‘Dinosaur!’ Category

  1. Oh! The (dinosaur-related) places you’ll go!

    September 18, 2012 by ms. xandra

    Last weekend’s Dinosaur Day celebrations were a resounding success! They were somewhat more…aggressively educational, shall we say, than most past Dinosaur Days. Everyone got a commemorative button:

    I keep my button on my desk, as a reminder that every day I need to LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS.  Wasting time on the internet?  Why are you doing that when you need to go and LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS?  Working on your dissertation?  Isn’t it about time you LEARNED ABOUT DINOSAURS instead?  They had different LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS available buttons with all kinds of different dinosaurs on them, including one with a brontosaurus, which, in retrospect, I obviously should have picked instead, because it wins the Most Ironic Dinosaur Pedagogy Button award.  As we all learned, from a shocking expose that I wrote for science class in the 2nd grade,  now corroborated by the wikipedia, the brontosaurus is not actually a scientifically recognized thing.  Could it be that someone needs to LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS?

    But I digress.

    We left West Hollywood at high noon, and headed to our first stop, The Donut Man in Glendora, for the customary Dinosaur Day strawberry donuts. We also picked up some bavarian creams and apple fritters for later.  It is important to have lots of provisions on Dinosaur Day, because one never knows where one will end up. (Usually, one ends up in the desert, wondering whose genius idea it was to do Dinosaur Day in the middle of the summer, again.)

    From there it was a skip and a jump Eastward to the untamed wilds of Riverside, California, where, apart from a boy scout troop, we were the only visitors at the Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center.  The place is a garden center meets a geology museum meets a  huge gift shop housed in a barn, where everything dollar (in addition to our souvenir buttons, some of us may or may not have purchased some fossilized dinosaur poop labelled ”endangered feces”); with a collection of dinosaur eggs and weird dinosaur statues lurking in unexpected places.  Think of a small local museum that you may have gone to on a class trip in the early 1990s, with lots of dusty taxidermied animals behind glass cases, and some charmingly homemade-looking displays (it is possible this experience is unique to those of us who grew up in Bruce County and spent more than one field trip at the Bruce County Museum), replace those animals with some rocks and fossils, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the place.  Basically, it was perfect.  And, unlike at the creationist museum we visited on the inaugural dinosaur day, we actual learned some real science!  Plus the dinosaur statues were really great.

    Click to embiggen!

    And then we went for carnitas at that taco stand with the velociraptor on the roof (“over five zillion sold”), and returned home for a celebratory screening of that well-known dinosaur documentary film GORGO (which is Godzilla but British; I’ll just let you imagine how that all plays out).

    Another successful Dinosaur Day!  Until next year, remember: make every day Dinosaur Day IN YOUR HEART.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur! | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Today’s dessert brought to you by dinosaurs

    August 30, 2012 by ms. xandra

    SUMMER!  Where has it gone?  It has gone basically nowhere, apparently, because Los Angeles is hot as blazes. Normally I leave LA in September for the cool climes of my native land, but this year I went northwards in July instead because POOR PLANNING.  Oops.

    Important things are afoot, though!

    Dinosaur Day cometh!  Dinosaur Day is, of course, the holiday we invented on which we pay homage to our lost forbears, the Dinosaurs.  Traditionally, Dinosaur Day has been observed on July 16th, but because of the aforementioned POOR PLANNING, I was not Dinosaur-adjacent and unable to make the traditional Dinosaur Day pilgrimage.  However, the chief benefit of a holiday invented and observed by oneself is that one can reschedule it for any date that one deems appropriate.  And thus, Dinosaur Day will be observed this year on either September 7 or 8, just as soon as we get some details locked in.  That’s next weekend! There will be a roadtrip.  And Michael Crichton audiobooks.  And dessert.  You know, the traditional rites of Dinosaur Day.

    Another Dinosaur Day rite is the Dinosaur Day countdown, which will start tomorrow with a series of blog posts profiling Dinosaurs We Would Visit for Dinosaur Day if We Had a Million Dollars and Also a Concord Jet.

    But speaking of dinosaurs.

    When I was in Canadaland, I picked up a copy of a charming (terrifying) volume called Cookery in Colour, by one Ms. Margeurite Patton. (If you are brave, you can even get your own copy.)

