There Are A Lot of Blackbirds Around These Parts Lately

They make a lot of noise.

Kicked Out of Candyland: the Mysterious Disappearance of Plumpy the Plumpa

This morning, while proofreading one of the finer comics in today's funny papers, I had the occasion to look up the spellings of old-school board games such as Mousetrap, Chutes & Ladders, and of course, Candy Land.

The google image result for Candyland brought up a large map of the Candylandscape circa the 1978 edition. I thought of the Wizard of Oz movies or Willy Wonka as I let my mind wander back along the Lollipop Woods, the Ice Cream Sea and the Mollases Swamp.

I looked at each landmark and remembered my childhood, but also wondered why the picture was so quilted-looking. And then I read the caption and saw some lady had constructed it out of beads. 100,000 beads, in fact.

The dedication this artist put into the project was as astounding as the end result, and it also took me from feeling sheepishly nostalgic to realizing Candy Land serves as an affectionate homeland for many more than just me, as this image I found on flickr demonstrates.


Following the image search, I consulted Wikipedia. I read that the game was invented in 1940 in San Diego by Elanor Abbott, a woman recovering from Polio.

I learned that Hasbro (who bought Milton Bradley) had to sue in order to retrieve the domain name www.candyland.com from the operators of an adult Web site.

I also learned that Plumpy the Plumpa Troll was replaced by Mama Gingertree, reportedly for unknown reasons.

The more I looked, however, the more clear it became that Plumpy had over the decades become the personfication of bad luck for thousands of highly sensitive and impressionable young children.

For example, I found an article by a psychologist describing her special needs student's reaction to playing Candy Land for the first time:

For those of you who forget (or never played) the game is played by choosing cards, and advancing to that place on the board. The winner is the first one who gets to the castle at the end.

Daniel was very intense as he played, and kept getting flustered by "Plumpy" Plumpy is the card in the deck that sends you back almost to the beginning. No one likes Plumpy, but I think of the game as a highly evolved, spiritual game, in that it lets us know what we can control (taking turns, not cheating) but is like life, in that there is much we cannot control, like love, or birth or death.

So, when a Candyland player is going along, and is suddenly swept up to the Queen Frostine card, or cast down to the little plum, Plumpy, then that is a lesson in things we cannot control. For children, much of their lives are involve things over which they have no control: where they live, who their teachers are, whether their parents get divorced, or stay together, etc.

So I love Candyland.

But Daniel did not.

Another article, this one written by the mother of a young girl, seemed to take it personally every time her daughter was dealt the unfortunate "Plumpy" card (a reverse trump card, if you will), which sent the girl into a state of despair.

That said, the main trouble with Candyland, in my opinion, is not the win-lose scenario. It’s Plumpy. Seriously, I really do think that Plumpy is responsible for a good deal of the rising Prozac trade. With Plumpy in action, a game of Candyland can last as long as the Dark Ages. Maybe longer. As soon as you approach the final curve of the path, Plumpy will rise from the depths of the card pile and send you packing your bags back to the sugarplum trees. After about six encounters with him, most parents are ready to ring his fuzzy little neck.

Normally I would seek a response from Plumpy's people, but he was nowhere to be found. Even the Wikipedia text that came up when I searched for him had vanished from all but the cached version of the entry.

All we know for sure is that Plumpy was replaced by Mama Gingertree. So what does that tell us? Most likely, replacing the scapeplum Plumpy with a matriarchal character was the result of recent breakthroughs in child psychology.

Or perhaps the collective resentment against Plumpy had become multi-generational, and a simple change of face was needed. In other words, Plumpy had to take the fall.

Or maybe Hasbro is following the same anti-purple prejudice displayed by the McDonald's Corporation when they gave Grimace the so-called "purple" slip.

Or maybe Ma Gingertree's just got that certain...spice.

