In these days of internet and reality television, wax work exhibitions seem so old school. And yet, the Madame Tussauds exhibitions around the world still pull in thousands of visitors every year. People, despite being wired 24/7 to all the latest news events, still have the need to get up close and personal with the rich and famous – even if it is only a wax copy of their favorite celebrity.

In fact, since the original Madame Tussauds put down roots in London over 200 years ago, more than 500 million people may have visited the exhibition.

But I’m not one of them.

Truth is, it never even crossed my mind to visit Madame Tussauds and check out it’s antiquated ‘chamber of horrors’ and stare at wax death masks of the players of the French Revolution. I have no interest seeing and being photographed with royalty. And the likes of Amy Winehouse, Bard Pitt, Kylie Monogue, and Justin Timberlake hold no appeal.   

But then I started reading a fascinating biography of the woman behind the exhibition and realized that I perhaps I was wrong to so quickly judge. In Waxing Mythically,  Kate Berridge brings Marie Grosholtz, the woman behind the exhibition, to life. It’s a fascinating study -  part biography, part history, and part social anthropology – written in an informative and entertaining style.  

Even from an early age, Marie was a canny recorder of celebrity culture. Together with her mentor, Philippe Curtius, she helped create exhibits in Paris aimed at bringing ordinary folk face to face with those making ‘headline news’. Covering everything from society beauties and their fashion statements to notorious criminals and their chamber of horrors, their early exhibits showed a clear understanding of people’s voyeuristic desire for ‘glitz and gore’.

They were the Entertainment Tonight of it’s day.

Of course, the French Revolution changed all that. Turning from entertainers to newsmakers, the  exhibits began to focus less on glitz and more on gore, displaying death masks (including that of Marie Antoinette) of the recently beheaded. 

In fact, it was the enduring popular image of Marie (aka Madame Tussaud) as a young woman cradling a bloody head in her apron that propelled her later success in England.  

Some of Marie’s earliest work, including death masks from the French Revolution and the infamous ’Sleeping Beauty’, a breathing likeness of Louis XV’s sleeping mistress Madame du Barry sculptured in 1763, can still be seen at Madame Tussauds in London.  

But sadly, that’s not what attracts most people to the exhibit.

Most come, not for the historic exhibit, but for the current exhibits and a photo op with the latest ’waxed’ celebrity.

A melting pot, a salad bowl, a tapestry — however you view the North American convergence of cultures, adults sharing connections across generations with children is a constant. Here are three recordings to help you enjoy that. Bring along a kid in your life and take a listen

Randall Paskemin is a singer and songwriter and a proud father. He is also a member of the Plains Cree people, a member of the Sweetgrass First Nation of Saskatchewan, Canada, who lives now in the western United States. He brings all of this to his new recording Goodnight Sweet Dreams I Love You. It is a collection of songs and lullabies to accompany children through the day. Lyrics in English and Cree are interwoven, and touches of familiar melodies such as Happy Birthday sometimes arise alongside Native American ones. He offers a soothing, celebratory sort of music that expresses deep love of parent for child and the safety that feeling brings to both. It could be just the right thing to rock children (and tired parents) to sleep.

When you are ready to dance around the room with kids you know, Ranky Tanky from Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem is a good choice. Though they are known for their stellar history of folk and Americana albums aimed at adults, fiddler and singer Rani Arbo and the three men of daisy mayhem — Andrew Kinsey on bass, Anand Nayak on guitar and Scott Kessel on his own invention, drumship enterprise, for percussion — have a really fine time with children’s songs old and new. All of them are parents, and as they began to share their joy in music with their children, the idea of doing a children’s show and then a children’s album naturally emerged. On this album you’ll find music you’ve heard before, including Green Grass Grows All Around and Purple People Eater, as well as less familiar songs. All four of the band members sing, and they’ve been working together for more than a decade now. The creativity, fun, love, and respect for each other they’ve developed over the years come out as they trade lead and harmony across songs such as the hilarious They All Ask’d for You, the uplifting If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out, and the reflective Morningtown Ride.

Tish Hinojosa was born in San Antonio, Texas. He parents, and many of her older brothers and sisters, were born in Mexico. She grew up with strong ties across the border, and in a household where there’d be Mexican music on the kitchen radio and Nashville country music on the television in the other room. That was just the beginning of the well of experiences she had to draw on when making her way as a professional musician. Watching her own children grow, she realized their experiences were different, and yet there were things she wanted to pass on. One of the results of her thoughts on that is the recording Cada Niño/Every Child. In most of the songs, lyrics move back and forth naturally between English and Spanish, not always literal translations of each other but in the same spirit. Subjects include memories of Hinojosa’s visits to her grandmother in Mexico, and of playing with her own children, stories from history of brave women of the frontera, a lively piece about Day of the Dead celebrations, and the title track, a hopeful song talking of children and faith in the future. There’s also one of the funniest songs you’re likely to come across anywhere, El Baile Vegetal/The Barnyard Dance, which will get people of all ages and languages laughing at the antics of midnight vegetables.

Vegetables dancing after midnight, birthday greetings sung in Cree, a quiet lullabye train taking you through night to morning: whatever you choose, it will be good fun and good listening.

He’s inspired films, books, TV shows, video games, even a census. His bronze likeness outside Tokyo’s Shibuya Station is a common meeting point amongst the dizzying chaos. And though he’s now been dead for 75 years, every year, in April, his memory is still celebrated by hundreds of his admirers.

He is Hachikō, and his legend in Japan is alive and well.