    It is a British publication, and thus opens my mid-century cooking universe to include strange and wondrous new things (ie: the Guy Fawkes Bonfire Cake, which is a pile of logs made out of candy cigarettes with a marzipan effigy of Guy Fawkes on top).  For my first dip into its garishly illustrated depths, I chose something from this page, a page that begs an important question:  if you are not going to use cake as dessert, what, exactly, are you planning to use it for?

     

    While the “Pearl in Oyster” cake at the top is certain to win all cake beauty pageants, I like underachievers, so I made that one on the bottom, the one that looks like a mountain of sweaty cheese with shrivelled up brussels sprouts stuck to it.  It’s called Parame Mousse, so perhaps it hails from the French village of the same name?  At any rate, it is truly the strangest thing I have made yet.  It’s jello with cake in it.

    Marguerite directs us to do as follows:

    “Make lemon jelly using just under 1 pint water.  Allow to cool and begin to set then whisk in 4 oz. cake crumbs, 1 oz. chopped crystallized ginger and 2 stiffly beaten egg whites.  Decorate with crystallized ginger and pistachio nuts.”

    She leaves out what seem to be some key steps, like, putting the mixture in a mold to set after you fold in the egg whites.  But maybe Marguerite is writing for an audience with more advanced gelatin skills, who simply take such steps for granted.  I used a pound cake from the store and sort of eyeballed the amount of cake crumbs.  I also just threw all the ginger and pistachio nuts right in the mixture.  And the result was…weird but good!  A good kind of hot weather cake, I think, because the cake sort of dissolves into the gelatin mixture, and the egg whites make it fluffy and cool.  And it’s really quite ingenious – you can imagine a frugal housewife making this to stretch out a cake for a few extra days.  The ginger and pistachio are unusual and interesting flavour choices.  We’ve been eating this for dessert all week with saffron coconut ice cream that Aaron made, and because the ice cream is so yellow and the cake jello is so weird, every time we have some, I announce, “time for outer space dessert!” because, truly, it is like the dessert of the future.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur!, Food | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. Dessert goes Mesozoic, and Meta Given would be proud

    August 22, 2011 by ms. xandra

    An important part of Dinosaur Day is, of course, the consumption of elaborately conceived dinosaur comestibles.  Last year, we made blue, dinosaur egg ice cream.  This year?  JELLO DIORAMA.

    First, I laid out the prehistoric earth, with a sad apatosaurus embedded therein.

    That is a milk-based almond, cinnamon, bourbon jello (I was trying to use up the dregs of bottles in the liquor cabinet, and last few drops of some fireball whiskey left over from some apocalypse-themed cocktails that I made a few months ago served quite nicely here), with blackberries, peaches, slivered almonds, and chunks of cherry jello (leftover from that time Aaron got a wisdom tooth pulled) for prehistoric texture.  The apatosaurus is plastic.

    And then I added a volcano, made out of grape jello, which was made using plain gelatin and real grape juice.  Using actual fruit juice instead and plain gelatin, instead of using flavored gelatin mixes is so much tastier and probably better for you because it isn’t as loaded with sugar.  Also, pterodactyl.

    And then the volcano erupted!

    The lava is gelatin made with tasty orange-carrot-ginger juice, which I let partially set and then folded into whipped cream. This results in an amazing sturdy and yet mousse-like texture that is tasty and also, admittedly, weird.  I then dusted the whole thing with sparkly red sugar from a cookie decorating kit, thereby negating any of the positive health effects of using juice.  The trees are eucalyptus branches.  The dinosaur is engulfed in lava.

    I promise that for next Dinosaur Day I will make an actual dinosaur out of jello and frosting.

