Part 3 of Penguins and Pyjamas: Rocking and Rolling with Magic Balls and Dusty Bones!

Finally.  The last installment of the Epic Adventure that was the Penguins and Pyjamas sleepover at the California Academy of Sciences!  This last part chronicles the descent into full-on mischief, mayhem and foolishness that only grown-ups in pyjamas mixed with Paleo-compliant sugary cocktails and suddenly unleashed repressed childhood urges can unleash.....  Be warned, some of the images below are not for the faint of heart.

We rejoin our heroes after they have changed into full-on battle gear.  Fully loaded with prints of polars bears and Time lords, with Angry Birds loosely stuffed into pockets and hell-bent on feathery revenge, they now pad through the cavernous halls in fluffy sheepskin slippers lookin' for trouble.

It wasn't hard to find.

Sold!  To the lady wearing the Angry Bird PJ's!

First up was a magician (whose name I singularly forgot but who I....um... somehow gave my number to - I blame Lori) and a grown-up magic show!  The show was held in the big glass-walled atrium and was the same space I remember being in last year during one of the Academy's Nightlife Thursday events.  This happened just after I'd arrived in SF, all keen to give the single boys a chance to prove themselves of higher calibre than their scuzzy East Coast cousins, so I ended up on a second (yes! second!) date with this guy who happened to be one of the architects who'd been involved in the redesign of the whole Academy a few years prior.   He was charming enough but the evening did feel as if it turned into more of a guided tour, than an intimate date but c'est la vie.

An embarrassment of balls.  It happens.  

Anyway, all the Nightlife events have different themes and that evening's theme was Dinosaurs!!  Always a crowd favorite.  As part of the evening's entertainment, other than the rampant imbibing and meat-marketing that seemed to be the main attraction, there was - for our edification and gratification a Dino Burlesque Show.  Yep.  Dino Strippers. A Bronto Burlesque Extravangaza.  Stripposauruses, as it were.   It was as completely random as you'd imagine and I'm still convinced I probably need therapy to recover - the T-Rex stripper wasn't so bad but it was the Bronto stripper who left an indelible mark on my sensibilities.  Dita Von Teese she wasn't and good for her for being so body-confident as she wobbled her way across stage but did I need to witness that?  No.  It was all a bit much.  It did, however, provide much-needed substrate for date-discussion other than the extensive use of recyclable and ecologically sensitive materials used to construct the Academy's infrastructure, so for that, at least, I was grateful.

Steady.  You won't find anything in there, young man.

Anyway, I digress.  A lot.  Suppressing the blob-a-liscious flashbacks, we settled into the FREEZING COLD of the atrium for the magic show - and it was absolutely fantastic!  He was simply incredible.  The things he could do with a pair of fluffy red balls was nothing short of...um... magical.  We'd arrived a little bit late, so were sat all the way at the back, so couldn't see quite as much as if we had front row seats but - even still - he was actually amazing!  He did a number of different tricks with balls, cards and the invariable "object from the audience" (in this case, some poor girl's engagement ring - and I think she'd just got engaged that night so was suitably petrified of giving it up! - highly amusing!) and it was really well done.  I mean, you know you are being hoodwinked and that its all a trick (I've watched enough episodes of The Mentalist, thank you very much) but the skill with which he fooled your cognitive processes and your determination to figure out what the hell he is doing and how on earth he just did that was impressive.  He certainly knew how to work the crowd too as his patter was top-notch and the crowd was eating out of his (sleight-of) hand.

OoooOOoooo!!
Pretty, pretty sparkly things!

So we sat and watched the Strangely Attractive Otherwisely Unattractive Magician until his show ended and we were completely frozen solid.  I have no idea why the Atrium was so cold relative to the other spaces but we gladly shuffled out in search of further mischief and to return the blood flow to our extremities.  On the way out, I managed to blag myself a free Train CD as the local radio station was there, and was giving away free swag to "those members of the audience who participated in the magic show" and invited those lucky folk to come on up and select a prize.  Well, I thought - I participated - I watched it, right and - I think - at one point Mr Strangely Attractive Unattractive Magician may have attempted to read my mind before giving it up as a bad job cos the echoing was too loud, so up I trotted, maneuvered myself to the front of the line and bagged a premium CD.  That, my son, is what you would call a result.

Perusing the appetizer cart

Anyway, buoyed by my own bravado, we struck out into the depths of the museum and thus happened upon one of the lesser visited areas, the Gemology (or something) exhibit where we could go and ooh and ahhh over lots of very pretty and sparkly rocks and gems!  Apparently, this was one of the exhibits not normally open (or significantly more restricted) to the public, but we were getting full access to go and tour their vault full of the good stuff.  It was very interesting and there were all manner of gems of suitably impressive dimensions, hues and colors.  Equally as impressive was the lab space we had to walk through, en route to the gem display, which seemed to be amply stocked full of pinned butterflies and ancient arachnids in big glass cases on the countertops.  We wondered if they would miss a couple but, in the end, sensibleness prevailed and we contented ourselves with bagging a couple of ridiculously posed shots for the camera instead.
 

