(via) Here’s Connecticut actress Jessica Blank reading Vancouver schoolteacher Ann Pimentel’s famous Yelp review of the Vancouver Maritime Museum’s recent Tattoos & Scrimshaw: The Art of the Sailor exhibit. The local mother was put off by the adult themes depicted in some of the scrimshaw, even though sex was thought to be a common theme in the obscure art-form developed by lonely 19th century men pining for women whilst hunting for whales in the South Pacific (essentially tobacco juice-stained etchings in whale bone). What kind of action are we talking about? “Oral sex, masturbation, a penis on one of them, people having sex in the images,” a horrified Pimentel complained this part March. “Anyone under the age of 18 shouldn’t be seeing these images.” It’s a good thing she didn’t see the one with the nun having playing hide and seek with a candlestick (the museum smartly kept that one in a drawer).

To date, Ms. Pimentel is the only person to complain. She has mounted a minor jihad, writing missives on various tourist-oriented websites and approaching local media outlets. “I am disturbed and troubled after a morning at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.”

The sad thing is that pretty much all of the local mainstream media ran with the story. What made fewer waves in the press was a former director of the same museum saying that the scrimshaw in question were fakes. This is why we can’t have nice things, Mom! If you want to see the exhibit, you still can. It’s on until October 14th. 2013.

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER