A Poignant Erection

We've all had to deal with erections.  Ry Williams handles them for a living, specifically dinosaur erections.  Williams is a self-described "dinosaur erection specialist" at Dino Lab in British Columbia, where he couples his training as a welder with his love of dinosaurs to erect their skeletal remains in lifelike positions.

And some not-so-lifelike positions.

Yes, that's a dinosaur tea party.  Williams is rightfully proud of this particular erection--it took him three years to get it up.  It was a challenging mount!  And a meaningful one too.  "A real T. rex and a real Triceratops sitting down and having tea together," he said.  "The most iconic enemies in the history of the planet having a conversation. I think the world needs that kind of message right now."

We could all learn a thing or two from Williams's poignant erection.

Where in the World was zman? Part 4

It's been a hell of a twelve day run for your boy from the Neck. I will regale you with tales of my comings and goings over the next few days. My last installment left off at bedtime on Friday.

On Saturday we woke up bright and early, had breakfast, and went over to the WDC. We were loaded onto a van and hauled over some truly bumpy terrain to a dinosaur dig site where we spent about four hours helping the WDC staff dig stuff up.

The big black thing on the right of zson is a Camarasaurus leg bone, I think it was a femur. zson found a small piece of Camarasaurus tendon which they let him keep along with some fossilized plant matter and "float bone" (random tiny bone fragments) that I found. He was thrilled. Then they loaded us up again and took us even further out onto a ridge that used to be below an ocean. It's littered with fossilized sea life. We found and kept a bunch of clam and squid fossils, then went back to the museum for a behind-the-scenes tour including a Maiasaura mid-assembly and various pieces of Jimbo the Supersaurus. He's 106 feet long.

Then we got a guided museum tour. It was dope, as the kids say. Here's a Camarasaurus:

And here's the best Archaeopteryx in the US:

And here's an explanation of the Archaeopteryx:

Then we headed back to Casper. On Sunday we fished again with great success including this 20 inch rainbow trout.

Then we went back to Denver on Monday. zson was too pooped to do much other than swim in the hotel's saltwater pool and play with other kids at a McDonald's playground. I guess he needed some kid interaction after six days with just me. Then we flew home. I read "The Boilerplate Rhino" by David Quammen through most of the flight and it's perfect airplane material, especially after our week in the field. It's a collection of Quammen's essays from Outside magazine. They're all about 5-6 pages long so it's easy to stop and start the book, and the one about T. rex fossils in Montana was particularly resonant given recent events.

None of this is a humblebrag (except for that last photo of the fish). I have no idea how to parent properly. My guiding principle when I'm faced with a decision about my kids is to avoid doing what my parents would have done. So rather than have him watch TV all summer I took zson to a place I've never been to do stuff I wanted to do as a kid (and as an adult, truth be told). I'm just trying to get things right.

Hopefully zson will look back at this trip fondly. I know I will.

Where in the World was zman? Part 3

It's been a hell of a twelve day run for your boy from the Neck. I will regale you with tales of my comings and goings throughout the week. My last installment left off on Friday.

The drive from Casper to Thermopolis takes two hours, the first eighty minutes of which are pretty boring. The final forty minutes through the Wind River Canyon are about as beautiful as any drive I’ve ever taken. Once you get to Shoshoni you turn north and drive along a lake which turns into the Bighorn River. Then you enter a canyon of multicolored rocks and flowers with the road right up against the river. The ride back south was even more beautiful. I could spend all day driving back and forth through that canyon in a convertible and never get tired of it.

Like Casper, Thermopolis is also a funny little place. The population is about 3,500 but it has a world-class dinosaur museum (the Wyoming Dinosaur Center or WDC), an amphitheater and the world's largest natural mineral hot springs. There's a tannery called Merlin's Hide Out. They sell all sorts of cool stuff like this:

Thermopolis also has one pretty cool restaurant with a brewery. But it also has this building with some uncool masonry (I hope it was built before the 1930s) and a Ron Paul sign.

Despite its libertarian streak, Thermopolis felt much younger, newer, and hopeful than Casper. I saw no cowboy hats or big belt buckles (although I did see a guy in boots with spurs and he was wearing them genuinely with no irony, unlike TR during his stint in the West Village). Most people were decked out in well-worn technical outdoor gear but with the swagger of a bow hunter, not a granola. The only time I smelled weed on the whole trip was by the men’s room at the One Eyed Buffalo (the site of my only real meal in Thermopolis—they make a hell of a prime rib). If Thermopolis was a singer it would be Sturgill Simpson.



At some point we had lunch. zson’s diet consists essentially of pizza, mac and cheese, and chicken tenders/nuggets so we had a fair number of meals at McDonald’s because (a) Wyoming pizza probably is not right and (b) there aren’t a ton of dining options in towns of 3,500 people. Thermopolis has a McDonald’s but more importantly it’s right next door to Ava’s Silver and Rock Shop. Much like Marls circa 1994, the shop’s outwardly dumpy appearance hides some amazing stuff inside. The owners (Eddie and Ava) are a husband and wife team of grumpy elderly geologists. Eddie discovered the Avaceratops (he named it after Ava) and he’s happy to tell the story. He’s also happy to tell you how the people running the Wyoming Dinosaur Center don’t know what they’re doing (apparently he and Ava helped get the dig sites started and were dismissed from their post sometime thereafter—Eddie is passionately pissed about this and Ava interrupted him at one point to merely say “It’s a sore point” and then got back to cleaning fossils). And man, do they have fossils. Cheap fossils! You can buy fossil fish for $10 to $20 and they’re beautifully perfect and decently big. They also have Spinosaurus teeth, shark teeth (for a dollar each), all sorts of plants (fifty cents a pop) and fish, bones from various sauropods, and an amazing lower jaw from a Mososaur. My biggest regret from the trip is not going back to their store on the way out of town to buy a fossil or two.

Then we checked into our hotel and learned that the air conditioning in our room was broken. I can say with great authority that there's nothing sadder than a Lasko box fan in your window on a 90 degree day. It was like freshman year in Monroe all over again. So we went over to Star Plunge where we swam in the hot springs, and this happened:

We played Bananagrams for a bit and had dinner, then we went back to Star Plunge to swim in the hot spring until it closed at 9 pm (once you pay you can leave and come back anytime that day). Then we slept a sweaty sleep.

Stay tuned for further installments later this week.

Russell Crowe is really Dave Dogfoot?

I have determined that we have an impostor in our midst. The man we know to be Dave Dogfoot is really a famous actor with a different name of animal origin--he's Russell Crowe. This shouldn't come as a suprise given that he name-checked Crowe in song at least once before.

Here's a picture of Helen Hunt and Russell Crowe circa 1992, before Crowe hit it big. They were doing a summer stock revival of Grease in the metro Camden area. This photo was taken back stage. If you look closely through the eyeliner, you can see a striking resemblance to Dave.

Here's a much more recent photo of Dave juggling a ball at one of his myriad youth soccer events.

If you look closely through Dave's flab, you can see that he's the spitting image of Russell Crowe. This explains why he's playing soccer with a football--Australians take the whole "soccer is really football" conceit way too seriously. And who takes things a serious step too far more than Dave?

Not convinced? Fine. I have more facts, alternate facts if you will. Russell Crowe and his wife Danielle Spencer are divorcing. To make the division of assets easier, Crowe is auctioning off a bunch of stuff he "collected" over the years and will split the proceeds with his former wife. The auction is called "Russell Crowe: The Art of Divorce" and it's preposterous in so many ways that Dave has to be involved. In fact the whole thing is so insane that only Dave could gin up this fever dream of collectibles. Here's the cover photo for the catalog:

Sweet toupee Dave! Things get increasingly Dave as you dig through the catalog. For example, he's auctioning off a mosasaur skull that he received as a gift from Leonardo DiCaprio. Dave/Crowe notes that "The fossil relative of the monitor lizard family, which includes the Komodo Drago, the Mosasaur was a giant, serpentine marine reptile, which was prevalent during the Late Cretaceous Period, approximately 65 million years ago. Mosasaurs were formidable hunters, with a double-hinged jaw and a flexible skull enabling them to eat their prey whole. The Niobrara Formation is a geologic formation located in North America that was deposited between 87 and 82 million years ago." Dave totally wrote that--it's taxonomically perfect (mosasaurs were marine reptiles, not dinosaurs) and right on the line between interestingly informative and smarmily pedantic.

And who other than Dave would keep a dead lizard head in his home?

Another Dave-only gem is this antique leather athletic supporter. Who else would wear a used leather jock strap (read the comments)? In fact, on the night of the Tonka truck incident zwoman saw Dave staggering around the house, looking for the bathroom, wearing nothing but this very same cup. zwoman said "Dave wears a codpiece? I guess he really does teach Shakespeare."

Also up for auction: nineteen (19!) guitars. I have no idea why anyone needs nine guitars, let alone nineteen guitars, but a collection of nineteen guitars sounds like something Dave would amass. Some are acoustic while others are electric. I won't link to them all, and they all look more or less the same to (except for the colors). The most expensive is a limited edition Gibson Elvis Presley "The King" J-200 black acoustic guitar. According to Dave/Crowe "In 2000 I took a road trip from Texas to New York, via West Virginia, for the filming of A Beautiful Mind (2001). I took a detour via Memphis to visit Graceland and I bought this guitar from the shop there. It is no. 90 of 250 produced for 1997." Seems like it would've been easier to fly from Texas to New York but despite all his professed love of and advocacy for all things green and eco-friendly, Dave loves to burn inordinate amounts of fossil fuels by driving SUVs back-and-forth across the country so this is a very Dave story.

