…accept no substitutes!
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The Doclopedia #2,176
You’ve Found A…: Power Belt
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Hey, Duke, whatcha got there, boy? Did you find something dead, cos I’m not…HOLY SHIT! That’s a power belt just like Mr. Justice wears! I heard it give him his super strength and stuff. Wow! This one looks kinda beat up. Kinda burnt here on the edges, too. Say, wasn’t this where he was fighting Doctor Madman last week? Yeah, yeah it was. Just over there nearer the beach. There was a big explosion. The papers said Mr. Justice survived, but Doctor Madman didn’t. I’ll bet this belt got blown clean off Mr. Justice. He must have gotten another, because he was on the news last night wearing it. I think I’ll take this one home and tinker with it.
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The Doclopedia #2,177
You’ve Found A…: Glove
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Damn, this house is spooky, J. I must have been crazy to let you talk me into coming in here. You and Tone always talk me into this kind of shit. What? Yeah, it’s a glove. Okay, a fancy glove. Michael Jaskson’s are better. Huh? Yeah, it is clean for being in this dusty assed place. Oh, you’re gonna put it on? Go ahead, but you better check that shit for spiders. Huh, a perfect fit. It looked too small when you picked it up. Hey, Tone, check out Mister Glove here! What are you laughing at, J? It sounds creepy as fu…GACK! Gaaaah!
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CritterCon 13, Trip Day Three: In which I start the day out with classic creepiness, we travel a stretch of “haunted” road, take a second visit to the GREATEST GIANT JESUS OF THEM ALL, see creepy clowns, and finish up with 8 miles of wet sliding. I knew two of today's attractions where going to get everyone bitching, so after a great waffle breakfast, I just ripped the bandage off and we went to the place that even creeped ME out. (Sadie M: Those were great waffles!) (Omar: I ate 3 of them.) (Amy: Baby, you ate 5. I watched you.) The World Famous Serial Killer Museum (Sasha: I knew it! I fucking knew it!) (Cupcake: WHAT? Are you serious, Grandpa?) (Leon: Oh well, I didn't need to sleep for a few weeks anyway.) We first came here in 2010 on our trip to DogCon 3. Back then, it was just Grace, our friend Sharon, the critters and I traveling for the first time on the bus. I was the only one who went into the Museum. This is what I wrote. About halfway between Springfield and St. Louis lies the only attraction that nobody else on the bus wanted to go into, The World Famous Serial Killer Museum. I paid my $5.00 and went inside and...dude...I mean...CREEPIEST FUCKING ROADSIDE ATTRACTION EVER! No shit, if the next one was the Museum of Guts & Eyeballs, it still would not be as creepy. Besides the subject matter, the main creep factor came from Lonnie Ray and Susie Ballard, the owners & operators of this shrine to violent sociopathy. Eight other people went in with me and I counted when we left to make sure we all got out. Thankfully, the establishment did not offer food. I declined to get on their mailing list.
Creepiness aside, they have a pretty incredible amount of stuff on serial killers, including correspondence between the Ballards and many Hannibal Lecter wannabes in prisons around the world. Lonnie Ray said the FBI even shows up a couple times a week to do research. Yeah, right. I fully expect to see the Ballards on CNN Real Soon Now. As you may imagine, I had high expectations of how fun it would be to take everyone in now, after 10 years. Sadly, my dreams were dashed. (Sadie M: And there was much rejoicing!) Oh yeah, we all went in, but the wonderfully creepy former department store that had once held the ghoulish collection has been replaced by a shiney new building with plenty of natural light and smiling young tour guides and armed security guards. (Brownie: That sucked. I was wanting to see the creepy place.) (Omar: So was I. I was curious what creeped Doc out the most.) (Amy: I know I'll regret this for years to come, but you two do remember that we have a time machine of our own, right?) The entry price is still five bucks and the place has more stuff than ever, but my heart just wasn't in it. The rest of our group seemed to enjoy the tour. I asked a tour guide about the Ballards, and he told me that in 2012 they just up and left town in the middle of the night, only to be arrested a week later in Florida. They were charged with trying to help a prisoner escape, illegal guns, a variety of restricted drugs and medical equipment and assaulting 7 officers of the law, including three FBI agents. They are doing 25 to 40 in the joint now. (Mary: You might've been disappointed, Doc, but I didn't get to see the World Famous Serial Killer Museum last time around. I