Adventure Thru Inner Space (or, How Disneyland Warped My Mind)

I grew up in Santa Monica.

Once a year or so we would head over to Disneyland.

This, while fun, was not entirely good for my young brain.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Thru_Inner_Space



This ride REALLY tripped me out. I still think about it and use it to describe my bizarre sleep paralysis occurances.

The fact that this ride was somehow linked to Monsanto is beyond creepy.



I am not the only one...http://themightymicroscope.com/home.htm

Wikipedia has a desperatly sad list of deceased Disneyland rides.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_past_Disneyland_attractions

Some of these sound like they really never needed to exist in the first place like, "1955-1960, Aluminum Hall of Fame" and, "1956-1960, Crane Company Bathroom of Tomorrow". I am not making that up.



I love the internet.



-k.

Oh, the joys of the internet abound.

So, continuing my hunt. Looking for J. Kreienbuhl around and about I found this... http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FA94-127.htm
The Smithsonian is our national museum. One thinks of organisation as being a big part of maintaining an institution like that. This list of what is in what box made me weep with delight.

I can't believe I am going to have to wait till 2009 to delve into whatever "Uncle Beasley (2 folders) " might be. Not to mention the rather depressing sounding " One with the Earth Temp Indian Exhibit 1983 " and, most appealing to me, of course, "Elephant Label ".

This list made me so happy. I wish that someone would take the time to include digital photos or scans of each of these objects.
I would be even happier.

The hunt goes on.

I continue to search, continue to hope.
I continue to find really weird alternative elephants.
At some point, for some reason the part of the French Natural History Museum that housed the taxidermied (wow is that a word?) specimens was closed off. It was left this way, abandoned, for decades! Eventually, a Swiss painter, Jurg Kreienbuhl discovered it and did a series of paintings of what he found there. I love this idea. I have no idea how Mr. Kreienbuhl happened to be the one to discover the lost collection. All of the articles I find about the discovery are in French. I can read just enough to make sense of the main points.

I am slightly worried that my elusive elephant may have been an ad for Mr. K's work being shown somewhere about Paris. I don't know. I know that he was showing his paintings of the Natural History Museum in 1985. It's more of a lead than I have ever had before.

I will keep looking.