IA Day 4 - Meat, Matchsticks, and Movie Sets
Today I slept in a little bit after staying out late hanging out with Iowa comedians after the mic last night so I started the day with a bit of brunch. After visiting the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library earlier in the week, I wanted to check out Cedar Rapids’ historically Czech neighborhoods New Bohemia and Czech Village. I decided to go to the traditional Czech deli, the Village Meat Market and Cafe (it has sadly closed but the city made sure to have another traditional take their place). I got a good cup of coffee to get my day started, and a nice fat Czech meatloaf sandwich. Meatloaf is never the prettiest looking dish, but good god was it delicious, and the fries were so nice and crispy that it was really a perfect lunch on the go. I guess I must be kind of a boring patron though, because the meat vendors were incredulous that I wanted a sandwich and fries without any ketchup or mustard. It was like they just saw a unicorn walk into their deli.
After fueling up, today was more of a quality over quantity type of day because the things I wanted to see were pretty spread out over a good four hours of driving but they were all very cool. My first stop was an incredible showcase of one artist’s very unique talents and vision: the Matchstick Marvels Museum in Gladbrook. The museum houses large scale works by a self taught local artist named Patrick Acton, who makes absolutely insane scale models of buildings, ships, and anything that strikes his fancy out of nothing but glue and hundreds of thousands of two-inch wooden matchsticks. Acton is now retired and able to focus on his models full time, but it was initially a hobby born out of necessity when he was a broke recent college grad (relatable) and the only wood he could afford to work with was from matchsticks. He started out making a small county church, and after enjoying the process he decided to challenge himself further by trying to make a matchstick version of the U.S.S. Constitution. He decided to keep honing this peculiar craft and challenging himself to make more and more complicated creations, and now forty years later he’s made over 70 matchstick models from over a million matchsticks and had his work displayed in museums (Ripley’s Believe or Not is a big collector of his works believe it or not) all over the country. It’s not hard to see how these pieces have captured people’s imaginations because it really is astonishing that Acton is able to get such fine attention to detail out of such an unconventional building material.
The first few displays I saw were all dedicated to different model crafts and vessels. Some highlights included: a painted fighter plane called the Yankee’s Revenge; a sleek SR-71 Blackbird spy plane; an Apache fighter helicopter complete with little matchstick pilots and gunners; the space shuttle challenger complete with the entire launch site; and a giant model of the USS Iowa aircraft carrier complete with miniature aircrafts for carrying.
Next up were some jaw-dropping architectural models including Notre Dame Cathedral, The US Capitol, and the Iowa Governor’s mansion (which I thought was the house from the Munster’s because clearly I am a man of high culture). The attention given to every minute architectural detail was just unbelievable.
Outside of the model buildings and vessels, there were a few wildcard sculptures which were naturally some of my favorites. These included: an adorably stubby brontosaurus; a surprisingly realistic rendering of a historic cannon hooked up to a little wagon for guarding and transporting lumber; and an impressively majestic soaring eagle.
I think possibly the most spectacular matchstick sculpture of all though was this model of the Cutty Sark Clipper ship, because the fact that, through careful warping and painting, Acton is able to create such wildly different textures between the sails and the hull using only matchsticks is simply mind-blowing.
Not all of Pat Acton’s sculptures are on display in the museum at any given point, but fortunately, there are pictures on the walls to highlight the breadth of his creations and just how many thousands of matchsticks he’s gone through. Some of my favorite photos included matchstick models of Pinocchio, The World Trade Center (with the artist posing next to it to capture just how gigantic the model is), the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, a whimsically M.C. Escher-like crooked house, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and a gun-slinging cowboy.
My favorite photo was this one of Pat next to an absolutely insane two-headed dragon he made (look at the texture on the wings and the leg muscles!) that was commissioned by Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The real life model is also hooked up to little lights and motors so it can actually flap its wings (which clock in at 10 ft. long) and appear to breathe fire. I particularly liked the photo, because while the sculpture is simply astounding Pat just sort of looks like friend’s dad and it’s fun to imagine how many people must have had no idea this was something he was doing with his spare time let alone at this level of talent.
Last but not least was a pretty incredible large-scale work in progress. The latest matchstick marvel being worked on while I was there was a giant recreation of the Dodge Charger featured heavily in the Fast and the Furious franchise. This piece, which was also commissioned by Ripley’s Believe It or Not, is an exacting work of realism recreating both the car’s interior, exterior, and internal parts with over 720,000 matchsticks. It also features a few animatronic parts including working headlights, engine sounds, and fully rotating tires. Even incomplete it was enough to ellicit an audible “wow”.
After bidding farewell to the Matchstick sculptures, I made my way to a slightly more famous Iowa landmark, the movie set from Field of Dreams. Possibly the most accessible bit of magical realism in mainstream American cinema, Field of Dreams and it’s “If You Build It They Will Come” catchphrase are pretty iconic in pop culture and I feel like its sort of gained a status as a go to father-son movie which is definitely how I first came across it. Even if you’d never seen the movie, there was something very ethereal and charming about the sudden baseball stadium in the middle of the grassy plains, and the fact that it had just recently rained gave everything an extra ghostly quality. I was also excited to learn that the baseball diamond actually extends across two different local family farms and initially one family wanted to keep it up while the others wanted to put the land back to agricultural use. Eventually though the popularity of the film and the in-flux of tourism led the two families to settle their differences and the diamond was restored to its former glory.