Whatever the reasons, history has taught us there are grave consequences to deposing public figures for political gain. Also worth considering is whether the gender switch suggests that this country may, in fact, be ready for a female president.

Certainly much about the circumstances attending Plumpy's downfall invites further discussion. But let us end instead with a salutation to the Plumpster himself: Plumpy, you may have been kicked out of Candy Land, but there I'm sure there's a special place for you in Plumpa Paradise.

A nod to nerds

A week after the shootings, classes are back in session at Virginia Tech, and so I too thought I would return to blogging normalcy. Like some of you, I considered writing a post about the tragedy, but I didn't want to give any more attention to what was essentially a murderous publicity stunt for a some hate-filled video log.

Instead, I thought I'd stick to my strengths and write about more light-hearted fare. Though this site has been referred to in many prominent blogger periodicals as a "triumph of triviality," I prefer to think of it as a celebration of the small things. And it doesn't get much smaller than that most cult-favorited of candies, Nerds.

The particular Nerds sampling I would like to review today is a box of Apple-Coated Watermelon slash Lemonade-Coated Wild Cherry nerds of the "double-dipped" variety. I purchased the Nerds at the Ninth Street Presto! gas station in Lawrence (the one where the gas leak took place a year or two ago). The sun-faded yellow and red box suggested a long shelf life, but the taste was anything but stale.

The red Nerds were at once tart and sweet, and small enough to qualify as crunchy. The much larger yellow Nerds felt like eating boulders by comparison, though they were no less sweet to the taste.

As sweet as the experience of eating these Nerds was, the art on the box was even more spectacular. The image, a colorful illustration of young Nerds frolicking lakeside, recalled 19th century frescoes of the gay bathhouses of France, in spirit as well as form.

In short, the double-dipped experience supports the theory that -- culinary, spiritually and sociologically -- Nerds have more fun.


In other exciting Nerds news, Nerds Ropes are now 2 for a dollar at the Apple Market on 47th Street in Westwood, Kansas. What is a Nerds Rope? It is a licorice-ish sticky candy rope thing with a bunch of multicolored Nerds stuck to it. A bizarre but beautiful piece of candy, Nerds Ropes resemble an Everlasting Gobstopper in texture and color. Unfortunately, they don't last forever, but neither does anything truly good in this world.

At one point I thought it would be funny to write a story about a kid who hung himself with a Nerds Rope, but that actually seems kind of morbid, and besides Nerds Ropes aren't long or sturdy enough to play hopscotch with, much less form into a noose. I guess the story could end on a happy note, though. The kid could always just eat his way through it. Which is exactly what I recommend doing when the going gets rough or the news gets depressing. Nerds, Dweebs, Tart'n'Tinys, you name it. That Wonka stuff works wonders.

until soon,

LHW

my state school mascot love/hate child

A few months ago, some friends and I attended the annual "sunflower showdown" football game between Kansas and Kansas State Universities. We walked to Memorial Stadium from the Lawrence student ghetto, and on the way we passed several loyalty checkpoints (drunk college kids of both schools demanding to know who we would be cheering for).

This should have been a no-brainer. I went to KU, lived in Lawrence for four years and attended a bunch of football and basketball games. But when faced with the "KU or K-State?" question point-blank, I didn't know what to say.

You see, I grew up a K-State fan. Both my parents went there, as did several aunts, uncles and cousins, and my grandfather is a professor of chemistry there. When I was little I'd go so far as to paint my face purple before the basketball games. I'd draw pictures of my favorite players while listening to the K-State Jazz band's recording of the fight song, and when a friend came over and accidentally broke the record, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.

Eventually I dried my eyes, grew up and applied to state college. Only when it came time to pick a school, I decided I'd much rather spend four years in Lawrence then in Manhattan. KU had better programs for what I wanted to do, gave me more scholarship money, and Lawrence was a fresh and exciting place.

