Sunday in the Park with Seward: The Grounds for Sculpture of Hamilton Township, New Jersey

 The great Seward Johnson

We've been delighted a few times on our eccentric road travels by the chuckle-inducing sculptures of a Mr. Seward Johnson that seem to pop out of nowhere. His 26-foot tall treatment of "Unconditional Surrender," the famous sailor-kissing-a-nurse photo, and a several-stories-tall version of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" made us stop in our tracks in Sarasota, Florida and Chicago, Illinois, respectively. Seward, who inherited a portion of the Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical fortune (oh, that Johnson), has been a prolific sculptor for decades and back in 1992 he used his impressive wealth and talent to purchase the New Jersey State Fairgrounds in Hamilton Township near Trenton and turned it into a beautiful, 42-acre sculpture park and museum. You'll see lots of his whimsical works, both on a huge scale and more real-life proportioned, some of every day people and others famous 2-D art masterpieces come to 3-D sculptural life. The park isn't just a vanity piece, though, as other talented sculptors' works are also exhibited among the lushly landscaped grounds. It's a real hoot to sit on a shady bench and watch real people mixing with the art...sometimes it's hard to figure out who is more life-like. And all this beauty and pleasantry is just outside Trenton, which, while very nice, is not exactly a place known for either its beauty or pleasantry. Art establishment snobs pooh-pooh Johnson for being kitschy and copyright-holders may sue him for infringement, but we're not here to judge. Maybe we don't know art, but we know what we like and we love Seward Johnson and his Grounds for Sculpture. He's got whimsical-art-in-a-lovely-location-for-the-masses-to-see down to a, well, fine art.

Barnacle Bill lives

Here's a nice story by Bill Geist of CBS Sunday Morning about the rebuilding of Barnacle Bill's Mini Golf of the Jersey Shore, including a swell Muffler Man.

Molar expedition: The giant tooth of Trenton, New Jersey

Just down the road from the tooth are some fantastic sculptures of Mariachi musicians and dancers. That's an average-sized dope posing in front for a sense of scale.

In Trenton, New Jersey, just a stone's throw from the really big American Gothic statue we blogged about recently, sits another of sculptor-of-kooky-and-really-huge-subject-matter-extraordinaire Seward Johnson's kitschy roadside marvels: the world's largest tooth. Measuring in at around 15 feet tall, it sits gleaming in front of the Congoleum Company building and near the on-ramp to I-295 South, with nary a trace of tartar on it. And like he did with the American Gothic, Johnson has added a sculpture of a bemused, normal-sized couple gawking nearby, to give passersby a sense of the ridiculous scale of the tremendous tusk. How great it must be to be Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, to have the wealth and talent to dot the landscape with all your crazy creations. Just down the street is his group of enormous Mariachi musicians and dancers. Why? You need a reason? Art doesn't have to say something all the time and hurt your head. Sometimes it's nice to give bored motorists a laugh and a smile. And that's the tooth.

But wait, there's more bad puns: To Mr. Johnson, we'd like to say fangs for the memories, we're abscessed with your work, there ought to be a plaque in your honor, do you work on retainer?, we're all up in your grill, we'll be your en-dentured servants, you're like a bridge over troubled water, we've grown bicuspid to your face and we're at a floss for words, dad gummit.

I Goth You, Babe: The American Gothic sculpture of Trenton, New Jersey

 Sculptor J. Seward Johnson calls his 25-foot rendition of "American Gothic" "God Bless America".

 There's a terrific realistic sculpture of two normal-sized people across the street called "It's So Big!"

 Baby Goth back.

 Seward's sculpture has traveled around. Here it is in Chicago.

