Jurassic Park

So I was a weird kid. Like a really really weird kid. And my parents did nothing to quell or suppress it. They encouraged any weirdness that I exhibited as artistic expression, and my dad was always helping me find new and creative outlets to let my mind go crazy. I think Jurassic Park had the most influence on my life from the period I was 10 to when I was 13. When it came out in third grade, well I went bonkers over it. All kids my age did. There was a huge push by toy companies, book and magazine publishers and the media in general to jam as much dinosaur crap down kids throats as possible.

It was right around this time that I started to really explore my creative, and well.. Pretty batshit psyche. I remember I would start to concoct realities in my head, about how this raft I used to float around in, in my parents pool in the backyard, somehow had a communications device in it, which had a direct line to Steven Spielberg in Hollywood. I used to talk into the raft in the afternoon and we would discuss all the different parts of Jurassic Park which were awesome, and how Mr. Spielberg was going to whisk me off to Hollywood to star in the next Jurassic Park picture. Yes. Steven Spielberg was my childhood imaginary friend

One day while I was in the bathroom at a local italian restaurant, having a conversation with him as I usually did, because at this point my communication devices with him were everywhere. Including the mirror of the bathroom at this place called DiBrenardos. Anyways so Mr. Spielberg told me to wait on the curb in front of my house the next day at 1:00 in the afternoon and a van would be by to take me to hollywood. So the next day, and every day after that for the rest of the summer, as often as I could, I would chill at the end of my driveway sitting on the curb waiting for the Hollywood bus to come. It never did.

To fill the time between sitting on the curb, I took up a few hobbies. The first and probably most time consuming was building my own jurassic park.

Like I said, I was a really weird kid. I already had all the toys. So my dad gave me a 10 ft by 8 ft piece of plywood to start building on. And boy did I go ape shit with it. I built fences, rivers, pens for all the dinosaurs to live in and my own visitors center. I built it out of extra styrofoam laying around my dad gave me since they were remodeling the house, and had extra. I also discovered that spray paint melts styrofoam. So once I built the visitors center and painted it, it melted. Oh well.

I would make stop action movies with the dinosaurs. And my mighty morphan power rangers. ANd my nightmare before christmas toys. I made innumerable mashups of all 3 toys and ridiculous storylines which I probably stole from spaceballs or some other mel brooks movie.