The Soundtrack: Tallest Building in Hell

I think it's about time I added another song to the Big Stuff soundtrack.

Tallest Building in Hell - by Jared Mees & the Grown Children

I've never been to hell, but I would imagine that the tallest building there would be rather big. Right? I mean, they do have cheap labor for all eternity down there, so that's not an obstacle.

Regardless, the song's pretty good and with the use of a superlative like tallest, it's good enough to make this list.

The song is currently up on their myspace page.

You can see the other songs on the soundtrack by clicking the little soundtrack label at the bottom or way over on the left.

International Spotlight: World's Largest Dinosaur

Drumheller, Alberta, Canada


Photo by Tall Meds

This T-Rex is billed as the World's Largest Dinosaur, and it's an easy claim to believe. She stands 86 feet tall, is 151 feet long, and weighs 145,000 pounds. There is a viewing platform in the mouth of the giant T-Rex and costs $3 CDN admission. On the way up there are murals and fossil displays.

Drumheller is about a 90 minute drive northeast of Calgary. Drumheller also proclaims itself the Dinosaur Capital of the World and the Heart of the Canadian Badlands.

Here is some YouTube video of the World's Largest dinosaur.


more info

Fallen Heroes: Spindle

Photo by paul goyette.

This Berwyn, Illinois landmark is no more. Spindle was a 50-foot spike with 8 cars impaled on it. It was built in 1989 by artist Dustin Shuler. It was located in the parking lot of Cermak Plaza in Berwyn. Spindle was featured in the movie Wayne's World in 1992. Plans were being made to remove the sculpture for more development at the shopping center, specifically a new Walgreens. The costs to move it would have been very high for the city, especially if the cars were in rough shape. In an effort to save Spindle, the sculpture was put up for auction on eBay. That auction ended with no bids.


Photo by BantikFamily.

On May 2, 2008, Spindle was disassembled. The top two cars were saved and, supposedly, if sufficient funds were raised, a new Spindle could be built using those two original cars.

More info.

Giant Ice Cream Cone

August 16th, 2008 - Wadena, MN



From Menahga we headed south on Highway 71 through Wadena and found the ice cream cone. We had tried to find it once before, but with no luck. We had kind of given up on it after it appeared that it had been disregarded and rundown. But, the folks at World's Largest Things spotted it on a recent trip. It has been fixed up and it looks really good.

The cone stands 14-feet tall and is made out of concrete. It is believed to have been originally built in 1973. It now stands at a private residence on the east side of Highway 71 south of Wadena, it's actually probably closer to Hewitt. It's located close to the big wind turbine, if you need a landmark. The residence also has a number of small windmills and other yard ornaments and sculptures. It seems that they sell windmills as well.

Since it was a private residence, we just pulled off the road quick, snapped a couple pictures, and bolted. Ok, we didn't bolt, but we did leave shortly in a timely manner.

After our success, we headed back into Wadena and ate at the Pizza Ranch. It was tasty. I hadn't had Pizza Ranch since college.

St. Urho

August 16th, 2008 - Menahga, MN



This one is kind of strange and, for this blog, that's really saying something.

The legend of St. Urho goes that a long time ago in Finland the grape crop was being destroyed by grasshoppers. Urho drove away the grasshoppers using his booming voice by chanting "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!", which translates to "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!"

St. Urho's day is celebrated on March 16th by wearing royal purple and Nile green, drinking beer (even green and purple beer) and wine, and feasting on mojakka, which is basically just soup. The plaque below this St. Urho statue even describes a celebration where Finnish women and children gather around the shores of the many lakes in Finland and chant what St. Urho chanted. All the while, the men dress in green costumes and gather on the hills overlooking the lakes and, basically, act like grasshoppers and slowly disappear to change into purple costumes. Then the polka and drinking begins.

Now this is where it gets weird.

"What", you say, "that wasn't weird already?"



The legend of St. Urho can be traced as far back as the 1950's to a region known as Northern Minnesota. It seems most of those familiar with the legend credit Richard Mattson of Virginia, MN as the creator. It was in 1953 while working at Ketola's department store in Virginia when Mattson first spun his tale. He was being teased by his Irish co-workers that the Finns didn't have any great saints like St. Patrick, so Mattson made up a story about a St. Urho. The women of the store threw a party in the coffee room and Gene McCavic wrote a poem for St. Urho. And thus the legend began.

In 1956, the media got a hold of it. The local paper, the Mesabi Daily News, wrote about it and in the years since St. Urho has been featured in newspapers around the country.

The legend and holiday we know today is a little different than Richard Mattson originally told it. First of all, the celebration was originally supposed to be in May, but Finns wanted to move it to rival St. Patrick's day and get a head start on the green beer (no doubt the next day they will suddenly be Irish like most of the country). More notably, Mattson's original tale told of how Urho used his powerful voice, which he obtained by drinking "feelia sour" (sour whole milk) and "kala mojakka" (fish soup), to cast out poisonous frogs from Finland. Somehow Dr. Sulo Havumäki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College (now Bemidji State University) had influence over the legend and the story changed to grasshoppers. Some even credit Havumäki as the creator of the legend. His name is on the plaque below the St. Urho statue.

Richard Mattson passed away in 2001, but his legend of St. Urho lives on. St. Urho's Day is celebrated in a number of Minnesota towns, including Finland, MN (they have an Urho sculpture too), and in Finnish towns across the country, like Butte, MT and Hood River, OR and several others. The legend has even spread into Canada and reached all the way back to Finland, where you can find more than one St. Urho's Pub.

In 1975, the city of Menahga commissioned a Minneapolis sculptor to carve a statue of Urho out of a 1-ton block of oak, but they got swindled. Dude must have been a contractor. In 1982, a traveling chainsaw sculptor named Jerry Ward took the block and created a 12-foot tall sculpture of St. Urho holding a pitch fork with a giant grasshopper speared on the end of it. That carving took a beating from the weather and termites and was replaced by the current fiberglass recreation. The old wood carved statue was moved to a mausoleum in a local cemetery.

For more info:
SaintUrho.com
St. Urho on Wikipedia
Roadside America

Bunyan News

Brainerd's Babe the Blue Ox, at Paul Bunyan Land, is currently undergoing major renovations. The work began on July 21st and is supposed to be completed within 1 month. Josh Porter of Avalon Studios is the artist in charge of the renovation work.

It's sounds to me like Babe is going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. He hits his 50's and then starts getting major work done. And I thought he had been aging rather gracefully.


This picture was taken August 3rd.

There's a new Paul in town. This summer a new Paul Bunyan statue was put in place in the Pequot Lakes - Jenkins area. He stands 12'8" tall and was created by Josh Porter. He is located near the intersection of Highway 371 and County Road 16 by the A-Pine Restaurant.

For more information, go here. You can learn about the process for creating Paul here, it includes pictures.

Pine City Voyageur

August 2nd, 2008 - Pine City, MN



From Mora we headed to Pine City. In Pine City's Riverside Park, on the banks of the Snake River, stands this 35-foot tall voyageur. According to a Roadside America tipster, "...the Voyageur is dedicated to the history of the early settlers of the Pine County area. It marks the city's beginnings as a trading post for the French Voyageurs and Indians."

This voyageur is a chainsaw carving and was carved from a massive redwood tree, rather than pine.....go figure, by Dennis Roghair. Some other towns probably would have had a giant cityscape carved out of pine instead to celebrate Pine City, but not this one. They went in a completely different direction and used redwood.



It's rather impressive in person. The sheer size of this is hard to convey with a photograph and the details are incredible. Look at the fingers. Here is a much larger version of that last photo. You can really see the details in that one.