    Category Dinosaur!, Food | Tags: | No Comments

  4. And then there were dinosaurs.

    August 21, 2011 by ms. xandra

    Somehow…I have not updated this blog in a month!  Dinosaur Day was long ago, as was the Donut Summit!  In the meantime, I have been doing a lot:  I’m finishing up a dissertation chapter.   I taught a summer class, which went pretty well, although I am somewhat concerned that, while a disproportionate number of students wrote me to tell me the class was amazing and changed their lives, a disproportionate number of students also wrote AMAZINGLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE THINGS on their final exam (example:  ”‘It’s Raining Men’ demonstrates the influence of 1970s lesbian separatist folk music,” which is so completely not true that I would probably argue that “It’s Raining Men” is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of lesbian separatist folk music), which really makes me wonder what, exactly, was coming out of my mouth when I was standing in front of the classroom for three hours a day, twice a week, for six weeks.  In addition, I have also been working in UCLA Performing Arts Special Collections where I am processing the Jimmy Durante Papers, which is so much fun and is the best job I have ever had.  It is also worth noting that my Special Collections job was paid for by the very generous donation of a fabulous famous lady, who shall remain nameless.  But I will tell you that I can now officially include a line on my CV that says that I was a Midler Fellow.  And also, somewhere in there, we hosted a bigger, better Donut Summit, which you can read all about at blogging.LA.

    So you will forgive me for forgetting to tell you about Dinosaur Day.

    Go on, click through for dinosaurs.  You know you want dinosaurs.

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    Category Adventure, Awesome, Dinosaur! | Tags: | No Comments

  5. We need to have a serious discussion about dinosaurs.

    July 14, 2011 by ms. xandra

    Guess what this weekend is, everybody!   IT IS DINOSAUR DAY WEEKEND!

    If you are new to this party, here are some facts about Dinosaur Day:

    Dinosaur Day is a very important holiday that I invented, on which we commemorate the loss of our lizardly ancestors.  Dinosaur Day is typically celebrated by embarking on a Dinosaur Pilgrimage to an important Dinosaur Historical site.  Ideally, Dinosaur Pilgrimages should involve going on inconvenient and ill-advised journeys into the desert on the hottest day of the year, although it is acceptable to modify the strictures of Dinosaur Pilgrimage depending on one’s geographical location.

    Our first Dinosaur Day Pilgrimage was to Cabazon, CA, to see the Cabazon Dinosaurs, which most famously appeared in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and are now owned and operated by creationists.  You can read all about our journey (and also see the extremely ambitious Countdown to Dinosaur Day that I wrote that year, featuring a profile of a different dinosaur every day because I wasn’t teaching that summer and had a lot of time on my hands) here!

    Last year we visited a tragic abandoned dinosaur site in Apple Valley, and had lunch at Peggy Sue’s Diner and Diner-Saur Park, just outside of Barstow.  The stop at Peggy Sue’s Diner is also notable because I forced Aaron to order Green River, the world’s neonest soda pop (I believe the phrase “the gentleman will have the Green River” may have been uttered), and they brought it out to him in a giant fluted goblet.

    Last summer, Tanya and I celebrated Dinosaur Day:  LONDONTOWN EDITION, at Crystal Palace Park, on what was arguably the greatest day of our lives.

    This year, things are complicated.  This year, Dinosaur Day is coinciding with (for my non-Angeleno readers who are blissfully unaware of this) the 405 closure:  they are shutting down a big section of a major freeway that runs through West LA, and the predictions are apocalyptic.  Aaron read somewhere that traffic might be backed up all the way to Mexico?  Which I think is maybe a bit extreme, hopefully?  But at any rate, they’re calling it Carmaggedon, and telling everyone to stay home, and so even though Dinosaur Day will take us Eastwards, away from this potential disaster, there is really no telling how bad it could get, and if it will affect our planned pilgrimage at all.

    I had initially come up with an extremely ambitious plan to avoid all of this by leaving LA on Friday night and making for Arizona, and the town of Holbrook, where everyone has a plaster dinosaur on their lawn, but then Some People’s Boyfriends scheduled dental surgery for Friday afternoon, which means Dinosaur Day: Can We Possibly Road Trip To Arizona and Manage to Not Buy Anything There Because We are Boycotting Arizona? edition will have to wait until next year.  My other plan, to build a giant dinosaur out of chicken wire and plaster and to reverently place it somewhere prominent (like, say, the middle of one of the Os in the Hollywood sign, or another reasonable location) as a Dinosaur Memorial was voted down by non-crafty-identified members of our party.

