Fact-laden and trivia-filled web sites regularly inform us that we're constantly consuming bugs, often when we don't know it, often when we sleep.
It's not knowledge for the squeamish, for sure, but the squeamish of SoCal are often too busy keeping an eye on one local weekend in particular: Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum. We're referring to that famous Maytime eat-a-cooked-bug bash. (Which isn't just about cooked bugs, but that is a definite highlight.)
Bug Fair just wrapped for another year, but bug-o-phobes shouldn't breathe a sigh just yet: Ripley's Believe It or Not! Hollywood is throwing its own annual Bug-A-Thon on Friday, May 24 from noon to 4 p.m.
David G. Gordon, "The Bug Chef" (we'd love to have that on our resume), will be at the Hollywood and Highland Odditorium cooking up a variety of multi-legged critters for the brave and daring.
Make that the brave and daring who also like to save money. Because there's a devious little deal, as there often is with Ripley's: Eat a bug and get discounted admission. Eat a "Super Awesome Uber Bug" and get free admission to the museum.
Some of the crawlies set to face Chef Gordon's skillet include crickets, scorpions, spiders, and termites, so we'll let your imagination determine what might constitute a "Super Awesome Uber Bug." One dish that may be whipped up is the chef's own scorpion scaloppine. Mmm.
Chef Gordon will make a return visit, spatula in hand, to Ripley's on Saturday, May 25.
The Scene
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Even if you aren't up to the challenge, dear bug-o-phobe, might we implore you to change your insect-avoiding ways? Bugs, after all, are beautiful, and so helpful. True, we don't always want them scurrying across our kitchen sinks, but we'll give bugs the ol' high five for doing all the things they do in nature, which, of course, helps nature be nature.
How many times would you have to high five a centipede, though? Better find a calculator.
