As promised, I attended my first dodgeball match last Thursday here at the school and I have to tell you, I’m pretty ridiculously awesome at dodgeball.  I mean, this game was MADE for me. They might as well change the name to Rex Ball or DinoKillBall.

I walked into the gym without a team, but that changed quickly because if you are a dodgeball team of art students and a giant monstrous killer death lizard walks into the room looking for a pick-up game, you ask that T-Rex to join your team and when he says that he was already asked to join a team, you bribe that T-Rex with fresh carcass to be delivered at a later date.

I’m easily swayed by carcass.

When it came time for the first match-up, our opponents took one look at me and I guess they realized they had two choices, weep in fear or taunt.

They chose taunt. Very ill-advised.

“Hey, Rex, you’re kind of a big target aren’t you?”

“Hey, Rex, eat my shorts!”

“Hey, Rex, can those little toothpicks you call arms even hold the ball, let alone throw it?!”

I took their taunting quietly while the balls were lined up on the center line and then as soon as the whistle blew, I ran forward, turned sideways, use my giant tail to sweep the entire opposing team backwards like I was sweeping up floor crumbs, and then I pinned them to the wall and held them there to squirm while my team pelted their faces with red rubber balls.

We won, of course.  I’m not sure what the final score was, but I’d estimate it was -5,000 to sixty billion.

Against the rules, you say?

Funny, the refs didn’t have any objections to my style of play once I showed them my teeth.

Rawr.

I was roaming the halls of the school this week, totally not getting into any kind of trouble, and totally not stalking the culinary students to see if they were carrying any leftovers on their persons, when I noticed a poster advertising a student dodgeball match.

Dodgeball.  Otherwise known as “The Only Sport in Which the Humans Hand Me a Rubber Ball and Tell Me to Try to Decapitate People With It.”

It’s tonight at 5:00 p.m. and I’m so there.

I’ll let you know how it goes, how many heads roll, and how very loud and whiny the sissy humans are when they look in the mirror to find rubber ball indentations on their foreheads.

Rawr.

This weekend, my girlfriend Sally dragged me to the Benedum to see Cats.

Here’s a tip.  They’re not real cats.

Here’s another tip.  I’m not allowed to go to the Benedum on an empty stomach anymore.

Rawr.

Well, looky what I found tucked inside of my laptop (HUGE laptop, by the way) this morning when I woke up.

Please recall that I already roughly translated that from Stupid B.C. to English for you last week when I wrote:

That won’t last, because as the caveman saying goes, “Bleeckie mah foo moo moo skee gah!” which roughly translates into, “Mock dinosaur and die painfully.”

So I believed this to be a note from that kid I DESTROYED in the snowball fight last week; however, upon further research into Stupid B.C., I have learned that I slightly mistranslated and “Bleeckie mah foo moo moo skee gah” actually translates into “Stupid dinosaur, it’s SO on.”

Which is EXACTLY what Blor’s kid Blor used to say to me before he would try something dumb, like tethering boulders to my tail.

This carefully placed note leads to me to believe that Blor’s kid Blor, somehow, is still alive.

And hell bent on revenge.

And to Blor’s kid Blor I say, “Woo foo limbee cheechie ma ma.”

Oh, yes, I went there.

Rawr.

This morning I woke up and was listening to the traffic report when I heard that “The Bathtub” was back.

If you’re new to Pittsburgh, you might not know that The Bathtub is what we call the area of the Parkway East, that when the river rises high enough, floods enough to cover the road surface which creates a sort of, well, BATHTUB!

Naturally, I did what any dino would do when hearing a giant bathtub had formed out of nowhere, like a gift from Mother Nature:

(source)

What?  I’m sorry, but when your daily cleansing routine is simply your wrangler asking the fire department to turn the hose on you full blast, you take any opportunity you can to commune quietly with your rubber ducky.

What?!

Rawr.

