Like Nirvana and Hendrix? No? Then STAY AWAY. And ...

Like Nirvana and Hendrix? No? Then STAY AWAY. And even if you DO like those two acts, I'd encourage you to think twice about forking over an outrageous $23 a head ($17 for children, no less!). Once inside, you'll discover the museum is ludicrously small (funny thing about Frank Gehry architecture is it's like dyslexia meets crack cocaine -- you end up with an architectural abortion and a lot of wasted interior space), with a handful of puny exhibits populating dark, crowded, and confusing corridors.

If the overemphasis on Hendrix seems like a weird choice for an experience MUSIC project, the answer lies in the EMP's roots. Local money bags (and closeted imbecile) Paul Allen, who singularly kept the institution afloat as it hemorrhaged money for its first decade, originally envisioned a Hendrix-only museum. And so it might have been, except that somewhere midway through the design stage, someone with half a brain in their head must have dared whisper in Allen's ear that such a museum would fail. Colossally. Hendrix burnouts, you see, tend not to be big museum-goers.

As it stands, rumors abound that the museum nearly went under a couple of times during its dark initial years. And this explains the downright schizophrenic 'catch all' line-up of exhibits. Rather than risk having a museum about something, Allen apparently eventually decided to have a museum about EVERYTHING. And so you arrive at the present day: the EMP WORLDAPALOOZA.

But the problem with that approach is that people, generally speaking, have individual tastes. And these tastes are rarely eclectic in nature. Thus, your average patron is going to be interested in perhaps 2 or 3 exhibits in the EMP, more than likely snoring their way past the remainder. This isn't unusual -- people like certain things. And since EMP attempts to cater to every whim of popular culture in the past three decades, chances are solid you're going to dislike more than you like if you step through those doors.

But hey, what the **** do I know? I only worked there. I only heard patron after patron walk out the doors complaining that they were ripped off. You wanna blow $100 to take a family of four through this tourist trap? Be my guest, you stupid yuppie.