Weird, Wacky, Wonderful: Martini Junction

Months ago, Laura Olin linked to Atlas Obscura on Twitter. I'm always looking for things to do with Baby Razor, so I searched for anything near me. Lo and behold, there was something called Martini Junction only twenty minutes from my house.

A hundred and twenty feet of model railroad tracks in the middle of the woods? Yeah, that sounded like something a three-and-a-half-year-old would enjoy. Unfortunately, it was February and said woods were about to be under two feet of snow. But it sounded so charming that come the first warm spring day, G and I headed to Needham Woods to search for it.

Of course, we promptly took a wrong turn. But we had a lovely picnic lunch on a fallen log, and our poor navigation meant Mr. Razor could come with us on our second attempt this weekend.

Here's what you do: Drive to the Robinwood Avenue entrance to Needham Woods. Turn right and follow the path, which is marked by tiny faux-birdhouses with white tops.

Look for a path on your right, turn onto it, and look for this birdhouse:

Then follow the orange-topped birdhouses. It's a twisty, root-y, up & down trail, but it's not particularly difficult. Baby Razor didn't have any problem with it. It's aways down the trail. I started to get discouraged when we saw a set of houses to our right, because it meant we were near the edge of the woods again. But then we saw this:

A bit further along the path came this:

We started to get excited. More signposts along the trail led us to our destination:

We'd found it!

The tracks were a beautiful addition to the woodsy landscape, and it was obvious how much time and care had been put into building them.

But it turned out the tracks were just the beginning of Martini Junction's magic. The area is packed with tiny buildings, models, and tableaux.

I don't know how much was put there by the tracks' builder and how much was added by visitors. I know that the spot is popular with geocachers, who often add to a cache when they find it. Regardless, the scene above is particularly charming, since it depicts a craftsman with a model train, birdhouses like the ones lining the trails in Needham Woods, and what looks like a bottle of vermouth--essential to a proper martini. All signs point to this being a meta-commentary on The Creator of Martini Junction.

But I have to say, this was my favorite bit, although I have no idea if it was intentional or not:

See the book by the monkey's paw? Yeah. Awesome. Someone also took the time to print out a realistic-looking computer screen and glue it to the teeny computer. I love it.

There's so much more that I'm leaving out for hikers to discover on their own. If you go, you can listen to the water wheel

And enjoy a snack and a drink at the table & benches.

If you're really lucky, the builder will be there and you'll get to see the trains (which are kept in padlocked boxes underneath the benches) running on the tracks. We weren't that lucky this weekend, but we'll definitely be going back.

Eleven Women You Should Know About

WWII Special Ops badass Nancy Wake has no patience for that French shit.

International Women's Day was last Friday. In celebration I dipped into the bookmark folder I call "Awesome Ladies" and tweeted links to almost a dozen Women of Badassery. (I have the folder because I have a secret dream of writing a series of blockbuster movies about real-life ladies who make the Avengers look junior varsity.)

Someone asked me to put all the links together, so here they are:

Ching Shih, the most successful pirate of all time, male or female, in that not only did she wreak havoc and strike fear into the hearts of millions, she also successfully retired and died in her bed instead of hanging from a noose. (Badass of the Week)

Sayyida al Hurra, Muslim pirate queen, who turned to piracy as an Eff You to the Europeans who had overtaken her home in Granada. (Amazing Women in History)

Hazel Ying Lee, Asian-American, WWII WASP pilot. (Wikipedia) (Discovered via Kelly Sue DeConnick's tumblr, which often features interesting links to women warriors.)

Lumberjills! Yeah that's right: lady lumberjacks. During WWII, the British Women's Timber Corps did everything the 'jacks did, but with cuter head scarves. (Long May She Rain)

Mary Kingsley, who explored and wrote about the West African coast on her own during the Victorian era. (The chief end of life)

Florence Dixie, another Victorian, who traveled to Patagonia and South Africa and wrote about her adventures, and spent her time at home agitating for women's suffrage and Irish home rule. (Wikipedia)

Mary Anning, who found and cataloged dinosaur fossils in England during the early 19th century. (Lyme Regis Museum)

Emmy Noether, a pioneering mathematician who contributed advances to abstract algebra and theoretical physics and became one of the world's first female math professors. (Wikipedia)

Nancy Wake I'm just gonna quote the wiki for this one: On the night of 29–30 April 1944, Wake was parachuted into the Auvergne, becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat in the Forest of Tronçais. Upon discovering her tangled in a tree, Captain Tardivat greeted her remarking, "I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year," to which she replied, "Don't give me that French shit.”" (Wikipedia)

Hatshepsut, who ruled ancient Egypt as pharaoh (oh pharaohs have to have a certain beard, seeing as how they're supposed to be men? Wooden beard! Problem solved.) (Lapham's Quarterly)

And finally, an ancient, anonymous Siberian princess, whose gorgeous, intricate tattoos provide a visual link between past and present. (Siberian Times)

So that's pirates, pilots, lumberjills, explorers, writers, a fossil hunter, a mathematician, a spy, a queen, and a Siberian. Go Team Women.

Self-promotion

So Marvel is doing a collaboration with Vans sneakers, which is awesome...except there are zero female characters on any of the shoes. As the proud owner of Wonder Woman Converse All-Stars, I think this is bullshit. (Side note: They have Batgirl, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy too! Wow, DC did something right. I have to pause for a minute to process that.)

Anyway, Marvel's marketing misogyny is my business opportunity. I make decoupage shoes from comic books. I also make boots:

And purses:

So, if you would like your favorite comic lady (or anyone/anything, really!) on an accessory of your choice, leave me a comment or ping me on Twitter.

Details:

I have a wonderful thrift shop near my house that keeps me in cute, cheap purses and wallets, so if you're interested in one of those, I can send you pictures of what I have on hand.

For shoes (and if you have a purse of your own you'd like to use), I ask that you send me a pair. You can either send me the comics/materials for the decoupage or tell me what you're looking for and let me track it down.

Prices:

Wallet: $30
Shoes/Purse: $50
Boots: $80

Important Note: Decoupage leaves shoes/purses pretty stiff and prone to cracking with repeated use, so none of these are great for everyday use. But they're excellent special occasion conversation pieces!

NY ComicCon, Quickly

I have an actual wrap-up post going up on Paper Droids soon (ETA: Here it is!), so this is just the goofy shit more appropriate for a blog I haven't managed to update since June.

Adorable ladies. They even had rebel alliance earrings.

So Mel, Jane, Amanda, and I hit New York ComicCon last weekend. Thoughts and impressions:

1) So. Fucking. Crowded. You know that feeling when you're hemmed in on all sides by people pushing you in multiple directions and you know that if something goes wrong, you're getting trampled to death? I got to experience that MULTIPLE TIMES. I realize that cons are always going to be chaotic, but there was zero crowd management and it was occasionally terrifying.

2) Clueless con staff. Dear organizers, Please give your volunteers maps, schedules, and lessons on how to ask people to form a line. Sincerely, everyone.

3) Numbers 1 and 2 led Mel to say something I never thought I'd hear: "I miss San Diego." Yup, it made SDCC's chaos look like a model of planning and organization.

4) Okay, when we weren't waiting half an hour to pee, we did have lots of fun. I met Sir Terry Pratchett! And, predictably, I went totally blank and was like, "Hi. Hello. Hi." But he told me I had a pretty name, so that's good! Jane held it together a little better and told him he inspired her to become a librarian. They had a moment. I got a little verklempt.

5) I had a ticket for a photo op with Stan Lee, but he cancelled his Saturday appearances. But! On Friday he walked right past Jane and I, so I can say I got to see Stan Lee, which is still pretty cool. We also walked past Richard Speight and Rob Benedict, two actors from Supernatural. They are wee pocket men. I heard Jane say, "Oh, look the guys from Supernatural" before I saw them, and given that my most vivid memory of SDCC is nearly being crushed to death by Jensen Ackles superfans, my first reaction was DUCK AND COVER. Thank goodness it wasn't them. I'm pretty sure the con staff were not trained in riot management.

6) During Saturday's crowd crush, a guy dressed as The Monarch ended up squashed up against Mel and me. "Um, sorry if my shoulder pads ding you," he said. "And also if I fall over on you. I'm not used to walking in heels." Me: "Welcome to the club." Meanwhile, I'm praying that we'll get to the escalator safely so my last conversation on earth won't be with a guy in a yellow felt suit.

7) Speaking of cosplay, here's my goofy self posing with She-Ra:

I love Catra photobombing.

She was my favorite that I saw. Looking at the costume round ups from other sites, I feel like I missed a ton of awesome costumes, especially this Captain Marvel.

8) Jane and I were sitting together when a guy dressed as Deadpool walked by. "That is a really bad Spiderman costume," she noted. It took me a minute to realize she was serious. And thus a running gag was born. I was like, "That's Deadpool?" and she was like, "WELL, THAT'S JUST CONFUSING."

And then we started wondering if guys who wear full-body spandex costumes tuck or not. We decided some do and some really should.

Veneer!

It should probably come as no surprise that Mr. Razor and I are huge Antiques Roadshow fans. So when they started advertising that they'd be visiting Boston, there was much nerdy flailing in our living room. I signed us up for the ticket lottery, and we improbably won two tickets for the June 9th taping.

After joking that we should head to Goodwill and buy the ugliest painting we could find, we decided to bring gold bracelets that came over from Syria with Mr. Razor's relatives, an old copy of Anne of Green Gables that belonged to my mother, and a brass lamp we'd found at the thrift store. I really wanted to bring the antique chamber pot my mother uses to store napkins in her kitchen, but she vetoed that one.

The day is split into five entrance times, each two hours apart. We had the first entrance at 9 a.m. I figured we'd be the youngest people there (we're in our thirties, in case my obsession with comic book characters and dumb internet shit has misled you) by at least a decade, but there were a good number of under-40s there.

Which brings me to a point that I had not considered until I got there: every single person at an Antiques Roadshow event is a massive, massive Antiques Roadshow nerd. No one wakes up and goes, "Oh, huh, that could be fun. Let me go look in the attic for something old." We applied for the ticket lottery four months before the event and spent a month of Sunday dinners with our families debating what to bring. All 6,000 people in the convention center had chosen the antiques most likely to get them either on TV or close to their favorite appraisers.

(We wanted to get on TV. We did not, but the piece that I thought could do it still has a very interesting story that I want to tell at a later date.)

So the first thing that happened was we got in line. At the front of the line, a general appraiser looked at our stuff and gave us cards naming the appraisal section they fell under. We had Books, Jewelry, and Metal Work. It's not an exact science, though. While we were getting our cards, two appraisers at another table were trying to decide if a handmade Freemasons's apron should be Textiles or Folk Art.

Then we went into a huge room that was mostly empty, but in the center had a roughly circular  setup of tall blue screens. Above the screens were large stage lights. The lines for each section were behind the screens. When you got to the front, a volunteer checked and stamped your section card and either held you in place or directed you to another, shorter line inside the set.

Our first two lines moved really quickly, so I didn't get to see much of what was going on around us, but the book line was like molasses and we saw all kinds of cool behind the scenes stuff. From what I could tell, if an appraiser thinks you have something TV-worthy, he or she pulls aside a producer and shows it to them (we saw the music guy do this with a viola). If they deem it worthy, the person goes back outside of the screen and is interviewed by the crew, who take notes. We also saw a couple of the appraisers come out to look more closely at the pieces and talk to the owners. I imagine that's the research portion of the process, where the appraiser figures out what he or she will say during the taping.

When we got into the set for the last time, the line continued to move slowly because two of the three book appraisers were talking to producers. But I didn't mind at all because we got to watch a bit being taped. The center of the set holds the cameras and boom mics, and around them are three appraisal stations. They were setting up to record an old rifle at one table, while at another a slightly shellshocked-looking woman with an antique toy was waiting for the appraiser to come sit across from her. The third spot was being set up with a contraption that ended up holding up a really cool looking rug.

We got the book appraised and were out almost three hours exactly after we'd arrived, exhausted despite the fact that we'd spent 90% of our time just standing in line. (Very well managed lines, I should add. Roadshow volunteers are On It.) The appraisers we spoke to were all friendly, upbeat, and happy to tell us in detail about our pieces (Peter Shemonsky in particular was super informative). They didn't seem fazed by the crush of people or seemingly endless lines, and it occurred to me that you'd have to be quite an extrovert to sign up to appraise for a television show.

I think my favorite moment came near the beginning of the day, when the woman at the metal work table was politely telling us that our lamp wasn't anything special. Another person walking onto the set looked at her and exclaimed excitedly, "Oh, it's Kerry Shrives!" Ms. Shrives briefly looked confused, then smiled and waved. It must be awfully strange to be a nerd niche celebrity.

Slayer Shoes

Previously in Geek Shoes.

The lovely Mel asked me to transform a pair of pumps into slayer shoes. She sent me the shoes and a TPB of Fray and I got to work (as soon as I finished reading it, that is).

Everything went faster this time because I knew I needed:

1) 4 long panels with visual interest for the sides.
2) 4 kick-ass close-ups for the heels and toes
3) A selection of smaller rectangular shots for the in-between spots
4) Some tiny pictures for the inevitable gaps

So I marked illustrations I liked as I read and picked ones to cut out only after checking to see if they'd fit on the shoe.

Then I decided to get faaaancy and layer pictures:

The goal is for you not to be able to tell, but this shot is three separate illustrations: The shot with the tattoo is the bottom, with the picture of Fray with her arm out and the red blade layered over it.

I was really happy with the results.












And Mel was happy too, which was the best part!



