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I had a very exciting experience this weekend that I would recommend to anyone in the Madison, Wisconsin area: I visited the Mustard Museum. It’s largely a store full of any type of mustard you can possibly imagine (I bought apple mustard and raspberry mustard), but it does have some very funny exhibits.
(That’s soap in a mustard bottle, which I thought was clever)
Photos by Stacy Conradt
Mt. Horeb, the town the Mustard Museum resides in, is also the home of trolls. You know, those little dolls with the neon hair that sticks straight up? Apparently they originated there and the residents are quite proud of it.
Anyway, the Mustard Museum made me wonder about what other strange museums are out there. I’m always up for detours on road trips. Below are a few that I found interesting – and one that I wouldn’t stop at if my life depended on it.
As you can tell by my Mustard Museum appreciation, I appreciate a museum with a sense of humor. That’s why, strange as it may seem, I would make a stop at the Museum of Funeral Customs. Its slogan is “Death is only the beginning” and the gift shop is where the fun is really at. But I’ll get to that. Among the interesting things you’ll find at the museum are a recreated 1920s embalming room, a recreated 1870 s funeral parlor, embalming equipment, a full-sized reproduction of Abraham Lincoln’s coffin, a scale-sized model of his tomb and railroad coach, and rare books on embalming dating as far back as the 16th century. The Lincoln stuff might seem a little random, but it makes sense – his tomb is in nearby Oak Ridge.
But the gift shop is where the fun comes in. Here you can purchase shirts that say “I Dig the Museum of Funeral Customs” or “Everybody’s Gotta Go Sometime”. Sweet tooth? Dig into a chocolate coffin. Coffin paperweights are also available. Makes me wonder what people at the office would say if you were using one of those to keep your files in order. (Photo by Wikipedia user Mycota)
Pirate Soul was started by Pat Croce, the former president of the Philadelphia 76ers, Olympic commentator and writer. It boasts a pretty impressive collection of pirate memorabilia, and we’re not talking about Johnny Depp (although I would probably visit that museum too). Croce has managed to get his hands on Blackbeard’s dinner plate, a real Dutch East India Company cannon, the 1699 Journal of Captain Kidd’s Last Voyage, gold retrieved from Blackbeard’s warship and one of two authentic Jolly Roger flags left in the entire world. So next time you’re in Key West, tear yourself away from Fantasy Fest, Ernest Hemingway’s house and Sloppy Joe’s Bar and hit up Pirate Soul… arrrrrr!! (sorry, couldn’t resist)
I might be embarrassing myself by admitting this, but I do love Jack Daniels. So this museum would be right up my alley. It takes us through the history of whiskey from the Colonial days through the 1960s. Artifacts include Abraham Lincoln’s liquor license, prescriptions for the medical use of alcohol and an exhibit on George Washington, who was the federal union’s largest whiskey distiller after his Presidential terms were up.
The Oscar Getz Museum is just one of the stops on the American Whiskey Trail, which has stops all along the east coast and Kentucky.
“Art too bad to be ignored”. And with a tagline like that, how could you? This 400+ piece collection is located in the Dedham Community Theater. About 30-40 pieces are displayed at any one time.
The piece above is Lucy in the Field with Flowers and it is the art responsible for the birth of this museum. One of the founders of the museum spotted this lovely work in a trash pile on the streets of Boston and decided he had to have it. Actually, a lot of the work acquired by the Museum of Bad Art has been saved from the curb. Another popular scouting spot seems to be the Salvation Army. I can’t believe I was in Boston last month and I didn’t know this museum existed then.
I’m only a few hours away from the Spam Museum, so it’s kind of surprising I haven’t hit up this weird spot yet. At the museum, you can try your hand at packaging Spam, see how Spam was used during wars and check out old-school Spam advertising. The Web site also mentions a Spam Spa, but they’re kidding… I think. Of course, there’s all kinds of Spam memorabilia for you to buy as well. Spam earrings? They’ve got ‘em. Spam flip-flops? Got ‘em. Necktie? Yep. Lapel pin, mouse pad, three-legged pig figure, full-sized Spam costume? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
I can attest to this one. I lived in the Philly area for about a year and kept putting the Mütter Museum off. The weekend we found out we were moving again, we immediately hit up this Museum of medical oddities. It didn’t disappoint. There’s all kinds of bizarre stuff, from a tumor removed from Grover Cleveland’s jaw to a corpse that turned into soap to a plaster cast of Siamese twins. It’s really fascinating stuff. The museum itself is located in a really unassuming building of the College of Physicans of Philadelphia, but it’s definitely worth seeking out.