In my years at KU and since, I've been a big KU fan. I went to a lot of games, kept up on their performance when I was out of the country, and even started an unofficial Jeff Graves fan club ("the graveyard"). But in all honesty, it's never been too difficult to be a KU fan. They've always got the best players and coaches, and there's nowhere more exciting to see a home game than Allen Fieldhouse.

K-State, on the otherhand, has been an unworthy B-Ball rival for as long as I can remember. They've lost 32 of the last 33 matchups, and if things go as predicted, they'll lose yet another tonight. As much as it pains me, I'll watch the whole thing from beginning to end. On one hand, I'd hate to see Kansas lose, but on the other, watching them beat-up on the boys in purple just brings back too many painful memories of being taunted by my childhood Jayhawk friends.

This brings us to the illustration you see at the top of the screen. I drew this years ago when I was out of the country and the whole idea of people a few miles apart hating on each other so passionately seemed particularly absurd.

It isn't beautiful, and some of you may even find it offensive, but the Wildhawkjaykitty is me -- the imaginary lovechild of two sworn enemies; an awkward emblem of state school-sponsored schizophrenia.

Saddam and me: Oh, the memories!

I know Americans right now are much more preoccupied with the deaths of Anna Nicole Smith and Barbaro the Horse, but before the year grows much older, I want to say a few words in memoriam of a man who I feel never got a fair trial in the court of U.S. public opinion: Saddam Hussein.

I write not to praise Saddam, but to bury him. No matter how many times he's been made out to be a monster, once I saw the grisly, grainy footage of the man's execution, it became hard for me to view him as anything but an indignified, helpless human being. I've never been a fan of the guy, but seeing him get killed on YouTube and then made fun of on late night television made me want to prepare this little eulogy of sorts. Because truth be told, I've always felt a curious familiarity with the man.

Part of this has to do with where I was when I first heard Saddam had been captured. I was covering a Sunday morning jazz shift at KJHK, and once I saw the news on the computer, I read a short update during the next break, which I think came between Coltrane's "India" and Brian Eno's "Midnight Rain of Green Wrens at the World's Tallest Building." After the show, I drove through Burrito King to get a tamale, and the guy working the window was quick to tell me the news. "Yep," I said in acknowledgement. "We got him."

The next day, that same phrase was pasted all over the papers. I was entranced by the photos of the man emerging from his so-called spider hole, where he'd reportedly been reading Dostoevsky and growing a famous salt and pepper beard. I kept the special "We Got Him" section of the Kansas City Star in my car, and one night a month or so after the capture I made Jennifer drive down Massachussets Street while I held it out of the window and shouted the news of his capture with all the fervor of a newsie on VJ Day.

My interest in Saddam began in the first Gulf War, when a Marine we had written a letter to wrote back to our class and told us how Saddam was "a shark in the swimming pool of life." He'd killed a lot of people, the letter said, including his own brother. We were suitably impressed, and you would have been hard-pressed to find any 4th grader in that classroom who had anything good to say about the Iraqi tyrant.

Just over a decade later -- long after Saddam had slipped from the daily thoughts of most Americans, but before he was destined to share the stage with Bin Laden as one of the free world's most wanted -- I had a profound hallucination one night that Saddam Hussein was sitting in a parked car outside my apartment complex. I can't say what exactly prompted this vision of a Saddam-Bogeyman, and I didn't actually believe Mr. Hussein had come all the way to Lawrence to pay me a surprise visit, but in retrospect it makes for an interesting harbinger of the political climate to come.

Once 9/11 hit and the beating of the war drums grew louder, I encountered some interesting Saddam iconography. On a winter night in Prague, my friend Adam and I were dining in a non-stop cafe when a haggard old man approached, pulled a pair of wax figures from a tattered gunnysack and set them on the table. They were white candles carved into little effigies Saddam and Osama, and they were for sale. We were too drunk to think of any response to the man, who kept pointing to each of the candles and saying, "Saddam...Osama." Eventually he moved on to an American couple, whose appalled expressions made us giggle in spite of ourselves.

