Collections are Dangerous: This post looks fake. No no, it looks real.

Mama Jones has been dying to go to Madame Tussaud's wax museum for as long as I can remember, and a couple weekends ago, as a belated birthday present, Miss Raquel and I finally took her.

Personally, I have never understood the appeal behind a chamber of eerie, gelatin celebrity look-alikes, and I found the idea of visiting one in heart of Times Square to be doubly repulsive. For thirty freaking dollars, Jennifer Lopez’s frozen doppelganger ought to do more than blush when you blow in her ear – that thing better lap dance me to climax with it’s attractively disproportionate booty. (Apparently all subjects model for their sculptors, offering their bodies up to measurement for accurate replication.)

There are very few profundities to ponder and debate in a museum of wall-to-wall pop culture candles. The four basic utterances one repeats over and over until seizure ensues are:

“Yeah, that looks like her.”

“Eh…doesn’t really look like her.”

“Wow, he looks real!”

“Nah, he looks so fake!”

Of course there are minor variations on these these themes of accuracy:

“Well, it could be Trump in his YOUNGER years…”

“I don’t think Jessica Simpson can be THAT skinny and still be alive.”

and construction:

“Julia’s eye is looking a little lazy.”

“Ghandi’s got a crack in his shoulder.”

And on. And on.

On my visit I found myself occasionally drifting out of the standard debates to tune into the croaking conversation of some Red Hat Society members (A club of which I’m secretly DYING to be a member. Only 27 years to go!) as they hurled grating mispronunciations of “Madame Tussaud” at my pained, francophilic ears.

“Oh, there’s one of Madame Toos-uhd! Ethel, she’s so short!”

And then right back into the fire.

All museum conversation took place in between obsessive photo snapping. Because God forbid you miss out on the opportunity to take a picture with faux Pat Swayze, circa 1987. (Patrick Swayze is not actually represented in Mme. Tussaud’s, NYC, but someone should really get on that. Ken Tailey predicts Swayze will enjoy a rebirth in 2007 à la David Hasselhoff.)

The Jones ladies were pretty discerning about which figures to photograph, probably due to our unease in attempting to integrate the balls-of-wax-cum-celebrities into natural or funny poses. Yet despite our initial reluctance, we did manage to capture a few clutch images with some of our more personally influential icons:

The Direct Imitation

The Part of the Family

The Too Cool for the Wax Museum

The “Tsk Tsk.” (P.S. You look nothing like Lindsay Lohan.)

The Unintentionally Awesome

For me, the most exciting moment of the day came when I realized I could take a photo with the wax Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel, subject of my very first biography book report for which I was required to dress up like the The Iron Lady and read my work in front of my entire fourth-grade class. The wig purchased for my performance was later featured in my fifth-grade old lady Halloween costume, the first October holiday ensemble that instilled within me, pride in creative costuming.