Finally, the Museum I will die before I set foot in:
I have never found anything remotely funny about clowns. They scare me, and not in a good way. But if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll find exhibits dedicated to Bozo, Emmett Kelly and Red Skelton, among others. Willard Scott gets a tribute because he played both Bozo and Ronald McDonald before moving on to the Today Show. You’ll also find out about the history of clowns and the different categories of clowns. If anyone has been there, let me know if you still have nightmares.
In the final episode of the 80s TV show St. Elsewhere, it was revealed that the entire series had taken place in the imagination of an autistic child. So therefore, the other 12 series that crossed over into the St. Elsewhere universe were also born in Tommy Westphall’s mind. And so were their crossovers and spinoffs. Here’s a huge graphic that shows how all those series (282 of them) were related. Link -via Kottke
All told, we cranked out well over 100 concepts that were taken to final art, and easily 300 that didn’t make it that far. No part of Star Wars was too small to think about, no character too minor. I’ve never had a situation before or since where someone said to take your favorite subject and do whatever you want with it. Nothing was too crazy or expensive to try.
Some of their ideas were accepted, adapted, and manufactured. But the ones that weren’t are even more interesting! I suspect Alex would go for this grill. Link -via Everlasting Blort
Once upon a time there was a blanket. This blanket had several sheets containing a traditional bedtime story. Each “page” adds a layer of linen making you warmer (or cooler) and comfier hopefully guiding you and your partner into a pleasant night’s sleep.
Link -via J-Walk Blog
An unnamed 10-year-old boy in Kandahar, Afghanistan got involved in a fight at his father’s shop and was stabbed in the head. The knife went behind his eye and penetrated the front of his brain. He was able to walk into a British field hospital, where this x-ray was taken. Surgeons at the 212 Field Hospital removed the 3-inch blade and sent him to the 208 Field Hospital for care.
Major Stephen Gallacher, 49, senior A&E nurse of 208 Field Hospital, said: “It was a horrendous sight. I just didn’t think he would survive. But he was soon off the life-support machine and was up and about within days. It was just amazing.”
Maj Gallacher added that simply pulling the knife out “would have been a disaster”. Link -via Arbroath
Mythbusters wants to settle the question once and for all -did the Apollo astronauts really go to the moon? The cast and crew of Mythbusters visited several NASA locations to conduct experiments to see if the moon footage could have possibly been faked. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy Blog served as an informal advisor for the episode, which is scheduled to air April 25th. If he has any inside knowledge of how the experiments went, he’s not telling. Link -via Digg
If you are an American, you know that when you see the name John Doe, it means someone whose name is not known. You also know that John Q. Public is a generic name for anyone and everyone. What about other countries? In Belgium, you might read about Jean Dupont, which won’t be his real name. In Finland, Matti Meikäläinen is not a real person; it means “generic male”. NationMaster has a list of generic names informally used for unnamed persons in many countries. Link -via Dump Trumpet
There are things that you think you should be able to do with your body. But if you’re like 99.9999% of people in the world, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t quite manage to do it.
Here is a list of things that are impossible to do with your body, and the few mutants who can do ‘em:
I can raise both of my eyebrows in bewilderment on how some people can raise just one. In fact, I know only one person in my life who can do this: my mother-in-law, who said that her ability just came to her during the pain of childbirth – and that this superpower was very useful in raising kids. Well, her and of course Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock: "Fascinating, Captain"), Sean Connery, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Stephen Colbert.
Some people call this the eyebrow cock, and it is known as the universal sign of O RLY … I mean, skepticism. The ability to raising eyebrows may be an evolutionary trait: baboons, mandrills and cebus monkeys raise their eyebrows as a threat gesture. (Source: David Givens / Center for Nonverbal Studies).
For all of you who want to do this (and yes, geeks who want to imitate Mr. Spock: I’m talkin’ to you), it turns out that you can learn to raise one eyebrow. Here’s the trick, according to wikiHow:
1. Start by keeping one eyebrow down with one hand and holding one up with the other. Keep practicing this in the mirror so you can
detect the correct muscle movement to obtain one eyebrow up.
2. Once you are familiar with this and can do it quite well, try it with out using your hands.
3. Practice this in the mirror intil you get it just right
4. Scare and thrill people with your new talent!
Didn’t work for you? Try the methods in this Ask MetaFilter thread or this Yahoo! Answer.
Photo: Gussy (Luke) [Flickr]
I once read a trivia that said it’s impossible to lick your own elbow. And that 75% of the people told this immediately tried to lick their elbows.
Well! It’s obviously not so impossible for some people. Supposedly, Guinness World Records get about 5 claims a day from people who think that they are special just because they can lick their elbows (Source).
Patrick Ellison gleeking. Photo by Josh Devine [Wikipedia]
Okay, it is kind of gross but it’s fascinating. Gleeking (or gleeting / glicking) is like spitting – but not quite: the term means projecting saliva from the submandibular gland upon compression by the tongue.
