Little Shop of Horrors

***Update below!***

"Our giant has haemorrhoids"

This past week while I was home on the East Coast, I delivered a public lecture on a topic related to my dissertation at Observatory, the lecture and exhibition space my friend Joanna Ebenstein runs in Brooklyn. She is an independent scholar and artist who also writes a blog called Morbid Anatomy. Joanna is interested in history of science and medicine, in museums and collecting, and most of all in death. In addition to books, she has an impressive collection of memento mori and specimens in her research library (right).  My talk was entitled "Body Voyaging or, A Short Excursion Through the History of Fantastic Anatomical and Physiological Journeys Through the Body" (sample image, left).

In this vein, during my travels here in Europe, I have occasionally come across some truly bizarre and/or disturbing things, some of which I will now share with you.

This was the first find, in the window of a bakery around the corner from the hotel in Copenhagen where Joanna and I shared a room while attending a conference on history of science and medicine museums. It’s a Barbie doll…baked into a cake. I hardly know where to go with that--a certain line from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind--but as this is a family publication, I’ll just leave it there.

Radio PSR. Always. There. Even when you’re
lying in bed drinking a cup of coffee.

If you can believe it, this billboard advertisement for a local radio station is the less creepy of the two iterations I’ve seen. The creepier version I saw from a streetcar involved this man poking his head from another dimension through the fabric of the universe into the front seat of a car being driven by a cheerful young woman in a yellow scarf.  I just *love* when my favorite disc jockey physically invades my personal space, don't you?


You know my roommate moved us across town between Christmas and New Year’s to an apartment so new it’s still under construction. It’s in an old factory warehouse that is being remodeled into apartments, an excellent project to re-purpose an existing structure. But the people who painted the stairways have a different aesthetic than I do, so I will include one of their pieces in my gallery of the disturbing.

My artist roommate needs a more avant-garde, in-your-face style to support her artwork. I rather preferred the slightly gentrified older neighborhood with the century-old buildings of our last place. Ah well. More on the aesthetics of Lebensraum in a future post.


You have hear how I found this one. I hadn’t come across it during our three months at the old apartment; then, when we moved, the utensil drawer (like everything else) was wrapped in industial-strength cling wrap for the Schlepp across town. While our kitchen was still under construction, if we needed something we just made a hole in the plastic and pulled out whatever we needed.

The week before I left for the US, I got tired of plastic-ware and went looking for a spoon. This…hoof was sitting right under a hole in the plastic, I guess because my roommate had wanted to open a beer. Now if I were the screaming type, I would have exercised my vocal cords. But as it is, I knew that whatever that foot was attached to, it wasn’t the rest of Bambi.

Chucky’s German cousin Hans

I haven’t shared much from my research yet, so I’ll close with this disturbing image.  It shows Baby Hygiene, decked out like Father Time on New Year’s Day, representing the Second International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, 1930-1931. It has the face of a Kewpie doll and not one but two Hygiene Eyes, the symbol of the German Hygiene Museum and the major sponsor of the health fair.

In case you’re wondering, the text reads:

Nun geh’ ich schon ins zweite Jahr,
Bin kerngesund und froh,
Das machs daβ ich hygienisch war.
Seid Ihr es ebenso!

Now I’m entering my second year,
Completely healthy and happy,
Which means I was hygienic [in my first year].
May it be the same for you!

original art deco hygiene eye, 1911

new objectivity logo, 1930

***Update!***

My MIL shared with me that the Barbie-doll-cake is an old cake-decorating trick:

"The Barbie doll in the cake is something we used to make in the late 70's.  Both Aunt M. and I made them at different cake decorating classes.  We had a good laugh one Easter at Grandma's because mine was too tall for the cake I had baked and I talked about cutting off the legs to make it work.  G. said why don't you just raise the cake?  Evidentally Uncle P. and Aunt M. had had the same conversation when her doll was too tall for the cake she baked.  You bake the cake in a bowl shaped cake pan and then cut a hole and insert the doll, then decorate it.  We have a picture of M. holding my decorated cake.  He was about 4 years old and so proud to have his picture taken holding the cake.  He probably won't want to see the picture now."     Thanks, MIL!