A couple of years later, in Hamburg, my neighbor Khalid from Jordan traded me an Iraqi 10 dinar bill with Saddam's face on it for an American 2-dollar bill. (It was a good trade for both of us. Khalid collected currency, but wasn't sure a U.S. 2 dollar bill existed, and I certainly never expected to have such politically loaded cash in my pocket. Unfortunately, I lost the thing before I could come back to America and do a photo series of attempting to buy propane at rural gas stations with my brand new 10 dinar bill.) Back in the States, I found a series of "exploding terrorist heads" fireworks featuring Saddam's face painted on a fountain cone, along with others resembling Bin Laden, Gadaafi and Arafat.

My favorite Saddam memory, however, was the 2005 news features about his prison behavior. How he loved Doritos, but hated fruit loops. How he preferred Bush Sr. to his no-good son. How he told the prison guard he should find a woman, not too pretty, not too ugly; not too smart, not too dumb. One who can cook and clean. Sounds reasonable to me.

Unfortunately, those good old days are gone, and as Iraq grew worse and worse, the man was taken to an undisclosed location and strung up. It's not that I didn't know it was coming, but I didn't think it would be carried out so tastelessly. And in the face of such greater violence, I don't think anyone was that impressed.

Now when I think of Saddam, I can't help but get Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" stuck in my head, the song which begins with the words, "They're selling postcards of the hanging." Even more chilling if you substitute "postcards" for "videos," as so many astute bloggers did in the days following the execution.

Like I said, I'm not trying to make a martyr of the man. I've read plenty about Saddam, about his squandering of Iraqi resources and the brutal murders of so many of his people. I accept that he is a bully on the playground of life. But the way America and her henchmen handled Saddam's execution didn't make us look so good either. The only difference is, neocons don't make for very cool candles.

photo taken from Welcome To The Blog at http://laurabush.info/ Thanks!

Ice Planet Hoth

Last week I took my first-ever sick day from my job. I slept for something like 17 hours straight and finally woke up around 3 in the morning. Somehow I wound up at my neighbor's watching "Empire Strikes Back," which touched off a newfound fascination with Ice Planet Hoth. Watching my namesake Mr. Skywalker and friends trip up those giant robot/elefant's with their space-harpoons, and then looking outside at the frozen earth, Hoth didn't seem too far away. At any rate I found it hard to imagine I'd ever worn shorts.

The next day I googled Ice Planet Hoth and saw that someone had designed a pretty professional-looking Web site to help Ice Planet Hoth make a successful bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Jesus, I hope they make it.

Halloween wrap-up: spooky nerds and prizewinning poems

All Hallow's Eve has come and gone, and though I suppose belated "Happy Halloweens" are in order, my own post-Samhain depression has grown so great that I have been unable to blog for days. I guess it's mostly daylight savings, which means I now leave work after dark, or maybe my near-overdose on sweet but deadly cocktails of Pumpkin Ale and orange-flavored Wonka Spooky Nerds. It's not that I'm addicted or anything, it's just that I couldn't decide whether I liked orange-flavored Nerds or not, so I had to keep eating the little boxes until I was absolutely sure they were awesome. And they are awesome, except that they kind of remind me of orange Tic-Tacs, which isn't really their fault, because if anything orange Tic-Tacs trespass on candy's territory more than orange spooky Nerds stray into breath mint turf.

A few other Halloween highlights/troubles:

Green collar blues
On Monday there was a Halloween parade for the children of my coworkers. I wore my Kermit mask and sat at my desk. A few kids were spooked, but nobody cried, and a few of them actually said hello in such a way that indicated they might actually believe I was a real frog. But then they left to go eat donut holes and drink cider and I was still there at my computer, typing, with my mask on.

Guess which one's my girlfriend
On Tuesday Jennifer decided to decided to show up for work wearing a moustache, a cosmetic affectation that looks distressingly at home on her once-feminine visage.

Scant tricks and treats for Midtown tots
I didn't figure any kids would trick-or-treat my neighborhood, due to the prevalence of apartment complexes, weirdos and students in the area. Nonetheless, I saw a few groups of kids making their way around the neighborhood with their parents. I felt especially sorry for a young Hispanic woman who crossed the street in front of me, leading her twin boys by one hand while they dangled their plastic pumpkin-shaped buckets around their free wrists. I thought about rushing inside and divulging some of my own sweets to share with them, but the chance of them catching a contact high from one of the smoky neighboring balconies was too great for me to risk it.

Houdi-Who
I read on my random Fun Facts calendar that Harry Houdini died 80 years ago on Halloween after succumbing to internal injuries. As the story goes, some wiseacre punched him several times when he was lying down, and although Houdini could usually withstand any blow, he didn't have time to steel himself for the impact so he died a week later. This upset me greatly. Can you imagine the nerve of the guy who punched him? Way to go, asshole, you killed Houdini!

I decided to redirect this anger toward a positive cause, namely holding a seance to resurrect the famous escapist, something his wife did every Halloween for 10 years after his death. However, because I lacked the secret code Houdini gave his wife in order to contact him "if possible" in the spirit world, I decided to try an alternate tactic. At midnight, I cued up my boombox cassette player and played the 1984 party classic by Whodini, "Freaks Come Out At Night" at high volume. Although neither Whodini nor Houdini arrived on the scene, I thought it was a fitting and funky tribute to both the rap duo and the famous escape artist for which they are named.

Never talk about these things
I watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" for the first time in 10 years and was surprised to see that it is actually Linus and not Charlie Brown who waits all night for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. Because it is an election year, a few of Linus' lines carried an added weight, specifically his statement that, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

Long live the King (and his friend, BBQ)
The Best Costume of the Year goes to the King Khan & BBQ show, a touring rock duo who played last week at the Record Bar in Westport. Their album was on the Top 10 list of pretty much everyone at Kief's Downtown Music last year, and although I didn't like it much at first, I eventually grew to love their ratty-sounding garage-rock, punk and soul. As you can see here, Mr. Khan performs at least half of his set in a sequin-dress and purple wig. This might not be the most revolutionary outfit for a man, but the fact that he wears it night after night makes him more than deserving of this blog's coveted Best Costume prize. The show at the Record Bar was one of the most fun rock shows I've ever been to, and if you would like to hear another song and learn more about their hyperbolic greatness, visit their MySpace page. "Why Won't You Lie" and "Waddlin' Around" are great tunes, and there's a good chance they'll waddle through your town soon as well.

Last, and definitely not least, I am elated to announce that we have a winner in the 2006 photo-caption write off. The winning entry comes in the form of a poem by Ralph Waldo Bojangles, who will receive a 2007 Bichelmeyer Meats calendar as a prize. It is believed that R.W. Bojangles is the pen name of a Ph.D. candidate at a New York University that was founded by Methodists. But in the blogosphere, as in life, nothing is certain...Thank you R.W. for your kind participation.

The Transmigration of Lucas Wetzel's Soul


you found yourself in 1912
in small white shoes
a small white town

and everything you loved
was nowhere to be found
on halloween

nothing now to do but laugh
lean back and hold
a small hand out

for kisses or candy
or something else
on halloween in 1912

the lunar townhomes that never were (reprise)

(as usual, click on pictures and text to make them legible)

"How would you like to play ping-pong on the moon?" is the question I always ask myself when I look at this illustration I cut out from an old National Geographic a few years ago. I can't remember the date of publication for this picture, drawn by science fiction artist Davis Metzler, but I'm pretty sure it ran sometime between Neil Armstrong's 1969 landing and Apollo 17 in 1972, which was the last time any human has set foot on the moon.