Interestingly, the word gleek appears in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where a character named Bottom says "Nay, I can gleek upon occasion." (The Bard meant it as "joke," though, not spit like a camel)
Y’know, twitch your nose like the witch Samantha Stephens of Bewitched.
Elizabeth Montgomery, the actress that played Samantha, actually got sick and tired of being asked to twitch her nose by her fans that she refused to do it after the series was over.
They should bring back Bewitched. I missed that show.
Jeff Goldblum wiggling his ears [YouTube]
Your cat can do it. And so can the hippo and Jeff Goldblum. But only few other people in the world can wiggle their ears. It turned out that in 2006, scientists determined exactly why most people couldn’t wiggle their own ears:
"The mechanism behind ear movements is sophisticated," says Bastiaan ter Meulen, who led the ear wiggling study, accepted for publication in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology.
Unlike other facial muscles, ear muscles have their own accessory nucleus, a control area for muscle function, in the brainstem, says ter Meulen, a researcher at Erasmus MC, a university medical centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
"Compared to animals, especially bats and cats, this nucleus is rather small in humans," he says. (Source)
But fear not, non-ear wiggling people! You can train yourself to do it. WikiHow explains:
Isolate your ear-wiggling muscles. You may be able to wiggle your ears, but it won’t be that impressive if you have to raise your eyebrows or look awfully surprised every time. You may not be able to move your ears without moving your scalp, but you should be able to learn to move them without moving your eyebrows. Practice wiggling your ears without moving any other parts of your face.
This is much better than a photo of Gene Simmons sticking his tongue out!
Photo: floyka [Flickr]
I betcha Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS could do both easily, but most people can’t touch the tip of their nose or their chin with their tongue. Rumor was Gene had a cow’s tongue grafted onto his own. But Snopes, ever the party pooper, set the record straight:
But, as Simmons wrote in his autobiography, his unusual tongue was indeed the work of Mother Nature alone, a feature whose distinctiveness (and value) he first realized in his early teens:
I was oblivious, for the first thirteen years of my life, that I was endowed with a large oral appendage, my superlong tongue. It really was longer than everyone else’s, and I was soon to find out that having a long tongue came in handy with the girls.
While we’re still on the subject of tongues, there are a few tricks that most people can’t do (just don’t get a tongue cramp trying to do all these, mmkay?):
Tongue tricks by YouTube user tinasandwich [YouTube Link]
Just go ahead and try to to the last one, the smiley face, like YouTube user a51a did [YouTube Link, shaky video but still!]
Nope, you can’t sneeze with your eyes open (well, without forcing ‘em open with your hands, anyhow). Why? Because when you sneeze, the "sneeze center" in the brain "sends coordinated motor impulses along nerves controlling muscles of the abdomen, chest, diaphragm, neck, face, eyelids and various sphincters, as well as the mucus glands and blood vessels of the nose. All this happens automatically." (Source) You can’t help it.
Now, if you did force open your eyes, would your eyeballs pop out when you sneeze? Adam Savage of The Mythbuster risked his eyes doing the experiment:
The Mythbuster: Will Your Eyes Fall Out From Sneezing? episode [YouTube]
We all have a ticklish spot or two, which are never a secret from the ones we love. Gentle tickling is fun – so one can be tempted to "auto-tickle" to amuse oneself. But alas, you can’t tickle yourself, and scientists actually know why.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London explains:
The answer lies at the back of the brain in an area called the cerebellum, which is involved in monitoring movements. Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. (Source)
I’m going to let Will Ferrell in the famous SNL yoga skit explain this one ("Look, I’ve done yoga everyday for three years … now I’ve finally reached my goal"). Or if you prefer something more literary: There once was a man from Nantucket …
All right, all right, this one’s only for the guys: Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can. And apparently, so can 2 to 3 out of 1,000 men in the world, according to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. (Source)
As stand-up comedian Bill Hicks once famously quipped:
"A woman one night yelled out, ‘Yeah, you ever try it?’ I said, yeah. Almost broke my back. It’s that one vertebrae, I swear to God, it’s that close. I think that vertebrae is going to be the thing to go in our next evolutionary step. Just a theory and a fervent prayer. Yeah, now all the guys are going, ‘Honey, I have no idea what he’s talking about. I think he’s a devil-child.’ That may be true, but guys, yoooo u know what I’m talking about. I can speak for every guy in this room here tonight, guys, if you could blow yourselves, ladies, you’d be in this room alone right now. Watching an empty stage." (Source)
Because Neatorama is a nice blog, I’m just going to let you read all about autofellatio over on Wikipedia (warning: NSFW, obviously).
Okay, give this one a try: bend your middle finger like the picture on the left shows and put your hand on the table. Then lift your thumb, index finger, and pinkie. No problem, right? Now try the ring finger.
