First Friday at the Natural History Museum

This week I attended First Friday at the Natural History Museum.  Not only do you get to wander around the museum at night (nothing came to life) but you also get to attend cool lectures, tours, and concerts.  My advice is to get there early and if you want to see the concert in the hall (as opposed to on screens in the lobby) get tickets in advance.

Night at the Natural History Museum.

Here is how the evening went:  We got there at 5:20 and were able to get tickets to the last tour at 6pm.  We wandered around upstairs in the rainforest room, marsh, and Discovery Center before our tour began.

I met a Polar Bear at the Discovery Center.  No Dharma collar though.

Then we joined our tour called "The Evolving Universe" lead by Doug Pearlstein, who was very interesting and has this great voice that should totally have a radio show.  He discussed the history of the world and covered billions of years in just 25 minutes. 

After our tour we got into the lecture, but were the last group they let in and we had to stand in the back, apparently people start lining up for the lecture an hour early.  Dr. Mike Brown, the man who killed Pluto or at least made it no longer a planet, discussed why Pluto had to die.  He got some boos from the audience, but after the lecture I have to say he made his case, Pluto had to go.  Plus, he was very engaging and made you realize why students at CalTech get such a good education if this is what their professors are like.

Next we got to watch some amazing acrobatics.  A man in an astronaut suit and a woman dressed as Pluto did some amazing Cirque du Soleil type stuff in the Discovery Center.  They were moving quite fast so this is the best picture I got:

Anti-gravity acrobatics.

But, if you notice on the left hand side of the picture, Benedict Cumberbatch (aka Sherlock, aka the new bad guy in Star Trek) is also enjoying the show.  Yeah, seeing him may have been the highlight of my evening, but the Pluto lecture was a close second.

But right after those things was seeing a T-Rex.  Okay, so it's not a real T-Rex (we weren't at Jurassic Park, guys) and it is furry, but it was still pretty cool.

T-Rex!!!

We chose to not purchase tickets for the concert so we watched part of it in the Lobby.  They projected it on the wall.  Also, they had a DJ in the African Mammal Hall so we wandered around looking at elephants, zebras, and honey badgers while listening to music.

This is my honey-badger-don't-care face.

Afterwards, we enjoyed some fries and brats from a food truck outside the museum with the rest of hipsters.

I have to say, I think I'm going to make First Fridays a new tradition for me.  Anyone wanna go with me next month?