We were helping Jimmy Cliff move a sofa from Jamaica to Hollywood when we were distracted by a sound. And then things got weird.

I didn’t catch this werewolf’s name because his name-tag was obscured by his matted fur, but you only had one half-man/half-wolf on duty at the time so I’m sure you’ll know who I’m talking about.

It has been estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Were it not for the tireless efforts of this Seattle artist, a world of strange and exotic creatures would now be unknown.

The dark city of film noir is still there, still luring in onlookers with the promise of easy riches and trapping them in failed plans. Good thing, too.

Film noir is sex and larceny and paranoia and all the other things that make America grate its collective teeth. And no one knows it better than Eddie Muller, the “Czar of Noir.”

P.T. Barnum was not a man to be content with the small stuff. His museum exhibited large animals including lions, bears, and most remarkably, two beluga whales.

If you’re susceptible to dizziness in the wake of surrealism, leery of vats of live snails, or likely to fall asleep after being eaten by turkeys, proceed with caution.

Lincoln faced the voodoo priest alone, with only the Masonic Eye of Providence to protect him. As he later wrote in his diary, “The Nigerian holy man was felled by a single slobber-knocker from the blunderbuss of my right arm.”

It says a lot that the people of the mid-1800′s were willing to take time off from work to attend circuses. Circus fever was spreading, and with it many came many myths, legends and vernacular that are part of our world today.

The same Wisconsin landscape that attracted puritans was exactly what circus folk needed as a home for their menagerie of animals. Before Wisconsin even became a state, these two groups had to find a way to co-exist.