This Belongs in a Museum
Bringing you museum-approved grammatical errors and typos since 2010.
Oh, and sorry - I DO NOT FOLLOW BACK!
If you’re in Singapore with either your own or somebody else’s children and looking for something to do, then why not take them to the most disturbing theme park of all time (yes, even scarier than the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland). I am talking about Tiger Balm Gardens, which is supposed to help relieve muscle soreness and stiffness, but just leaves you sore and stiff from freaking the fuck out. Since renamed Haw Par Villa Dragon World, the place opened in 1937 by the the developers of Tiger Balm (hence the name) as a venue for teaching traditional Chinese values. The best known attraction amongst the 1,000 fiberglass statues and 150 giant dioramas is the Ten Courts of Hell. Down a dark musty cave, the court features gruesome depictions of hell from Chinese mythology and Buddhism in graphic detail. If you visit a prostitute, you’ll be “thrown into a pool of blood and drowned.” Always finish your dinner or your body will be sawn in two. Don’t even think of escaping from prison or disrespecting your elders, because your heart will literally be cut out, kind of like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If the kiddies can handle these scenes of severe punishment, then they’re probably ready for anything, including the cruel world we live in right now. What I find fascinating is there are a number of statues sitting abandoned right outside the park. I think I’d like to see that stuff too. It should be part of the official tour along with the bloody gore. I wrote about this place once before, but many of you weren’t around two years ago so why the *hell* not?
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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.
One day President Barack Obama will have a Presidential Museum & Library, most likely to be located in Chicago, but until that moment happens we will just have to make due with all the other Presidential Museums & Libraries. Besides driving right by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum when I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I’ve only ever seen one in person. That would be the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, which was surprisingly well done, but that’s probably because it had lots of money to create something interesting. I know traditionalists don’t like it, but I think the goal should be to make museums less boring. Even if you hated the movie version, I guarantee you will like this museum…or at least not be bored or get shot by John Wilkes Booth. Anyway, if you want to see all the U.S. Presidents together, there’s only one place to go. Unfortunately you have to go to South Dakota. Sorry! All 43 men (damn Grover Cleveland for serving non-consecutive terms) who acted as commander-in-chief are represented as life-size bronze statutes over several blocks of downtown Rapid City. The series, known as “The City of Presidents”, was created by five local artists; Edward E. Hlavka, Lee Leuning, John Lopez, James Michael Maher and James Van Nuys; over a ten year period between 2000 and 2010. George W. Bush is depicted holding Barney the Dog and giving an enthusiastic thumbs up to no one, while William McKinley takes a phone call from his friend who won’t shut the hell up. Even though John F. Kennedy should be walking with Marilyn Monroe instead of his son John John, I’ll forgive the mistake. Looking a bit depressed, Benjamin Harrison feeds the birds as he sits on a lonely park bench. Is this what he’s been doing all these years? Totally forget about him. I think my personal favorites are Mr. Burns…oops I mean Richard Nixon, who looks like he’s getting ready to concoct his next sinister plot, and Harry S. Truman, who looks more than happy to recreate the “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment over and over again. Oh, that’s Rutherford B. Hayes walking into obscurity in the above photo. And if you’re looking for the current president - Obama the Presidential Statue is coming soon to a Rapid City nearest you.
In the two and half years of its existence, this blog has never paid a visit to the country of Lebanon. My sincerest apologies to the Lebanese people because it sounds you guys have one of my favourite kind of museums. Yes, I have a love/hate relationship with really bad wax museums (see here and here and here…oh, you get the picture) and the Lebanese Hall of Fame sounds like a dream/nightmare come true. Located north of Beirut in Zouk Mosbeh, the hall of fame is the world’s first and probably only animated silicon museum. Yes, silicon…like the valley and breast implant…so that makes it better than wax. And the fact the fifty or so models talk and move makes it the best of the best. An animatronic Saddam Hussein offers visitors a handshake while deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hangs out with Saudi King Abdullah and deceased leader of the Palestinian Authority Yasir Arafat. Alongside current, former, or perhaps soon-to-be-overthrown Arab leaders is Bill Clinton denying he had sexual relations with that woman, the late Pope John Paul II who once visited the country and Albert Einstein because….um, well, I don’t really know. But don’t worry! Lebanon is fully represented with random politicians and other well-known local figures, including singers like Magida el Roudi and Wadih El Shafi. Also, a random museum like this one has to be even more random (see picture) with statues of the world’s fattest and smallest men standing in front of a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Because why the hell not? This is an animated silicon museum, it’s not supposed to make any sense.