especially liked the Ed Gein and Jeffery Dahmer house/apartment exact reproductions -- exact right down to the human head trophies, the general disarray, and the heads and body parts in the Dahmer refrigerator. Like, you can open up the fridge! And the frying pan of meat on the Dahmer stove! OMG!) (Roxy: Humans...I can't even.) (Sasha: And that is why Auntie Mary and Daddy get along so well.) Once the tour was over, we popped off to our next stop, another new one. The Haunted Road Located in rural Maine, this is a 3 mile long stretch of formerly private road that runs through an area of farmland and woods. The idea is that the area used to belong to a demented timber magnate who killed dozens of people just for the fun of it. Their ghosts still haunt the road, it is said. Well, it is said by the folks that own the land the road runs through now, who hire mostly high school and college age folks to dress up and act like killers ghosts and stuff. It's basically an outdoor haunted house attraction and was, I admit, kind of fun to drive through. No real scares, but the makeup and costumes were pretty well done. (Goldie: I wasn't paying much attention to the spooky stuff because there was too much wildlife to smell!) (Tucker: Oh hell yes! I could smell deer and rabbits and squirrels!) (Pixie: I'm pretty sure I smelled pigs at one point.) (Sadie F: I smelled those pigs. I thought I caught a whiff of cows, too.) (Sadie M: It was a buffet of wonderful smells!) (Sasha: Yep, it sure was. Also, some of those actors were smoking weed.) After that little 20 minute diversion, the bus popped back onto the highway in Arizona and we all got into a holographic game of Car Wars. It was set in an abandonded small town and the goal was to be the last car & team standing. The winners were Tucker (driving) and Cupcake (gunner), who hid their car in a blasted out shoe store on Main Street until only two other cars (Leon & Sasha, Peter & I) were left on the street. Both our cars were badly damages and our weapons were low, so we were pretty quickly dispatched by mines, machine gun fire and rockets. (Tucker: We decided that sneaky was the way to go and it paid off!) By the time that was over, we were across the border into New Mexico and stopped in Gallup for a delicious Southwestern lunch. Then, full of chiles both red and green, we went to my favorite Giant Jesus of all time. Our Lord, the Giant Jesus Christ of the Desert (Sasha: I was waiting for this one to come up.) We visited this Grand Mack Daddy of all Giant Son's of God back in 2017. Here are some hilights from that report.
No actual fee to go see it from the parking area, but if you want to go inside the 12 foot tall razor wire topped fence to get up close and personal, the church that runs the place, God’s Divine Ministries, asks for at least a $7.50 “love donation”. They also state that only“True Christians” will be allowed to pay another minimum of $5.00 per person to ascend into the viewing room in Jesus’s head.
Fortunately, I prepared all of us with ID that proved we were members of the First Baptist Church of God in Roscoe, Alabama, R. Cross, Reverend. I also had Sasha whip up a fat roll of Benjamins that would totally disintegrate in about 12 hours. Thus armed, we went to see the statue.
This time I was Pastor Luke S. Cross and we were from the Church of Jesus Christ the Saviour, Maxwell, California. We repeated the fat roll of fake money.
(Brownie: Nice tribute to Uncle Luke, Grandpa.)
Once I donated a cool five large, we were escorted in by our own personal tour guide, Sister Amanda. I reckon she was about 18 and still full of the dewy eyed religious fervor that would begin crumbling once she went off to college and faced the real world. She gave us a quick tour of the compound, then took us to the feet of Big J himself.
The entire place looks the same as it did in 2017, but not quite as well kept up and one of their little religious strip mall buildings, a coffee shop, was “Closed For Renovations”. A bit of quick googling informed me that the head of God’s Divine Ministries, Reverend Jackson Wilks, was doing a 17 year stretch in the Federal pen for a variety of charges. The place was being run by church members and the Rev’s wife, who had opted to turn state’s witness against him in return for staying out of the joint herself.
(Roxy: She was no dummy.)
Out tour guide this time was a 40 year old guy named Edgar who gave off a strong vibe of not wanting to be there on a Sunday. Still, we took the tour. As I wrote in 2017…
My friends, if you enjoy collecting visits to Giant Jesus statues, or really any Giant Statue, you must know how I felt standing there. It was, by far, the best looking statue I have seen yet. 350 feet tall, excellent detailing, well painted and maintained…oh my, it was breathtaking. I can only imagine how a non-atheist would feel.
