LEGO Games Tour

Robbie and I went to check out the LEGO Games Tour at Soulard Market Park yesterday and now I am obsessed with LEGOs. When I visited the Miniature Museum I wanted to build a dollhouse, when I visited Real Pirates I wanted to build a pirate ship, and now I know I can do all these things with LEGOs! Which is perfect for me because I am sorely lacking in creativity but I can totally follow directions.



First let's talk about the games. At first I was a little confused, because all the press releases I saw for this tour showed these giant games, and I was thinking these are for toddlers or something.







But no! These are just large and difficult to steal versions of the games, so you can learn the rules. The real games are made out of LEGOs. So basically you have to assemble your game before you can play it. Pretty cool!



I said to Robbie that this Creationary game looks awesome for parties. A lady with two small children heard me and started laughing. She says that if you are playing with kids, you will definitely want to make use of the time limit option. Of course, if you are thinking more like me and intend to play this with adults and alcohol, you'll probably also want to use the time limit.















Check out the Minotaur! There was a contest going to guess how many LEGO blocks were used to build this, winner to receive a trip to LEGOLAND!



The Minotaur is my new great white whale. As many of you know, I am a construction estimator by trade, but I have no point of reference for LEGOs. I haven't built anything bigger than a 6x6 house, and that was 25 years ago. Not having any clue how many LEGOs went into this drove me crazy!







So now I have been obsessed with large scale LEGO projects all weekend. My sister tipped me to James May's LEGO house that was built for the Toy Stories TV series. Here's an edited down version of the show:



The LEGO house is made from 3.3 MILLION bricks and was built by 1,000 volunteers. Just try not the grin like a little kid while you watch that video. Is it like all your dreams came true, or what?



There's the schedule for the rest of the LEGO Games Summer Tour. I have friends in almost all of those cities, and I know you will want to check it out! The schedule and locations for each stop can be found on the website.

As every nerd knows, one of the things LEGO is most well known for is their massively complex Star Wars kits, inlcuding the coveted $400 Death Star, so I leave you with this video of Eddie Izzard's bit about the Death Star canteen, with LEGO stop-motion animation. Note: video is PG (language).

Catsup Bottle Festival and WLCoWSVoWLT

Yes, that acronym is a mouthful, and what it stands for is even more mind-blowing. Erika Nelson, curator of the World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things Traveling Roadside Attraction and Museum visited the Catsup Bottle Festival in Collinsville, IL last weekend to display her stupendous collection and show off her art car. Courtney took off work for the catsup but I was there for the WLCoWSVoWLT.



Erika painted that herself. You can buy postcards and prints (and all kinds of other cool stuff!) at worldslargestthings.com.



Speaking of a mouthful, this here is the Rotate-O-Matic Whirlwind Wonderhouse of World's Largest Things (Seriously, I love everything about this entire concept. LOVE IT. Erika is living the dream. You should buy things from her. Perhaps you'd like to start with the World's Largest Challenger Ball Stater Kit?)













We got to see the Cereal Killer freak show, too. Pictures can't do Erika's performance justice, and I thought about leaving them out so that you would have to seek out WLCoWSVoWLT on the road, but I am overruled by Keith. Speaking of which, he doesn't like for me to shine the light on him, but I never even took my camera out of my pocket on this trip. If you've been reading for awhile you have probably already figured out that the good pictures are his.



BEHOLD! CEREAL FREAKS OF NATURE!







A few pictures of the WLCoWSVoWLT Art Car:







So the other reason we were in Collinsville last weekend was for the Catsup Bottle Festival, a birthday party for the World's Largest Catsup Bottle. Yes, I know this is America and we say ketchup, but this is Brooks Catsup Bottle so it's catsup today. Even though Brooks has since started spelling it ketchup. Get over it.



