15-2-09: SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE PEAK

Checking out the Terror of the Wax Museum

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This Sunday, at their insistence, I took the three wise monkeys to Madame Tussauds. My eldest son Ryan is obsessed with height, and wants to ascertain how many celebrities are taller (or shorter) than Daddy. We duly took the Peak Tram. I can never ride it without remembering that classic scene in ‘Bloodsport’, after Van Damme’s buddy has been beaten, where he sits in the tram, looks across at his reflection and sees… Bolo! What a classic movie moment that is…

The first waxwork to greet you outside the museum is Bruce Lee. Or, rather, an effigy that looks more like the goalie from Shaolin Soccer (Danny Chan) who played the lead in that god-awful CCTV series about the Little Dragon. Danny’s a good guy, and the show features such luminaries as Mark Dacascos, Michael Jai White and Gary Daniels, but, please… And this travesty had the stamp of approval of the Bruce Lee Estate!

It made me nostalgic for that old Spirit of the Dragon ATV series starring David Wu (The Wu Man!) as Bruce. David never could kick that well, but he span a mean nunchaku and at least the show had Lau Kar-leung as Lee’s father. Anyway, given that The Little Dragon is prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong’s favourite son, he deserves a better looking dummy!

Once you get inside, the assembled icons are a mixture of the good, the bad and the just plain bizarre. Pop idol Ayumi Hayasaki is sitting in one corner. Now this girl has the most ridiculously big eyes I’ve ever seen on anyone who wasn’t a Japanese cartoon girl, and I don’t think the dummy does her saucer-sized peepers justice. Ryan put his glasses on her, but that didn’t help… (I looked her up on Youtube to check I spelled the name right, and there are all these clips of her forgetting the lyrics to her own songs, which is kind of adorable. Also makes you wonder how big her eyes would need to be for her to read a teleprompter…)

Local singer Janice (Wei Lan) Vidal is represented as a wind-up doll (which is kind of kinky if you think about it….) Whatever, she wouldn’t be the first Cantopop idol I’ve wound up (no, that would be Gillian from Twins…). On the accompanying track, she is belting out the old Diana Ross song ‘Do You Know Where You’re Going To’, which was from the movie Mahogany, which starred Ross and Lando Calrissian. (The song was previously covered by another Hong Kong singer, Teresa Carpio, and where’s her dummy?).

I had the kids get ‘inside’ a Rembrandt, and this reminded me of the scene in Project A, Part Two, where Jackie Chan ‘hides’ inside an old painting. It’s a good thing that bad guys in movies are so dumb, or the heroes would have a really hard time…

I guess it’s a sign of the times that the historical figures and world leaders section had Mao and company, Hitler, two American Presidents, but no Dalai Lama… Is it really that he isn’t famous enough, or might the sensibilities of mainland tourists be offended by his presence? (They do have the great man’s idol, Mahatma Gandhi, so that’s something…)

The twins plain refused to don the Marilyn wig and gown (maybe they got the Seven Year Old Itch), so Ryan became the designated cross-dresser. It was slightly worrying that, where Calvin and Kyle could not be persuaded to put the dress on, Ryan had to be persuaded to take it off… I guess some do like it hot, after all.

The Indiana Jones figure looks more like Harrison Ford if Harrison Ford happened to be a zombie…Still, in honour of the little Asian sidekick he had in Temple of Doom, I took a photo of Calvin running along side him. (By the way, the real Short Round, Ke Huy Quan, later became a martial arts champion and can be seen opposite Bolo, yes, I said Bolo!, in the film Breathing Fire.)

In the sports section, there’s a sumo, so, to cries of ‘Kung fu ‘im!’ (damn those Mainland tourists…), I struck a pose. (The kids hid behind Yao Ming pretending they were orphans.)

When the coast was clear, Calvin put on the sumo suited provided to show us how it’s done…

Then Ryan put on the same outfit and started throwing kicks, looking like a small, brown-haired Sammo Hung.

I have to say that most disappointing waxwork, for me, was Muhammad Ali. I mean, here’s a guy who was the prettiest boxer in history (that’s what he told us all, anyway) and they give him the ugliest statue.

Finally, we came to a group statue of The Beatles and so, as Ryan has the appropriate haircut, he got to join the band.

Madam Tussauds is hokey fun (which is, incidentally, also the name of the North Korean defense minister), definitely more palatable with some kids (your own or someone else’s) in tow.