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Day 10: Thursday 26th April 
Mmmm... cheesecake for breakfast! After this healthy and nutritious start to the day we finished all our packing and went to check out. Strictly speaking it was now lunch time so we went down to Swingers for one last meal and then headed off to see some more sights. We had an appointment at 6 o'clock that evening so we had plenty of time to kill, and we decided to visit the La Brea tar pits that I had seen in the film Volcano. This is the site of an ongoing archeological dig that has produced thousands of bones and skeletons of animals that roamed the Los Angeles area in prehistoric times. It's quite impressive to see these pits (several small ones and one large one) in the middle of such a big city, and we spent a while walking around the park looking at the various pits and reading the various signs dotted about the park. It was interesting to see that tar was bubbling up through the grass in some areas of the park.We also had a look around the museum which had a fascinating history of the pits, the many finds, and a lot of skeletons. One wall even had an eerie display of several hundred wolf skulls that had been dug up. Still with plenty of time on our hands we drove around taking a few photographs of famous landmarks and buildings before heading north in search of the California Institute of Abnormalarts. Los Angeles seems to go on forever but we eventually found the place we were looking for, tucked away in an area that seemed to be full of car repair shops. We were early so we went for a leisurely meal in the Denny's Diner opposite. I had arranged to meet a man by the name of Ego Plum at the C.I.A. that evening and I was really looking forward to it. I first heard of him through Bizarre magazine and after getting his CDs we have occasionally e-mailed each other. I couldn't miss the chance of meeting him and so I had decided to do an interview with him for Bizarre, and have the chance of a guided tour around the exhibition of his work that was showing at the C.I.A. 
We were met at the door of the C.I.A. by the owner, an ex b-movie actor called Carl. He gave us a guided tour of the place and it was fascinating listening to him tell the stories of all the exhibits he had on display. A lot of it was old carnival freak show stuff like the skeleton of a Fiji mermaid, the head of Big Foot, a two headed baby, a two bodied duckling, and a stuffed Jackalope (a rabbit with antelope horns). One of his best exhibits was a dead fairy that he had bought over from Cornwall, a figure about 12 inches long in a glass case. Carl explained the story of how he came to be in possession of the fairy and why its hands were wrapped in linen (apparently the hands are the most powerful part of a fairy). I love things like this so it was a truly fascinating tour of the stranger things in life. 
Ego and his wife, Julie, appeared shortly afterwards and we sat around chatting and drinking tea that Carl thoughtfully provided. All four of us are really passionate about music so we spent ages talking about how things differed in our respective countries. Ego and I eventually drifted off to do the interview which ended up being the best part of an hour and a half long. One of the main features of his exhibition was a large photograph of an elephant being hung by the neck from a crane because she had killed her trainer, and the public felt she should pay for her crime by being put to death. He took me around the rest of his work giving me the thoughts behind all the exhibits and telling me what he had in the pipeline. Ego also talked about his band, the Ebola Music Orchestra, what they were up to and how their last show at the C.I.A. went. All in all it was a great success and we hung around taking photos with some of Carls' strange artifacts until we finally said our goodbyes. Our plan for the next couple of days was to take a slow drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, so we found the 101 and drove north for a couple of hours. We finally found a motel on the highway to spend the night, one of the Motel 6 chain, got a room and fell into an exhausted sleep ready for the long drive tomorrow. |
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