Searched For museum

I don’t know where that Skunk Ape sleeps, but I do know that he had impure relations with my wife!

January 14, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Florida, South, Travel, USA

One of our must-sees in Florida was the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, so, you know, another intellectual venture for us. Based on the myriad quotes on their website, such as “I’m an American. I should be a shining example of how great this country is. But instead, the Parks Service has built all of these campgrounds around me. Their employees direct customers away from me.” [The rest of this quote is found on the Roadside America report: “…one of their employees has attempted to buy illegal weapons in Miami to kill me. And they won’t even fire the guy.”] generally make the owner sound unhinged in a fashion that made the prospect of visiting particularly enticing. Having never been to the Everglades before, I expected the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters to be decrepit shack at the end of a winding dirt road hours from civilization, the air thick with humidity and the strains of banjo music from an unseen player, the sort of place that would make you feel like you’ve stepped out of your car and into a horror film.

This is what we got instead:

I mean, it’s sort of decrepit in a touristy way but it’s off of a paved main road and there’s still cell signal, so your only legitimate source of danger are the mosquito swarms and the myriad diseases they can transmit.

Inside the corrugated metal storage container, there was a large gorilla statue, some skunk ape tchotchkes to purchase, and the same generic tourist crap you can buy from literally anywhere in Florida.

Shoved into one corner was the Skunk Ape “evidence”, which consisted of one foot cast (which was covered up with hats you can purchase), a few photographs, and a broken television. There wasn’t even anyone in the shop to answer questions, not even the, uh, eccentric owner, just a guy who was browsing the internet and clearly pissed we’d interrupted him.

It’s not that a couple of photoshopped pictures of a dude in a suit isn’t exciting, I just expected a little bit more enthusiasm for their supposed obsession. Perhaps a little more scientific rigor, something to tide over the public’s thirst for truth while visiting on weekends that aren’t on the Miss Skunk Ape Pageant. Or if you’re going to the trouble to falsify a cast, why not go a step further and fake up a fur tuft or a skull? Because right now, I’ve got about as much evidence of unicorns in my house (a non research center) as they had of skunk apes in their research facility. Plus, not to boast, I have two working televisions. In the back, they have a small animal exhibit, and I suppose the Skunk Ape stuff is just a way to lure people in and away from any of the other animal exhibits we’d seen on our way; paying for it just so we’d feel we didn’t waste the trip. Apparently I’m one to reward that sort of sheisty behavior, because pay and go back we did.

They clearly specify that the back area is “at your own risk”, and they mean it, letting you hold a baby alligator and even offering to let it bite you. The man in the back was much friendlier than the one up front, seemed knowledgeable about the animals, and generally allowed you to poke and prod things at your own risk. Mostly, we neither poked nor prodded because if anyone was to be bitten by something that could shear bone, it’d be me.

They had a number of snakes, a few snapping turtles, a large nonthreatening turtle, and a large alligator out back, but I was unexpectedly charmed by the birds. The parrot greeted me and would follow me around as I walked around his cage (though he’d always make sure to say “hello” when I wasn’t recording video.) This umbrella cockatoo in the cage I was told “loves attention but has poor impulse control, so he would also love to bite you. But you can pet him if you can get him to turn around.” I did actually risk stroking his feathers with one finger on my non-dominant hand. I’m not sure he got much out of it, but I felt immeasurably brave.

There was a second cockatoo who loved people more and apparently managed to quell his bitey impulses, because he would sit on anyone who would let him, raising one little leg in the air when he’d had enough and was ready to move on to the next person. Sometimes he would hang out on one person for a long time, and sometimes his leg would pop up almost the second he perched on someone; all we could do was respect the leg.

Overall, maybe things are a bit livelier around the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters during the Skunk Ape Festival, but otherwise I can’t recommend a visit until they get their act together. It could be a truly ace roadside attraction with a better mini museum about the history of the skunk ape and the owner’s efforts to see and capture one, and they could kick it up another notch by getting rid of the sad everyday Florida tourist crap merch and sell skunk ape plushes, cast replicas, official licensed Skunk Ape hunting gear, and for god’s sake, get a pressed penny machine in there. Either way, they need more than their sad neglected corner o’ crap to make it worth the trip. I’m not going to lie, I also hoped that we might catch a baby skunk ape that looked like a wee Chewbacca who could ride the dog around, but unless he has amazing powers of camouflage and elected to climb in our rental car of his own free will, that one didn’t happen either. That might be the biggest disappointment of all. I was going to name him Carl Skunkbutt, make him tiny outfits, and freak out everyone at the dog park. Why don’t my dreams ever come true?

“Oh look what you did! Now I’ll have to go get my cold cream gun.”

December 14, 2012 3 Comments read Canada, Everything is Terrible, Live Shows, Travel

In July, Jason and I took a trip to Vancouver for IMATS (the international Makeup Artist Trade Show). We had plans to attend the previous month’s event in Los Angeles as LA is by far the bigger show, but it unfortunately fell on the same weekend that Jason was committed to being in a wedding so it didn’t work out. However, the next LA IMATS is in January, which is right around the time that I start losing my mind in the cold, dark Seattle winter, so it will be an ideal time for a trip to a place where the sun peeks through the smog. Vancouver is essentially a cleaner, friendlier Seattle, with better candy AND Plants vs Zombies scratch off tickets!

I wasn’t interested in the push and shove aspect of the trade show floor–I love makeup, and I love discounts, but it has to be a hell of a discount or a product I cannot purchase otherwise to make me want to deal with crowds of people elbowing one another to get the last item–I’d rather pay full price AND shipping and never have to deal with a human being. What I was interested in was the student creature competition, the makeup talks, and the makeup museum. The student competition was broken up over the course of two days, with beauty on Saturday and creature on Sunday; I only attended on Sunday, and I was impressed by the quality of the work I was seeing. I wish self-taught people like myself could compete, but unfortunately it’s only open to makeup school students.

The makeup museum, though small, was also very cool, featuring mostly work by Toby Lindala (keynote speaker, creator of SFX for X-files, Supernatural, and V, among others) and Todd Masters (featured speaker, creator of MastersFX, SFX on Big Trouble In Little China, Predator, Underworld, True Blood, and more). Questionably, however, they also included submissions from various local schools, some of which were so bad that I was embarrassed for the artist and the school. Everyone has to learn somewhere and everyone works to the best of their personal abilities, and hating on someone for trying is the height of uncool…but showcasing pieces that aren’t ready to be shown do a disservice to both the student and the school. It’s why you don’t see macaroni necklaces in the Louvre.

^{Taking a photograph of a video camera videotaping a video feed. The only thing that could make this better is if someone behind me took a photograph of me taking a photograph of a video camera videotaping a video feed.} Both Todd Masters’ group and Toby Lindala struck me as likeable, humble artists with a genuine love for their craft and fascinating stories to tell, and their speaking time went by far too quickly. If MastersFX still had a Seattle studio, I would beat down their door for an opportunity to work there, to observe, to help, to sweep their floors…but sadly, it is no more. The only thing that stuck in my craw about the event in general was that the floor was full of tons of women (and some men, but predominately women), but nearly all of the speakers were men. Where are the women, and why don’t they rise to the top of this craft? More women learn to use makeup than men, so how is it that the most notable figures in the business are men? Is it the glass escalator effect? Surely there are women who are just as talented…so where are they? Halfway through the day, we decided to take a break and head to a nearby pub for lunch rather than suffer through convention food, and there I learned two important things. One, there are vampires actively prowling Vancouver:

and two, I learned an important lesson about Canadian light and how it interacts with steak fibers. At the time, I was on a restrictive diet and could only eat carbohydrates one day a week, so I’d been eating/preparing/ordering a lot of proteins and veggies. I ordered a medium-rare steak with veggies while Jason ordered some carbtacular dish that I remember being insanely jealous of at the time. What I received was a completely well done steak, and even though I’m the sort of person who haaaaates sending anything back to the kitchen, I flagged down the waiter and told him that it was far too well done while apologizing profusely for bothering him. He disappeared with my plate and came back twenty minutes later with….another well-done steak! He disappeared before I could cut into it, and when he came back around again to ask if this one was better and I responded negatively, he said “Oh, I know what your problem is” and grabbed the fork off my plate and poked at the steak. “Yeah, that’s medium rare, I can tell. It’s just that you’re sitting by the window and the light is what makes it look brown. It’s why steakhouses are so dark inside, so you can’t see that the meat is actually brown when you expect it to be red.” HUH. It’s fascinating to learn that the Canadian visible light spectrum is missing the color red! You’d think that I would have heard about that before, read it somewhere, seen it in a documentary…SOMETHING. I didn’t think to look while I was still in Canada, but does this mean that their national flag is actually a brown leaf and they’ve been too (typically Canadian) polite to inform the rest of the full light-spectrumed world that we have it wrong? Because, and I don’t mean to boast, I have cooked and eaten many a steak within the borders of the United States in both darkness and in light, and they’ve always been a varying shade of red inside. So it must be Canadian light, right? I refuse to believe that an actual Canadian could have lied to me just to get me to shut up and eat an overcooked, shoe-leathery piece of meat.

The next time I burn the hell out of dinner, I’m going to tell Jason that we must have had a Canadian air front sweep through the kitchen, but not to worry…even though it looks and tastes burned, that’s just a factor of the air, and it’s actually the most succulent thing he’s ever had in his mouth. Thank you, Canada!

“And my heart will go on and on for a period of time which closely approximates the length of this song which is forever!”

December 10, 2012 6 Comments read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington

Last year, Seattle tore down the so-called “Fun Forest”–the ramshackle collection of worn, broken, sad-looking rides at Seattle Center that should have been torn down years ago if not for people’s collective nostalgia of a time when it wasn’t tagged with graffiti and falling apart. However, it’s 2012, the World’s Fair was 50 years ago, and rigs put up and torn down by carnies in a week’s time look more reliable, so good riddance, though I suppose it is a little sad to lose a genuine thrill of fear when you’re riding a rollercoaster that may fall apart at any given moment. In its place, the city has leased the land to Chihuly Garden & Glass, the world’s largest permanent exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s work. Outside, in a similarly permanent fashion, are multiple groups of musicians attempting to lure tourists into purchasing CDs of pan-flute renditions of popular music. We entered the building to the strains of Vanessa PanFlute Williams’ “Colors of the Wind”. While we waited for Emily and Evan to arrive, we perused the gift shop, where I learned that you can slap “local” on any $2 craft and charge upwards of $100 for it. I’m looking at you, chalkboard vases–don’t think that I didn’t see the how-to on Pinterest and can’t make my own for pennies on the dollar! I forced myself to leave before giving into the urge to pick something off a shelf and shatter it on the ground for dramatic effect. The exhibits are very much “Hey, look at this cool artwork” without much info on any of the pieces or on Chihuly himself. I don’t know that it would have enhanced my appreciation of the work to know more about the process, but with an entire museum dedicated to one man and his work, you’d think there would be more to it than “Look at this! Now look at this! Ooooooooh!”

^{I’m pretty sure I saw this exact thing in Prometheus.}

^{Birds ain’t got no respect. No respect at all.}

At this point, we exited the building into the glass gardens outside, and were immediately serenaded with Celine PanFlute Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, which I helpfully pointed out to Emily so as not to suffer alone. When she didn’t seem to be suffering enough, I took it upon myself to sing it, loudly, changing the lyrics as I saw fit. Emily, of course, was mortified, but I like to think I added something special to the overall ambiance for the other exhibit visitors. And she keeps going out in public with me so she’s basically asking for it, because I show people I love them through large, loud, public gestures.

Where she did draw the line, however, was at my threatening to lick an ornament. I’m surprised we weren’t hustled out of there in a hot minute, but instead allowed to leave out our leisure, exiting through the aforementioned giftshop, where I once again resisted shattering an arts and crafts tourist rip-off. Poor impulse control, my ass.