Stepanie Weaver of Science Made Simple explains why you can’t:
The tendons in your fingers are independent from one another apart from the ones in your middle and ring finger. These tendons are connected, so that when your middle finger is folded down you cannot move your ring finger. It feels like your ring finger is stuck!
Think you can multitask? Try this: while sitting on a chair, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Then, while doing that, draw the number 6 with your right hand. You can’t help it: your foot will change direction.
Similarly: move your right leg in anti-clockwise circles and simultaneously draw the number 8 with your right hand.
Another tricky thing to do: simultaneously rotate the index fingers of both hands clockwise. Do it slowly at first, but then pick up speed. Try to go faster and faster, and pretty soon your two fingers will be going in opposite directions!
Well, the steps are easy enough: 1. Make a fist, and 2. Insert into mouth – but most people can’t do it, except the few (all women it seems) who have a) small fists and b) big mouths!
For example:
If you’ve got more things that seemingly easy to do but are actually
impossible, I’d love to hear them – please add them to the comment section.
Before anti-smoking groups had their way, Mr. Potato Head’s favorite accessory was a smoking pipe.
The pipe was discontinued by Hasbro in 1987. (Image: wm.edu)
The original Mr. Potato Head was an actual potato. In the early 1950s, as a young boy in a poor farming family, George Lerner took potatoes from his mother’s garden and used grapes as eyes and a carrot as a nose to make a doll for his younger sister.
What happens if a zombie epidemic turned everyone in the world into mindless undead? And what if Teller of the magician duo Penn & Teller was the last man on earth?
There might be a message in the clip somewhere (written by Teller and Ezekiel Zabrowski) … but I was too distracted by Teller’s voice (yes, he speaks in the clip!): Link (embedded MySpace clip) – Thanks Emperor!
Adam Jarvis of Vectorvault, a webzine dedicated to vector art, sent us this neat post of his interview with Nathan Jurevicius of Scary Girl.
I’m a big fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (took my wife on our first date to see it), so Nathan’s style is a wonderful reminder of that.
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Here’s a new performance by Improv Everywhere: a spontaneous Food Court Musical!
… 16 agents create a spontaneous musical in a food court in a Los Angeles mall. Using wireless microphones and the mall’s PA system, both their voices and the music was amplified throughout the food court. All cameras were hidden behind two-way mirrors and other concealed structures.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] (Can I get a napkin, please?) | Improv Everywhere website – Thanks kyax!
Previously on Neatorama: Frozen in Grand Central
Scattered throughout Chicago are more than 30 woolly fabric as "crochet graffiti" by an underground artist group Micro-Fiber Militia.
So here’s the obvious question: is crocheted art a form of vandalism?
Unlike spray-painted graffiti, which is more permanent and can be considered destructive to property, Kristin argues that her pieces don’t actively destroying anything and are more fleeting. She prefers the term “artistic littering.”
“I’m sewing it on,” she said, acknowledging that her work can be destroyed by a quick snip of the scissors. “It’s not buttons or Velcro that people can’t take off easily.”
The Chicago Police Department tends to agree. “Since there is no criminal defacement to property, it would be difficult to categorize it as vandalism,” said Monique Bonds, a department spokeswoman.
Link (Photo: Bernard Manning) – Thanks Brad Flora!
Previously on Neatorama: Erika Barcott’s Tree Sweater | Soap Not Spray Can: Reverse Graffiti Art
Angela Yuan built this awesome Etch-A-Sketch clock that draws out the time and then erases itself every minute. It was built on the Arduino platform. Hit play or go to Link [Revver] | Angela’s website – Thanks Sean and SenorMysterioso!
That’s not grape juice … that’s wine served in baby bottles in a restaurant called Le Refuge des Fondues in Paris, France.
Ashley Thompson of Intelligent Travel blog tells us why:
Disgruntled servers and fondue restaurants are all over Paris, we know, but this is the only place that offers up some of the lowest-end table wine served in baby bottles. It seems that Le Refuge des Fondues found a clever little shortcut to getting around the mandated tax Parisian restaurants face when serving wine out of the slightly more traditional stemmed glass.
There’s an added benefit:
You know how drinking any sort of alcoholic beverage from a straw sometimes seems to hit you much harder? That same logic applies to drinking wine from a nipple.
Link (Photo: Jay McMillan) – Thanks Marilyn!
That’s the Last Supper … in balloons as twisted (right?) by Mr. Bubbles and fellow balloon twisters at the Fellowship of Christian Magicians in 2004.
More Last Supper posts on Neatorama
Oy, I’ve been hooked on "Bellen" ever since Brian Michael Brown AKA Box Brown sent me a link to his comic. It’s an adorable comic about lovers Ben and Ellen that will rot your teeth with sweetness.
Link (the very first one here) – Thanks Brian!
