Mesozoic Mind

It's the third anniversary of Mesozoic Mind. It's been a long three years so far, but I'm doing well, and I promise I will post more (or at least go back to just two per month ata minimum - without burning myself out). What better way to celebrate the oocassion then where I got the inspiration for this very blog's title: Dinosaurs: A Fun-Filed Trip Back in Time . This 1987 VHS short that's actually an extension of a 1980 short produced by the great Will Vinton, simply titled "Dinosaur". Both of them are made in the midst of the Dinosaur Rennaisance and the renewed interest in the subject . Land Before Time was in theatres that year for just one example of 80's dino-mania, the kind that gave rise to Jurassic Park . The doc starts with a young kid named Phillip, played by Fred Savage, struggling to get an idea for his science report but can't, and his mother is nagging him about it. However, a song comes up on his boombox, and it leads into the ve...

Happy New Year everyone! 2024 has fully begun, and admittedly i'm just waiting for it to end already. But that's not what we're here to discuss. Rather, we are doing something more fun and upbeat: looking at childhood memories! Last month, my parents were cleaning the basement, and they found stashed in a cat litter box, books we had put there years ago. What caught my attention were several books I had not read in years as I rummaged through it for fun. Surprise surprise, they were the ones about palaentology and dinosaurs, picture books and a magazine, and I immediately took them and reading them, even after the other books got donated to a thrift store. They came from the Paulian and Beebian ages of the 1990s and early 2000s when children-oriented books like them were all the rage and just about every book had something original to it So we're gonna take a look at some of them to start the year off, just as we look back on our lives and choices at the start of year. ...

With the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park having come in June, I had to celebrate, first by watching the film itself, but the day after that, I went with my father on June 12 to another befitting attraction: Jurassic World: The Exhibition , a travelling walkthrough attraction organised by Neon Global, which came to my fair city of Mississaga in May, specifically a former sporting good store now used for travelling. JWTE themes itself to travelling to the namesake park of the recent trilogy. It's actually the latest of many tie ins to the frsnchise, from The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park back in the 1990's, to the Japenese-exclusive Jurassic Park Institute Tour , which I eagerly watched as a kid and wanted to go to. But enough of building up and let's begin our tour, shall we? The exhibit begins with a themed pre-show about boarding a boat to Isla Nublar, as video screens of ocean simulate the ride there. It's a nice start to the attraction if I say so myself. Neat post...