...where I write about my visits to oddities of art, nature, history, and culture across the country and world, as well as my life in between the oddities.
OTIS Visit
Naperville, Illinois
05.19.2013
Gigantic Gumshoe: The Dick Tracy Statue
We visit the giant statue of an 80-year-old fictional detective that Warren Beatty tried to get me to care about almost a quarter of a century ago. Yes, that's how you can describe the year 1990.
Random Photos
05.18.2013
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| My day in three frames. |
Oddity News
05.16.2013
- Boston Bomber buried in Virginia.
- Strange white foam seeps up from beneath a street in China.
- Man restores Galileo shuttle prop from Star Trek: The Original Series.
- Hong Kong's pink dolphins at risk.
- Bizarre, toothy marine carcass washes up on New Zealand beach.
- Slideshow of abandoned cities across the world.
- Vatican hates Mexican death saint.
- Detroit's 10-foot-tall RoboCop statue cast and ready for bronzing.
- Old pieces of wedding cake from celebrity weddings are highly collectible.
- Mysterious, tiny wooden coffins filled with tiny wooden bodies found in 1836 in Scotland on display.
Random Photo
05.15.2013
Headed to the Chicago area for a couple of days. Last time I was there I met this guy:
Random Photo
05.14.2013
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Astronaut Chris Hadfield's recent orbit rendition of David Bowie's Space Oddity reminded me that I've had this on the wall of my study for more than a decade. Multiple studies over the course of a decade, actually. From back when personal printers and tons of fonts were a novelty.
OTIS Visit
Seattle, Washington
05.13.2013
Alien Architecture: The Space Needle
Every major city has a Signature Tall Thing. For most of them, it’s usually just a relatively boring office building. In Seattle, Washington, it’s a tribute to extraterrestrials built by Satanists...
Random Photo
05.13.2013
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My Saturday in the Bronx wasn't just all bell towers.
It was also trash, razor wire, and alleys.
Random Photo
05.12.2013
OTIS Visit
Milford, PA
05.08.2013
These Colors Run: The Bloody Lincoln Flag
Local history museums are the attics of entire towns. Everything old and weird and that people don’t want to throw out but don’t know what else to do with ends up there. Like the blood of Abraham Lincoln or the noose of an executed wife murderer...
Oddity News
05.06.2013
- A sunken town in Italy whose tower still juts above the water.
- 1,700-year-old Roman cemetery found beneath UK parking lot.
- Fully stocked, 50-year-old fallout shelter discovered in Wisconsin family's back yard.
- Amazing giant metal creature sculptures in the desert outside San Diego.
- Six-inch, alien-looking Atacama skeleton turns out to be human.
- Antique, taxidermy frog sculptures in the Frog Museum of Switzerland.
- Freud's couch in London needs a restoration.
- Hundreds of yellow spheres found beneath Quetzalcoatl's temple outside Mexico City.
- Bray Studios, the site of many Hammer Horror movies from the 50s and 60s to be torn down.
- Historical marker unearthed in Cambridge, MA.
Random Photo
05.05.2013
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| I know I still owe you my map of New England oddities. It's coming. Promise. |
Random Photo
05.04.2013
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| All right. May the 4th...whatever. Pic from a disastrous event I did last year for the New York Grimpendium. Well, not totally disastrous. This moment was my salvage. R2D2 not pictured. |
Random Post
05.02.2013
Thanks to yesterdays gruesome, "Researchers find proof of cannibalism in Jamestown" story, we started talking a bit on the OTIS Facebook Page about the 1999 movie Ravenous, which stars Robert Carlyle, Guy Pierce, and David Arquette. It takes place at a Sierra Nevada fort during the Mexican-American War and is about, well, cannibalism. It's an incredibly strong, tight, visceral movie that really doesn't get its due.
Anyway, a way cool OTIS reader named Michael sent me pictures of the Ravenous pressbook that he got his hands on back in the day. It's frankly spectacular, and purports to be a cookbook for "cooking with friends." Below are a few pics. I'm off to watch the movie again. Thanks, Michael. If you get ever get tired of the burden of awesomeness having this in your life means you have to bear, you know where to send it.
Random Post
05.01.2013
It's May 1, and just now getting warm here in central New England. Naturally, after a long winter of perfect health, I'm sick as a god. But I can't help but being excited about searching for oddities outdoors again. There are only so many museums I can take (which is quite a lot, honestly). Of course, OTIS is more of a road trip site than a hiking one, but every once in a while I'll un-atrophy my legs a bit by jaunting through a few miles of forest to see something particularly interesting. Even better if I can drive right up to it. So while I ride Halls and Hot Fries into recovery (wife's out of town), here's a look back at a selection of some of the strange stuff I've found in the middle of forests.
Oddity News
04.29.2013
Random Post
05.01.2013
It's May 1, and just now getting warm here in central New England. Naturally, after a long winter of perfect health, I'm sick as a god. But I can't help but being excited about searching for oddities outdoors again. There are only so many museums I can take (which is quite a lot, honestly). Of course, OTIS is more of a road trip site than a hiking one, but every once in a while I'll un-atrophy my legs a bit by jaunting through a few miles of forest to see something particularly interesting. Even better if I can drive right up to it. So while I ride Halls and Hot Fries into recovery (wife's out of town), here's a look back at a selection of some of the strange stuff I've found in the middle of forests.
Madison Boulder (Video)
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| Cave of Kelpius |
Oddity News
04.29.2013
- Massive, inflatable astronaut suit art installation in Poland.
- Robots discover more burial chambers under Quetzalcoatl's temple.
- "Pirate" ship for sale in Missouri.
- A look at the dilapidated Astor mansion in New York.
- Seven-foot-tall fiberglass head found in Hudson River.
- 9/11 plane debris found wedged between two buildings.
- Glow-in-the-dark sheep in Uruguay.
