Traveller's log: Ariel in CT

Now that Ariel is a freelance writer I wanted to take advantage of her talents for my own blog.  When she mentioned a trip out of town for the 4th I told her I would love to see her documentation of it.

I honestly couldn't be more happy I did either.  I actually watched the video before I read the post and I laughed so hard I cried.  I remembered after it was over that they had mentioned it at dinner but somehow it was nothing like I could have ever imagined.  I mean, wow, just wow.

I'm excited to present this to you:





The Amazing Adventures of a Traveling Smusher
Wack-in-the-Box: an Independence Daze

This holiday, in the spirit of celebrating my country (and my day off), my girlfriend and I, who affectionately think of each other as smushed up bulldogs, decided to do something wholesome for the Fourth of July. Because the only American tradition that I have ever known involves a lot of drinking, we called her cousin and his boyfriend, who are equally as cute and boring as us, and who we can rely on for a good-old adult time. So we rented a zipcar to spend the day touring the metropolitan area.


The most impressive (and confusing) stop on our odyssey was the strange roadside attraction known as “Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Center” in Middletown, Connecticut. For the life of me, the only word I can really think of to describe it is “creepy.” I spent a good deal of time simply trying to wrap my head around what exactly it even was. Here’s what I concluded: it appears to be a “collection of memorabilia,” (and I use the phrase loosely; “hoard of junk” also comes to mind) anything and everything you never wanted from the last fifty years or so, all on sale for a pretty penny. The building is completely covered in vivid murals- some generic psychedelic 60’s tie-dye, some amusement park haunted house characters, and a lot of half naked babes. Upon entering, it’s hard to know what to look at first: the wall of joke magnets, the racks of old fatigues, the sports star bobble-heads, the plethora of porn, or possibly this baffling “still-life” arranged on a stage in the back:


The lot outside has also amassed a similar array of treasures, including their claim to fame, a 33-foot tall jack-in-the-box, the world’s largest, with a clown head weighing a massive 600 pounds. It’s less like the surprise, pop-goes-the-weasel, from your childhood, and more of a terrifyingly slow, optical illusion out of a bad acid trip: 

Although my tone may seem rather cynical, I actually recommend stopping in if you are passing through, if for nothing more than the sheer bewilderment that will overcome you.

I give it 3 out of 5 Travel Smushers

why is this on the animal planet?

source



Last night I got sucked in to the Animal Planet while I made dinner and cleaned because of a new show (which i'm now obsessed with) called "Fatal Attractions".  If you've not seen it I highly recommend checking it out.  Each episode is an hour long and it's like a mini documentary of a few different cases of people who decided to keep exotic and deadly animals as pets.  It was so fascinating.  The first one I watched last night was about chimpanzees and focused a lot on that crazy woman in Connecticut who's pet chimpanzee ripped off that womans face.  They also talked to a woman who has two pet chimpanzees now and kept trying to justify why hers were different and why she wasn't concerned that they would some day rip off her face as well. 

The next episode was about tigers and they mostly talked about that guy in Harlem who kept the 500 lb Bengal tiger in his apt in the projects.  I mean, this guy was insane!!!  I was so torn with him because he subscribed to a lot of hippie meditation stuff that I could get on board with, but he didn't make a lot of sense and then there was the whole issue of him thinking it was appropriate to keep an adult female tiger in his apt.  I mean, his apt couldn't have been much bigger than mine and I have a hard enough time dealing with the detective.  I guess he at least can't bite me on the back of the neck and kill me, but he does stick his butt in my face a lot. 

But the real point of this post was the show that came on after the back to back episodes of "fatal attractions" which was called, "the haunted".  They did a lot of buildup for it so even though I wanted to go to bed I decided to stay up a little later and check it out.  I like shows about ghosts when they're done well and I figured it might get me in the mood for halloween too.  It did not. 

My first issue with the show is why it is on the Animal Planet at all.  They try to justify it by saying that the ghost stories have something to do with the family pet either being possessed or being able to sense spirits.  The story I watched (half of) only referenced their pet dog to say, "sometimes he'd bark at nothing, but we just figured that's what dogs do".  Then they would go on and on about how their daughter saw a woman with "boo boo's on her face".  I don't really care about your hayley joel osment wannabe daughter, I wanted to hear about a nice doggy, that's why I'm watching the animal planet. 

The bigger issue I have with the show however is that the story was dumb and not really as involved as they drew it out to be.  It's one of those shows where they show the same teaser clip over and over before they actually get to the part of the story where she finally says, "oh god, something touching me" and then it turns out that that's all she had to say to begin with.  I finally had to shut it off when they brought in the R.I.P.S. (rhode island paranormal society) experts.  There's only one group of douchey ghost hunters that I want to watch and it's the ones from Ghost Advenutres on the Travel channel.  This work computer won't let me deal with videos, or I would have shared a clip with you.  The show basically consists of these douchey frat guy types walking around supposedly haunted places and shit talking ghosts.  It's a lot of, "you wanna come at me bro?  do it, fuckin' come at me, i wanna see you try to mess with me" etc. 

The only good thing that came from the 15 minutes of me watching "the haunted" was this quote from the teenage daughter in reference to the haunted house that they moved in to:

     "you walked in to that house and you just wanted to punch somebody in the face"

I know the feeling sister, I know the feeling.