Day in L.A. Part 2: Ecosystem and Bitty Babies...

After checking out the space shuttle Endeavour, we enjoyed the rest of the California ScienCenter. Will, my 11-year-old, is very much in to ecology, thanks to his 5th grade teacher last year. So we checked out the Ecosystem exhibit, which was quite interesting. For those of you who can't remember back to high school freshman Earth science here is the definition of ecosystem:

So, we examined the sample ecosystems the ScienCenter provided, such as the ocean, desert and arctic.

My Mom and my boys

My Dad was asked to take a photo of a family with an iPad. I could have stepped in and offered to handle the technology, but I was too amused by Xan, 7, coaching grandpa on how to work it.

An ice wall in the arctic ecosystem exhibit. 

There was actually an exhibit called the Rot Room... this pig carcass housed flies and maggots.

The boys were completely fascinated by this display and I had to drag them out of it so we could stop by the Natural History Museum before we left Exposition Park to get some lunch.

Military readers: The L.A. Natural History Museum allows military families to get two adults and two children in to the museum for free... a savings of about $45. Just show your military ID. And there is a lot of great stuff kids love... such as dinosaur poop. Which was the only thing Xan remembered from his visit to the museum when he was 4. Not the dinosaur skeletons, not the stuffed elephants... petrified dinosaur poop. Sadly, I did not get a photo of the dino defecation... all the more reason for you to visit the museum yourself.

One of the things that I found fascinating as a child was Megamouth, a large, rare shark that was caught off of nearby Catalina Island. My kids thought it was cool... and I remember it as being bigger.

Here is proof I was actually there... Usually I am behind the camera.

I have always enjoyed the dioramas of stuffed animals the museum has had on display. Here are a few of my favorites:

One of the halls in the original museum has a domed foyer and this is the stained glass in the ceiling:

My favorite dino, Triceratops (with a T-rex breathing down its neck):

The boys checking out dinosaur howls. Turns out that some of them had anatomy that worked a lot like a trombone.

The museum also featured an "edible garden" with grapes, artichokes, etc. But they had a security guard in it so that you didn't eat anything. That just doesn't seem quite right to me. If you can't eat it, then it is not edible, is it?

With the 20-minute drive to lunch and the hour or so we spent in the Natural History Museum (and we definitely did not have a chance to see everything!), I had some time to get the pig carcass out of my mind before I chowed down. My parents love to eat at The Gumbo Pot in the old L.A. Farmer's Market whenever they are in the city, so we stopped there to eat... and to get my niece birthday presents at the American Girl doll store at the nearby mall, a place I would never otherwise venture in to.

The farmer's market is more than 75 years old and truly started out as a farmer's market before L.A. grew in to the hulking metropolis it is now. From what I have been told, it has not changed much.... relatively speaking.

Once my belly was full, I was much more inclined to stomach the American Girl store. Now, I do not have daughters, nor was a much in to dolls as a child. But I can appreciate the American Girl brand and what they have accomplished from a social scholar/marketing perspective. Any company that can get parents to spend more on doll clothes than they do on their own kid's clothes must be doing something right when it comes to American capitalism.

So, here is the front of this doll business phenomenon... iconic Barbie couldn't even get her store in Shanghai, her only store, to last more than two years. American Girl has 15 stores across the U.S.

Of course, as you would expect, you can buy an American Girl doll that looks like you... or one that you would like to look like, whichever you prefer. This is a step up in diversity from Barbie, where Barbie is blonde with blue eyes. If you want a Barbie that looks like you and you are not blonde and blue-eyed, you'd have to settle for Midge, P.J. or Miko. I was blonde and blue-eyed, so it wasn't until I was in high school where I realized that is might effect the psyches of other girls. Regardless, it has been proven that none of us have Barbie's figure, so, regardless of hair,skin and eye color, Barbie is a fraud.  I am pleased to report that the American Girl dolls are more realistic in their proportions.

Take a look at the photo below. I really want to know what possesses a man to work at the American Girl store. If I hadn't been trying to actively avoid all the pink splashed everywhere, I might have thought to ask him at the time.

Aside from the dolls, accessories and matching girl and doll clothes that cost more than the average trip to the Natural History Museum for a family of four, there are a few attractions that American Girl devotees and their daughters can enjoy WITH their dolls (so if you visit, be sure to bring yours. Unless you are buying another one, then you might want to leave the first one at home, due to jealousy. Or, if it's like buying a second dog, maybe you want to bring your first doll so that you can be sure that the old doll gets along with the new doll. I'm not sure, as I do not have experience with this. Your prerogative, of course.)

First off, if your doll is hurt or sick (such as your brother ripped the head off your doll) you can visit the hospital the moment you walk in the door of the store. No joke, before you really encounter anything else, the Doll Hospital Admissions is front and center was you walk in. I looked for the Doll Ambulance and Doll ObamaCare, but, alas, they were no where to be found. The Doll Nurses (seen behind the desk) were quite friendly, though.

You can also get an official store portrait with your doll. But, first, you want her to look her best, so take her to the Doll Hair Salon for a new 'do.

After your doll is fixed, primped and photographed, you can head to the American Girl Cafe where you can get a table-side booster seat for your doll so she can eat with you. I am not sure what they feed the dolls, but the human cafe menu looked pretty kid-friendly.

The insanity continued upstairs as we encountered the historic dolls, the ones that portray girls' lives at different times in American history. This is the area I actually found interesting. Educational dolls. Sweet. Hopefully these will help girls score higher on history tests. But, since Mattel (owner of the Barbie brand) has purchased the company, education has gone out the window.