A couple of people have asked, so:

To get your own geek shoes, just send me the shoes and comic of your choice. My jar of Mod Podge and I will do the rest!

Curmudgeon Central

Me: I have issues with this song.

Him: Me too.

Me: You go first.

Him: Was it really too much trouble to write a second verse? It's 30 seconds of an interesting story followed by 3 minutes of la la la bullshit.

Me: I hadn't even thought of that. My problems are that a) I am NOT young, therefore this song reminds me of my old age and impending death and b) even when I was young, I'm pretty damn sure my standards for dudes were higher than "willing to carry my drunk-ass home from the bar."

Him: That may very well be why you were single until you were 25.

Me: Point.

A perfect storm of NERD

I originally thought this would be a crafts blog. This plan was derailed early on when I realized that I am, in fact, AWFUL at crafting. I'm impatient, messy, uncoordinated, and clumsy.

I still almost made this a crafts blog. Names I considered include:

DIY Reject
To What Has Daisy Glued Her Hand This Week?
Crafting for the Incompetent
"It Only Took 30 Minutes!" My Ass

Because regardless of my incompetence, I really like crafting. I like taking junky, unused stuff and turning it into something pretty and at least nominally useful. I love watching a crazy idea become greater than the sum of its parts. It's a visceral sense of accomplishment that adulthood doesn't often provide.

I'd been looking for cool geek shoes since I found these boots while trawling tumblr for Avengers info (Hot guys, Joss, and shit blowing up. Can I get in line now?). I din't like the execution (Sneakers should not have heels.), but I liked the theory. Apparently the universe wanted me to have geek kicks, because The Hairpin promptly linked to some badass decoupaged heels.

They looked easy enough (famous last words!), but I didn't have any comics, so my friend Kristen and I negotiated a trade: she'd brave the comic book store and send comics for herself and me, and I'd make shoes for her too. I ended up tackling her shoes first because, well, it turns out that in the comics Captain America doesn't look like this; he looks like a sack of potatoes wrapped in a flag. So I need to rethink my concept.

Anyway. Kristen sent me four Mass Effect comics. I know absolutely nothing about ME, but Mr. Razor is a fanboy and pointed out the cool stuff for me.



Shoe one was a near-disaster. Non-pro tip: If you've never decoupaged anything in your life, don't start with a curving, uneven, moveable surface. There were glued fingers, torn papers, and copious cursing.



Shoe two went a whole lot faster. Here's what I learned between the left pump and the right: choose large images. You'll have fewer edges and fewer weird tiny gaps. (Weird tiny gaps, however, are easily covered by onomatopoeia text.) Plus, big images show up better when people look down at the shoes on your feet. Cut the images as close to the shape of the shoe as you can to avoid creasing. Then resign yourself to some creasing at the heel anyway. That curve is freaking impossible.



Materials: Sensible pumps ($6 slightly used at Boomerangs), 4 comic books, mod podge, small paint brush, and acrylic sealer

Method: Cut out your pictures, slap some mod podge on those suckers, wait for them to get a little bit damp so they'll bend better to the shoe, then slap 'em on, When you have the whole thing covered, do 3 or 4 coats of mod podge over the shoes (waiting about a half an hour or more between coats), then wait a day and spray the sealer over them in a well-ventilated area.

Time: About an hour if you know what you're doing. Probably closer to three if you read this and are going, "What's mod podge?" But, as I think I've proved, still totally doable for a newbie!

Or, you know, you could send me some shoes and comics and I could do them for you for a nominal fee. Just sayin'.

Sunday Morning, With the Dead

On Sunday morning, Mr. Razor and I went to see A Day in Pompeii.

I can't really give you a review, because the moment we walked into the exhibit I got hit with what I privately call "the graveyard feeling," because the first time I felt it I was standing in a lonely, overgrown graveyard on Penikese Island. It's not that I'm squeamish about the dead--I've toured catacombs and tombs, and seen mummies and skeletons and not felt it. But it hits me sometimes, like something pushing down on my shoulders or holding a hand uncomfortably close to my neck.

Yes, I realize this is just me being my own personal gothic heroine, and it's all in my head. But I wasn't expecting it, and it made me edgy the whole time we were there. So I took a bunch of pictures to give myself some distance.


This is a detail of the wall-sized fresco at the entrance to the exhibit. I had no idea the colors would be so vibrant. (Nearby, there was a pornographic--oh, sorry, we were in a museum, so it was "erotic"--detail from another fresco, and I really wanted to take a picture, but there was a young girl standing next to me, and I was afraid if I called attention to it she'd be like, "Hey, mom, what are those two men doing to that woman?" and my parenting karma would go in the toilet. So no ancient dirty pictures for you all, sorry.)



