Monsters Mummies & Mayhem

Location: Hollywood, California, USA
Address: 1660 N Highland Ave.
Date: June 2019
Website:  thehollywoodmuseum.com/

    The Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles has so many movie props and memorabilia that they fill every nook and cranny.  Since it is the Halloween season we thought we would revisit their basement and a few classic horror movie icons.

  First off is an old classic, Frankenstein. While the novel was written in 1818, we are talking movies here. This Frankenstein was played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film and is seen above with his bride from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein.

  There were life masks of Boris Karloff and Bela Legosi. Bela Legosi had played Dracula and along with Boris was part of Universal Studio's classic monster movies.

   Another early creature that scared audiences was the great ape, King Kong.  The original King Kong was a stop motion model.  The museum had various King Kongs on display.

  Flying ahead a few decades there were some birds from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  We are not sure if these were just props or former movie stars preserved for future generations.

  While not a movie monster herself, Elvira became very popular in the 1980s as a host presenting B grade horror movies.  Horror movies had never really gone away, but the 80s saw a group of classic horror villains rise to stardom and appear in numerous sequels.

  Michael Meyers changed Haloween night forever and gained his place as one of the greatest characters in slasher film history.  Michael escapes from a sanitarium and visits his hometown for a night of fright and murder.  Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a babysitter that Michael is stalking while wearing a plain white mask.  So far there have been eleven Halloween films.

   The next mask wearer to terrorize teenagers is Jason Voorhees from the Friday The 13th movies.  He drowned as a boy and is best known for wearing his hockey mask while slashing his way through twelve (or is it only eleven?) movies.  This franchise just has to make Friday The 13th: The 13th.

  The next horror franchise to arrive in the 1980s started with A Nightmare On Elm Street.  This movie starred Freddy Krueger who terrorized teenagers in their dreams.  Johnny Depp's Hollywood dreams came true after being one of Freddy's victims.  There have only been nine movies in this series but there was a Freddy vs Jason cross-over movie made.

  In the late 80s came Chucky.  He was a psychotic, knife wielding doll from the Child's Play movies.  Only 8 movies made so far.  He did find love in Bride of Chucky just like Frankenstein did over 60 years before him.  If you have ever seen videos of dogs wearing costumes, and we know you have, the Chucky costume is one of the best.

  The museum is crammed with movie props and costumes from many other films.  There was this stick figure from The Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project grossed almost 250 million dollars on a budget of less than 500 thousand.  It's shaky hand held camera work caused as much tension and fear as it did nausea.

   After having a role in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Johnny Depp spent a lot of time making movies with a Halloween feel to them thanks to director Tim Burton.  Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is both a Halloween and a Christmas classic.  Johnny's Sweeney Todd costume was on display. 

   We headed upstairs again to escape from the horrors we had seen in the basement.  We did spot a couple more monsters up in a corner.  Mike Wazowski and Sulley from Monsters Inc. are a little less creepy than the hundereds of items you can find in The Hollywood Museum's dungeon.

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Map of Our World
The Hollywood Museum

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Post # 292

Frasier On The Backlot

Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Address: 5515 Melrose Ave.
Date: June 2019
Website: www.paramountstudiotour.com

  After a successful run on the sitcom Cheers, the character of Frasier Crane was given his own show.  Frasier aired for 11 seasons as did Cheers before it.  We were fans of both shows.

  Kelsey Grammer played the role of Frasier and didn't have far to go between jobs.  Both shows were filmed at Paramount Studios and both shows were filmed on Stage 25.  We took a Paramount Studio tour when we were in Los Angeles.  We were able to see the exterior of this famous sound stage as well as visit a section of the backlot where one episode from the first season of Frasier was filmed.

  The Paramount backlot has a section named SOHO after the New York City area.  In episode six of season one, Frasier purchases a piece from an art gallery.  He is embarrased when the artist comes to his party and declares the work a fraud.  Frasier is angry and further frustrated when the art gallery dealer insists all sales are final.  He stands on the street ready to throw a brick through the gallery window.  Frasier would be standing between the bike rider and the green subway entrance in the photo above.  The subway entrance was removed in order to film the scene.

  A couple walks by and Frasier hides his brick behind his back.  You can see the building above behind them as they cross the street.  Frasier turns to throw his brick but this time his brother Niles pulls up in his car.  Niles tries to calm Frasier by telling him of a time Frasier stopped him from exacting revenge.  Frasier gives Niles the brick and reminds him of how stromg he was despite the nicknames, such as Peachfuzz.  Niles hurls the brick through the window, tosses some money into the gallery and leaves.  

"We may be barbarians, but we pay for our pillaging!"

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See more locations from the Paramount Studios Backlot.

Map of Our World

Paramount Studios (Soho)

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Post # 285

Easter Island Dreaming

Location: New York City, New York, USA
Address: 200 Central Park West
Date: Sept 2007
Website: https://www.amnh.org

  Easter Island remains on our bucket list.  It is a small island located about 3220 km west of Chile and received its name from a Dutch explorer who found it on Easter Sunday 1722.  The island is famous for its large stone sculptures called moai.  Just because we have yet to make it to the island, does not mean that some of the island has not made its way to us.

