Free Museum Day Part 1

Let me start by saying that it’s not that I’m not a fan of crowds. Crowds can be okay. For the most part, San Diego Comic Con is a well-behaved crowd until Saturday afternoon.

Nay, the thing that I’m not a fan of is uncivilized mob behavior. Which seemed to be the way people were acting on the Los Angeles Free-for-All Museum day.

Come on, people.

We can do better.

Anyway, my first stop was the Natural History Museum.

It seems to me that a typical Natural History Museum consists mainly of stuffed and mounted animals and I wasn’t wrong. Some of the cooler stuff were the things focused on local wildlife. For instance, this display of the butterflies of Griffith Park.

Griffith Park butterflies

In trying to fight my way through the mob, I found it difficult to take time on the things I wanted to see, but here, of course, is one of the big attractions, the T-Rex.

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth

The Los Angeles Natural History Museum has a Dino lab upstairs where you can watch some of the paleontologists working on their craft. Of course, you are reminded not to tap on the glass, as it will startle the scientists.

It startles the science.

I don’t think I have the patience to be a paleontologist. I’m not exactly sure how they are able to tell the difference between a fossil and a regular rock. Then again, the extent of my paleontological knowledge comes from that scene in Jurassic Park where the pulse an ultra sound through the ground and find a fully formed velociraptor in the dirt. The dinosaur they were working on just needed a few brushes to be revealed. I can’t imagine it is actually that easy.

I spent the rest of the time walking through the animals of North America exhibit. The thing that struck me was that I’ve killed almost all of those animals in Red Dead Redemption 2. Anyone for some caribou?

Also, I’m not really sure why the curators of the museum decided to make it look like this wolf was popping a squat, but I guess they want to show real life, warts and all.

Finally, we find the most terrifying exhibit in the ornithology wing.

Nightmare bird

Why, Los Angeles? WHY?

Free museum day comes up every so often in Los Angeles. The thing is, though, even when it’s not free, the cost is reasonable. If you are a Los Angeles resident and you have an LA County library card, there’s a way to get more free museum access.

Los Angeles has sort of been bumming me out lately. Saying that it bums me out doesn’t really do justice to the problems. People are getting attacked within spitting distance of my apartment, the police don’t respond to calls anymore, the homeless seem to think if they can’t have it, they must destroy it.

It’s hard to live in a place that doesn’t enforce its laws. It’s hard to live in a place where you get a fine if your dog shits on the street, but it’s okay if a human does it. For awhile in the summer, the new homeless trick was to poop in a disposable cup and leave it under the tire of a parked car so that when the car pulled away, it would smear and track the human feces down the road.

This is bad. This is disgusting. I don’t have much sympathy for people who do this sort of thing.

I’m trying to find the good things about Los Angeles, the cultural offerings, the things that make is unique and desirable because I’ve started looking for a way out.