Little Shop Of Horrors – Theme Song Little Shop Of Horrors
All is not lost. Two blocks away from the Museum of Natural History you can find the shop that should have been the museum’s, and it would have been, if only the museum had been run by Tim Burton or David Cronenberg. Maxilla and Mandible, Ltd. was founded in 1983 by a former Museum of Natural History night watchman – or so the story goes. I picture him, a visionary, slowly but surely tunneling his way out of the museum (spoon-style) in the dark of night, over a period of years, burrowing right to the basement of the store. His pockets would be filled, at first, with trinkets found in the museum’s dust bowled depot, no longer on display, slowly eaten away by the toothless mouth of oblivion. Later on, I imagine, he would start to get more reckless and free small stuffed mammals from their sectioned up niches in some of the dimmer halls; he would carefully tuck them under his wide coat and walk to the nearest exit unnoticed. The specimens would not be missed until the day some watchful boy or girl would point at a dust-free outline of little paws on the floor behind the glass. The kid would tug at a grownup sleeve and ask, 'Mom, where does the armadillo go when it has to pee?'
Well, it went to Maxilla and Mandible, where it curled up and is now hanging from the ceiling behind the counter. Next to it, a glassy-eyed ferret can’t seem to decide whether it wants to jump the armadillo or make a run for it. The shop shows a wildly random reverence to anything to do with nature’s remnants. Stacked on racks from floor to high ceiling are baskets filled with dog’s teeth, emu toenails, and minerals; collections of beetles and butterflies hang off the wall; plastic dinosaurs lie next to fossilized shark teeth, a cast of a baboon’s head, snake vertebrae, a pile of chicken feet that contract and relax as you pull and release the tendons still sticking out; posters display the evolution of nature and the anatomy of man; an entire freeze dried mouse in a glass cube ogles the black capuchin monkey with the white face that is wondering how the hell it got here; a camel skull (in two separate parts) sits next to the shrunken human head – unfortunately, says the guy behind the counter, the head isn’t real. It’s a prop from an eighties horror movie. Rumor has it, he says, they used to have a real head on display, back in the day when the shop had just opened – until someone bought it. At Maxilla and Mandible, everything around you is the real deal, unless the price tag specifically says it isn’t.
New customers ring the doorbell, a man with a little girl. As they walk in, the man points out the assortment of 3 million year old shrimp fossils, and a bear’s head. The girl carefully pats the bear on the head, then lets her fingers glide oh so cautiously along each of its fangs, before she crouches and starts rummaging through a basket on the floor, filled with miscellaneous dinosaur bones.
A thick-set guy has come in with them. He waltzes straight up to the counter where he stops, leans over and stares at the shopkeeper for a full minute. Then he booms, 'YOU HAVE… YOU… YOU… YOU HAVE A…' He sways lightly on his feet as if the act of thrusting the words out is throwing him off balance. The shopkeeper is polishing the glass cube in which the mouse stands on its hind legs, paws in front of its chest like a tiny boxer. 'HAVE A VERY NICE DAY!' the guy spits out. He turns on his heels and pushes out to the street again. The shopkeeper shrugs as he watches the door fall shut behind the guy.
'Look, Yayla, it’s Marcel from Friends', the man in the shop says. 'You see the little monkey up there?' But the girl is fully engulfed in the vials that hold lightning captured by sand. 'When the lightning strikes the sand, it gets so hot that the sand that’s hit by the lightning bolt melts and then solidifies around it. So what you get is a little hollow tube in the shape of the lightning', the shopkeeper explains. He turns back to me. 'Ever since I was a little boy and my dad took me here, I dreamed I would one day work in this place', he says as he holds the freeze dried mouse up to the light, a trophy for life and death eternal.
I end up buying seeds to grow my own carnivorous plant (it will get rid of any fly problem I might have in my apartment, promises the bag. I am thinking, if my scientist sweetheart can spur this thing on a bit, it might get rid of any rodent problem the city might have, too) and a little silver bracelet with stringed together ceramic dentures from the nineteen forties the owner of the shop managed to pull from a dentist’s practice (although it makes for animated dialogue with the shopkeeper, it turns out to be somewhat of a conversation stopper outside the shop. 'Aww, what a cute little bracel… Ewwww! Are those real teeth?')
Maxilla and Mandible is a Natural History Museum shop the way a Natural History Museum shop should be. Like nature (and history), it is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who realize that everything in existence has a beginning and an end – and it could have an afterlife in your very own window-sill.
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