Dave's interest in oddball Euro sports like soccer and darts is well documented. As is his interest in cricket. Dave/Crowe's auction contains a batshit crazy volume of cricket memorabilia, including five signed and framed cricket batting gloves, ten game-worn sweater-vests, seven cricket bats, seven signed and framed cricket shirts, two bronze sculptures of Donald Bradman playing cricket (one of which is life-sized), and three framed cricket caps (one of which was apparently worn by W.A.S. "Bert" Oldfield and will allegedly sell for $50,000 to $60,000). Here's the pricey cap:

According to Dave/Crowe's catalog entry, this cap is:

green wool, embroidered with the Australian coat-of-arms worked in gold and silver wire and coloured silk, the series date below '1932-33', with a 'Farmers Sydney' label inscribed in ink 'W.A.Oldfield', framed with a black and white photograph of Oldfield, together with a copy of The Larwood Story: A Cricketer's Biography, (the dust jacket framed separately), opened at the page describing the infamous encounter between Oldfield and the English fast bowler, Harold Larwood, on 17 January 1933, when Oldfield was struck in the head off Larwood's delivery, suffering a fractured skull. An area of separation to one of the seams in the cap where Oldfield was struck, is a further reminder of the incident.

Sounds like a really pleasant piece of cricketing history to display in one's home--the hat hat Oldfield was wearing when he broke his skull, ripped seams and all!

I won't even get into the 1873 Sunbury Cup Australian silver trophy for greyhound coursing, attributed to Edward Fischer (1828-1911) for $10,000-$15,000.

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence proving that Dogfoot is Crowe is Lot No. 5, a two-piece double-breasted purple suit worn by Russell Crowe in the movie Virtuosity.

Who would wear such an atrocity? This guy:

If you think this "slob with a football" ensemble is a one-off look you're mistaken. Historically, Dave looks like hell even when he's dressed up.

Pleated khakis, unzipped fly, rumpled shirt, oversized paisley print tie tied to a Trumpian length? Hell, this purple suit was probably the crown jewel of Dave/Crowe's wardrobe back in the 90's!

I think I can safely rest my case. Now that we know Dave is a wealthy movie star we should encourage him to pay for lunch at Tortuga's one day. All the more reason to attend OBFT XXV.

The Test Episode 3: Zman Gets a Shout-out From Stacey . . .

Here is the third episode of our epistemology podcast: The Test. This time, Young Cunningham delivers the goods; her questions are about TV and technology, two things that she cares profoundly about (i.e. phones and shows).

I should warn you that Stacey and I flail a bit on this one, and you might too . . . though while I am taking the quiz, I claim (typically) that I am "crushing it," as I always think I know all the answers . . . until the teacher hands me a D+.




Anyway, download it and play along at home . . . or in the car, or while you go for a run, or as you pretend to take care of your children. They might even learn something.

Zman gets a shout out around the nine minute mark. More episodes to come . . .

Dave, Stacey, and Young Cunningham Make a Podcast: The Test!

I am annoying. Luckily, this is a prerequisite for my job: I am paid to annoy sleepy teenagers . . . to pester them with questions, irk them with activities, and coerce them into reading, writing, and thinking. I've been doing this for a while, so I've gotten adept at it. But I've always recognized the subversive questions lurking beneath the surface of every high school class: Do we really need to learn this shit? Is it really worth the time? The frustration? Calculus? Seriously? Organic chemistry? Sex education? When am I going to actually use any of this crap?

We attempted to address these epistemological questions with something my friend Kevin invented: the Life Quiz. This is a set of ten questions that don't count towards your grade, but instead determine how you are doing at seeming to be educated. Art, science, current events, and common knowledge. Major events in history and psychology and economics. Significant sports stuff. No trivia. Just information you should actually know. Or probably should know. Who knows? I encourage the students to pick a partner of similar intellect and bet some push-ups. Then I pose some questions: what is the boiling point of water? How long ago did the dinosaurs live? What is the population of New Jersey?

You don't have to nail the answer . . . it's like horse-shoes and hand-grenades. Close enough counts. Within ten percent.

Sometimes the questions are broad: name a jazz musician and their instrument. Sometimes they are specific: what does it mean to "bury the hatchet." And sometimes they seem really obvious: what are the seven continents?

You end up with some surprising answers, and some surprising logic as well. And plenty of discussion about epistemology. What should we have rattling around in our brain? What do you need to know? Do you need to know anything?

The brain is a counter-intuitive instrument. It's not like a computer-- your memory doesn't fill up. In fact, the more things you know, the better your brain works. The more connections you have, the more connections you make, and the more you understand. So despite the ubiquity of Google, I think there is some value in knowing stuff. The question is: what?

A few of us were so enamored with this theme, that we decided to make a podcast about it. The concept of the show is simple-- it's ostensibly a quiz show, but it's the anti-Jeopardy-- one of us asks seven questions, and the other participants try to answer them. Or argue about them. Or declare them stupid. Stacey, Cunningham and I are the hosts, but we plan on having lots of guests. On the plus side, our voices are easily discernible and we cover three decades: Young Cunningham is in her twenties, Stacey is in her thirties, and I am forty-five. Not only do we ask questions and discuss validity, but we also crack a lot of jokes. On the minus side, I am annoying. I try not to be judgmental, with varying degrees of success.

We're calling the show The Test and we've recorded two episodes. We haven't had any guests yet, but they are coming soon. If you want to be on, just ask . . . I think we can even Skype you in. While we're certainly not pros at this yet, we've got original background music, an audio montage, and a theme song.

Good luck and have fun . . . you can play along at home, but no studying . . .