  At the American Museum of Natural History in New York City there is a plaster cast of a moai statue on display.  The mold was made from one of the real moai during a museum expedition to Easter Island in 1935.  A copy of this cast statue comes to life and was featured in the movie Night At The Museum.  Brad Garrett voices the character that spends most of its time asking for some gum.  Sorry, gum gum.

  Las Vegas always tries to copy everything so it makes sense that it has a replica of an Easter Island statue.  The Vegas strip has its own Eiffel Tower, Venice, New York City and even an active volcano among the copied structures.  The strip used to have two Easter Island statues outside the Aku Aku restaurant which was part of the Stardust casino.  The restaurant and casino are no longer around.

  One of the statues was moved off of the strip and placed in Sunset Park. It sits on an island in the pond at the center of the park.  Not quite Easter Island but it is still an island none the less.

  London, England  has a few replica Easter Island statues as well as the real deal.  There are replica statues sunken in the shark tank at Sea Life London Aquarium.

  Sand Tiger Sharks spend their days swimming around while these giant heads keep a close eye on them.  Unlike these replica statues the real Easter Island statues all reside on land although many have sunk deeper into the soil through the centuries.

  The closest we have ever come to Easter Island is at the British Museum where they have an actual statue that was transported from the island back in 1868.  This statue is called Hoa Hakananai'a.  Easter Island has requested that it be allowed to return home again.  If they let us know, we will gladly accompany it on the ride home and then we can cross another item off of our bucket list.

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Map of Our World

Sea Life London Aquarium
Sunset Park
American Museum of Natural History , British Museum

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Post # 283

Dan's Greenhouse

Location: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, USA
Address: 626 Front Street #4
Date: Feb 2017
Website: www.facebook.com/DansGreenHouse

  Front Street in Lahaina is filled with many shops and restaurants.  One of our favourite places to visit when on the Hawaiian island of Maui is Dan's Greenhouse.  We leave Front street and hurry up the stairs to the top floor.  The shop is filled with exotic plants, birds and usually one or two mini-pigs.

  There are Fuku bonsai trees and other plants just waiting to thrive under the Hawaiian sun.  As tourists we were not looking to take a plant home and didn't think customs would let us anyways.  We came to spend a little time with the wild animals who seem to enjoy seeing us as much as we enjoy seeing them.

 A black palm cockatoo was sitting by the window.  It looked as if he was in charge of flipping the OPEN sign at the end and start of each day.

    In the next window sat a beautiful female eclectus parrot.  These parrots have extreme sexual dimorphism.  The female is bright red and the male is bright green.  Easy to tell them apart, but people used to think they were two different species.

  In a small little pen in the middle of the store were two little piggies.  They were so cute and were wearing floral leis.  These are known as Göttingen mini-pigs and grow to be about 35 kg as adults.  The myth of the teacup pig isn't true.  Be careful if buying a pig as a pet as you don't want your little cuddly piglet to end up being a 200 kg plus porker.  These two little guys grew on us while we were visiting, but only in our hearts.

  As we headed for the door, one last bird wanted our attention.  A bare-eyed cockatoo was speaking to us.  It wasn't long before it had hopped up onto one of our shoulders to get a better look.  We spent some time talking with our new feathered friend until the store owner moved it back to its perch.  Good-bye little friends.  That includes all of you pigs, birds and even plants.  After all some positive words never hurt a plant's growth.

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Map of Our World

Dan's Green House

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Post # 282

Ethel M Chocolate Factory & Cactus Garden

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Address: 2 Cactus Garden Dr.
Date: March 2020
Website: www.ethelm.com

    Franklin Mars started the Mars Candy Factory in 1911 with his wife Ethel.  Today Mars makes Snickers, Twix, Mars bars and more.  Ethel is the Ethel M from a popular chocolate factory near Las Vegas, Nevada.

    While in Vegas you can take a short drive to see Ethel M chocolate being made in the factory.  It is made in small batches with no preservatives.

  The tour starts with a taste of some chocolate.  So far so good.  You then wander past the machines where the chocolate is prepared.  Next it is more machines that fill multiple molds and create patterns on top of the chocolates and then put them into cases and boxes.

  The end result is something like the giant chocolate wall at the end of the tour.  Thanks to all the different shapes and patterns you can identify which pieces to eat first when sampling from a box.

  After our tour we enjoyed a chocolate cappucino and some chocolate dipped strawberries. Very nice.

  Next it was outside to take a tour of the cactus garden located just behind the factory.  A little desert after dessert.

  If you still feel like food, there was purple pancake cactus on display.  We don't think they were very edible.

  There was a couple of Joshua Trees.

As well as a nice view of the mountains.

  There was also wildlife to be found in amongst the cactus.  Above is a male Costa's Hummingbird that is known for its purplish head if caught in the right light.  Its head feathers also sort of flare out on the sides.  It was sitting surprisingly still for a hummingbird.

  A small white, grey bird with a yellow head was all over the place.  We managed one good photo of it as it moved from branch to branch faster than we could get it into focus.  These birds are fairly common in Nevada and are known as Verdin.

  We enjoyed our visit to Ethel M.  A great chocolatier knows that chocolate and cactus work well together late in the afternoon.

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Map of Our World
Ethel M Cactus Garden
Ethel M Chocolate Factory

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Post # 280