Though people during the early Apollo missions might have assumed moon homes were the logical next step, it would take a pretty giant leap of the imagination to picture something like this happening anytime in our lifetimes, especially since no one has been there in 34 years. So what happened to dampen our enthusiasm for colonizing the moon, besides a couple of space shuttle crashes?

In her 2003 book, "Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond," journalist Marina Benjamin takes a philosophical approach to why the moon landings didn't lead to permanent bases like this one.

"Homesickness prevailed over the imperative to press outward and upward," Benjamin writes. "Images of our lush fragile globe beamed back from afar made cooling, protective converts of the most forward-thinking rationalists, and before long many of these had swaddled themselves in environmentalism. Exploration was out and conservation was in ... Within less than a decade of landing on the Moon, all our outward-bound aspirations had more or less turned in on themselves."

Or to quote Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin from their song Rocket Man, "it's lonely out in space."

Like a kid who goes too far out of his head on drugs and gets homesick for an innocent, normative state, the astronauts in the Apollo missions expressed a longing to return to earth even before they left. The lunar missions also mirror psychedelic experiences in that people who try psychedelic drugs usually only do so for a couple of year time period before they decide it's time to move on. Maybe the people involved in the space program felt they had done as much lunar exploration as they needed to. I have no doubt that humans will make contact with the moon again someday, but it might be by a later civilization, or at least a different nation state than the ones in power now.

In the arts, however, the moon remains as inspring as ever. What's not to be inspired by? It's bright, round, changes shape each day and takes on different qualities each month which are known to many native peoples by many different names. The moon exerts a commanding influence on the waves we surf and the women we love. It's also the subject of a lot of poetry, both excellent and abysmal.

Fortunately, you don't have to be John Donne to write about the moon's influence effectively. In fact, it is often the most simple lunar observations that remain memorable. One evening in the Rheinland, when four of us decided to go on our own little space adventure in the hills of the Kottenforst, Wade decided he wasn't feeling well and broke away from the group to enjoy a more urban sojourn. While walking around the city listening to his discman, he paid special attention to the moon, which kept threatening to disappear for good behind wisps of passing clouds. "Come on, moon!" he kept shouting. "You're the only friend I have left!"

It was actually while visiting Wade in Madison, Wisconsin under the glare of the Tim Burton moon that I first postulated my theory of Lunar Poetic Inversion. The theory suggests that because earth-bound humans look to the moon to receive and inspire our most poetic thoughts, any words actually spoken on its surface (should we get the chance to visit) would logically be the most authentic, poetic sentiments we are capable of expressing, however trite or plain-faced they may sound on other surfaces (i.e. "earth is beautiful", "I miss my wife", "if only I had a taco"). I abandoned the theory of Lunar Poetic Inversion once I realized that it doesn't make any sense, but I still think it's a pretty thought.

To sum it up, no matter what scientific or artistic accomlishments it inspires, instilling those of us on earth with a sense of childlike wonder will always be the moon's true legacy. That, and a delectable, pre-packaged pastry known as the banana moon pie.

A Hundred Million Years Ago, in 1987

Record Review: Once Upon A Dinosaur
Artist: Jane Murphy et al

As a dedicated crate digger, I know how rare it is to find an album that is musically impressive, educational and heartwarming enough to make you smile. But when I recently came across a record with cover art depicting triceratops going down a slide and a dimetrodon holding colored balloons, I knew I had found something special.

The album, "Once Upon A Dinosaur," is children's songwriter Jane Murphy's musical attempt to open children's hearts and minds to those most fascinating of ancient creatures, the dinosaurs. Originally released on vinyl and cassette in 1987 and now available on compact disc on Amazon.com, "Once Upon A Dinosaur" explores what life as a dinosaur was all about as well as asking what our lives would be like if dinosaurs were still around today.

