Tacky Tourist Photos

If you're endangered wildlife in Hungary, don't mention you love music.

SUBMITTED BY: Ilya Mirman   LOCATION: Budapest, Hungary (2008)

Oh, like you haven’t converted all your armadillo torsos into guitars?

(Ilya Mirman is the co-founder of Tacky Tourist Photos. He encourages you to send your fun flea market finds to tackytouristphotos@gmail.com)

U.S. Senator Barack Obama does his best Superman pose after a town hall meeting in Metropolis, Illinois

Barack Obama has millions of friends. Barack Obama has millions of enemies.

We don’t get caught up in domestic political squabbles here at Tacky Tourist Photos, although we do occasionally stick our nose into international affairs.

Bottom line is this.  TTP loves Barack Obama for fulfilling our spirit and mission during this 2006 campaign stop.

We invite him and all former U.S. Presidents still alive to continue this practice and pose with the Red Auerbach statue in Boston, the Anne of Green Gables statue on Prince Edward Island, the chorus line creature on Martha’s Vineyard and the stale Michael Jackson marzipan sculpture in Hungary.

(Thanks to conservative radio talk show host Michael Graham for unearthing this gem on his Natural Truth blog).

In black and white, this militaristic Michael Jackson statue appears to be Soviet-esque. In color, it looks like an elementary school papier mache project.

SUBMITTED BY: Andy Carvin      LOCATION: Hungary (2005)

The Neverland Ranch gets all the glory, but there’s another overlooked place for Michael Jackson fans to leave flowers and teddy bears — the Szabo Marzipan Museum in Szentendre, Hungary.

Hungary? Well, you can’t eat this candy Michael Jackson. It’s stale.  And, as Andy Carvin reports, it has “a waxy, embalmed-like appearance.”

“Leave the eating to the zombies in the Thriller video,” Carvin says.

“I’d suspect that the museum would have a temporary bump from MJ’s death,” he adds. “But they’ll probably continue to pull in the crowds, modest as they are, from the cutesy marzipan kittens and bunny rabbits they make for the kids. Pop culture icons are fleeting, but a sweet tooth is eternal.”

For Americans who only know about Snickers and Twix, marzipan is a flavorful, sculptable almond paste that lasts much longer than Play-Doh.

For those unaware of Hungary’s special role in Michael Jackson lore, it is where he shot his historic HIStory music video portraying himself as a dictator and featuring Hungarian soldiers as authentic, Soviet-era troops. Jackson’s giant fiberglass statues of himself, which inspired the marzipan sculpture, are still floating around Europe.

(Andy Carvin is a senior strategist for social media at National Public Radio. You can read about his Hungary experience here and also invest a few hours in his “Waste of Bandwidth” blog).