Fairy Dust-Up

Spiritualism, a religious movement that touted a belief in the ability of the living to communicate with the spirit world, enjoyed a period of popularity from the 1840-1920s. The bloodshed of the Civil War and WWI left a whole lot of people missing their loved ones, and wishing they could somehow breach the chasm between our world and whatever may come next. The movement embraced a generally paranormal worldview, touting everything from clairvoyance to spiritual healing.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was among the most passionate converts to the Spiritualist cause. The author wrote passionately about the power of séances, embarked on a world speaking tour to win converts to the cause, and even broke up his bromance with Harry Houdini when the magician spoke out against the faith. Doyle took his biggest pro-Spiritual stance in 1922, when he published The Coming of the Fairies. And no, it wasn’t a novel.

Cheez Whiz!

America is a nation of Big Gulps, 72-oz steaks, Cookie Monster, and Man vs. Food marathons on the Travel Channel every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. We’re the land of the free, and the home of the Whopper. Our national love of loosened belt buckles is in our blood- while our forefathers may never have ordered Denny’s Maple Bacon Sundae or Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco, they set the stage for our future gluttony with a really big, political hunk of cheese.

Pandamonium

A few weeks ago, I made a visit to the International Museum of Crytozoology in Portland, Maine. For those of you who don’t watch Finding Bigfoot (spoiler: they don’t), cryptozoology is the study of animals that have not been proven- or disproven- to exist. The museum is a shrine to all creatures questionable. It’s a wonderland.

Consisting of two rooms, the museum boasts tufts of hair glued to pieces of paper, a full-sized stuffed bigfoot, exhibit labels written on hole-punched looseleaf (sample text: “Have you ever heard of anything scarier than the Chupacabra? If you have, that’s a miracle!”), a lot of Harry and the Henderson action figures, a Fiji mermaid television movie prop, and a case of stuffed animals depicting the abominable snowman from those stop-action Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer movies. The staff kitchen sits among what we will refer to, for lack of a better word, as the exhibits.

The museum was good for me, because I don’t claim to be well-versed on cryptids. I don’t know how Nessie got loched-up, or where Bigfoot buys his footwear (Big and Tall, I assume). In my mind, I call the abominable snowman the abdominal snowman, which sounds like the lovechild of the Situation and a polar bear. So I was surprised to see a familiar face mixed among the moth men and Mautauk monsters in the museum’s displays: the panda bear. What was he doing here?

Bourne Again

A.J. Brown had no memory of the past two months. He had woken up to the sound of a gunshot, and found himself in a strange bed in a strange city. When he frantically woke his neighbors, they were confused: his name wasn’t Brown, it was Bourne… and he had been sleeping in the back of his own candy store.

Sadly, it’s not a teaser for The Bourne Confectionery, in which Matt Damon strangles enemies with Twizzlers and puts jawbreakers to literal use (don’t steal this screenplay idea). It is, however, the story that inspired the Bourne films. On the big screen, Damon plays Jason Bourne, an amnesiac CIA agent who battles would-be assassins and struggles to remember his true identity. Ansel Bourne, his historical namesake, is the guy described above. His story is lighter on the hand-to-hand combat and heavier on the religious awakenings, but it’s still got blockbuster written all over it.

Pot Head

History is full of nagging questions. What happened to the Roanoke colonists? Who was Jack the Ripper? Why is Johnny Appleseed wearing that pot on his head?

The last of these mysteries seems strangest of all. I, for one, always assumed that artists were just trying to make Johnny look resourceful and thrifty. I reasoned that they must want him to be appear like the kind of guy who, when he loses his Dodgers cap, just shrugs his shoulders, goes into the kitchen and rinses out the cookware (or, when handed a bunch of appleseeds, gets to work on a fuss-free national planting spree). It most definitely did not occur to me that this unorthodox mode of head-warming might actually reflect some bizarre historical reality. Certainly, our American folk hero was not just some sort of unwashed eccentric. Right?

Collateral Damage

Before you throw stones at the man in this story, look in the mirror. We’ve all been there. Up too late, online shopping, you spot a steal. It can be yours for nothing more than a credit card number, and you consider the purchase all too briefly before adding it to the cart. Before you have time to regret it, the damage is done. Next thing you know, UPS is delivering the box to your lobby. What were you thinking? You don’t need another mastodon!

Dumb Jocks

It’s Olympic time, and that means the world’s best athletes to competing in classic battles of brawn, speed and agility. Battles like gymnastics, diving, and rowing. Battles like pole vaulting, boxing, and 100m dash. Battles like…table tennis, canoeing, and trampolining? Sure, why not.

Inspired by these oddball Olympic events of 2012, let’s revisit some of the strange sports that got our grandparents cheering- at least for a while. Ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously boring, or just plain ridiculous, these are the sports that time forgot.

Axeman Cometh

At the end of a hard day, we all need to unwind: a nice glass of wine, a long shower, a good workout, a big slice of cake, a moment of meditation, a six-hour marathon of dvr’d Four Weddings episodes. Wait, is that last one just me?

Don’t be too quick to judge. For one thing, all programming on The Learning Channel has to be pretty educational (for instance, Four Weddings has taught me that if you don’t like the food at a wedding reception at which you are a guest, you should feel free to dramatically gag on your steak and then order pizza to be delivered to the banquet hall).

Two, there are guiltier relaxation combos than even sweatpants and reality tv. Jazz and serial killing, say. The New Orleans Axeman knows what I’m talking about. For two years, this serial killer kept the citizens of New Orleans running scared…and ready to dance.

Eh Christmas Tree

This is Boston’s Christmas tree. Every year, it is lit on the Common, giving commoners like me the chance to bask in the glow of holiday cheer and tiny lightbulbs. The tree brings all the serenity and charm of Stars Hollow to the bustling Boston downtown, but with less fast-paced banter and fewer roaming musicians to disturb the peace and quiet. It’s as peaceful a scene as one can imagine- and it’s all thanks to the worst man-made accidental explosion in history.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

The Mattern girls had two baskets of Barbies and two Ken dolls. Hot Ken wore a tuxedo, even if he was just sitting on the living room floor with his legs sticking straight out. He and his wife owned a clothing store, and sometimes they would lay all their stock out on the linoleum front lawn for a killer sale. Since they had a monopoly on plastic heels and snap-back dresses, Hot Ken and his trophy wife were rollin’ in it. They lived in the nicer of the two Dream Houses (the other one was in a bad neighborhood, over by the bookshelves) and drove a pink convertible. If he hadn’t been such an upstanding family man, he could have cheated on his wife a hundred times over. Everyone could see the star-shaped twinkle in his eye, though- he thought about it.