The Origins of a Dinobsession

Dinovember might change your life.

The newspaper-thin, almost translucent, paper crinkled between my fingers. The few pages full of seemingly endless possibilities of information and excitement. Four times a year, the day that our teachers passed out the flimsy catalogue and order form for Scholastic books remain some of the brightest school moments in my memory. In these pre-internet days, searching for books in the library could be a grueling and time-restricted task. How many books were out there? What books was I missing by choosing the four that I held in my hands? How many times could I read them before their due date?

Although money wasn't abundant, my mother, a teacher, was always supportive of my overzealous book ordering. I began building the collection that dominates my current home very early. By 3rd or 4th grade, I gravitated toward science topics, and started obsessively collecting trading cards. Coinciding with the baseball rush of the late 80's and early 90's, Scholastic advertised cat and dinosaur trading cards (which I never once traded, but kept in a binder or plastic sleeves intended for card-collecting so that I could admire them often.)

When I think about it now, I wonder what it was about dinosaurs that intrigued me then. I don't think I had any dinosaur toys and I don't remember my siblings being interested either.  I certainly didn't understand how long ago 65 million years was, or how an Asteroid could wipe out an entire ecosystem. I just loved them. A lot of kids do. My niece and nephew always squeal with excitement when I gift them dino-themed birthday and Christmas presents.  They don't love them with the complexity and awe that nerdy adults might, but they love them because they've never seen one, because they were huge (and probably because they think they all RAWWWRRed and stomped the hell out of things).  Happy to once again witness that children are filled with with magic and adventure few real, actual things can give them, I found this beautiful story of some creative parents who strive to bring dinosaurs to life in their own home. If nothing makes you desire parenthood, this post might change that.

Tiny Tri Sighting

A friend of mine in Hyattsville, Maryland spotted this tiny guy in a gas station parking lot. I hope he can find his way home!

"I AM DINOSAUR!" - Thinks Local Golden Eagle

Although this item of interest may not match perfectly with this blogs intention of highlighting how dinosaurs are imagined in the modern day - it really is too cool to take a pass on.

Even the most lay-dinophiles support the theory that some dinosaurs evolved to become modern day birds, although this theory didn't gain popularity until the last couple of decades. Its hard for some people to imagine that delicate little multi-colored, weightless birds could be related to dinosaurs - who still exist in most of our imaginations as immense and formidable creatures.

 Of course, folks who only think of 10 ton beasts when they think of dinosaurs aren't remembering all our tiny feathered friends like Epidendrosaurus and Xiaotingia, but thinking about birds as being delicate and minute is wrong, too.

A camera in Russia recently caught this image of a massive eagle taking attacking a deer in the most dinosaurian of take downs.

If this doesnt cause you to start thinking about birds in a new way, I don't know what will. 

 http://strangebehaviors.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/eagle-schools-deer-on-dinosaur-ancestry/

The Traveling Dinosaur - Jay Ryan

Fancy yourself a traveler? Jay Ryan brings this beautiful guy, called "Actual Navigatosarus" to life - complete with his sleeping bag and approach pack.

Those honest eyes just shout, "Let's have an adventure!" Don't they?

View the print here at Gallery 1988. Or visit Ryan and McCarthy's blog here.

The Best Wedding Crasher Ever

Even though the arteries of the internet are clogged with musical proposals, embarrassing engagement photos and wedding flashmobs there is at least one recent wedding gimmick on the web that is fresh and hilarious.  This has got to be the most creative (and I can only imagine the most requested of wedding photographers) bridal party shot of all time. My only question is this - how'd they get that T-Rex to pose like that?

Read more about the now-famous photo here.

In Japan, the Raptor is Alive and Well

The raptor chase scenes in Jurassic Park are as terrifying today as they were in 1993 when the film first came out. Remember shaking along with Lex and Tim, huddled in the kitchen as the giant beast used highly evolved brains and natural hunting abilities to stalk them?

Can you imagine what it would feel like to see that 10 foot tall creature (which is really a Jurassic Park myth, since in real life a velociraptor was about 3 feet tall) come barreling around a corner craving your blood? 

I bet this guy can.

A Dinosaur Fundraiser

While chronicling the presence of dinosaurs in our modern world, I occasionally contribute to the trend. Aside from the dinosaur image that holds a prominent place in my apartment and the army of small figurines that swarm my cubicle at work (I'll follow up with posts documenting these), I recently performed an experiment that measured how popular our extinct friends really are.

I'm training to run the Chicago marathon this year and am raising money for the Red Cross. My original goal was $1500, and I spent a couple months repeatedly emailing my friends and family, sharing inspirational stories of the Red Cross, Facebooking and Tweeting the link to my fundraising page out across the universe. I was feeling pretty good about my efforts. In about two months of promoting my page, I raised 800 bucks (I have super nice friends). 



With three and a half months left until the big day, I felt confident that I would meet my goal.

Then, on the last Friday of July, an ex-colleague of mine who I haven't seen in 5 years messaged me that she saw my link. She said she'd be happy to donate, but in return she'd like me to draw her a dinosaur. Although I've never been much of an artist, and I think she was being sort of silly, of course I said yes. I could definitely draw a dinosaur for a donation to the Red Cross.

In fact, the more I thought about it, I wondered if it would be a good way to raise a few more bucks. I signed into Facebook and updated my status. I offered a personalized dinosaur drawing for anyone who donated to my "Do It For The Dinos" fundraising campaign which would go on for only five short days. I expected a couple more donations.