    Instead, we have some more (somewhat) reasonable events planned:

    We will start our journey at Carnitas Michoacan No. 3, a humble East-LA taco stand, that has the distinction of being the only taco stand that has both a) a sign proclaiming “over five zillion tacos sold” and b) a plaster velociraptor on the roof.  They are open 24 hours, which means TACOS FOR BREAKFAST, EVERYBODY!

    We will then venture forth to Whittier Narrows, to visit the sea monsters and dinosaurs in Legg Lake Park!

    And from there, pending traffic, and using a roundabout route that ideally avoids freeways, it’s off to the strange, and potentially very creepy Charlie Brown Farms, which, in addition to a Land of the Dinosaurs, also has Village of the Gnomes, House of Dolls, and World of Betty Boop.  Because those are things that go together.  Also, they sell rattlesnake meat.  WHY, DEAR WORLD?

    And then it’s back home, for a dinosaur film and DINOSAUR JELLO which I am envisioning in my mind as I write this, and it is going to be beyond beautiful.

    This is all pending-Carmaggedon.  If we are stuck close to home, the Natural History Museum’s new Dinosaur Hall is actually officially opening on Saturday, and I suppose we could celebrate Dinosaur Day there, although, as I keep insisting, Dinosaur Day just isn’t Dinosaur Day if we don’t drive really really far for no good reason.   In which case I will drive to Arizona the following weekend by myself, if necessary.

    Category Dinosaur! | Tags: | 1 Comment

  6. Hope!

    October 29, 2010 by ms. xandra

    I am made very happy by very trifling things.  To wit:

    Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream.    It makes my chapped lips unchapped in approximately five minutes.  It comes in a tiny glass jar that is the same tiny glass jar it has come in since approximately forever.  You can also get it in a sad plastic tube but WHY?

    Tiny glass jars.  I would like to accumulate a collection of old glass jars that were once filled with cold cream and pomade and powders and were used by women, who, I like to imagine, were Great Women of Letters.  I would like to keep these artfully scattered on the bathroom vanity, as though my own home were inhabited by a Great Woman of Letters of yesteryear and has been frozen in a more fabulous time.

    Animatronic Dinosaurs.  Every day can be Dinosaur Day, it is true, it is true!  You just have to believe in the power of Dinosaurs and make it so!  Today I said “if there is one thing we accomplish tonight, I would like it to be a trip  on the Jurassic Park in the Dark ride.”  And my wish came true!  Granted, Nikki and I were already at Universal Studios, which did perhaps enable my dream in becoming reality, but I feel that this doesn’t take away from the message of hope I am trying to convey here.  That message being:  Dinosaurs!  They’re secretly always with you!  Even if they’re only animatronic, or only in your heart.

    Category Awesome, Dinosaur! | Tags: | No Comments

  7. DINOSAUR DAY 2010!!!!!

    July 23, 2010 by ms. xandra

    If I go down in history for anything in the world, I want it to be for inventing Dinosaur Day, the day on which we honor our long lost reptilian overlords, the dinosaurs, by going on Dinosaur Pilgrimage.  Last year, we celebrated the inaugural dinosaur day with a trip to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, home of a terrifying creationist museum.  This year, aided and abetted by roadsideamerica.com, a website that has come to dictate far too many of my day to day activities, we went on yet another ambitious journey into the desert, in the middle of July, where it reached 44 fucking degrees celcius.  But nothing will stop Dinosaur Day!

    Armed with seven hours worth of educational paleontology podcasts, we ventured forth to Apple Valley, California (stopping along the way at the Donut Man, in Glendora, the Official Donut Purveyor of Dinosaur Day), home of the now tragic, crumbling Apple Valley Dinosaurs.

    What was once a magnificent . . . mini golf course, is now a tragic monument to the loss of our long-departed lizardly overlords.  I braved six inches of barbed wire to get close to one, and, apart from that time at the Cabazon Dinosaurs, and that time at the Natural History Museum, and that time at Science North when I was five, and that time at the Bruce County Museum, and all of those other times when I’ve stood next to fake and/or reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, it was the closest I’d ever been to a dinosaur.

