Museum Of Jurassic Technology

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more complimentary pairing this weekend than the mysterious guitar explorations of Sir Richard Bishop and the equally confounding confines of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Surrounded by exhibits that blur the line between fact and fiction, the co-founder of the surrealistically psychedelic band Sun City Girls should fill the air with a similarly bewitching atmosphere as heard on the Middle Eastern-tinged mix of surf rock and ragas on his 2009 album, "The Freak of Araby.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more complimentary pairing this weekend than the mysterious guitar explorations of Sir Richard Bishop and the equally confounding confines of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Surrounded by exhibits that blur the line between fact and fiction, the co-founder of the surrealistically psychedelic band Sun City Girls should fill the air with a similarly bewitching atmosphere as heard on the Middle Eastern-tinged mix of surf rock and ragas on his 2009 album, "The Freak of Araby.

The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life. --pamphlet from the Museum of Jurassic Technology An In-N-Out Burger recently opened on Venice Boulevard, yet another attraction along the main drag of Palms, a West Los Angeles neighborhood of apartment buildings and condominiums south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

When you take your kids to the Museum of Jurassic Technology -- or, as Nipper dubbed it, "The Weird Museum" -- bring along their bathroom step-stool if they're under 4 1/2 feet tall. Much of the coolest stuff is in display cases too high for them to see properly and, believe me, they'll want to gape at curator David Wilson's oddities -- such as a horn removed from a human's forehead and "micromosaics" made from butterfly wing scales -- far longer than you'll want to hold them up. To adults, this museum is loaded with brain-scratching exhibits like "Tell the Bees: Belief, Knowledge & Hypersymbolic Cognition."

A tiny clockwork flea, one that can dance? It sounds like one of the improbable miniature wonders exhibited at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. And soon, it will be--as part of the first film produced by the museum's media arm, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information. The Culver City museum almost closed when the owners of the building that houses it put the place up for sale in the late '90s.

As its name implies, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is an oxymoron--a paradoxical, serious, silly mystery of a place. Solemnly, it serves up displays on a species of bat that can fly through solid objects, a mice-on-toast remedy for bed-wetting and a memory researcher who most likely never existed.

Three months ago, David Wilson's cell phone rang in the middle of a meeting at his one-of-a-kind establishment, the Museum of Jurassic Technology. He was talking planning with Kelly Coyne, the museum's administrative director. "It was a pretty down period, and we were trying to figure out how we were going to get through November," he says. "Financially, every month is a juggling act. We get to places where we're OK for two or three months but then it goes back to week-to-week.

You have listed in your Family section from time to time the Museum of Jurassic Technology, most recently on Nov. 27. Before you continue including this museum, you should send a staff member over to confirm that this is not a place for children, especially little ones. First, it has no exhibits of interest to them, but foremost, it is dark and creepy and will surely induce nightmares in the young. My husband and I felt like we had stepped into an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There were a number of dead animals with holograms imposed on them and an incessant barking of a coyote's head.

When you take your kids to the Museum of Jurassic Technology -- or, as Nipper dubbed it, "The Weird Museum" -- bring along their bathroom step-stool if they're under 4 1/2 feet tall. Much of the coolest stuff is in display cases too high for them to see properly and, believe me, they'll want to gape at curator David Wilson's oddities -- such as a horn removed from a human's forehead and "micromosaics" made from butterfly wing scales -- far longer than you'll want to hold them up. To adults, this museum is loaded with brain-scratching exhibits like "Tell the Bees: Belief, Knowledge & Hypersymbolic Cognition."

Thanks for the page on Downtown Culver City ("Downtown Culver City Buzz," by Jessica Gelt, A Day In, Nov. 19), but how could you omit 1) the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which exemplifies the word "unique" and draws discerning people from around the globe, and 2) the apartment complex at 3819-25 Dunn Drive, which, to quote David Gebhard and Robert Winter, is "a Medieval fairy-tale world of Hansel and Gretel cottages in a witch-infested jungle with pools of water." Experiencing these places converts a trip to Culver City from being merely invigorating to being truly inspirational.