Courtney loves catsup. Girlfriend can eat some catsup like no one I've ever seen. Like I said, she took off work for this. However, she failed the Brooks taste test. We're Heinz people over in Missouri. I'm not much of a catsup person myself, but I hear Brooks is spicier than average (it's the tangy-est!)



Funny story, though: the food booth where we got hot dogs had Heinz on their condiment table and the girls in front of me in line were offended. They actually went over to the taste test booth to get Brooks.



Some facts about the World's Largest Catsup Bottle: The bottle itself is 70' tall on a 100' base. It was built as a water tower for the plant in 1949, and holds 100,000 gallons of water. It was saved from demolition and renovated in 1995 thanks to the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group, and in 2002 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.



There was also a Princess Tomato and Sir Catsup pageant. I expected it to be more pageant-y, but this one is just for fun. Each kid had to tell a catsup fact and perform a talent. Most of them sang a song.



Next up, the Hot Dog Eating Contest. Possibly the most boring Hot Dog Eating Contest ever. Sorry, dudes, but six hot dogs in four minutes? Kobayashi wept. Of course, you know what that means: a perfect opportunity for the CC&G Action Cam!


(disclaimer: Courtney would not actually steal children. Thanks to Robbie for the video!)



And finally, one for the locals: It's the dogs from Insta Credit Auto Mart! You want to say Buckley, but the current dogs are Buckey J and Baxter K.



The Catsup Bottle Festival is held every year in July, but you can see the Catsup Bottle itself any day of the year at 8000 South Morrison Ave in Collinsville, IL.

Pirates!

OK so, last week I promised you pirates. Here's the thing. I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures. I didn't hear that at the beginning of the tour and apparently all my friends thought I was just flaunting the rules and didn't say anything. So I'm going to cheat just a tiny bit and post JUST ONE.



I didn't want to skip the pirates entirely because the reason I wasn't paying attention at the beginning was because I was SO EXCITED when I found out this was not just any pirate exhibit. This is stuff brought up from the Whydah shipwreck! The Whydah started out as a slave ship before being captured by pirates, so the exhibit covers the slave trade quite a bit. There are lots of artifacts from the shipwreck, as well as all the details they could piece together about the crew, and a pretty cool bit at the end about concretions and some of Barry Clifford's pioneering techniques in identifying objects inside concretions without breaking them apart.

I already knew a little about the Whydah beforehand because I read one of Clifford's other books, Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd. He found the Whydah a few years before the Captain Kidd expedition, so it is mentioned quite a bit. There are a couple books on Amazon about the Whydah expedition itself, Expedition Whydah: The Story of the World's First Excavation of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her, which I intend to read shortly, and the book that goes with the exhibit, Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship.

The Real Pirates exhibit continues through August 6 at the St Louis Science Center. Admission is $16, but you can get a combo deal with the Omnimax (regular price $9) for $22. I recommend Hubble!

It's a Webster Groves Thing

I grew up in Webster Groves, so as far as I'm concerned, there are no other options on the 4th of July. Fair St Louis? Never heard of it.



We were obsessed by the Nemesis 360, which was new this year. It's so dangerously complex for something that arrives on a tractor trailer. Action cam coming up later.









I love carnivals, and I love the Webster carnival the best. So much shiny! The Sugar Shack makes me laugh because they don't even try to mask the fact that they are selling junk.













OK, Action Cam time and then on to the fireworks. When I first arrived at the carnival, someone told me they heard that this ride should be renamed the "OH SH*T!" because that's what everyone says the first time they see it. Sure enough, I was no exception.



FIREWORKS! 4th of July is my second favorite holiday (second only to Halloween, also a big deal in Webster) and I believe in sitting as close as is allowed. People who watch from parking lots and overpasses are missing half the fun.



No one was more surprised than me that my normally disappointing point-and-shoot actually takes some pretty sweet fireworks photos.



















Happy Birthday, America! We're using our day off to check out the Real Pirates exhibit at the Science Center, so be on the lookout for that report next week!