The album kicks off with a rocker, namely, The Fossil Rock. The Fossil Rock follows the story of some scientists who chip, chip away until they uncover bones so big, they could only belong to a dinosaur. The song itself is fairly repetitive, but a key change and some soulful saxophone make this opening number engaging as well as educational.

The album's strongest song is the next tune, "We Want To Learn About Dinosaurs." Regardless of whether listeners approach the album with a sense of ironic amusment or genuine childlike wonder, they'll be taken aback by this ballad's emotional impact. With sweeping harp arpeggios and a plaintive piano finale, the instrumentation in "We Want To Learn About Dinosaurs" is powerful on its own, but the children's chorus featured on the song is what pushes the album into truly heart-rending territory.

The rest of the album follows through on its promise to teach us about dinosaurs. In just 37 minutes, many different dinosaurs are discussed, with songs switching perspectives as well as topics. Some song tell a story from the third person, such as the fifties doo-wop number, "Ankylosaurus and Paleocincus," which chronicles the unlikely friendship between two dinos with spiky shells. Others resort to the first-person to better explore a character, as in "The Stegosaurus" or "Big Bad Al," the latter of which is a daunting depiction of Tyrannosaurus' smaller ancestor, the Allosaurus. "The Brachiosaurus' Song" is a ballad about what it's like to weigh as much as 20 elephants. Although Brachiosaurus lived millions of years ago, it's hard not to interpret some of the lyrics to "The Brachiosaurus' Song" as a dig at modern American obesity and ignorance, especially the line: "I may be huge, but I'm not clever at all/because my brain's just the size of a ping-pong ball." Interesting.

As socially relevant as these songs may be, the album truly shines when the vocalists address the dinosaurs and dinosaur lovers directly, such as on the closing number, "Where Have They Gone?" The song begins with a lone male vocalist listing off the names of the dinosaurs alphabetically, a lonely echo enveloping his voice as it travels up and down the scale. Soon after, the children join in, their voices gradually steering the song's mood from one of melancholy abandonment to solemn curiosity. Like a kid's choir singing to the baby Jesus at a holiday pageant, the children's voices in "Once Upon A Dinosaur" have a timeless resonance, as if the dinosaurs they are addressing are as near to their hearts as they are distant on the geological timeline.

Still, I did have a bone to pick with "Once Upon A Dinosaur." The album's utopian depiction of dino/human co-existence will appeal to those who have always resented scientists saying dinosaurs couldn't have lived with us (which is another way of saying we couldn't have lived with them). However, "Once Upon A Dinosaur" assumes in several cases that if dinosaurs were alive today, they would serve mostly as pets.

In "My Pet Tyrannosaurus," a witch's hex turns the family dog into a T-Rex. This tale of a girl taking her T-Rex to school and attempting to keep it out of the family fridge is amusing--as is mom's proclamation that "this house just isn't big enough for a tyrant lizard"--but the part about T-Rex enjoying being "tickled on the nose and washed down with the garden hose" is highly unlikely, not to mention a slight to T-Rex's tough-guy reputation. The mention of a "dinosaur zoo" elsewhere in the album is also alarming in spite of its naivete. These well-intentioned sentiments are forgiveable considering "Once Upon A Dinosaur" is an album made for and by children, but the assumptions of dinodomesticity smack of the same hubris that eventually led to Jurassic Park's demise.

Fortunately, the beats and instrumentation on the album are every bit as diverse as the lyrics and subject matter. There's some honky-tonk, some (reptile) rap and some synth-bass and synth-percussion that would be right at home on an album by the Flying Lizards, another group whose records I found at the sale.

Thematically, the album's premise that dinosaurs never go out of style rings true, and the fact that "Once Opon A Dinosaur" sounds very 1987 is ultimately irrelevant. In the end, it's just a big, educational dance party, as the song "Dinosaur Dance" makes abundantly clear. As the song's chorus contends, "Whether up on two feet, or down on all fours/it's fun to dance like the dinosaurs." How very, very true.