After my site seeing, it was just under a two hour drive down to Iowa City where the night’s open mic would be. Before the comedy, I stopped for some dinner at a great local dumpling restaurant called Dumpling Darling. I couldn’t decide between steamed and fried dumplings so I got a mix of both, ordering a small portion of fried avocado rangoons (like crab rangoons but with a refreshing dollop of avocado) and a small order of steamed pork and cabbage dumplings with a filling of local pork, cabbage, ginger, and scallions. Everything was delicious and even if it was surrounded in fried dough and meat it was also nice to get a little burst of vegetables to mildly level out all the pure meat and cheese I’d been having while in the midwest.
After dinner, I made my way to the venue that was hosting the night’s open mic, High Grounds Cafe. The mic had been recommended to me by some local comics from the night before, and I could see why because even before the comedy started there was just a super welcoming and fun atmosphere in the room. Before it transitions to being a bar, they are also a cafe (perfect for a college town) so I got to have the best of both worlds getting some good coffee and a place to sit and write for a bit before the show and then a great bar for comedy a few hours later. Once it turned into a bar, I had to get a beer called the Juice Factory IPA from Iowa City’s ReUnion Brewing Company because even though I don’t normally love IPAs this was some of the craziest can art I’d ever seen.
The open mic was a real blast, albeit a bittersweet one, because the two hosts Jessica Misra and Austin Mooney were really great comics but they were getting ready to move to Chicago the week after the mic so it was great to see them perform but sad to see them saying goodbye to a scene they clearly meant a lot to.
My favorite for the name was a comic named Trenton Orris because he decided in honor of Austin and Jessica leaving to just tell his favorite jokes from each host. It was very sweet, and also the jokes were very funny. My favorite was a story about how Austin's friend won a ranch drinking competition and then a month later killed himself so all of their friend group was just stuck with his lifetime supply of fast food he won. It was a perfect mix of sad and surreally hilarious
Other highlights included:
Audrey - I accidentally sent a Robert Downy Jr. meme to the love of my life, I was so embarrassed my brain actually started to itch
Q- Cheeseburgers discovered 30 years after Hamburgers. For 30 years nobody thought to put cheese on a hamburger.
Andrew Tysinger- CrossFit is the vegan of workout regiments
Craig - I saw a bridge named after a police officer who had a heart attack training for his physical. I don’t feel like he earned that.
Gerald Bronson- Fox and friends sounds like a show for children... because it is. I'm a holocaust denier. I don't let any holocausts near me
My own set went very well, because I think I really fed off the warm convivial energy in the room and I just had a very loose fun time with it. After the mic, I had a nice time hanging out with all the East Iowa comedians I’d met throughout the week.
One of the comedians recommended that I pay a visit to Aspen Leaf Frozen Yogurt for some post-comedy dessert because they have super out there flavors like apple pie. I didn’t go that route opting for the Irish Mint which was a delicious and refreshing way to end the night.
Favorite Random Sightings: a loan agency called Chec King; a restaurant called Fuzzy’s Taco Shop (not sure if the innuendo is intentional, but I feel like it has to be); a hot dog shop called The Flying Wienie; A billboard that proclaimed "Eat our famous eye for health" (I have no clue what that means); a farm supply store called Goos Implements (sounds crazy); a gas station called Quik n Handi
Regional Observations: Cedar Rapids has a faint but distinctly yeasty smell, possibly from the local breweries and bakeries.
Albums Listened To: I finished listening to every song on my iPod, but I had four new albums I picked up from a fun indie record store in Madison, WI called Strictly Discs. I listened to Q: Are We Not Men? by Devo; Relatives in Descent by Protomartyr; Saint Dominic’s Preview by Van Morrison; and Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation by Dr. Octagon (I must have seemed very odd to whoever was working at the record shop picking up such a strange selection all at once).
Random Joke of the Day:
A group of Americans was touring Ireland. One of the women in the group was a real curmudgeon, constantly complaining. The bus seats are uncomfortable.The food is terrible. It's too hot. It's too cold. The accommodations are awful.
The group arrived at the site of the famous Blarney Stone. "Good luck will be followin' ya all your days if you kiss the Blarney Stone,"he guide said. "Unfortunately, it's being cleaned today and so no one will be able to kiss it. Perhaps we can come back tomorrow."
"We can't be here tomorrow," the nasty woman shouted. "We have some other boring tour to go on. So I guess we can't kiss the stupid stone."
"Well now," the guide said, "it is said that if you kiss someone who has kissed the stone, you'll have the same good fortune."
"And I suppose you've kissed the stone," the woman scoffed.
"No, ma'am," the frustrated guide said, "but I've sat on it."
Songs of the Day:
One of my favorite covers for fully changing the entire tone of the original
A really wild collaboration between Kool Keith, Dan the Automator, and DJ Qbert
Post-Punk Beat Poetry
Cool version of a great song. I love that the video specifies that this is a rare time when Van looks like he’s into what he’s doing