As any good marketing professional will tell you, promotions that encourage repeat purchases are essential. American Girl excels in this area. Every year a new girl is created and promoted. You can only buy her in the year she is introduced. She comes with accessories, books, movies and a coupon for a discounted tattoo of her face. Just kidding about the tattoo, but I betcha someone has an American Girl tattooed on them somewhere. Someone in Louisiana, is my guess.

Saige is the girl for 2013 and, as signs around the store explained, you can only buy three of of these $189 dolls per household. I did not purchase three, or even one, but I did make my sons take a photo with her in her hot air balloon so they could show it to their three female cousins in Illinois who, last I heard, were big American Girl fans. The boys made me promise I would not post the photo on Facebook. This is not Facebook so I have kept my promise. Ha!

Apparently this annual doll thing has been a tradition since 2003. Here are all of the annual dolls you can no longer buy new:

Of course, every American Girl starts out as a baby, so there are Bitty Babies to collect, as well. This is the type of doll my almost-3-year-old niece, Cheyenne has.

My father's comment when we got this far in to the store: "It's like a cult, isn't it?"

Mmm... I'm not sure. I have not joined a cult yet, so I have nothing to compare. I reserve judgement but my instincts are leaning toward "yes."

Of course, if one Bitty Baby at a time isn't enough for you, you can get Bitty Twins. These were the only boy dolls I saw in the whole place. I did not see any named Ken, though.

After making the necessary birthday gift purchases for Cheyenne, my family drove back home to Orange County, where, in about 28 hours I would discover that I was not going home to Japan as planned...

Day in L.A. Part 1: Nude statues and space shuttles...

Before I realized that my passport was missing and I would not be returning to Iwakuni July 1 as planned, our family took a trip to Los Angeles June 29, with the top destination being the retired space shuttle Endeavour's new home at the California ScienCenter in Exposition Park. This was my mother's idea, who is as nostalgic about the Space Shuttle as I am. Details later in this post...

Exposition Park is also the home of the L.A. Coliseum, where the 1932 and 1984 Olympics were hosted (it's the only stadium to have hosted two Olympics), as well as where the University of Southern California (USC) Trojans play football.

Sculptor Robert Graham created these nude sculptures of a male and female athletes for the 1984 Olympics. My father actually had the pleasure of meeting Graham briefly by chance several years ago. My Dad was waiting at an office on business and there was this scruffy-looking older man, almost homeless-looking, waiting in the same lobby. Any of you who know my Dad knows he will strike up a conversation with anyone, and he did. He asked what the man did for a living, the man said he was an artist. My Dad asked if there were any pieces of work that he did that my Dad might recognize. These sculptures are the ones Graham mentioned to my Dad. Dad said the life lesson he learned with this experience was to "not judge a book by its cover." Good lesson...

After a few moments admiring the front of the stadium, my family moved on to the ScienCenter, the new home of the space shuttle Endeavour. It is free to enjoy the museum itself, and $2 per person to see the space shuttle. I happily paid my money. 

I have had a fascination with space and the space shuttle since childhood. I think part of this is because I spent about six years of my childhood in Houston, Texas, home of Johnson Space Center, where much of the shuttle program was developed and managed. Every year my class would take a field trip to the Center, and it was also the No. 1 tourist destination for my family when we were entertaining out-of-town guests. My Mom said that I was there so often that I was able to give the guided tour myself by the time I was 8. Here are some of the photos I managed to find in my parents' albums:

Me trying on a space helmet in 1982 at the age of 6. I remembered that I liked this one because I could see all around. My brother, Joe,  who was 3 at the time, appeared to have selected a different one.

Mom, Joe and me with the shuttle mock-up that was used for training.

Playing with our plastic space shuttle toys. The cargo bay doors on top really opened! ;)

My brother, me, and my cousins, Marianne and Heather at the Center in 1983 when they visited us from California.  I also remember that the elastic on those bloomer shorts was tight on my legs.

I also spent half of a semester in grad school studying the communication involved with NASA and the space program, so that renewed my interest in the subject. One of my bucket list items is to go to space. Not necessarily outer space, but at least far enough where I can look out of the window and see Earth and be weightless. I hope to win the lottery so I can ride with Virgin Galactic or SpaceX, or have space travel become more commonplace in my lifetime so I can go on vacation to the moon or something. I wonder what SPF of sunscreen I would need...?

So, my infatuation with the space shuttle came full circle last weekend when I got to see Endeavour.

She was the youngest in the NASA shuttle fleet, built to replace the Challenger after that tragic 1986 accident.

Coincidentally, Endeavor was also the shuttle most used in partnership with Japan for projects, a fact I probably wouldn't have really noticed if I wasn't currently residing in that country.

As you walk in to the shuttle's hangar, you are funneled through a small museum of shuttle regalia, such as the shuttle toilet, shuttle tires used in an actual mission and a mockup of the California mission control.

Tires that have been in space... yes, you can touch them.

A shuttle toilet. No, you can't try it.

Once we were in the hangar, we, along with the rest of the visitors, got our requisite photo with the Endeavor. My children were good sports about my excitement and wonder... but unless there were going to be operational laser guns on the shuttle, a la Star Wars, (which there weren't) the boys were minimally interested.

Fun fact: Because California is prone to earthquakes, the shuttle is mounted specialized stabilizers:

Hanging on the walls around the hangar was a timeline of all the shuttle missions. I took pictures of the ones I thought were most important: The start and end of the shuttle program, the maiden voyages of each shuttle, the two shuttle tragedies, and some of Endeavor's missions. If you read the captions on the Endeavor's you can see how much she was involved in Japanese space missions:

Of course, like any good museum, there was a gift shop at the end of it. I got a cloth patch (my parents started collecting them for me when I was a baby) to add to my collection of places I have been. However, there was a t-shirt I was tempted to purchase, that had this design on it:

This space-loving girl found it funny.

Day in L.A. Part 2 coming up in the next post...