n the corner of Hollywood and Highland, in the bustle of the city's most ridiculous tourist traps -- the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Guiness Book of World Records store, etc -- is the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum. 'A collection of curios from around the world,' promises the banner outside, featuring the picture of a shrunken head.
"Look!" I say, pointing to the neon sign. "It's called an 'Odditorium'. Isn't that funny?"
"I can't believe you want to go to that stupid place," Julie says. "What's wrong with you?"
What's wrong with me? I don't quite know. But I have been threatening to go to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum since I saw it last year. Julie doesn't understand. She never watched the television show, hosted in the Eighties by Jack Palance, which spotlighted strange foreign rituals and absurd feats of human strength. Everything was exclamation points and ellipses. "This man lifted five-hundred pounds of steel ... with his tongue! Believe It ... Or Not!"
My brother and I were entranced. We even had the board game, which gave players a bizarre scenario and asked them whether or not they believed it.

Josh: Okay. In modern-day China, monkey brains are considered a delicacy.
Sarah: Modern-day China? No way. I don't believe it.
Josh: [making buzzing noise] Believe it! It's the truth!

There's a sweet naivete to our fascination with Believe It or Not!, which has everything to do with being suburban children whose lives revolved around Ataris and syndicated sitcoms and trips to Disneyland. It blew our mind that there were places -- in this world, at this moment -- where people ate monkey brains. Where tribes used human skulls for instruments and bowls. This was a tunnel into some secret world of nudity and ritual, a world our parents never talked about (did they know?), where women put disks in their lips and men grew their fingernails into long, yellowed coils. We didn't have context or even sensitivity. We really only gawked and squirmed, as children do when confronted with the unusual. But it's still a kind of eduction, I guess. Like the Guiness Book of World Records meets National Geographic meets Stupid Human Tricks.
"Believe It ... or Not!" Jack Palance always said. And he said it so beautifully, as if it were a dare. We believed, Mr. Palance, we believed.

The Ripley's Believe It or Not! "Odditorium" costs $11.95. The first exhibit is a Wack-a-Mole.
"How many mole heads can you hit in 30 seconds?" reads the sign above it. "Wanna try?"
I hit 22 heads in 30 seconds. Am I at Chuck E. Cheese?
Downstairs is the stuff I'm looking for. The two-headed goat (fake). The fish with a human's face, once believed to be evidence of mermaids (fake). Ooh, the wax statues. Wax statues are so supercreepy. There is the construction worker who lived after a metal pipe penetrated his entire face: "The Worst Industrial Accident Ever Survived!" There is the pig who was executed publicly for killing a woman: "The Most Dangerous Animal!" There is the criminal who was placed in a barrel spiked with nails and rolled down a hill: "The Worst Form of Punishment!" It's hysterical in its hyperbole, cheesy in its presentation, but in truth, it's gross and tacky and makes me feel kind of disgusting.
But wait: Where are the shrunken heads from Ecuador?
The shrunken heads room is roped off right now. Are they being cleaned? Are they acting up? Those damn shrunken heads, always giving attitude.
I leave the museum, not so much satisfied in my curiosity as feeling had by it. And I wander, a little crestfallen, down Hollywood Avenue, wondering where to go next.
"Wanna take a free personality and IQ test?" a man asks outside the Center for Scientology.
"No thanks," I say. I remember these guys from the Drag in Austin, always dressed respectable, but unremarkable. A button-down shirt and a tie. A jacket and a shirt without a tie. Thick glasses, bad hair.
"You don't wanna know your IQ?"
"No I do wanna know my IQ, I just don't have time." A total lie.
"It'll only take 45 minutes." A total lie.
And that's how I spent three hours with the Scientologists. More on that tomorrow.