This Saturday is the Pittsburgh St. Patrick’s Day parade, and as it is for all downtown parades, I’ll have the best spot on the sidewalk to watch the action as the parade rolls right in front of me.  And this year I borrowed a camera from the Photography Department so that I can take pictures of the action.

Let’s discuss the rules again, in case you’ve forgotten:

1.  Do not sit on me.

2.  Do not climb on my back.

3.  Do not climb on my head.

4.  Do not touch my tail.

5.  Do not put anything in my mouth except carcass.

6.  Do not bring food within 30 feet of me if you don’t plan to share it with me.

7.  Do not stand in between me and any of the horses taking part in the parade.

8.  Do ignore all of these rules if you are a cute babe.

As you know, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh is partnering up with WearPittsburgh to provide three shirts you might want to wear at the parade.

Norm asked me which I wanted to wear and this is what happened:

Norm: Whaddaya think?

Me: Do you really need to ask?  A shirt that instructs cutie pies to smooch me or two shirts that don’t?  Do the math.

Norm: Math?

Me: Dinosaur plus handsome times a billion plus instructional shirt minus Sally equals lots of smooches for Rex.

Norm: That’s a hell of an equation.  I see you borrowed a camera from Photography.

Me: I’m going to take some unbelievable pictures of the parade.  You might want to clear a date at the art gallery for a showing of my photographs.  I’ll sell them for $40,000 each, easily.

Norm: Have you taken a picture with a camera ever in your life?

Me: Hmm, can’t say that I have.

Norm: I see. Why don’t you go ahead and practice on me?  Go ahead. Pick up that camera and hold it up in front of your face and click the button.  Go on.  You got it in your hands?  Got it?  Okay, now using your GIANT LONG arms, lift that camera up high enough in front of your face so you can see the view-finder.  Up. Up. This is up, that is not up.  Up. Higher. Higher.  Are you lifting, Rex?  That’s all the higher you can go?  To your throat? Do you see my point, Rex?  Don’t stomp on the camera, REX!

Dear Photography Department, about that camera you loaned me.  Yeah, I don’t know anything about that.

Rawr.

When I told Norm that I was pretty sure it was Blor’s Kid Blor that left me that cryptic message a few weeks ago, it took Norm about five minutes to regain his breath what with the falling down and pointing and laughing at me.

Well, look what I found scrawled on a whiteboard in one of the school’s classrooms while I was NOT on my way to raid the culinary department:

First, this proves that I’m not paranoid.  Blor’s Kid Blor is somehow alive and he has picked up English and he is stalking me in an effort to exact revenge.

Second, the only thing Blor’s Kid Blor ever did to my butt in a cave fight was watch as it sat on his ugly face, making him really regret that I ate month-old mammoth meat that morning.

The cavemen had to invent a new word to describe the smell.

Rawr.

The other day, Norm and I had this conversation.

Norm: Hey, Rex, first, did you see that promo for “Tyrannosaurus Sex?” And second, I’m getting some complaints about you lighting students’ backpacks on fire with your Olympic torch.

Me: First, TYRANNOSAURUS SEX?  Did we suddenly subscribe to DinoMax and you didn’t tell me? And second, I don’t know anything about that.  Kids are liars.

Norm: They showed me their burnt backpacks and the hair on the back of their heads.  Most of them have reverse mullets now thanks to you.

Me: Hee. Yeah, I don’t know anything about that.  So, what’s this about dinosaur sex on TV?

So on Valentine’s Day, I tuned in to the Discovery Channel of all places to watch as scientists attempted, quite poorly, to explain dinosaur sex to the humans.

You can watch a video here, but as a real live dinosaur, I am telling you that these so-called “scientists” didn’t get ANYTHING right about dinosaur sex.

Let me explain to you how it REALLY works.

[redacted by Norm]

I know. Amazing. Try not to be so in awe of me the next time you see me.

Rawr.

What?!  What?!  I’m sorry, can you speak up?!

I can’t hear you over all the moaning and the whining that Pittsburghers are doing just because we got a measly 30 inches of snow.

Live a couple million years during the Ice Age and 30 inches of snow is cause for play, not WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE panic.

The first night of the storm, I walked over to the CMU campus to see how the smartypants were doing, and I accidentally stumbled into an epic snowball fight:

(source Boring Pittsburgh)

See those two guys by the light pole, kind of looking down at the ground like they’re hunting for something? Yeah, they’re looking for their brains because taking a dino-sized snowball to your face will definitely result in spilled brain matter.

Then, it was again with the whining and the moaning and the “Rex, YOU KNOCKED OUT HIS BRAINS!”

He’s a CMU student.  I’m sure he has brains to spare.

The next morning, there was so much snow on the ground I was able to play hide and seek with the children in Squirrel Hill.

(source)

You should have seen the look on that kid’s face when I jumped up from underneath the snow pile and roared at him.

Then it was again with the whining and the moaning and the “Daddy, I peed my snow pants.”

I headed from Squirrel Hill to the University of Pittsburgh where again, I found myself in the middle of a snow fight.

(source)

There’s a couple of things you can learn from that photo — but the most important thing you can learn from it is what TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE PWNAGE LOOKS LIKE.

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.

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.

This is a Rex Christmas card built by a six-year-old.

Except that it’s actually a Rex card built by a 35-year-old lady blogger.

I assume she is visually impaired because, first, my face is split open and second, my arm is falling off and third, my legs aren’t supporting my weight which is making me appear to be doing a split, and I haven’t done a split since my Broadway days, and fourth, I’m not even going to discuss the tape on my head, and fifth, I sure AM going to address her snide comment about my arms being unable to support the weight of a Terrible Towel, because it sounds very much like she insulted my massive arms.

I’m going to assume she’s just jealous because my blog is eons better than hers and because a baby giraffe (mmmmm) could build a better Rex than she can.

Norm told me to be nice because “you do not want to get on her bad side,” and I replied, “Buddy, I’m not on her bad side, SHE IS ON MINE.”

Rawr!

Tonight is the Portraits of the Past Gala here at AIP and yours truly is not only going to be there, daintily snacking on pterodactyl munchies (which is what I assume they serve at “galas”), but I’m also sure to be featured in some of those historical AIP photos.

For instance, here I am a few decades ago checking out the students doing sketches of each other:

You can’t really tell, but in that picture, I was sitting for a portrait being sketched by a total babe.  And I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Don’t tell Sally.  It was ART.

Here I am sneaking up on AIP’s founder (left, holding the hat):

If you think his screaming was funny, you should have seen him throw that hat at me in stark terror before he realized it was me.

That was a fun day and since it was before AIP invested in a stockroom of highly powered tranq guns, I basically got away with it.

But here’s something I didn’t get away with.  Admiring the lovely ladies while they worked so hard in class:

All I did was breathe a little and it shook the windows, maybe exploded a few of them and then all this crazy screaming and throwing hats and pencils and purses at me.

Excuse me for breathing, ladies!  They did eventually forgive me when I agreed to be a sketch subject for one of their classes.

Again without my clothes.  It’s the story of my life.

In honor of this event celebrating our past, I decided to dress for the occasion and I dug up some of my oldest accessories:

I can see you’re rendered absolutely speechless by the sheer magnitude of my dapper-ness, but just wait until you see me in my tuxedo tonight.

Also, completely unrelated, do you happen to know the best way to get sheep blood out of a tuxedo?

Rawr.