Madame Tussaud's Las Vegas - Originally Published 2010

Once again, Animated Meat ventures into the underbelly of the city and pulls back the curtain on places you’ve wondered about but never bothered with.  In this installment, Madame Tussaud’s Las Vegas.

Madame Tussaud’s bills itself as an interactive wax museum.  What does that mean?  It means that they have dropped the velvet rope and allow visitors to stand right next to the sculptures and take pictures.  That’s pretty much it to the interactivity of the museum.

The quality of the sculptures is remarkable.  Wax museums in my past have left me jaded.  To Madame Tussaud’s credit, I never once wondered to myself, “Who is that supposed to be?”

Bring your camera, because this is a museum that you need to check all your coolness at the door in order to really enjoy.  The museum is populated with celebrities both current and former and from all professions, just waiting for you to make a fool of yourself in front of. 

I’ll give them a whole lot of credit for making a statue of Chuck Liddell.

M & M World - Originally Published 2010

M&M World gets referred to in publications as a museum.  I’m not sure if this is a mistake on the consumer’s part or if the blame lies on M&M corporate.  We wandered into it because I had seen it billed as a “museum”.

However, a museum it is not.  It’s a colossal emporium where you can get anything M&M oriented you would like.  Just don’t go there looking for a history lesson on the brand.

We went midweek and the place was packed with visitors.  That’s an accomplishment because this store is no less than four stories stocked to the rafters with the smiling spokes-candies stamped, embroidered, embossed, and extruded on items that run the gamut of price points.  Speaking of prices, I wouldn’t recommend going there looking for a bargain.  Even the candy seemed pricy.

If you have a couple grand lying around, they have some trinkets for you.

They even have M&M dog items.  This is a bold maneuver because chocolate is toxic to dogs.

I think the thing that fuels purchases at M&M World is something known as the guilt factor.  Mom and dad have gone to Vegas for some adult fun and forgot for a while that they’re parents.  As a result, they go and buy an overpriced M&M plush item to smooth over things with their little princess who had to stay in the hotel room all night.

Bonanza Gift Shop - Originally Published 2010

Somewhere in China, there is an industrial town where all of the local residents are employed by the local factory.  Every morning at dawn, they rise and go through their routines.  They file down the streets and through the iron gates of the grey industrial complex.

I suppose there are signs on the wall that translate to phrases such as “Work is Our Pleasure” and “The People’s Party Makes Us Free”.  The complex is filled with miles of tables where the locals sit for sixteen hours a day and produce so that the Chinese government will grow stronger.  The workers’ reward for their labor is knowing that the people of China are free from the yoke of capitalism and greed.

So what is it that these nameless drones produce?  Las Vegas ashtrays and shot glasses for the Bonanza Gift Shop.  Enough is produced in this factory town to fill this robust store. 

The Bonanza Gift Shop is 40,000 square feet of any kind of Las Vegas trinket one could ever hope to lay hands on.   You name it and they have it.

The Watts Towers - Originally Published

Have you ever read the poem “Monte Blanc” by Percy Bysshe Shelley?  It seems that old P.B. went and took a look at a mountain in France.  Upon viewing, he has what a religious man may describe as nothing less than a spiritual experience. 

He has an intense sense of connection with the mountain.  On the one hand, he is completely dwarfed and made insignificant by it. However, at the same time he realizes that he and it are interconnected.

This is the magical moment that Animated Meat seeks out.  The moment when a human mind is blown.  And seeing the Watts Towers in person provides just that.

Why does it do so?  Because it goes to work on both sides of the brain.  On the one side, the brain goes into overdrive in order to take in all of the visual appeal of the place.  On the other side, the rational brain tries to sort through the facts.  Simon Rodia was a four-foot eleven immigrant from Italy that spent nearly every free moment of his time constructing the towers.  There was no math and no machinery here.  Not even a TIG welder.  Just a little old man climbing up the side of the towers, all to complete his vision.  

And by towers, I mean towers.  The tallest of them soars almost one hundred feet above the neighborhood.

God bless all of the people that struggle to keep and present this treasure to the world.

Halloween Club - Originally Published 2010

Being a peer-edited scientific journal, Animated Meat seeks to shed light on the mysteries of the universe.  Today, we ask the question, “What happened to all the adults?”

Adults.  Remember them?  They were those folks with mustaches and lower back pain that drove AMCs.  They used to tell us when it was time for bed and to turn down that god damned racket.  I’m not sure when it happened, but it seems that they very quietly disappeared somewhere back in the 1990’s.

Take the Halloween Club, for example.  This is a year-round store in Santa Fe Springs devoted to all things spooky.  It’s well stocked and the staff was great.  They were attentive and helpful.

But a year-round Halloween store?  I don’t think that this would have flown back in 1976.  Why?  Because 1970’s moms were worried about being good moms.  They didn’t concern themselves with dressing like a slutty stewardess. 

Do you have $1000 sitting around?  If you do, they have a storm trooper outfit for you.  The adults that used to be around wouldn’t be interested in something like that.  That same thousand dollars could be used to put a new roof on the house.

But as I said, this place is incredibly well stocked.  There’s even a cannibal butcher shop.  Stock up, because the peeled off face is on special this week.

And while I’m busy calling our generation’s ability to be adults into question, I want to point out these costumes.  Yep.  Leatherface, Jason, and a pimp all in child sizes.