Earlier today I went to the EMP—the Experience Music Project. It's a music museum, and it's in Seattle.
To my understanding, the EMP is actually a giant tax writeoff. Paul Allen (the, you know, co-founder of Microsoft) is a collector of music memorabilia and by the late 1990s he had amassed quite a collection. I'm not sure this is the actual rationale, but he reportedly donated the entire collection so that he could cash in on the rather substantial tax writeoff.
Even if the details were true, I understand that even if it is convenient to dump the entire collection and save some cash, that it probably isn't the only reason he did it.
Nevertheless, the museum was unexpectedly expensive to get into. I understand that any museum of popular culture is going to be ridiculously expensive to maintain, but the going entrance price was something like $15/person.
Thankfully, my employer has a copay program that allows me to get in cheaper. Awesome.
In any event, there was a lot of really fantastic stuff in there that I'm sure I would have never gotten to see otherwise. I'm tempted to write about some of it, but I realize that it's the sort of thing that means something different to everybody.
I will, however, note that they had a small kid's plastic turntable that Dan the Automator used to figure out whether records are worthy or not.
...I'm pretty sure only Mouser will realize what I'm talking about. Dork.
As an attendee of the Handsome Boy Modeling School, I am trained and licensed to 0wnz0r your bitches.