First Fridays @ the L.A. Natural History Museum

I generally enjoy museums with one notable exception, natural history museums. They are kind of like zoos, but all the animals are dead. Since I don't hang out in cemeteries or morgues, I'm not really sure why I'd want to hang out with a bunch of taxidermied animals. My sentiment must be fairly common because many natural history museums across the country have started programs to expand the demographic of the typical museum visitor, which is currently people ages of 6 - 17 and transported by big yellow bus.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles is no exception. According to their website: "Once a month [January-June], the entire Natural History Museum stays open until 10 pm and features live music, exciting scientific discussion, and behind-the-scenes curatorial tours......".

So my friends and I went to check it out........ in March (obviously this is one of those anachronistic entries I warned you about). As promised by the museum's marketing blurb there was indeed live music, but you had to arrive early to get the wrist band for the show. There were also libations, but my friends and I don't drink, so instead we went exploring.

And discovered the B-E-S-T part of First Friday............the dinosaur.

Who would have guessed that this man:

could don a 50lb dinosaur costume to become dun, dun, dun:

The area where they keep the dinosaur is known as the Discovery Center, like the rest of the museum there are lots of dead things, but at least in this portion, it was interactive so you could do things like:

Get up close and personal with a polar bear

Cozy up with a crocodile.


Imitate a skunk.

And lest you think it's just me and my friends who behave like children, I snapped a picture of a two random guys taking the concept of 'going stag' quite literally.

Once we had our fill of the Discovery Zone, we walked around looking for other interesting finds, like perhaps locating something alive on display, and I really wish we hadn't found it.

Big ol' bugs. They had at least 8 varieties of roaches, a good sized scorpion (which btw glows blue if you shine it with a black light), and a couple tarantulas. My question: Why, oh why, in this land of dead things, did they have living, breathing giant bugs? Turns out they were on loan from somewhere else......lucky for the the bugs. I'm pretty sure they'd have to kill them if they wanted to add them to the permanent collection.

We also found a living breathing human on display........

However, he was working on something dead, and his look told me he wished I would drop dead.....or maybe he was just tired of being the subject of 20+ photos as I tried to get one that wasn't grainy. I wisely gave up.

Then we were on the hunt for something totally different, something out of this world, so we searched high and low, through every exhibit where we found dinosaur bones, rare gems, a snipe (they really do exist), and then tucked away in some distant corner we found something that defies explanation.

Could someone please explain why this creepy-looking cardboard city filled with plastic duck action figures was on display anywhere, let alone at a natural history museum? Yeah, me neither, but I think it was my favorite display. :)

So there you have it First Friday at the L.A. Natural History Museum. It was an evening of silly fun with my friends. Would I go again? That's an excellent question. Ask me again in January. :)

Let's see what should I blog about next: internet dating or Hawaii or soapbox races?