After taking 74 pictures and 15 minutes of video, I was ready to lead my flock to the head of Jesus. I donated five more c notes and we all piled into the elevator and went up.
The view is great and, since I figured it would be the thing to do, I lead the group, Amanda and about 15 other visitors in a prayer. I really pulled out all the stops and was glad that several of my traveling companions concealed their smiles and chuckling by yelling “Praise Jesus!” and stuff. Gabriel was especially great when he started yelling that he could hear again out of his right ear and his right arm had full movement. A couple of folks not in our group swooned.
This time, our group was the only one up there, so I just asked for an “Amen” and that was it. However, when we got to the bottom, another group was waiting and that caused Omar to throw down a heretofore unseen white cane and cry out “I can see! I can see! Praise Jesus!” I figured that was my cue to launch into a sermon and praise the Lord and stuff. The other group looked suitably impressed as they got on the elevator.
(Omar: Oh man, that was SO funny!)
(Cupcake: I’ve got to agree, it was pretty hilarious.)
(Penny: I had to bite my tongue to not laugh out loud.)
(Pixie: Doc would make a hell of a preacher.)
(Brownie: I took a few notes. You never know when posing as a preacher might come in handy.)
We hit up the gift shop, but most of their stuff was the same as before, so we bought little. My opinion of this attraction is the same as it was in 2017.
On the D. Cross Giant Jesus Rating Scale, this Giant Jesus rated as follows.
Size: 10! 350 feet tall!
Climbability: 10! Elevator, baby!
Appearance: 10! Extremely lifelike looking and in primo shape.
Pose: 10! He’s standing with his hands on his hips and smiling AND looking down at you, not up at the sky or off into the distance.
Religiosity: 10! Hell, maybe a 12, if my scale went that high. There’s a whole religion strip mall in that compound.
(Sadie: So the giant is supposed to be the son of god? Which one, Dad?)
(Mark: He belongs to the christians.)
(Sadie: And they believe in a god that sees everything, has power over everything, and looks out for everyone, and let’s all this bad stuff happen?)
(Mark: I‘ve explained that. Humans aren’t as advanced as most NHTs are. Your Mom and I, Uncle Doc, and the rest of the humans on this bus are the exceptions.)
Once back on the bus, I was told that was it for Giant Jesuses today, to which I agreed. We all relaxed and had various cold drinks for an hour, then got off the Bus at our next stop and once again certain members of our party gave me Maximum Stinkeye.
Clownland (Sadie F: I could smell this place 5 minutes before we got there!) (Sasha: Yeah, there's nothing quite like the smell of old drunken clowns.) Our 2011 trip was an odd one, even by our standards. Via temporal manipulation, we and our friends spent a week in Orlando, Florida, then started out trip to Texas from there. Along the way, I found out about Clownland, located in the small town of Wesson, Mississippi. I wrote this about it. About two hours later, in the small town of Wesson, we saw a sign reading “Clownland! Only 3 Miles ahead! Bring the kids!”. Since we were all still hyped up and full of adrenaline from our little musical production,we decided to give it a look. (Omar: Okay, first of all, FUCK CLOWNS!) (Brownie: My homie is not a fan of clowns.) I'm not sure I'd actually bring kids here. Maybe surly teenagers.
What you find in Clownland are clowns in a clowny looking village. Scarecrowy clowns, big fiberglass clowns, carved wooden clowns, garden gnome sized clowns and about 50 real live clowns.
The “living” status of a couple of the clowns was the subject of some debate among us.
The deal is, the founder of this little village, Hobart Franks, was a retired circus clown who had inherited the land. He started inviting other old clowns to move there and they started building the clown town. Soon, younger clowns began coming here for vacations or during the off season (who knew clowns had an off season?). By 1987, Clownland covered 45 acres of land and, if our Sunday visit is any indication, gets a fair stream of visitors.
The entrance fee is $4.00 and to tell the truth, the whole affair has a pretty high creep factor due to A: Clowns are creepy anyway and B: Old (and by the smell, alcoholic) clowns are even creepier. We stayed about 30 minutes.
Clownland, like other roadside attractions, has not aged well over the last near decade. It looks shabbier and about 20 of the 50 old clowns died. There are a few new old clowns, but we heard from the guy at the soda stand (not a clown) that attendance has dropped way off.
We only spent about 20 minutes there this time, mostly due to the creepiness factor being even higher and the fact that I was getting threatening stares from several of our female travelers.
Back on board Sweetie, I though fast and deflected the heat I was taking by going directly to our final stop in Colorado.
