An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making

World Cup, whoo, exciting!

The office seemed quiet this morning. In particular, I came in this morning to see my manager’s jacket and bag at his unoccupied desk in the cubicle next to mine. Two hours later I still hadn’t heard or seen him at all, so I figured he might have just left it there from yesterday and didn’t come in this morning.

I finally saw him when I went to get some coffee…he had been in the lunchroom for over two hours, watching the Paraguay and Japan game, along with like half the office. Good stuff. I expect office productivity to be similarly paralyzed when the Spain and Portugal game starts this afternoon.

I am North American, I have no idea about anything soccer (aka football aka povertyball) related. But I am glad to see that other people get irrationally excited or depressed about sports events as well.

Why do I follow sports? I don’t know, I find no joy in the limited success of my home town teams, and yet for some reason I have still not gotten used to their perpetual failures. I think it’s just the manner in which they lose, the continued ignorance and idiocy that surrounds these teams that irks me so much. Take for instance, Cito Gaston’s comments after yesterday’s Jays’ 2-1 loss to the Indians about how limp this lineup is when it’s not hitting home runs…

For the Blue Jays, who have scored just eight runs in their last four outings, it was another night of frustrations at the plate for the team that still continues to lead the major leagues in home runs.

“That’s pretty much what this team is about,” Gaston said.

Gaston was asked if there is anything he could do to somehow spark the Blue Jays to score more runs.

“I guess you can go out and get some guys that get base hits,” came his response. “That’s all you can do. You can’t do much more about that. These guys are what they are.”

Go suck a dick, Cito. Go suck a whole bag of dirty horse dicks, you senile old bastard. I don’t even really want to get into this topic, because even now I feel an incoherent two thousand word rant coming on if I don’t stop now. I just want to post this up here so that this object of my hate is preserved into cyberhistory for all time, like a horrible little blood sucking insect trapped in amber for future generations to find (and create clones from, like in Jurassic Park).

Speaking of hate and Jurassic Park and home town teams…one of the biggest regrets I have about that entire mid 90’s era of dinomania is the popularization of Velociraptors, the most prominent dinosaurs from the movies. I mean, they named our basketball franchise after them. It’s like naming a sports franchise the Toronto Ewoks or the Toronto Glitter Vampires – let’s be real here, people, come on. Jurassic Park and “raptors” became pretty lame pretty quickly, as even from a pretty young age I knew to instinctively hate any interest I may previously have had once it sold out and became non-indie.

I was a big dinosaur nut back then, years and years before the movie even came out. In Grade 2, we got to pick our own words for our weekly spelling quizzes (remember you only had “quizzes” back then, never “tests”), and I would always choose various dinosaur names. Mrs. Doble was very impressed because their names seemed so difficult, but in reality I actually did it just because you would only need to memorize like the five or six letters in the prefix, because they all ended in “saurus” – maybe this is how I cheated my way into the gifted program. My favourite dinosaur was Deinonychus, who was the fucking G of all the dromaeosaurs (or at least until the Utahraptor was discovered in 1991 and not widely known until years afterwards, which means it isn’t relevant to my Grade 2 spelling quizzes story SO WHY ARE YOU EVEN ASKING ABOUT IT SHUT UP ALREADY). They were also the stars of Jurassic Park, even though they were credited as Velociraptors. Velociraptors in reality were less than two feet tall, they were chicken-sized dinosaurs.

Imagine, as a nine year-old, watching Jurassic Park, and experiencing your first ever erection as all these fucking awesome dinosaurs are brought to life using revolutionary special effects. Imagine seeing your favourite indie dinosaur tear shit up and steal the show…only to learn that it isn’t your favourite indie dinosaur, it’s some other much shittier dinosaur playing bad cover versions of all their songs under a different name. And then imagine seeing that counterfeit dinosaur become every other kid’s favourite dinosaur overnight, while your original indie favourite vanished further into obscurity.

In this bizarre mixed analogy, Velociraptors are kind of like Oasis, but if Oasis was sucky. (The Verve?) And Deinonychus is Blur. But even more unknown and original…like…Suede? I don’t know, I just compared Velociraptors to Oasis, I don’t know where the hell I’m going with this post any more.

“What your favourite dinosaur?” they would ask me afterward.

I would then roll my eyes in a very childlike immature fashion and sigh before replying, as if it was all I could to not pass out due to sheer boredom. “Deinonychus, duh.”

“Uh…what’s that one?”

“It was a like this man-sized pack hunting carnivore with this huge claw on its foot, it was AWESOME.”

“Oh that’s the Velociraptor.”

“NO IT’S NOT! I KNOW WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS, IF I HAD MEANT A STUPIDHEAD TURKEY SIZED LOSER DINOSAUR I WOULD HAVE SAID SO, LET’S FIGHT NOW, AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!”

I had social problems as a kid. Still do, and that’s probably where it all comes from. This hate has bubbled away in the darkest corner of my heart, largely unarticulated for 17 years. No one would understand, no one would care.

Very recently, I found this clip of Dan Tefler doing a stand up bit called The Best Dinosaur. I am happy now.

I love it because it works on so many levels. The actual content of the joke with each dinosaur is funny enough, but it’s not even the real joke – the real joke is the fact that he’s even talking about such a stupid topic in the first place, and that he is way too opinionated about it and has way too much information at the ready. And it’s a great improv bit as well. I’ve heard some people saying it’s all just a scripted routine and he’s got plants in the audience…but I really don’t believe that’s the case. I know I can name all those dinosaurs off the top of my head. (And spell their names too! Thanks Mrs. Doble!) It’s not a far fetched idea to imagine that there’s similar dinosaur nerds in comedy clubs all over the place, ready to shout out all sorts of random dinosaur names if prompted. (All the same, I think this would be one of the better crowds and iterations of the joke he’s had.) People are passionate about dinosaurs.

Real dinosaurs. Not those played out Velociraptor assholes.

I know I said that I would not launch into a retarded two thousand word rant about the Blue Jays, but instead I wrote one up about dinosaurs instead. Even when I succeed, I fail. (Jeff Goldblum did say that “life, uh, life…ah…always finds a way.” Raptors and Blue Jays are essentially the same animals anyway, and their respective dependencies on three pointers and home runs make them identically inconsistent, crappy teams.)

What is left to talk about? Oh yes, here is Chuck E Cheese doing the crip walk.

This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth – Mexico or Portugal!

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