Curious Museums of LA

I've found a new website to haunt: http://www.rentfoodbroke.com/.  Take a wild guess what it's about. They have an awesome calendar with events around the city that cost $0 to $10.  It's pretty awesome.  It drew my attention to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  I had heard about this place before, and it's only a $5 suggested donation, so my friend Pra and I went to check it out this weekend.

Pra enjoying a snack before going in.

The museum has an unassuming facade on Venice Boulevard in Culver City, so I was sort of surprised when it was PACKED inside.  I was bumping asses and elbows with all sorts of strangers.  Fun.

As far as the content of the museum, I am hard pressed to capture it all.  My best advice for all five of my readers (don't think I didn't notice my two new followers!) is to go experience it yourself.  Except that you can't because you all live in other states.  So since you're begging for it I'll give you my two cents (I'm not that broke).

Readers of Neal Stephenson, China Mieville, and Neil Gaiman would love this place.  MJT poses as a historical and educational facility, but it's pretty much all fantasy.  The exhibits and collections supposedly date from the Jurassic through the present.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but Athanasius Kircher designed it.

An exhibit devoted to Athanasius Kircher, some sort of medieval super-genius included a giant magnetic sundial of some sort, lots of models like those in a 7th grade science fair showing things like water systems of Earth with holograms projected on them, and-most importantly, a 3D movie translated from German.

Caption to an engraving

There were micro-mosaics you viewed through a microscope (duh) of floral arrangements created from fragments of butterfly wings.  There were lots of random engravings and paintings and whatnot.
There was a pretty awesome reading room, where Pra and I wrote some book spine poetry.  I got the idea from Rainn Wilson's website, Soul Pancake (http://www.soulpancake.com/post/1519/book-spine-poem.html).  Our poem was not very awesome, and the picture was not very clear, but I will include it anyway:

For a handful of feathers,
the gold of Troy,
British biscuit tins
Time Detectives
Q.E.D.
zone
gladiators at Pompeii

I was pretty upset when I realized we'd skipped right past a book called "Catapulting" but oh well.

There was also an entire section devoted to archaic remedies, with some really weird visuals.  My favorite was a model of a child with a duck's bill in it's mouth.  Apparently the duck's cold breath was supposed to cure thrush or something.  Ew.  In this area I discovered this gem, "Mouse pie when eaten with regularity serves as a remedy for children who stammer." 

 One section had handheld viewing glasses, which made only the most minimal differences to the vectographs on display.  

Another room was devoted to collections found in Los Angeles trailers, complete with scale models of mobile homes.  


After a while my brain lost it's ability to try to make sense of anything I was looking at; I could only sit back and let the experience hit me in waves.  I'm pretty sure that's part of the point.  We try to so hard to be adults, to get things right, that we forget to play.  We have so little sense of wonder anymore that we need places like the Museum of Jurassic Technology to get us out of our heads.


Upstairs behind a door marked, "Fairly safely venture" Pra and I played cat's cradle for ten minutes.  Peppered throughout the museum were phone receivers and buttons, 90% of which did nothing.  I can only assume it was 100% intentional.  And to finish our visit we enjoyed tea and cookies in the tea room!  Actually I didn't eat any cookies; they had no gluten-free refreshments.  The nerve.


Like my visit to the Psychiatry: an Industry of Death Museum, I left MJT feeling bewildered.  This time though I felt more bemused at my confusion, rather than depressed and in need of a drink.  I am not sure what I was supposed to get from it, but maybe that's not the point.  

Summer Reading part 2

After reading all those fabulous books by awesome lady authors I ran out of women on my to read shelf by my bed.  So I looked at what I had:

I chose Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (not pictured here).  I wanted something kind of sexy, and that still fired up the feminist in me, and nothing else there really fit the bill.

Boy was I in for a disappointment!  I have looked forward to reading this book for a while.  I take pride in being well-read.  Not just in quantity, but also in a variety of time periods and genres, so this seemed like a classic that must be attended to.  But frankly I kind of feel like I wasted my time.  Lawrence spends a lot of time showing how most people are not connected to their bodies, how they leave the physical out.  This is an idea I can get behind.  It's something I have struggled with in my acting, and I feel like it's true in a larger sense for many people.  Ironically though, I found myself skimming through the end of the book because I didn't care for all the chitchat and higher ideas being discussed in the book.  It was too heady; it didn't tug at my core-where I feel my soul.  Check out the link to read my review on Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/186554294

Field Trip!

