over eighty pairs of pants), he was the first chief executive to have his own valet (you know the guy in charge of taking care of your wardrobe…you watch Downton Abbey, right?). But his extravagance went beyond his closet. Upon becoming President, he refused to live in the White House until it was completely renovated to his liking. He hired designer Louis Comfort Tiffany at a cost of $30,000 (that’s over $700,000 in today’s inflated word). Unlike Lincoln, who has museums up the wazoo (Did Lincoln spend the night here? Save this building, please!) Arthur does not command the same respect and joins a long list of forgotten U.S. Presidents, who are represented at the National Presidential Wax Museum. Sitting next to Andrew Johnson and Millard Fillmore, Arthur looks quite dandy with his top hat, tie and trimmed whiskers. You go, Chet!
P.S. LBJ was really into pants too, especially lightweight blue ones, you know, where “your nuts hang” (his words, not mine).
In case you’ve been living in a cave with no connection to the outside world (wait, why are you on tumblr then?) let me inform you that today is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. 1,517 people died, which is horrible, but that is far less than the number of people who suffered watching James Cameron’s godawful film (and 3D version too). So what’s the real tragedy here? With plenty of museums and memorials dedicated to the historical event and the media coverage in overdrive there is no need for me to write anything about it. Instead I leave you with really bad wax figures of Leo and Kate on the bow of the ship at the Wax Museum in Fishermen’s Wharf in San Francisco.
HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY!
Today is the day the U.S. Presidents are commemorated with no school and no mail. That’s exactly the way George Washington (and FDR) wanted it to be. These two dudes are not posing at the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Washington D.C., far from it. This is an actual picture taken during Roosevelt’s presidency sometime in the 1930s. Yes, even back then people wore shirts with words on them. Cool, huh?
With all the wax museum tourist traps out there, the next one wins the prize for weirdest, especially if mom and dad end up taking the kids here after the “Maid of the Mist” boat ride. I mean, what kind of tourist town would Niagara Falls be if it didn’t have at least one wax museum. Even though the place is located on the Canadian side of things, the Criminals Hall of Fame Wax Museum celebrates many notorious criminals, from the good ol’ U.S.A., like Jesse James, Al Capone, Charles Manson and the Unabomber. Adolf Hitler and Jack the Ripper are thrown in there so Americans don’t come off as completely evil. Down the narrow black corridors, one sees familiar faces behind glass windows, like Jeffrey Dahmer looking through his fridge for a late night snack, Timothy McVeigh in his orange prison jumpsuit, Son of Sam listening to his neighbor’s dog, Bugsy Seigel and Lucky Luciano at the gambling table…
And if that’s not enough tourist shit for one day, the museum shop has a photo-op electric chair that buzzes when you sit on it as well as a lot of crap you don’t need but would love to purchase so you can relive this experience over and over again.
And from this sign, I can see their curator needs to go back to spelling school.
(Image Source 1, 2, 3)
In 1959 Movieland Wax Museum opened just a few miles away from Disneyland. But this is America and one is just never enough. I mean, come on, how dare we go some place and not be reminded of some other place? So in 1975 the Movieland Wax Museum cloned itself near that other Disney property in Orlando, Florida (I don’t know if you’ve heard of it). The Six Flags Stars Hall of Fame Wax Museum was built for 6 million dollars (which is how much Bill Gates makes in the time it takes him to sneeze) and had more than two hundred wax figures in more than one hundred famous movie scenes. There was Laurel and Hardy driving a vintage car, Nancy Sinatra riding a motorcycle and wearing boots (of course) and Charlton Heston racing a chariot. Unfortunately, the wax dreams of Hollywood lasted as long as a botox injection. Not even ten years after it opened, the building was sold and the museum shut its doors forever (“forever, ever, forever, ever?”). Dreams do come true, but they eventually die like Paul Newman and free parking.
There’s nothing more exciting in the life of a wax statue than to make another wax statue.
Michael Dukakis or DeForest Kelley? You decide.
Oddly seen at the National Bridge and Wax Museum in Virginia.