The story goes like this:

Japanese professor Hidesaburō Ueno adopted Hachikō, a then 1-year-old Akita dog, in 1924. Every day the owner and dog would meet each other outside the train station at Shibuya after work, a ritual that went on for about a year, until one day Ueno suffered from a cerebal hemorrhage and died.

Nobody told Hachikō, though, so for the next 9 years Ueno’s faithful little pooch would somehow find his way back to the station, at the exact same time he used to always meet his owner, and wait for him, in vain, until he died in 1935. Go ahead, I won’t mind if you stop reading to go hug your dog or cat now.

In a country whose people go to great lengths to prove their decency and loyalty, Hachikō still stands as one of the most beloved embodiments of its collective, desired personality; plus, he’s so cute! During my trip to Tokyo last year, I didn’t make it to the National Science Museum of Japan to see Hachikō (now stuffed and preserved), but did find his Shibuya statue, which was treated to a constant parade of people posing for photos.

That statue, by the way, was a replacement for the original one, which was unveiled–with Hachikō present–in 1934 but later repurposed during World War II. Who successfully petitioned for a new one to be erected in 1948? The Society for Recreating the Hachikō Statue, of course.

There’s an episode of the brilliant, animated sci-fi series Futurama entitled “Jurassic Bark”, in which Fry stumbles upon his fossilized dog and considers cloning it. He relents, thinking the dog probably forgot about him after Fry fell into a cryogenics chamber and woke up in the 30th-century.

In the end sequence, however, we see Fry’s dog faithfully waiting for him every day, for 12 years, outside the pizza parlor Fry worked at. I’ve probably seen the episode five or six times, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve fought back tears every time; after the first viewing, I was bawling and hugging my cat for an hour (much to her horror).

Hachikō’s legend might belong to Japan, but his story is, indeed, one we can all embrace.

Hachikō’s statue is planted on the northeast corner of Shibuya Square in Tokyo, just outside the train station, kitty corner from a huge Starbucks with tall windows overlooking all the madness. While you’re over there, try to find your way over to the nearby Standing Sushi Bar, 75 Uogashi Nihon-Ichi, for a few pieces of fantastic (and affordable) charred salmon sushi. The National Museum of Nature and Science is located, appropriately, in Ueno Park.

Kaikoura is just a small seaside town on the east coast of the South Island but it attracts thousands of  visitors from around the world. World famous as the place where people can get up close and personal with a variety of marine wildlife, Kaikoura has become a must stop on any  New Zealand itinerary.

Most  come for the whale watching, to swim with the seals and dolphins, encounter albatross and other sea birds, or to simply sit on the beach and picnic on fresh crayfish bought from a roadside stall.

But those in the know will head to the Ohau Falls just 15 minutes north of Kaikoura on State Highway One. The first and only clue that it exists is the ‘Ohau Stream’ signpost hidden on the left side of the highway, followed by a gravel car park.

A short walkway starting  underneath the railway line leads through dense bush to the small Ohau waterfall. Here, dozens of fur seal pups cavorting in the green pool below the falls while their mothers are out at sea hunting for food. 

Not all the pups are playing though.

Some, tired of all the social interaction, take off by themselves for a little down time.

Why do these people look so much better than I do?

As I’ve mentioned before, this is a question I ask myself — often the start of an internal harangue — whenever  I travel in certain European cities.  I’ve just had occasion to revist my notebook from my last trip to Paris, and found therein the following note: “aesthetics matter!  beauty matters! the details of life matter. In some ways I don’t live up to my own ideals.”

I’ll spare you the rest, but also on that trip, I picked up a fantastic book called Paris Tales.  It’s an anthology of 22 short stories, set in Paris, and each keyed to an included city map.

As it happens, when I jotted down my little notebook tirade, I was in my room at the InterContinental Paris-Le Grand, right across the street from the Garnier Opera.  So when I cracked open Paris Tales today, I decided to first read the story set in the 9th arrondissment.

It was “A Parisian Adventure”, by Guy de Maupassant. It’s about a married woman “from the provinces” who nurses a fantasy  — albeit different from my own! –  about Paris.

“The reports of society dinners, fashion and high life made her seethe with longing…living where she did, she viewed Paris as the apotheosis of glorious luxury and vice.”

So she arranges a trip to Paris, where her machinations put her in the path of a famous writer, whose looks she doesn’t even notice, so caught up in the Parisian fantasy is she.

She sips absinthe, she goes to the theater, she is in the company of the fabulous and eventually winds up in the writer’s bed.  In the middle of the night, in the…

“…yellow light of the Chinese lantern, she looked in despair at the little fat man lying beside her, his distended belly making the sheet swell like a gas balloon. He was snoring noisily like an organ pipe…from out of the corner of his half-open mouth ran a trickle of saliva.”

It’s a major let down, to say the least. She returns home in the morning, with the feeling that her “excited dreams had also just been swept away.”

I’ve never had my particular fantasies about a fashionable life in Paris or Rome or Florence so entirely punctured.  And while I am in general an advocate for an examined life — and also have tended to agree that travel writing should do a better job at penetrating the layers of a place –  I think the moral of de Maupassant’s  story is that it’s sometimes nicer not to.

Sure, there is a certain kind of satisfaction that comes from the reality of our global shared humanity — in realizing, for example, that Parisians drool on their pillows too.  But let us also remember Guy de Maupassant’s epithet, which he wrote himself: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” And take caution when we consider dismantling the pleasurable travel fantasies we covet the most.