Sir Barken Hyena writes:

Lady Hyena has been getting restless lately, never a good thing, so I took her and myself for a few days in the Big City: The City of Angels in this case, a place we’ve only seen from the speeding window of the car before. Now, having been up close and personal I can make a surprising admission:

We love L.A.! Yes, the city everybody loves to rag on, butt of endless jokes and object of contempt for every New Yorker. As usual the conventional wisdom is only conventional. Here are a few high points from our trip:

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

What we have here is actually a work of art in the form of a museum. Some paint canvases, others write poems, David Hildebrand Wilson, the museum’s creator, makes fictional (or are they?) exhibits of curiosities, historical figures, social phenomenon and incredible animals.  Most of which never existed but if they did you’d want to know about it. Some of the exhibits are: the Deprong Mori, an Amazonian bat that uses radar, a history of the self-built travel trailer, a scientist’s long battle with Mt Wilson observatory, an innovative Armenian violinist, and folk cures treated as objectively verified scientific phenomena.

MJT is part homage to the menageries and Cabinets of Wonders that were the precursors of today’s museum, part sly joke about the nature of knowledge, part indulgence in the mystery of it all (the “jurassic” in the name is never explained), part nothing else you’ve seen. A must see for all fans of the bizarre.

http://mjt.org/

animal

Next up was dinner with the blogging sensation Blowhard, Esq. This was to be our second “Brush With Greatness” in Tinseltown – we had bumped into Ron Perlman in a kabob restaurant earlier that day. We asked him to pick a place to “wow” the ignorant hayseed in us with Big City sophistication. We got it.

First of all there’s no sign on this restaurant, which I think is hilarious. Atmosphere wise it’s a typical trendoid place, with the usual suspects in place, but thankfully it’s also just too fun to be pretentious. In any case the conversation was too good to notice – highlights were some great stories Blowhard, Esq. shared about writer and raconteur Lloyd Fonvielle.

The food was spectacular, kind of a fusion-tapas thing where you order a bunch of smaller entrees. The stars, we all agreed, were the rabbit-shrimp sausage spring rolls in green curry, the yellowfin sushi tostada, and the black bean ribs. Only the kale was just OK but what do you expect from kale?

Desert was also amazing though the tres leches was a bit too sweet. All in all a spectacular meal and a great time. Highly recommended.

http://animalrestaurant.com/

Up Next: Brutal Churches & Martian Invasions