    So, I cannot over-emphasize the strangeness of this place, you know?  Wire and cement skeletons of fake dinosaurs were everywhere, a few had vestiges of their original paint jobs, and it was so hot and desolate.  I’m fascinated by the strangely melancholic desert cities in the middle of California – who are the people who choose to live there and why?Once, the area was booming, but it certainly isn’t anymore.  And, most importantly, who builds their dinosaur golf course out there?  My theory is that since Apple Valley is Route 66-adjacent, it might have been a tourist draw once, but now, there is nothing surrounding it.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

    Anyhow, we stopped at the Route 66 Museum in Victorville because it was there and because it was free, and it was fascinating too.  They have a 9 foot tall hula girl statue from Hulaville, which looms large over the entire museum, and which Aaron completely failed to notice because he is an oblivious boy who was busy reading the descriptions of antique radios.  And also the Route 66 Museum is right next to a Wonder Bread/Hostess warehouse store (yes, really) so next time we go out into the middle of the desert for no good reason I am going to buy a gross of Twinkies.

    And then we were off to Peggy Sue’s Diner and Diner-saur park.  If you’re going to have a giant 50′s diner with an entrance shaped like a jukebox, you need something to distinguish yourself from all of the other 50′s diners.  And apparently that thing is dinosaurs.  And to think I was already excited that there were sandwiches named after Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Richard Nixon!  I could eat a Frankie Avalon sandwich AND ALSO there were dinosaurs.

    And King Kong, don’t forget King Kong.

    And in case anyone needed any help with dinosaur identification, voila!  A handy guide to dinosaur taxonomy:

    And then we went home and watched The Land that Time Forgot, which had WONDERFUL and TERRIBLE fake dinosaurs in it and also cave men and Really Excellent Science.  Although it did suffer from a little too much “we are on a German U-boat and not very pleased about it”-style exposition before we got to the actual dinosaurs, but they were such good actual dinosaurs that I can’t complain much.  We also made our own Special Edition Dinosaur Day Ice Cream by throwing vanilla ice cream in the stand mixer with blue food coloring, malt balls, chocolate chips, and marshmallows, which, somehow, stands for dinosaur?  Whatever, it was awesome.

    I am thinking that for next Dinosaur Day we need to do something really big, and maybe actually involving real dinosaurs, like volunteering on a paleontology dig or something?  Whatever we do it will be amazing because Dinosaur Day is officially the BEST DAY OF THE YEAR.

    There are more Dinosaur Day pictures on that facebook thing, if you want ‘em.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur! | Tags: | 3 Comments

  8. Dinosaur Day!! The photo essay! Part 3.2: LOOK! Even MORE dinosaurs!

    July 18, 2009 by ms. xandra

    I love dinosaurs. Do you love dinosaurs?  I hope you love dinosaurs.  Creationists love dinosaurs!

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    Category Dinosaur! | Tags: | 2 Comments

  9. Dinosaur Day! The photo essay! Part 3.1: LOOK AT ALL OF THESE DINOSAURS!!!

    July 18, 2009 by ms. xandra

    DINOSAURS!  EVERYWHERE!  AMAZING!  It was the greatest day of my life.

    Dozens of dinosaur pictures await!  There are lots, so this is split into two posts.

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    Category Dinosaur! | Tags: | No Comments

  10. Dinosaur Day! The photo essay! Part 2: Things I Learned from Creationists.

    July 18, 2009 by ms. xandra

    So….the thesis of the creationists who run the Cabazon dinosaurs appears to be:  There was an ice age.  And then GOD CREATED MAN AND DINOSAUR.  And thus man and dinosaur coexisted.  And continue to do so.  The dinosaurs are just, like, hiding, or something.  In the woods.  Also:  evolution could not possibly be real because of the second law of thermodynamics; fossils are not actually old, they’re just from dinosaurs who have randomly died, like, recently; we know this because carbon dating is actually wrong; motion of the earth’s tectonic plates actually happens REALLY REALLY FAST.  Um, also, they were giving out free copies of a documentary which I promise to watch and report back on.

    Anyhow, I thought it was important to give you, you know, the theoretical framework we’re working with before getting to the actual dinosaur displays.  Not that any of this actually requires, say, logic or sense or anything.  In fact, it’s probably best if you put logic on the shelf.

    See below the jump for photos.

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    Category Dinosaur! | Tags: | 2 Comments

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