Jun 12, 2015 3 min read

“Jurassic World” just opened at the movie theaters, and I can’t wait to see it. I love dinosaurs from the Jurassic to the Late Mesozoic. My favorite is the scariest one of them all, the Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s simple nostalgia. There were a lot of dinosaurs around when I was a kid. Wait! Not actual dinosaurs. Geez, I’m not THAT old.

We had a lot of television shows about the Cretaceous critters back in my day, like “The Flintstones,” “Dinosaucers” and “Land of the Lost.”

I used to thrill as Rick, Will and Holly Marshall fended off T-rexes with a battering ram on “The Land of the Lost.” I always felt bad for their little man-ape friend Cha-Ka, who would freak out every week. He was the only one who seemed to realize that dinosaurs were big, freaking, man-eating monsters (or Pakuni-eating monsters, in his case).

The Marshalls were very blasé about fighting dinosaurs. It was before the days when green-screen guys with golf balls sewn all over their body would stand in for the actual monsters; most of the time the actors were looking slightly to the left of the T-rex and not actually at him. I also think the actors were a little bit high. I am convinced the creators, Sid and Marty Krofft, were. How else would you explain “H.R. Pufnstuf”? The name alone implies they were smoking something. Don’t even get me started on Charles Nelson Reilly running around on a kids’ show about talking top hats!

The “Jurassic World” critters look a lot more real, but I am having a slight problem with this new movie. As much as I love dinosaurs, I don’t know if I would vacation on an island with them. That seems like a really bad idea, like going-down-in-a-shark-tank bad. I’m talking an actual shark tank and not just trying to sell Mark Cuban some hot, new business idea. If you take into account the first couple “Jurassic Park” movies, it’s even more ludicrous. In “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” a T-rex ate San Diego.

Trivia-busting side note: The Steven Spielberg movies are misnamed. Most people don’t know this, but T-rexes were prominent in the Cretaceous Period, but “Cretaceous Park” doesn’t have the same ring to it. You bet your Jurassic, it doesn’t!

But I digress, like I do. I used to be a more adventurous person. I’ve grabbed a parachute and jumped out of an airplane. I’ve walked around the Lower East Side of Manhattan at four in the morning. I’ve gotten potato chip crumbs on the carpet at my mom’s house. All death-defying activities! But there ain’t no way I’d go willingly to an island of dinosaurs. You know … if that was a thing. Not even if I got to hang out with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.

The closest I want to be to a dinosaur is watching them on a big screen with plenty of popcorn.

See you at the movies.