A few summers ago I took a road trip through Iowa and stopped at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson gave their last performances. Just after midnight on February 3, 1959 they crashed in a nearby cornfield during...
We’ve covered Outsider Art many (did I say MANY???) times before on the ol’ blogamajig, from the House of Dreams and Fred Smith’s Concrete Park to the Italian American Artistic Museum and African Village in America. Basically non-artists find stuff and turn the crap into art, just like at Wade’s...
My cousin’s daughter turned 21 today so I’ve been bombarded with endless selfies, “21″ balloons, and girly drinks like pink moscato (just serve over ice…WHAT???). When I haven’t been rolling my eyes, I’ve been thinking how I wish I could take her out for some real booze, like say vodka....
It’s time to go to Vietnam and visit the De Lat Crazy House, which can be best summarized as Gaudi meets Alice in Wonderland meets Antarctica. The exterior is full of twisting concrete shapes that look like tree trunks and caves. There are irregular-sized windows and secret staircases. But the...
Apparently the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus hit shelves today, giving purpose to the lives of people who have enough free time to sleep outside an Apple store. I love Apple products, like I would die for my still-functioning 6-year-old iMac, but when it comes to phones I’m more...
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...
Think you’re in need of a nose job? Wonder how many noses it takes to build a nose museum? Well, hundreds of schnozzes live on in Sweden. Housed in the Museum of Student Life at Lund University, the Nose Academy (could there be any other name?), managed by a Nasal...
As this tumblr nears its 6,000th follower, let’s think back to all the museums we’ve visited (technologically so to speak) from around the world. Okay, finished thinking? Wait, what? I asked you to think. I know, I know. Something is clearly wrong with me. What’s going through your head right...
In the middle of Wisconsin’s Northwoods is Fred Smith’s Concrete Park. This is probably the most random place to have an outdoor museum full of hundreds of concrete sculptures, but who ever said life makes sense? A retired lumberjack, Smith built himself the Rock Garden Tavern in 1936. When not...
One of thirty permanent exhibits found at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is called “Tell the Bees: Belief, Knowledge, and Hypersymbolic Cognition: An exhibit of pre-scientific cures and remedies”. Supposedly eating a mice sandwich helped cure bedwetting and just about anything else you might be suffering from....
I read Interview with a Vampire as a teenager and I’ll admit that I watch True Blood (it’s like a soap opera, but with vampires and shit) but I’ve never been into the whole cult of mythological blood-sucking creatures. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in paying a visit...
The National Maritime Museum consists of three linked sites: the Maritime Galleries, the Royal Observatory and the 17th-century Queen’s House. Located on the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, the Museum incorporates the Prime Meridian of the world and London’s only planetarium.
