Or, sitting in the O2 Arena on Wednesday and watching a battle between a life-size Allosaurus and a Stegosaurus such as one might have seen any day of the week if one had been around 208 million years ago in the Jurassic Period!
Yes, I've been Walking with Dinosaurs!
My friends Richard and Christine took me on this amazing, time-traveling expedition back to the age of reptiles and to say it was breathtaking is a chronic understatement!
Kids have always loved dinosaurs: they are the tangible link between the dragons of the fantasy worlds of myth and fairytale and the grown-up world of scientific knowledge.
They are, and always have been, the source of sheer wonder whether in the form of towering fossil remains, or in their filmic representations from The Lost World and King Kong via One Million Years BC and Jurassic Park to the BBC TV series that gave it's name to this awe-inspiring arena spectacular.
The show is 'educational' in tone: an actor playing a paleontologist named 'Huxley' (yep, we got it!) accompanies the audience back through time to the Triassic period (245-208 million years ago) and then on through the subsequent Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods to that day (some 65 million years ago), when a damn great comet crash-landed in the Gulf of Mexico and changed life on earth for ever - or, at least until the next time...
There is no story other than that inherent in rise and fall in the fortunes of these great beasts - no overlay of Conan Doyleish or Spielbergian adventures - it is the spectacle that carries the event.
It's questionable whether there would be room for any stars alongside the dinosaurs: powerful, majestic, formidable, there they are - just as we know them from the paintings in the dinosaur books we pored over in childhood - right there in the flesh, before our very eyes, and decidedly red in tooth and claw...
Of course, I ought to be writing at length in praise of the skill with which this extraordinary show has been created: the craft, artistry and technology employed in designing, building and animating the dinosaurs, but - and I'm sure the huge team of artists, engineers and performers will forgive me - I would rather forget the nuts and bolts of the enterprise and, reverting to that state of mind which only the child can truly know, wonder at the opportunity to visit, albeit briefly, the marvels and terrors of the time when dinosaurs ruled the earth...
And I'd better leave the last word - or roar! - to the king - Tyrannosaurus Rex!
10 comments:
I was wondering when we're going to have (Strictly Come) Dancing with Dinosaurs but I guess the BBC have already put paid to that.
I know Brucie is a veteran, but that's ridiculous!
I somehow missed being fascinated with dinosaurs when I was a kid... I don't know why.
P.S. I answered the question you posed on my blog, after your comment on my blog -- it's actually an Oscar themed Symphony Concert, not a real red carpet event.
I didn't mean to sound rude when saying I hadn't been interested in dinosaurs when I was young -- hope it didn't seem that way.
I'm wondering why suddenly the post that shows in my bloglist as "most recent update" is "Arty-Facts" from 4 weeks ago? Same update is showing on SharonM's bloglist. It's a puzzlement.
So where is Godzookie in all this, asks a fellow six year-old at heart?
SCB - Rude? YOU? Never! Either dinosaurs are your thing or else...
As for the mystery, disappearing blog post: I had to put it up - fleetingly - in order to check that the pictures (resized from flickr) would work. It will appear again before very long...
SHARON - I'm sorry to disillusion you, but Godzookie was not a bona fide dinosaur, any more than Mickey Mouse is actually a MOUSE! Shocking, I know...
But...but...but (chin quivers)... Mickey's real, isn't he? Next, you'll be telling me that Mary Poppins doesn't really fly. (I wouldn't advise you telling me that, even if you think it's true... ...) ;-)
I'm still puzzling about dinosaurs not being a part of my childhood. It wasn't that I had any particular dislike of them, I just didn't think about them much. There was quite a dinosaur craze several years after my original childhood (note that I am on my sixth or seventh childhood by now), but the only dinosaurs I remember being "acquainted with" in my original childhood were those on the Flintstones cartoon series.
AUCTYC -- a small relative of the Pterodactyl.
It's alright, SCB, I didn't mean THAT Mickey Mouse! And as for Mary Poppins - fly? She positively zooms!
Anyway, if Walking with Dinosaurs comes to anywhere near your neck of the woods on its world tour, you must see it and then you can start on your eighth childhood! :-)
Some of my favorite toys as a small person were plastic dinosaurs that came as prizes in boxes of cereal. I loved all things dinosaur. [ I was so disappointed when brontosaurus turned out to be apatosaurus. ]
Getting to see this as a kid would have been Christmas ten times over.
I confirm that MM is real -- he helped buy my house. Whatta guy!
My first dinosaurs came in a box - or, rather, a number of boxes - of Shreddies breakfast cereal. Oddly, they were all white...
Very generous of Mickey M to buy you a house! Does Minnie know...?
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