Thanks for the page on Downtown Culver City ("Downtown Culver City Buzz," by Jessica Gelt, A Day In, Nov. 19), but how could you omit 1) the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which exemplifies the word "unique" and draws discerning people from around the globe, and 2) the apartment complex at 3819-25 Dunn Drive, which, to quote David Gebhard and Robert Winter, is "a Medieval fairy-tale world of Hansel and Gretel cottages in a witch-infested jungle with pools of water." Experiencing these places converts a trip to Culver City from being merely invigorating to being truly inspirational.

Novelty sure can spice up an evening out -- but it never hurts if there's an all-you-can-eat buffet involved. On the recommendation of a fellow yoga obsessive, my husband and I checked out the Hare Krishna temple in Culver City. It has an unassuming eatery, sparsely decorated with pictures of half-man, half-animal gods, and a delicious $6 vegetarian buffet. Dinner with the Krishnas? Different enough. And only three blocks away is the Museum of Jurassic Technology, one of L.A.'

Why direct a blockbuster when real life is so eccentric, arcane and obscure? The film "Inhaling the Spore: A Journey Through the Museum of Jurassic Technology" salutes founder David Wilson's Culver City temple of culture that falls somewhere between natural history museum, art installation and prank theater.

Four new exhibitions at the Museum of Jurassic Technology trace the roots of digital technology back to the 19th century. They pull the rug out from under the feet of visitors who think that the offbeat institution is a throwback, and they demonstrate that the idiosyncratic venue is ahead of its time -- and worlds apart from the bigger-is-better ethos of high-profile museums. Compressing information like the most advanced gadgets, none of the four little shows takes up much floor space.

You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but the easiest person to fool is yourself. Especially when the products of your own wishful thinking are also being peddled by higher authorities. So it struck me as particularly apt that I took a class of students last week to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City--while the Enron mirage was dissolving; while dubious claims for the production of fusion energy graced the cover of the journal Science; while Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson was in town trying to turn people's attention to wholesale extinction of life; while military planners were blithely bringing back nuclear weapons as instruments of foreign policy.

Three months ago, David Wilson's cell phone rang in the middle of a meeting at his one-of-a-kind establishment, the Museum of Jurassic Technology. He was talking planning with Kelly Coyne, the museum's administrative director. "It was a pretty down period, and we were trying to figure out how we were going to get through November," he says. "Financially, every month is a juggling act. We get to places where we're OK for two or three months but then it goes back to week-to-week.

Novelty sure can spice up an evening out -- but it never hurts if there's an all-you-can-eat buffet involved. On the recommendation of a fellow yoga obsessive, my husband and I checked out the Hare Krishna temple in Culver City. It has an unassuming eatery, sparsely decorated with pictures of half-man, half-animal gods, and a delicious $6 vegetarian buffet. Dinner with the Krishnas? Different enough. And only three blocks away is the Museum of Jurassic Technology, one of L.A.'

Why direct a blockbuster when real life is so eccentric, arcane and obscure? The film "Inhaling the Spore: A Journey Through the Museum of Jurassic Technology" salutes founder David Wilson's Culver City temple of culture that falls somewhere between natural history museum, art installation and prank theater.

A tiny clockwork flea, one that can dance? It sounds like one of the improbable miniature wonders exhibited at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. And soon, it will be--as part of the first film produced by the museum's media arm, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information. The Culver City museum almost closed when the owners of the building that houses it put the place up for sale in the late '90s.

You can stick pins in Dixie Browne's collection all you want, but you can't puncture its meaning. That's because the meaning resides not in the objects themselves--mere pincushions, after all--but in the people who used them regularly over the past 100 years, perhaps taking a moment now and again to muse over their mundane curiousness.