Round and round

Magnet #167 - Binghamton, NY

Yep, another roadtrip, but this stop was semiplanned. The goal: to try and ride the carousels of Greater Binghamton.

Two reasons why:

1. I used to be the editor of a trade newsletter/magazine called Carousel, which covered carnival news around the United States. (Stop laughing. I can hear you. And yes, that's another magnet.)
2. Apparently, there are only 170 antique carousels left in North America. And this town has six of them...and all of them are listed in the National Historic Register.

C'mon. That right there is reason enough. I'm not even a big fan of carousels, but how can you pass up the chance to ride them!

Ummmm....well, we sorta did. We got there and managed to ride only two of the six. Yes, yes, I know, magically I ended up with a button-turned-magnet that states otherwise. (We made friends at the visitors center.)

Funnily enough, the price to ride the carousels was one piece of litter. But, it's like the honor system...plus? There wasn't any litter at the carousel at the park. I promise!

Looks like that Keep America Beautiful campaign's workin' out well for them.

There's always room for Jell-O!

Magnet #166 - Jell-O Museum

I'm not gonna lie. This museum's been on my to-do list forever, and I still haven't made it there. Kinda like the American Airlines museum down in Texas, or the SPAM museum up in Minnesota, or the Winchester house out in California.

But, a friend of mine went to the Jell-O Museum up in LeRoy, New York. By all accounts, a fun museum.

Though...really? They don't sell Jell-O?

Little America

Magnet #165 - Roadside America

During an unplanned roadtrip across Pennsylvania (the trip itself was planned, the stops along the way were...not), we stopped at this odd little building called Roadside America, in Shartlesville (no, I'd never heard of it, either), PA.

Once you get out of your car, you feel like you've stepped right into the 1950s. From the little old ladies running the register and the little shop, to the aged facilities, and the hand-penned signage and the cool, somewhat retro tchotchkes.

But this magnet does no justice to the largest miniature village in the world. I dunno if that's truly what it is, but take a gander at this and this and this and finally, this. C'mon. How freakin' awesome is this village.

The entire room is a diorama of the history of America. This guy basically carved and built all the buildings over a period of like 60 years - and there's about 300 buildings! And I'm not counting all the cars and people and animals and trees and grass and railways that he and his family maintained throughout the years, as well. It's massive.

But here's the absolute best part. So at the far end of the diorama, there's a small seating area, where everyone sits when the lights go down and night falls across the land. And then. And THEN! On the far wall, right where the Statue of Liberty is, a bright light is projected on to the wall.

And remember in grade school, when they used to have filmstrips for us? Dudes. A filmstrip starts playing, and a full moon comes up. And images of Jesus sitting and little children at his knee pops up. And a Verse comes up. And in a rousing fit of patriotism, the American Flag pops up as the you hear the strains of "God Bless America" begin to swell.

It's just fantastic - and just what you'd expect from what's arguably one of the last, great Roadside Attractions in America.

Turn left! Turn left!

Magnet #164 - Lucy the Elephant

It's summer, and the best time of year for roadtrips and sidetrips, so I thought I'd do a little miniseries on Roadside Attractions.

For those of you who don't know, there are a TON of roadside attractions here in the States, so much so that there's an entire web site (and indeed, culture) devoted to these weird places of interest. These are the forgotten, or little-known, attractions that you find along the way to your real destinations. The serendipitous pieces of history that time and major highways forgot. The unplanned (or sometimes, planned, if you're me) detours that add on a couple hours to your trip. The wacky pitstops that, when you woke up that morning, you never imagined you'd be standing in the shadow a 65-foot elephant with a funny french manicure.

So, on Saturday, as we were headed down the Jersey shore, I was sitting in the backseat, minding my own business, when suddenly I saw a roadsign for Lucy the Elephant, with an arrow pointing left. As we moved through the traffic light, I was a little puzzled, and more than a little intrigued, when toward my left I saw one of those seats (a giant one, floating in the air) that you put on top of an elephant, peeping above the buildings.

I yelled out, "Turn left! We have to turn left!" I'm quite sure that my sister and her fiance thought I was joking, because of the Turn Left episode of Doctor Who, where Donna Noble changed the entire course of history by turning right, instead of left. When they realized I was serious, the fiance hurriedly turned left two blocks down, and we began to instinctively navigate back to where I saw the giant, disembodied elephant seat...with me bouncing in the backseat like a kid going to a candy store.

And what we found was Lucy the Elephant, of Margate, NJ!!!!

OMG. She was fanTASTic! How often do you accidentally run across a giant elephant on the way to wherever you're going? So we stopped. I'm sad to report that I did not do the tour of the inside of Lucy, but we did go into the little shop - hence the little magnet, which I freakin' love.

So why is there a 65-foot elephant in the middle of the Jersey Shore? Well, the real history's is here at her official site. But, basically, a real estate developer back in the 1880s wanted to attract attention to his properties in the area. And so he built a giant freakin' elephant to get people from far and wide to come.

And, 127 years later, it's registered as a National Historic Landmark, and people are still coming from far and wide to see Lucy.

Down the Jersey Shore

Magnet #163 - Cape May, NJ

Soooo, yesterday, if you'd said that I'd spend my sister's big birthday weekend down the Jersey Shore, I'd probably have laughed at you. Mostly, because ya'll know how I detest beaches. But also because for some reason beyond me, I didn't associate either Atlantic City or Cape May, NJ, part of the Jersey Shore.

