I was brought in to restore the giant T Rex on the roof of the Ripley's museum in Hollywood in April/Mayish 2004. What an enormous job. Over time, the giant critter had cracked significantly and a few years prior had been repainted and repaired poorly. The critter was given a good bath before I got to it, but required bondo for all the cracks, and fiberglass applied over the repaired areas to blend and strengthen the weak areas; then a primer and of course an aesthetic paint job with a sealer to keep it looking good with the desert heat and occassional rain storms... and of course the pigeons. The beast's mouth had become a home to them and smelled beyond nasty. I looked across the street into 3rd story windows and would try to hold my brush steady while the basket would rock back and forth in the wind, all this over the heads of tourists and in the midst of a heat wave. It was really hot... the roof of the building was too hot to stand on even while wearing boots and the metal pole for the roller would get too hot to hold on to without a rag. It was a bit of a challenge and different from my normal gigs where I am working at home at my desk. Though the view... was magnificent. One thing that made it go very smoothly was the Ripley people themselves. Really good people.
As it is typically an inconvenience for a business to have work done during business hours, I thought I'd do it in pith helmet and theatrical make-up to give the event a little more ... well ... whimsey. It worked and I drew attention to the business. I posted my Wil Whimsey bio with the story of how I met "Betty" down on the sidewalk with my "Painting Dinosaurs" poem. The Tourists were amused and I am in a lot of trip photo albums.
One near disaster was when the wind picked up without warning and blew off my pith helmet. I saw it soar past the edge of the tile roof and had great panic of seeing the next day's headlines say "TOURIST KILLED BY FALLING PITH HELMET". Thankfully, no one was hurt... and I became much more careful of when I wore my pith helmet.
Wil Whimsey, unrenowned adventurer, artist and poet, will be recreating the beauty that is T Rex on the roof of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum in Hollywood, California, on weekdays April 26th through May 7, 2004.
Unknown to the owners of Ripley’s, Wil Whimsey has a very personal connection to this particular T Rex. It happens by pure chance to be a portrait of an actual T Rex acquaintance from Wil’s childhood.
Wil Whimsey was born in the remote village of Oo-sey in southern Tibet to Mr. Mort Whimsey, an ambitious vacuum salesman and his beautiful wife, Truly. Mort Whimsey reasonably concluded that a land filled with dust was destined to be the place where he would make his mark on the world. Mort and Tru Whimsey did make quite a mark after an unfortunate accident involving a herd of yaks and a Hoover… leaving 8 year old Wil an orphan with only chanting monks for company. Wil’s trek through northern India to reach the nearest outposts of civilization would have been short and unhappy if not for the singular friendship with the last surviving tyrannosaurus rex which happened to be hiding out in the wilderness of northern India- generally living off of wayward tourists. In a story that would have made Aesop proud, 8 year old Wil was able to dislodge a banana from the dinosaur’s ear and quickly forged what would have been a lifelong friendship had they not encountered one of those dratted plastic things that hold six packs together. An innocent afternoon of skinnydipping turned to tragedy when “Betty” inhaled a nostril full of plastic.
Haunted by this horrible tragedy, Wil considers it an honor to revisit the cherished memories of his lost love as he restores this lasting tribute to Betty.