Jurassic Park was on television last night. I forgot how much I loved that movie, how much I felt justified seeing it at least four times in the theatre… June 11th, 199something… ’91? ’92? I remember I saw it with Michael Gunelson the day after I had an end-of-the-year party. It was supposed to be a sleepover, but everyone got sent home after throwing a whole box of cookies at the t.v. while watching Aliens.
After seeing Jurassic Park we left for some lame Boy Scout trip. Interesting how things come full-circle, as I was first introduced to Michael Crichton’s famous book on a Boy Scout campout many months before. Why, I actually read the paperback copy with the old Jurassic Park cover on it; before they changed it to reflect the logo in the movie. Yeah, just like polyester, Hawaiian shirts, Dax Wave and Groom and bowling shoes, I was way ahead of the trend on that one.
In the early morn on that camping trip, Mitch Axelson and I were in charge of cooking the bacon. It quickly caught on fire, so as my father tried valiantly to douse the flames we just danced around chanting “Put out the bacon, put out the bacon!” Our tribe later sat in trees and exchanged dirty jokes and then we retreated into the woods… we talked about how much our explorations were resembling the movie Fire in the Sky. ‘Five guys went into the woods… only four returned.’ Some fat kid got spooked as a result and bailed back to the campground, paring our group down to the mentioned four. Then we climbed up a hill to explore an ice cave. It had rusty chains, likely used to imprison Ice Giants.
When I watched Jurassic Park I cried. Really. It was so damn beautiful. In the wise words of Tyler Zenner, “Yeah, I’d pay to see live dinosaurs.”
I would too.