Clearly, both are next to the water, but I just didn't think about it.

We spent much of today in Cape May - the only town in all of America designated as a historic landmark - looking at the supercute Victorians, visiting the lighthouse, running around the little shops, and yes, walking on the beach and even(!) dipping a toe or two or ten in the freezing cold Atlantic.

The best surprise of yesterday was a giant elephant (yep, I'll eventually get to that in a later magnetpost), but the coolest surprise of today was seeing a World War II bunker on the beach. I've been to Normandy, and seen the WWII bunkers there, so, seeing a bunker on a beach shouldn't have been so jarring. But, I honestly hadn't a clue that we had our own bunkers on U.S. soil. How cool is that. A little scary, but still cool.

Also a little scary? How much food one can consume in a weekend. Between the Philly cheesesteak taste tests between Pat's and Geno's in Philly (jury's still out), the Borgata buffet (pretty damn good, though the Bellagio's better), and seafood (seeing as how it was the beach) along the shore, I'm surprised I didn't just roll down the railroad tracks back up to NYC. Yikes.

No, really - talk about Cash in the Attic

Magnet #162 - Blue duck

If you've read any page on this blog, you know that I have a serious anglotelephile (teleanglophile?) habit. I can't stand Brit humor shows, but give me a drama or action/adventure, and I'm your gal. Which doesn't explain my newest obsession at all.

While I was home sick a couple of weeks ago, I was completely sucked into my new favorite show Cash in the Attic, with my new favorite presenter Alistair Appleton and my new favorite valuer Paul Hayes. Basically the Cash team comes to your home, rummages around for stuff to take to auction, and then auctions off the stuff to help raise money for a particular goal.

Seriously. I can't stop watching it. And BBC-A airs the hell out of them during the day, so when I get home at night, there's like five episodes all ready to roll.

Some of the homes are just full of crap. But some of the most gorgeous homes are just amazingly stuffed to the gills with...quality crap. What's funny is that it's really only in Europe that you'd have a beautiful serving plate from the 1700s just sitting in some box in the garage, or you've been using a 1800s sheet music rack as a TV remote holder and just not realized that it's worth hundreds of pounds. It's amazing.

Now, I'm dying to go to my mom's house in North Carolina. Our house is jampacked with flow blue plate sets and other treasures - the result of hot summers of antiquing, with me stuck in some dusty shop while my parents went rummaging around for yet another stack of blue plates. Now? I want to turn over every. single. plate. she owns. Of course, with my luck, the Georgian period plates are really the Bush, Sr. era. Heheh.

Hmmm. I wonder if this little duck magnet's worth anything. I really can't remember where it came from - either it was from Holland, or Dutch country. I turned it over, and it has no markings beyond the magnet. So, while it's supercute, I'd put maybe only 50p - 75p price band on it.

Do I hear 80p?

Pure as the snow under that tire over there

Magnet #161 - SoapNet Pure

<---- The second in my SoapNet swag magnets.

Am I the only person on the planet watching that new ABCFamily series Secret Life of an American Teenager? It's this new family-oriented drama brought to you by Brenda Hampton - the same woman who gave us RevCam and the 7th Heaven bunch.

Secret Life has me puzzled as hell. I can't figure out if I'm offended by the exteme stereotyping in this "Brendavision" show.

At the heart of the show is a 15-year-old all-American teenage girl who got herself knocked up one awkward, misguided night...at Band Camp.

The rest of the show is an extremely contrived community of high school students from all walks of life and religions, an intricately complicated set of parents who have either dated or married or are sleeping with each other, and a soundtrack and sets repurposed from 7th Heaven.

Consider:

The born-again Christian family is the blondest blond family to ever blond. The neurotically perfect cheerleader daughter is sporting a purity ring, which drove her football jock boyfriend into the arms of the resident bad-girl.

The bad-girl who is pretty much the fallen Eve figure, a Latina chick who loves sex and isn't afraid to tell EVERYone, with a promiscuous flight attendant mother who not only leaves her daughter alone frequently, but tells her daughter that the married-to-another boyfriend is being allowed stay at the house while she's away. And, by the way, Brenda, I love the slightly Latin score whenever you pan across her inappropriate-for-school attire as she sways down the hall.

The pregnant girl's family was seemingly perfect, except that the father's sleeping with Latina chick's mom, and has now left to move in with Latina chick.

The foster kid with a heart of gold whose own personal traumas prevent him from connecting with anyone, except for his counselor, who just learned that the kid is about to be a father.

The requisite Catholic best friend can't believe she has a friend who's not only considering an abortion, but whose parents are possibly getting divorced.

The requisite African-American best friend who has quickly become my favorite because she doesn't do anything but advise the pregnant chick to tell her parents.

The pregnant girl refuses to talk about how she's pregnant. WTF? She's 15. And now, her new boyfriend that she's in love with and is in love with her has asked her to marry him. Again, WTF?

The Asian best friends of the stupid boyfriend who are dating each other, but who function as the chorus, a conduit of gossip, and a fount of sexual data.

And on and on the travesty goes.

So why am I watching? Well, for starters, it's summer.

But, really, it's because with each ridiculous word that comes out of the actors' mouths, I wonder just what the hell is Brenda's vision.