My goodness.  I take one little week off from my blog and oh, my God, the MOURNING.

The calls, the emails, the WHY, REX, WHY?!!?s.

Can’t a dino have a little life outside his famous, well-written, fantastically trafficked, future award-winning blog?

According to Norm, I can’t, and he was not too happy to discover that I had disappeared.

I’m sorry.  It’s cold here in Pittsburgh.  I’m cold-blooded.  That means however cold you are at any particular point in time, I am thousands and thousands of hundreds of millions times colder (and cooler) than you.  I’m not exaggerating.

I got sick of the cold and so I decided to find out where in the world Leo and Leonis were having their latest adventure.  And once I found out that they were still in sunny California, I headed out West.

Dear Dollar Bank, I have no idea where Leo and Leonis are.  Swear to Zeus and all the stupid caveman gods.

Anyway, we spent some time on the beaches of California surfing and being warm.  Leo and Leonis showed me around Venice Beach and I took a bus tour that visited the stars’ homes.

You can imagine my anger when I discovered that the tour only brought you to look at the OUTSIDE of the stars’ homes.  That was ridiculous because that’s like accepting money for a movie rental and then only giving the customer the box the movie came in.  “Look at the cute little chipmunks.  They sing and are adorable.  Here’s the DVD box.  Now give me four dollars and go home to imagine what the movie is like.”

I understandably got angry and maybe a bit destructive and I may or may not be wanted in California for what I did to the gate leading to Jennifer Aniston’s home.

With California conquered, we headed to Arizona for a nice dry heat and some swimming in the tallest fountain in the world.  That’s something to add to our travel scrapbooks.  Here we are enjoying the sunny day:

But how were we to know that swimming is not allowed and that the tourists would freak so far out at the sight of two lions and a dinosaur taking a cooling swim?  And how were we to know that Norm had basically put an APB out on my whereabouts?  And how were we to know how accurate a shot that fat, old security guard would be with a tranq gun?

So, I woke up back here at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, a bit sunburned, very groggy, and POSSIBLY sporting a new tattoo.

As for Leo and Leonis, the last I saw of them, they were making a break for it, swimming like mad for the bank of the fountain pool with tranq darts branded with “Dollar Bank” sticking out of their necks.

But I’m back and I’m happy to see that it is not as cold as it was when I left.  All in all, my time out West was one of the greatest adventures of my life and that includes the time I invented Caveman Ball.

Blor’s kid Blor was NOT a very good ball.

Also, chipmunks are delicious.

Rawr.

Apparently, some of the new students here at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh didn’t take my warning too seriously when I hinted that I would be, out of love, starting a snowball war once they arrived on campus after winter break, because many many of them came woefully unprepared to counterattack once the hail of spherical ice missiles began.

Someone come get all these freshmen who lie unconscious in the snow on the Boulevard.  But watch where you step because there are many sets of eyeglasses littered around their frozen bodies.  And good luck figuring out which backpack belongs to who because I sent one flying literally over 50 feet. And his backpack probably 50 feet beyond.

Now, the students who did come prepared were the students who have been studying here for some time.  The veterans who know their good friend Rex well and they know I don’t joke about snowball fights.

Their leader, Matt, tried valiantly to mount an offense against me, and psst, here’s a secret: I let him think he had the upper hand for a bit.  Just to mess with him.

Here he is approaching the front lines of the battle.

Note the “bring it” expression on my face, and note the poor girl running from me trying in vain to cover her head from incoming snowballs.  She didn’t last long.

Here’s Matt on his first approach.

He’s laughing and mocking me. That won’t last, because as the caveman saying goes, “Bleeckie mah foo moo moo skee gah!” which roughly translates into, “Mock dinosaur and die painfully.”

Note how I’m pretending not to even notice he’s standing there.  I’m just looking over his head like I don’t have a care in the world or a snowball aimed at my neck. This is the part where I was letting him think he was winning.  They’re so cute and reckless when they think they’re winning.