There's a renown sculptor named J. Seward Johnson who likes to work big. Really big. So when he decided to replicate Grant Wood's "American Gothic," he liberated the simple farm couple from their house backdrop and made them 25 feet tall and cast of aluminum. He also added a suitcase with travel decals from faraway places. Are the couple world travelers or is this a symbol of America's immigrant roots? You decide. A suitcase is also an appropriate addition because Mr. Johnson leases the sculpture out to different municipalities and it has traveled to several different locations, including Chicago, Indiana and Grant Wood's native Iowa. We were lucky enough to see it when it was on Chicago's Michigan Avenue back in 2009 so imagine the delight of seeing it again while passing near Trenton, New Jersey. There it sits near the Trenton train station and across from the Congoleum factory as part of the "Sculpture Along the Way" installations put on by The Sculpture Foundation. Across the street is another Johnson sculpture called "It's so big!" depicting a normal-sized man and woman gawking at the American Goths. This is a great visual effect because it gives a terrific sense of scale to the farm couple, and the regular-sized couple look extremely realistic (and a little bit randy) from a distance. Mr. Johnson is quite a hero to us eccentric roadside attraction fans, with his huge and wacky works of art that make you stand back and go "Wow!". We Goth to hand it to him.

What, me worry? The happy halfwit Muffler Man of Winslow, New Jersey

 An homage, a distant relative, or an incredible coincidence...

...you decide.

There's an old-fashioned drive-in restaurant in southern New Jersey with a great mascot out front to lure in hungry beach-goers and locals to try the pastrami cheesesteaks, homemade onion rings and custard eclairs. A 3-story former Muffler Man with a face that's a dead ringer for Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman proudly stands watch in front of Mr. Bill's Coney Island Drive-In on Route 73 in Winslow, just off the Atlantic City Expressway. Mr. Bill's has been a South Jersey institution for over fifty years, and offers an authentic retro vibe where Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph would feel right at home. When the drive-in first opened, its owner, Ray, named the place after his father-in-law, Bill. It was also Ray who purchased the Muffler Mad-Man and made him Mr. Bill's' master of ceremonies, getting the attention of eccentric roadside attraction fans ever since. Categorized as "happy halfwits" by the Muffler Man aficionados at roadsideamerica.com, they are a rare mutation of the more common Paul Bunyan MMs, with similar bodies but heads of a more, shall we say, moronic nature. Which brings to mind a sage quote from Mr. Neuman himself: "It takes one to know one -- and vice versa!"

Smarty pants: Princeton, New Jersey's Albert Einstein museum in a clothing store

 This unassuming Ivy League clothing store houses the world's only permanent Albert Einstein exhibit.

 Go figure (literally).

 Albert Einstein's desk and chalkboard.

 Some of Landau's fine tweeds.

 In 2005, Princeton put up a bust of Einstein.

It's in a part of the park called EMC Square. Ba-dum-bum.

Even if you don't know bupkis about science, you've probably heard of the world's most famous equation, E=mc2 or the theory of relativity. That's because a German-born theoretical physicist figured out something so complicated and brainy about the mass of a body and the measure of its energy (or something like that, we're not quite sure) that he became a metaphor for anything mind-numbingly hard and scientific to the average frontally-lobed. That guy was Albert Einstein, of whom, one assumes, it was never said, "well, he's smart but he's no Einstein". One would also assume that someone of such great renown and accomplishment would have several permanent scientific exhibits on college campuses and places of higher learning the world over dedicated to his legacy. One would be wrong. Oh, there is a permanent Albert Einstein exhibit on the campus of Princeton University, where he taught later in his career, but it's not part of the science, math or physics departments. It's in the far back corner of Landau, a 97-year-old clothing store known for its woolen sweaters and tweed blazers. In among the fine lodens, cashmeres and shearlings are a couple of walls with photos, archival documents, posters, t-shirts and other Einsteinabilia. In 1994, while the movie "IQ" starring Walter Matthau as Einstein was being filmed at Princeton, Landau borrowed a lot of Einstein artifacts from locals and put up the exhibit. Five years later the exhibit became permanent. Not a lot, really, for Time Magazine's Man of the Century, but a tribute just the same. In 2005, the university finally put up a bust of Einstein in a nearby park. Why it took Princeton so long to honor its famous resident and the world's most famous scientist is a mystery. Seems like a no-brainer, relatively speaking.