Gladiator's helmet. Me: "They must have had really strong necks." Mr. Razor: "That's what you're taking away from this?"



The jewelry is my favorite part of any exhibition. I enjoy the continuity of humans liking pretty things.



Funerary statue. I think this picture really highlights the amazing lighting throughout the exhibit.



Minerva says you can all go fuck yourselves. Or she's giving her blessing, whatever. But doesn't she look cranky?



Minerva detail. We figured this is Medusa's head.



Neptune seems very chill here. I love the clean lines of his tunic, which really contrast with the ornateness of Minerva's.


We did the body casts last:


Mr. Razor never met a special on Pompeii that he didn't like, so I have watched upwards of a dozen programs on the disaster since we've been together. I have to tell you: I hate them. I hate being told in graphic, vivid detail how the people whose faces I saw yesterday knew they were dying; how it may have taken them minutes to choke to death on the hot ash flooding the air. Yet I can never bring myself to turn the channel or leave the room, which is how I felt looking at the casts yesterday. I figure it they had to die like that, the least I can do is pay attention.

Nerdography

Two things:

1. I was my elementary school's National Geographic National Geography Bee champion in 1992. (I got stomped at the state competition, where some of the kids had coaches. I was like, "Should I have gotten a coach?" My parents were like, "No, we'd rather you had a childhood.")

2. My favorite freelance gig is for a local tour company that leads trips all over the world. A few months ago I wrote short historical overviews of countries from Mongolia to Montenegro for their website.

So when I saw this little beauty at Boomerangs, I knew it was coming home with me:



The fact that it cost $3 was just a bonus.

My husband was initially like, "You bought...a globe?" but warmed up when I told him I bought it because it featured post-WWII USSR borders and the French Indochina, two things that were only on maps together for nine years years (1945-1954), making the little globe an antique instead of a piece of junk. (I didn't know that off the top of my head, by the way. I had just finished histories of the Baltic states and the countries of Southeast Asia.)

Mr. Razor, whose geekery surpasses even mine, then wondered if it would be possible to pinpoint the exact year of the globe's manufacture by looking at the countries listed on it. And we were off!

DISCLAIMER: This research was conducted via Wikipedia by two people whose areas of expertise are Medieval British literature and systems engineering, respectively. We also know fuck-all about mapmaking, so if we've screwed this all up, please let us know how, in as much geeky detail as possible. (Note: I am not being sarcastic.)



French Indochina, from the days when one nation could show up in another and take over just by saying, "Do you have a flag?"



So between the World Wars, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were independent states for the first time in a few centuries and were trying to set up governments when WWII rolled around and they got stomped by the Nazis going one way and then stomped by the Communists again going the other way. So the fact that the Baltic area is within the USSR's borders means post-WWII.

(Side note: I wonder if globes were even produced during WWII? Did map makers reprint everything whenever another border shifted? Or were they like, "Eff you Hitler, I'm leaving Poland on there"?)

But you'll notice that Germany remains one country. People born after 1989 are like, "Duh, Germany is one country," but us oldsters remember that there used to be a country called "East Germany" that was full of spies and Olympic athletes on steroids. East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, came into existence in 1949. So our date range was down to 4 years (1945-1949).



OK, I'ma speed up my (probably horrifying to actual historians) event summaries. Pakistan split from India in 1947. So: 1947-1949. I thought that was as close as we were going to get, but Mr. Razor pushed on.



Oh, hey, Israel! Declared independence in May 1948



And, finally, Korea is one country. South Korea came into existence in August 1948.

So, in theory, our little thrift shop globe was produced in the summer of 1948. Again, I have no idea if maps actually get changed that quickly. Enlighten me in the comments if you know!

All right: what have we learned? 1) The 1940s were a turbulent time for international borders and probably a very stressful era for map makers. 2) I am nerdier than everyone.

That fine line between genius and madness

I just read that today is Shel Silverstein's birthday, so I thought today was as good a day as any to tell my Shel Silverstein story.

Shel Silverstein had a house on Martha's Vineyard, and we used to see him around when I was in high school. We did not talk to him (although we would totally peek over his shoulder when he was doodling on napkins at the coffee shop), because even though he was a beloved author of our childhood, he looked like this:



and we were mildly terrified of him. He also sometimes talked to himself, walked everywhere, and never wore shoes.

So one day my dad and I were driving to Oak Bluffs, and we passed him walking along the bike path. I pointed him out and said, "That's Shel Silverstein. He's a famous children's author."

Dad looks over and says, "Famous? Huh. I thought he was a hobo."