Day 72
Not wanting to fall behind for the second day in a row, I broke camp in record time, scarfed down my oatmeal, and began the long drive up to Seattle. One of my favorite chocolate companies, Theo’s, is based there, and I was determined to go on a tour. As I merged off of the highway and into the city, I got stuck behind a truck with an interesting ad on it. It was for a Star Wars costume exhibit at the EMP Museum, which was still on. The fact that it even existed was enough to convince me to go, so I added that to the list of things to do before heading further north to North Cascades National Park for the night. You’ll have to pardon me while I get my ultimate geek on for the rest of the entry. But first, Theo’s.
I hopped on the next tour and donned a hair net. We learned about chocolate’s history and took a tasting tour of different varieties (which was the best part of the tour, obviously). We got a short tour of the factory rooms, where all the chocolate that is sold, ever, with a Theo’s label is produced, as well as a short tour of the confection room. This is where all the fancy ganache, caramel, molded bunnies and Santas, and more are created, to be sold only in the gift shop at the front of the factory. They’re too perishable to ship elsewhere, so they’re a bit of an exclusive item to Seattle. There were samples, but because typical chocolate decadence involves heavy cream, I passed. I did, however, get a free chocolate bar at the end of the tour (as did everyone else, so my bar wasn’t particularly special) and some special vegan confections from behind the counter in the gift shop to sample before diving into the merchandise. I couldn’t resist buying a raspberry bar (who could?) before heading out to the EMP. I had just gotten my chocolate geek on, and now it was time to get every other kind of geek on.
When I arrived and paid for my ticket, I looked at the list of exhibits to see if there was anything else that I wanted to visit (although Star Wars would have been more than enough for me). To my surprise, everything sounded great. The EMP, or Experience Music Project, was inspired by Jimi Hendrix, and is housed in a Frank Gehry designed building. Both the inside and out are made of hammered metal, reflecting the brightly colored lights and giving you a sensation of entering another world, or least a drug induced one…which, considering the inspiration, was probably the intention.
I checked Star Wars off my list first. The exhibit featured over sixty costumes from all six movies, which were designed by two separate costume designers decades apart. But they all came from the mind of George Lucas. I did a research project on Star Wars in college for one of my film classes, so I knew a little more about its roots than the average person there. It helped me appreciate the intricacies of the designs even more. Most people take movie costumes for granted; if they’re done well, you’re either wowed by them or don’t notice them at all. I think Star Wars’ tend to do the former, more so the ones from the second trilogy than the first. The movies are supposed to be like a space western, which explains Han Solo’s cavalry-like garb. After the fall of the Republic, fashion was supposed to have essentially disappeared, and thus Leia’s costumes are much simpler and more monochromatic than Amidala’s in the later movies. The evil minions of Darth Vader are dressed like fascists from World War II, while Darth Vader himself wears a mixture of samurai and monk influenced garments (just like a Jedi, but darker and scarier). Star Wars, as the name suggests, is about a series of military battles, so most of the costumes have a military influence, whether it be from ancient Japanese warfare or from the American Western. A lot more thought went into the precise design of the costumes than people realize.
The costumes from the second trilogy are even more impressive, although far less iconic than the C-3PO, R2D2, Chewy, and Stormtrooper get-ups featured in the first part of the exhibit. Amidala’s costumes were drawn from a myriad of cultures from around the world, from Elizabethan paintings to photos of Mongolian royalty. She’s supposed to look exotic in her dresses, but not any sort of exotic that you can pin down to a single reference or culture. The influence is clear in each one, but together they are a mass of the entire world. They also settled for nothing less than the finest fabrics, which doesn’t hurt the end result.
I wandered downstairs into the exhibit Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction next. It featured a spaceship console to play with, drawings from famous science fiction novels, models of spaceships and aliens over the decades (they’ve changed A LOT), and costumes and props from all your favorite sci-fi films and tv shows. They had robots from the original Doctor Who, costumes from the newest Battlestar Galactica (which is one of my personal favorites) and the Fifth Element, aliens from Galaxy Quest and Alien (of course), a slew of Klingon gear, and guns galore. It was very dark in the room, and everything was behind reflective glass, so sorry about the quality of the pictures. But it just wouldn’t have been the same in a brightly lit room.
I headed up through the gigantic hall where a screen the size of the wall was playing music videos and local radio coverage to the video game exhibit. It focused on the rise of the indie gaming industry, but mostly was just a bunch of games that you could play. That sounded like the world’s biggest time suck, so I headed to the next and final exhibit on my list: the fantasy exhibit. They broke down the archetypes of pretty much every fantasy story and movie into a gathering of tarot like cards with cute animal illustrations. Each window featured a different fantasy character, or group of characters, and related them to one of the archetype cards. They really can all be broken down into a chosen few. They had things from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, you name it. Well, not you name it they had it, but they had a fair bunch on display.
Thoroughly geeked out, I rushed back to my car before my meter expired and headed up towards the Canadian border. I’m not actually visiting Canada yet, but I keep coming mighty close to it.
Next up: North Cascades National Park
KNITTING KNOMAD 