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.
Open since 1966, the Witch’s Dungeon Classic Movie Museum is the longest-running Halloween-ish museum in the United States. It is only open during the month of October. The brainchild of Bristol, Connecticut native Cortlandt Hull (who was literally a child when he opened this place), the museum is housed in a 40 by 17 foot Swiss chalet-style structure full of life-size figures of classic movie monsters, like Lon Chaney’s Mummy, Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula and Vincent Price’s Abominable Dr. Phibes. The heads of many of the figurines were based on life-casts of the actual actors who portrayed them. Some costumes, background sets and props are from the original films. Because the place is so tiny and only open once a year, there are hour-long lines to get inside. I guess the waiting is the really scary part. But at least the museum redeems itself with outdoor screenings of silent horror classics.
On this date in 1966 the Beatles performed their final full concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Beatlemania swept the world in the 1960s, and it still continues to this day. If you’re a Beatles fan, you’d expect to see the band in bronze form in their hometown of Liverpool, England…but not in a place like Almaty, Kazakhstan. Yep, that’s right. John, Paul, George and Ringo will eternally hang out on a bench near the Kok Tobe mountains greeting tourists and hikers alike. The bronze statues were created in 2007 by artist Eduard Kazaryan to pay respect to the popularity and universal appeal of the group, especially in the former Soviet republics. It would be cool (or annoying) if the sound of the song ”Back in the U.S.S.R.” was coming out of the figures, or at least John’s shiny guitar.
On this date in 1939 The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California. In Chicago’s Oz Park there are statues of Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion. Why? Because this is where the author L. Frank Baum lived in the 1890s when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was in Chicago where the book was published in 1900 and opened as a musical two years later. But who cares about historical connections when you’ve got statues of Toto, Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, the Wizard (and his giant green head machine), a flying monkey, the Wicked Witch, a couple of Munchkins and the yellow brick road on the roof of Reliable Sheet Metal in Juneau, Alaska. Forget hiking up mountains and taking pictures of glaciers. Go see this random and fun roadside attraction! “We’re off to see the Wizard…”
I can’t think of a better way to honor the 98th anniversary of the place where World War I got started (besides listening to a Franz Ferdinand song of course) then with a visit to the Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918 (or as I like to call it the Museum of the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand) in Bosnia. Most historians agree that when the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was killed it triggered a chain of events that led to the Great War, besides the fact that there had been open hostilities and diplomatic clashes among the great powers of Europe for decades, plus the rise of militarism, imperialism, nationalism, etc. But that Franz dude was important, yo. Can you tell I briefly taught history and really like military shit?
Anyway, the building on the street corner overlooking Latin Bridge, next to where the assassin Gavrilo Princip was standing when he fired the fatal shots, was turned into a museum dedicated to the archduke’s death and the Austrian-Hungarian rule of Sarajevo. It wasn’t always like this as the original memorial plaque marking the spot was removed by the Nazis during WWII and later during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. But local perception has changed, the museum (and plaque) were reinstated and now Franz and his wife Sophie (who was also killed) are memorialized as creepy statues. Cool, huh?
Due to China’s internet censorship policies, I’m not sure if this next museum shows up in any Google searches over there. Next time you have a fit of paranoia, remember the size of China’s Internet Police is rumored at more than 30,000 (or the same number of people who die in motor vehicle traffic-related deaths every year). Anyway, China’s first (and only) Museum of Sex opened in 1999. The museum’s founder Dr. Liu Dalin, or the Dr. Ruth of China, completed a national survey on sex over twenty years ago. His findings have been called “The Chinese Kinsey Report”. So he’s obviously an expert. Or just a creep. Located fifty miles outside of Shanghai (because the city government drove them out of town, those pervs), the exhibits cover nine thousand years of people doing it and are divided into sections with names like “Unusual Sexual Behavior” and “Sex in Primitive Society”. It starts with rudimentary dildos (a label states that lesbians used them) and many ceramics in phallic form and ends with a contemporary poster of two muscular guys, shirtless and in tight jeans, with the caption “The Gays” (homosexuality was classified as a psychological disorder in the country as recently as 2001). Oh, and there is also an interesting artwork titled “The Apple and the Snake” (NSFW). And before you leave, don’t forget to check out the statue garden full of giant penises while meditating in the tea pavilion. Thank you and have a nice day.