 In that five days, I received more than 30 donations, totaling $1025 (bringing me to $1825 -- 122% of my goal)

Over a thousand dollars raised in 5 days because friends, family members, and barely acquaintances wanted to get their hands on some limited edition dinosaurs drawings. Because people love dinosaurs (especially anthropomorphic ones). I have completed drawing half of those 30-something requests, and have given most of them to their new owners. The campaign is over, though I could be persuaded to do some more drawings for the right size donation.Here are some camera-phone photos documenting a few of my favorites.

All images are copyright JScribe "Do It For The Dinos" Red Cross Fundraiser

Jurassic Park 3D - Better Than Ever?

Twenty years after it first hit the big screen, Jurassic Park is trending again thanks to the re-released 3D version of the film. Although I'm not sure we used the word trending in those days before Twitter.

Not only were many of us too young to have seen JP in the theater in 1993 (it was rated PG13, and rightfully so), but seeing it in 3D was a dream we never thought would come true.  I have to say, the movie doesn't let us down for one second. Because JP wasn't created to be 3D, it doesn't have any of the purposeful, gimmicky flaws of many 3D films. Nothing arbitrarily comes flying out of the screen toward the audience, the 3D just enhances the beautiful landscapes of Isla Nubar, and makes those clever raptors even more terrifying and life-like. 

I was excited to see these incredible creatures in the large scale of a movie theater (my last screening of JP was on my 17 inch TV), but I wasn't prepared for the sound. The cacophony of a raptor annihilating that poor bovine bait is almost nauseating, and T-Rex's might roar actually shakes your bones in theater surround sound. The original music by John Williams makes your heart practically beat out of your chest. Williams also scored plenty of other film favorites like the Harry Potters, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

I have written on this site about what the original JP meant to me, but I was shocked to say how much of this film stands up 20 years later. The graphics are incredible, and the warnings of Ian Malcolm about playing God with Nature have never felt more important.

Jurassic Park was ahead of its time in its unflinching support of dinosaurs-as-birds theory, which we now look at as a certainty. Early on,  while Grant and Sattler dig in the Badlands, the team actually laughs when Dr. Grant suggests it. As a modern day audience, we laugh at their ignorant laughter. In the time since the original films, we've also learned a lot more about dinosaurs (many of them would have been fuzzy, if not feathery), and the film may not always be accurate, but there isn't a moment when it doesn't entertain and excite.

Go see Jurassic Park in 3D - It doesn't get much better than this!

Breaking Dino News !

We've known that Jurassic Park IV has been on it's way for a while now, but the news just broke that a director has been chosen for this film. Deadline reports that Colin Trevorrow has been tapped to direct the newest installment!

Trevorrow directed the 2012 film Safety Not Guaranteed, which won the Independent Spirit Award for best first feature film.  It was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the powers that be would be wise about choosing a director for what could be an epic masterpiece, but we will have to wait and see.

The current scheduled release date for JP4 is July 2014. Mark your calendars!

A Prehistoric Mockbuster

Film rental service Netflix offers dinosaur lovers a plethora of choices from animated to animatronic, from classic to laughable. I keep my Netflix queue loaded with random dinosaur films. I try to watch the movies that are important to the cannon of dinosaur films – from early contributions such as The Lost World and King Dinosaur to films that altered the genre like The Jurassic Park series. I also add kid’s films like Land Before Time or We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. Some of these films are amazing, and some are not – but that’s why I like to see them all.  I’m interested in how these films reflect culture, science and other films.

In my mailbox last week I found a movie called 100 Million BC and did not instantly recognize what it was.  The envelope revealed that the 2008 film was made by The Asylum, a production company known for their “mockbusters” – low-budget action films with poor acting and dialogue, often named similarly to recently released films, ostensibly to capitalize on their popularity. Whether I Netflixed it with that knowledge or not didn’t matter. I was excited to check it out.

The movie actually has a couple redeeming factors – it’s fast moving and fun, with a premise based on time travel (it’s a little vague about how the time travel works, as most films trying to tackle this topic are).  The acting is certainly terrible, as are the special effects, but it’s a nice surprise to see Steven Keaton, er, Michael Gross playing our aging super-genius out to make good on the errors of his past.

This film also has a few fun plot elements. It opens with modern day hikers stumbling upon some prehistoric cave paintings. Its unbelievable enough that the paintings include images of dinosaurs (unless you believe that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and then its totally plausible), but also with the hand scrawled phrase “Rita Hayworth as Gilda.” We find out that the messengers most certainly were 1950s scientists sent back in time 100 million years via some early time travel experiments. The paintings prove for the first time that the time travelers survived the trip.

100 Million BC also falls back on (or pays homage to, depending on how you look at it) some classic dino-film movie tropes. You probably won’t be surprised to find out that some way, some how, there’s a glitch in the portal and a terrifying T-Rex is transported to the urban center of an American city. Calling to mind 100 Million other movies.  Like I said, we can give them a little credit and say that the decision was a purposeful hat-tip to films that came before them, but its just as likely that the attempt to make a quicky direct-to-DVD dinosaur action movie lead to a little laziness in screen writing.

It's not a life-changing film, and Spielberg would likely not have his attention held, but it is a fun 85 minutes. It also reminds us that even today dinosaur special effects are an art, and can be pretty painful if left in the hands of folks just trying to capitalize on the love we all have for dinosaurs.