It's summer, and money is tight.  So I have been looking around for affordable (read free) things to do.  The other day I came across a coupon on the LA Weekly website for free admission to the Pyschiatry: An Industry of Death Museum.  It was eight pm on a Tuesday night, and this place just happens to be open until 10pm (weird hours, right?) so obviously I downloaded the coupon onto my phone and took myself to Hollywood!

I have walked by this place a number of times and thought to myself, "What is up with that place?  What kind of a name is that for a museum?  And what kind of hole does this fill in the public consciousness?" Time to find out!

So, turns out I didn't need the coupon, because the museum is ALWAYS free.  Okay, interesting.  My friend and I went in, and as the docent is giving us the history of the museum she mentions that it's affiliated with Scientology.  Ding ding ding!  Weird hours, unnecessary coupons, and unwieldy name all starting to add up here.  Clearly I am great at mental math.

The museum is basically a loop, and they start you out in a small room with padded walls to watch a movie.  The padded walls were a really nice touch; I guess I should expect great production value from anything associated with Scientology.  The movie had testimonials from lots of psychiatrists saying that there's no medical proof for most of psychology, and then it showed that they were the authors of books like "Mad in America", so they're obviously reputable sources.  The movie also showed shots of lots of really unhappy looking people, and interviews with their families about how their lives were ruined by psychiatry.  Finally, once we were totally depressed, we were turned loose into the museum.

The museum was like a combination of Universal Studios, Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, and the Holocaust Museum in Normandy.  It was basically a parade of Atrocities Everyone Loves to Hate, beefed up  with weird visual aids: examples of medieval torture devices, bloodletting knives or primitive electroshock chairs, realistic looking mummified heads made of wax, photos of bone thin patients locked in "cage beds", etc.  Every six feet or so there were large monitors showing video segments (now I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I should NEVER submit myself for an in-house Scientology project).  The exhibits are organized somewhat chronologically, and concern the Holocaust, racism, Hollywood icons, school shootings, insurance fraud and TERRORISM to name a few.  This was all accompanied by a bunch of arguments that really stretched to show that all of psychiatry is a conspiracy with big pharma.  

Don't get me wrong.  I think that people, especially kids, are over medicated.  I believe that there are lots of people out there who want a quick diagnosis, or who want to put other people's inexplicable behavior into an easy to understand box.  But I also believe that sometimes we can become emotionally unbalanced, and need more than someone to talk to.  There is a time a place for chemical aid.

When we left the museum we passed through a room whose walls were COVERED with pamphlets.  A sign politely informed us that each guest was permitted to choose one pamphlet free, but that additional pamphlets can be purchased for $1.50.  I was tempted to take the one titled Raped by Psychology, but I restrained myself.

I couldn't leave without checking out the gift shop.  Sure enough, right there on the shelves were copies of "Mad in America" and all the other books whose authors were quoted favorably in the introductory video.  What a surprise.  There was also a book that had a giant tag line saying, "Tom Cruise was right!!!"; I forget the title though, because I was so mesmerized by that.  There were also some really awesome tee-shirts.  My favorite was a bubblegum pink one that said, "Psych drugs turn kids into killers."  'Killers' had a gun superimposed over it.

We rushed out of the museum.  Luckily there were some teenagers foolish enough to talk to the docents, so we avoided being cornered by Scientologists.  We felt thoroughly depressed and in need of chemical aid after my trip through that weird, sterile space-it was like a carnival ride from the most depressing circle of hell-so we headed over to Mercantile for a glass of wine.

