I've Seen Dead People (My Trip to The Universe Within)

Yesterday, Saturday July 16th, I took a trip up to San Francisco with my work friend Aimee. Our goal was to go and see The Universe Within, an exhibit about the human body. In this exhibit were a number of cadavers, as well as hundreds of specimens of organs. I thought I would be grossed out by it, but it turned out I was not. It was a really interesting exhibit that showed off the human body in ways I had never seen before. I don't think I had ever seen real human organs in person, and it was very educational.

The cadavers and organs were from Beijing University, and I assume all the work to open the cadavers and plasticize them was done there as well, but I am not sure of that. The cadavers were very interesting, but they started to get repetivie after a while. They showed off all of the muscles, bones, and organs and even had the cadavers set up in physical activty, such as riding a bike, or throwing a baseball. But easily the most interesing thing there was what Aimee and I came to call, The Blood Man. It was a body in which everything but the blood vessels had been removed. It took me a while to accept the fact that it was real, but like everything else on display, it was authentic. It ws amazing to see just how complex the blood vessels are, and how they keep the shape of whatever limp they are in-hands and feet, and fingers were clearly formed. The imagination and creativity of the people behind this is unmatched. It was great being in such a neat environment, where you knew you were surrounded by like minded people. I guess there were protests to this early on by those whacky Christians who don't believe in learning anything from the deceased, just in burying them and leaving them be. But since this has been going on for a while now, they had moved on to other matters of protest. Overall, it was a very interesting exhibit that I highly recommend people attend. I think it runs through until September at the Masonic Center in San Fran.

After that fun trip, we headed over to the SFMOMA, but I was a little disappointed by that. It is too similar to the NY MOMA, and since I was just there in January, it all had a feeling like I just seen most of these paintings(which in reality I had).

Then we went to a restaurant for drinks where Aimee used to work called LuLu's and we sat at the bar. Aimee told me about the time she had to protect Winona Ryder from hordes of screaming teenage girls. She also told me how Jennifer Aniston used to come in and sit in the very spot that Aimee was sitting in. I thought that was neat. Unfortunately there were no celebrities to gawk at tonight, just good food and good drinks.

We then headed over to Virgin Megastore and wandered around there for an hour or so and I picked up The Postal Service album Give Up. I'm still taking it all in, but overall I am impressed with it.

Then, after that, we went over to the Rogue restaurant and had a few beers there. I also bought 6 22oz. bottles from them. After that we went home. Me to mine and her to hers. It was a a fun, educational day and I really enjoyed myself. So take that!