Hmm...what do i feel in the mood for? Arachnid snack
or Lepedoptiris lunchable?

Quelle horreur!  Have you seen the calories in these things??

And rattles and rolls.....

Unfortunately, our sojourn of sparkles meant that we then missed admittance into the Planetarium for one of their shows by a mere couple of minutes.  Darn!!  So, instead we headed over the the Shake House to experience one of the Academy's most recent exhibits, the recreation of the 1989 earthquake.  This was one of the things I'd been most looking forward too and particularly looking forward to enjoying it without the inevitable hour or so long queue that visiting on a weekend would entail!  Since moving to CA, I can't say that I've actually noticed any earthquakes, though hundreds happen every month (most little one around 1-2 on the Richter scale, but there have been a number in the 4's) so I was  curious to see what a major earthquake would feel like.  Lori, however, already knew what an 6.9 earthquake felt like as she was actually in San Francisco when the 1989 earthquake happened and a part of the Bay Bridge collapsed.  So, for her, being in that exhibit and experiencing the shake of that tremor again was actually quite an emotional experience.     

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_san_francisco_earthquake

The Shake House.  Primed for seismic mischief....

Lori and some Painted Ladies  - and kick-ass PJ's!!

Not hamming it up in the least.  Honest.  No, really.  

OK.  So, needless to say - I don't think being in a 6.2 earthquake would be a great deal of fun.  The Shake House faithfully recreated both the severity and duration of the shaking  - and it was significant.  You had to really hold on and it seemed to last forever, so you really could imagine how utterly terrifying it must have been to have been experiencing it live, back in 1989, not knowing how long it would last for.   After the House had Shaked and Baked us, we gratefully exited - me with a deeper appreciation of just how fortunate I've been so far to not experience any significant seismic shakedowns.  It is pretty sobering, though, to think that that could happen at any time - in the next second, minute, day, hour or year - its just a matter of time and whether i will be lucky enough to dodge  the tremorous bullet....

Losing that evening's Stretch Your Neck competition by a.. ahem.. head.

But, on to happier thoughts and back to living life in the present moment - it was safari time!!  Yep, time to explore all the animal exhibits and rope in innocent bystanders to capture Lori and I in poses of an increasingly ridiculous nature.  First up on our photogenic odyssey were the giraffes - alas, too tall for their ears and that weird stubby bit on the top of their heads to make it in the photograph.  But they were suitably impressively tall and not at all Evil Looking Giraffes....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYcnEonB04E

Incapable of taking even one serious photo.  I blame the Paleo cocktails....

After the giraffes, it was onto the dinosaurs and the very scary and impressively Jurassictastic T-Rex skeleton!  I almost expected Ben Stiller to jump out at me with a big black Maglite torch and for the skeleton to suddenly come to life and demand to play fetch but, alas (or not, I guess), all remained in its place and non-animated so instead we added the drama with a moving tableaux featuring much angsty mugging for the camera and our Patent Pending Angry Birds Interpretative Dance.  Lori's performance was so inflammatory, she literally (or metaphorically or metamorphically or metaphysically) set her hair on fire....

Yeah.  Not sure what was happening by this stage.
T-Rex?  Angry Bird juggling?  I'm on it....

Angry Birds somehow spookily ignite Lori's head....

Let's do the Time Warp agaiiiinnnnnn!!  

Please God, save me from these crazy-assed photos!!
Lori going postal with the Angry Birds....

Ah.  Ouch.  Ugh. 

Oh Foucault Pendulum.  Why is the Earth spinning so much?

And so we now get to the part of the evening that is somewhat more.. ahem.. fuzzily remembered than the rest.  Alas Paleo-endorsed cocktails contain, apparently, a Stone Age-worths more alcohol than Homo Sapiens and it all start to get a little Foucaltian from hereonin.  Fortunately, the festivities were starting to wind down, so ill-advised game of Twister aside (cue full-on face plant) - it was time to get the blow-up mattresses ready and to crash out in the African Hall.  We'd decided at the last minute to go sleep with the Penguins, rather than the fish, so off we wobbily trotted off to the Hall where a number of folk had already set up camp and were turning in for the night.  It was just so cool to clamber into your sleeping bag and to fall asleep in front of the lions and gazelles and antelopes.  Waking up the next morning with a caveman-sized hangover was less cool, but all in all, it was an absolutely fantastic evening and one which I would absolutely do again next year.  I already have the Japanese-styled Penguin onesy sleepsuit on order so I'm ready to bring it and up my sartorial A-game - so 2013 P&P Sleepover, here I come!!!

Wipe-out.  Playing Twister after one too many may seem like a
 good idea but very very rarely is.....