The World’s Longest Waterslide
2012 saw one of our longer trips, and we found this cool attraction in Colorado. My report then was as follows.
By the time I rolled out of bed at 8, we were halfway through Western Colorado and nearing our first fun stop of the day the World’s Largest Waterslide.
Note the name change due to them adding three more miles to it!
Folks, they were not kidding about that. This thing is FIVE MILES LONG! It’s made of clear Lexan tubing about 8 feet across and starts at the top of a big freakin’ mountain. The initial drop is 500 feet long and damned near vertical and gets you up to 70 miles an hour!
It was that drop that put some of our party off trying the slide. Not without good reason.
On your five mile trip, you’ll go through corkscrews, hairpin turns, several smaller drops, a couple of detours out into open space and three loop dee loops! You’ll do most of this while whizzing through forests, rocky outcroppings and even underground tunnels, all face first on specially designed mats at never less than 50 miles an hour. It is just crazy cool.
(Spike: And Doc forgot to mention one of the scariest aspects of the World’s Longest Waterslide: airtime. That’s right, each time the slide takes one of those “detours out into open space” it’s not just an open roof: You’re shot out into the open air with no roof OR FLOOR, free-flying through a glorious arc before you’re somehow sloooshed back into the slide without splatting.
And the designers of this fiendish little feature were devious: You can’t see the airtime sections from the line waiting to get on the ride (so as not to scare people away before paying their $30), but when you’re corkscrewing around the mountain you get a couple of quick “Did I see what I thought I saw?” glimpses of other sliders flying through the open areas before you hit the first one yourself.)
(Cupcake: If android bodies could shit, I’m pretty sure most of us would have.)
(Leon: The first time we shot through open air, I’m pretty sure I lost three of my remaining lives.)
(Sadie M: I’m pretty sure my heart rate will go back to normal in a day or so.)
Or just crazy, depending upon who you ask.
With the notable and probably sane exceptions of Grace, Sharon and Avis, we all chose to pony up $20.00 each and wait in line for an hour to take the ride. There is a shuttle service that brings folks back up to their cars, but we didn’t need it, since Data drove the bus down to meet us.
This year, there was no Sharon, but miraculously, Grace agreed to go. I admit being momentarily struck dumb when I heard this. Come to think of it, that might be why she did it. Avis steadfastly refused.
It was insane fun! Also, for an extra $20.00, you can get a video of yourself that has footage from a helmet cam and continuous footage from their many security cams, which I opted for. Also, our non-sliding friends could watch the live stream from the the company website, which they did. I’m sure their commentary was amusing.
The price is up to $30.00 each now, just for the slide. The personal videos are $35.00 each. The livestream can be watched for free.
At the bottom of the hill, we all agreed that it was money well spent. Later, watching the video of me and Mary (you go down the slide two to a mat) shooting along like we were rocket propelled, we all agreed that Mary and I made enough noise for any 10 other humans.
(Mary: Screaming? Yeah, there was some of that on the World's Longest Waterslide. Sorry about the ringing in your ear-- and the hair I might've pulled out by clutching on you -- and the nasty bruises from my kung-fu grip. But I did tell you before you "convinced" me to go on the slide that I was kinda claustrophobic about closed tubes. But you promised me there would be open spaces. "Soon? Whadda you mean, ‘Eventually, Mariposa'? That's not soon!" So "eventually" we got to the so-called open spaces -- Holy Jesus God In Heaven! -- Being emptied down a drain, propelled in an arc, and flushed down a giant toilet bowl of insanity funnel into another effing tube! So sorry about the bruises from my prehensile toes too.) (Cupcake: Auntie Mary has surprisingly apelike toes.) (Roxy: All of that and yet she went on it again this time. Humans are strange creatures.) Once again, the whole trip, which takes about 10 minutes from start to finish, was a total blast and that last mile and a half, where you go through turns to slow you down, is added fun. (Leon: You folks reading this should now picture many of us kissing solid ground.) This attraction did a lot to write off the stinkeye I got for Clownland. The Bus popped back onto the highway just west of Albuquerque, so we decided to spend the night there. We ate Southwestern again for dinner, then played assorted boardgames until it was time for bed. We'll all be sleeping in a bit tomorrow, before hitting 5 more roadside attractions. Destination Sign When We Left: Ravenloft Destination Sign When We Stopped: Santa's Workshop Radio Station: Elven Jazz
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