I think I may have taken one or two snowballs to the body and one “Good luck fighting back with those tiny useless arms, you stupid dino” before I finally decided it was time to show Matt what my tiny useless arms are capable of:

That’s right.  One snowball the size of a globe, aimed exactly right and you too could send a 175 lb. human up five stories to the top of the nearby parking garage where hopefully, some kind soul will help him out from underneath that avalanche of awesomeness.

Rawr.

I love Christmas and I always have, ever since that night that giant bright star appeared in the sky and we dinos thought it was an asteroid zooming toward Earth and boy, did we look silly trying to outrun it.

Christmas is wonderful.  Winter break, however, is not.

I hate it because it gets so quiet here when the students go home to their families.  No one to stop and chat with me, other than AIP staff, and I don’t need to tell you what a giant box of fun they are.

I’ve suffered through weeks of being bored and having no one to terrorize save for the occasional downtown accountant or lawyer, which, Norm, if you get a letter from Michaels, Michaels, Michaels, Michaels, and Smith LLC informing you of a lawsuit for personal injury, I don’t know anything about that, but ask them if LLC stands for Lame Losers who Cry.

Today, the students began arriving back at AIP to get ready for orientation tomorrow night and classes which begins on Monday, and boy, I have missed those little rascals and OH BOY, am I ready to greet them with love, affection, and spheres of icy death.

Remember kids, when you walk by me tomorrow and I pick the backpack off of your back with one well-aimed, 100 mph snowball, I did it with love.

I believe you humans have an expression, do you not? It’s on like Donkey Kong.

Rawr.

Here lies the Steelers season, dead at such a young age. May it rest in peace.

Needless to say, I’m very angry with Norm.

The Steelers did not make the playoffs because I did not eat a dolphin and I did not eat a dolphin because Norm would not allow me because he fears animal-lovers.

Sure we beat Miami, but that’s not the point.  The point is we needed mojo to have the rest of the games go our way so that we could sneak into one of the wildcard spots, and we didn’t have that mojo because I didn’t eat a dolphin.

Steeler Nation, as your king, I encourage you to start pressuring Norm now so that next season when I want to eat a panther or a falcon or a bengal or a raven or a buccaneer, he understands the importance of my selfless sacrifice on behalf of the team, and doesn’t stand in my way.

Now, I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a “buccaneer,” but I’d go for Barney dressed as a pirate.

Rawrrrrrr.

Me: [sigh]

Norm: Don’t sigh. You’ll blow the fridge over again. What’s wrong?

Me: The Steelers.

Norm: Yeah. Bummer.

Me:  MORE than ‘bummer’. This is terrible. We might not even make the playoffs this year!

Norm: Stop shouting. You’ll blow the window out again. Look, it happens. Teams win championships and then fall apart.

Me: Well, we have to beat Miami or we really are done for.

Norm: Yep.

Me:  We need  better defense.

Norm: Yep.

Me:  We need Troy Polamalu.

Norm: Yep.

Me: We need mojo.

Norm:  Yep.

Me:  I should eat a dolphin.

Norm:  Yep — NO!

Me: But it worked with the Penguins!  I won them the Stanley Cup! They were almost losers and I ate an octopus and just like that, WINNERS! I was a hero, a national hero! If I eat a dolphin and the Steelers win and somehow get to the playoffs, why, they’ll throw ME a parade!

Norm:  You’re NOT EATING A DOLPHIN! There is a difference in the eyes of a human when it comes to eating a tentacled, suction-cupped ocean dweller versus a kind, loving, beautiful, life-saving ocean dweller.

Me: But –

Norm:  No.

Me: But -

Norm: NO!

Me:  Fine.

(Ten minutes later)

Me: Do you happen to know which bus goes to the Zoo?

That’s the last thing I remember.

So if the Steelers lose on Sunday, don’t blame me.

I tried.

Blame Norm.

Rawr.