Summer Reading

I have read some really awesome books so far this summer.  Somewhat unintentionally, I'm on a great streak of reading female authors.  No, not Charlaine Harris, Stephanie Meyer, or even JK Rowling (although those names rolled pretty easily off my mind).  I'm talking about inspiring, artistic, intelligent authors.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin finished 6/19/11
This is a scifi classic; it was included in the display on fiction at the SciFi at EMP in Seattle.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I went to that-it was really cool (to a nerd).  It's about a genderless world.  An ambassador lands there to try to get them to join some sort of trade federation, and is forced to realign his ideas about humanity.  I almost feel like I need another reading of this.  It was told from the points of view of two different characters, alternating.  But I wasn't really hip to that at first because LeGuin used a lot of madeup lingo that was difficult to assimilate.  I really liked it in the end though.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood finished 6/24
Another awesome book!  I really liked "The Handmaid's Tale" and "The Blind Assassin", so I was definitely eager for this one.  "Alias Grace" tells the story of a girl who's imprisoned for murder at age 16 in the 1840's.  It's sort of a pastiche of her recollections, news clippings from the trial, and letters and recollections of a physician 15 years later who's trying to determine if she was innocent.  This is a thinking woman's mystery.  Atwood's prose is clear and concise, and very pointed.  She's a great storyteller.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver finished 6/30
I have loved some works by Kingsolver, and others I really couldn't get into.  I was glad with this one that she put the level of research and dedication in that seemed to be present in "The Poisonwood Bible".  This was a really interesting story about a writer in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.  I love it when an author can wrap you up in a story but also teach you about a place or time period.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl finished 7/9
Okay, I admit it.  I've read this book at least twice before, maybe three times.  But revisting a favorite book is one of the joys of reading.  This is written in the style of a meticulously annotated textbook, but it's a whodunit.  It tells the story of Blue VanMeer, a senior in high school, who finds her teacher murdered in the woods.  I'm not giving anything away, you learn that in the first chapter, although it happens towards the end of the story.  The whole things is dark and precocious and carefully crafted.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen finished 7/13
Okay, I had sort of vowed to read no more Austen after Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion because they're all basically the same story.  However this was practically free at the library sale, so what the fuck?  I actually really enjoyed it.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to rush to reread it (ever), but I found it pretty funny.  Jane Austen basically made fun of her main character-Catherine!-the entire time.  She is sort of a nut, who reads too many novels and gets caught up in silly fantasies about her life (that doesn't sound like anyone else I know).  The ending did wrap up a bit too neatly for my taste though.  I felt like Austen got tired of the story, and decided to sum up the end instead of telling it.

At this point I decided I could read what I wanted, and besides I only had one more choice by a female author on my To Read shelf, so I picked up this crappy Stephen King novel (also from the library sale) called The Dark Half (cue ominous music).  But I read a chapter or two and just felt meh about it.  So I'm going back to the ladies (oh yeah!).  Which brings me to the final book I have to talk about:

The Lover by Marguerite Duras present
I originally read this book in French, and really liked it.  I got the English version(at the library sale!) and couldn't turn it down, especially since I no longer have that French copy.  I'm digging it so far.  But I think I need to slow down and taste it more, I found myself rushing a bit.  It makes me want to find it in French again.  And it also makes me want to go get some Anais Nin or something sexy like that...

Check in

It's been a while since I checked in with anything, so I figured 7/11 was as good a day as any to update all three of my followers with something mildly humorous (hopefully) less depressing.

Produced another 24 Hour Theatre event this weekend.  This is the third time I've put this event up at Theatre Tribe, but the first time I actually performed.  I directed in the first one (fucking scary), and I ran the show in the second, so I was differently excited this weekend. The part written for me was a hooker.  Surprise!  Or not.  When I told my director I had a lot of fun choosing potential wardrobe he said, "I thought you would."  And feedback from my Stuart, my artistic director and teacher, "You didn't get as nasty as you could have."  Hmm.  Go figure.

I had such a fun and exhausting weekend.  It was artistically draining, and I'm left with the thought that I need to obsess over art.

Life is interesting.  I feel like I'm only now discovering LA, which is lame.  But also exciting.  I went to Jumbo's Clown Room for the first time (with 5 girlfriends, no less).  Um.  AWESOME.  Why have I never been to that mecca before?  The next exciting place I plan to explore is the New Beverly Cinema.  Time to see some grindhouse on the big screen.

I have nothing else interesting to report at the moment.  I could tell you about how I'm getting back into yoga (I wonder if I could do a split by the end of the summer?) or about not eating gluten and trying to get really healthy (definitely not by living off Larabars) but I won't bore you.  Besides, if you ever hang out with me you've heard all about it anyway.

Kisses