Waxy Residue

In 1997 I took a job as a guide at Madame Tussaud's, because I was living in London, and I was broke. I figured working there would be the best way for me to see what all the fuss was about without actually having to scratch together the admission price, which was 18 pounds (roughly 36 dollars) at the time.

I actually find wax figures beyond creepy; I was literally terrified of the figure of Hitler that stood in the stairwell leading down to the chamber of horrors. It was my job to check that stairwell at closing time, so every time I'd open the doorway, I'd see him looking right at me from behind the glass barrier designed to protect the figure from vandals. I'm actually getting THE SHIVERS just thinking about it now.

But that was about the only excitement in my day. I mostly pointed out the toilets to visitors, which has given me the unique ability to locate toilets in about six languages, and sold guidebooks to people waiting in the queue out front. And I made some very excellent friends who will doubtless mock me for the following.

See, since 1997, Madame Tussaud's has franchised all over the world, and they have one in Las Vegas. And The Suz talked me into buying a ticket, now that I'm employed and living in the suburbs.

To be fair, I don't know what the place in London looks like now. I've seen the people who work there, and they all wear black bootcut pants and t-shirts that proclaim them "backstage cast" or something like that. They're clearly trying to be hip-- we had to wear plaid blazers and blue skirts, which were NOT FUN in London in December. I may have singlehandedly propped up Marks and Spencer that winter with my purchases of opaque tights to guard against the chill and damp.

But when we reached the top of the first escalator, there was no Queen Victoria to greet us like there was in the old days. "Manda, people don't know who Queen Victoria is here. They'd all be saying, 'Who's the old guy in the dress?'"

But I guess The King of NASCAR probably wouldn't translate in England.

Probably not much call for Evel Kinevel, either.

But I did see some familiar faces, so to speak. The Suz maintains that Mel Gibson paid somebody to make him look like he did in 1990, but I told her that was the same figure they have in London, so they probably just made him from an older cast. I checked my vintage guidebook when I got home for confirmation.

She's probably right that Oprah paid someone, though.

We were also able to establish conclusively that Suz is not taller than Prince.

And she talked to the Founding Fathers and determined that Sarah Palin is, indeed, out of her freaking mind.

I also had to speculate about how they get the figures of sitting Presidents. It's a pretty involved process to make one of these figures. There are sculptures and sittings and calipers involved. Is this something a President has to do once elected? Do they have to go to Madame Tussaud's and do a sitting for a figure? Is that in the Constitution? Because their Obama is pretty good.

We had a moment of panic when we discovered that the Johnny Depp figure was missing, that possibly he was stolen and we weren't informed.

We found him later on, disguised as a gay pirate.

The eyeliner is weirdly hot.

Overall, it wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon, though their scary exhibit doesn't come close to the old Chamber of Horrors, which featured, in addition to the Scary Hitler figure, recreations of scary killers from English history and the severed heads of nobles from the French Revolution. The severed heads were doubly frightening when you knew that they were made from casts Madame Tussaud (yep, she was a real person) took from actual heads during the days of the guillotine-- and as I understand it, that's how the revolutionaries allowed her to keep her own head. So now you know How It All Got Started.

The scary exhibit in Vegas was just a short maze of dark hallways that were supposed to be some kind of government lab at Area 51. They had some wax figures of zombies and stuff, and people would jump out of the shadows at us as we walked through. It seems with America's rich tradition of serial killers and other nutbars, Tussaud's could do better.

So that ended our visit. The front desk offered to sell me a guidebook, but I said, "Thanks, I'm all set."

And they haven't totally lost touch with their roots. I found Queen Victoria in a back stairwell.