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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because I don’t say this enough, I am a freaking fantastic mentor.

Because I don’t get enough pats on the back for that, please, hot babes, come here and give me a pat on the back.

I took Jake to Light Up Night in downtown Pittsburgh last Friday and while any old dinosaur can use his perfectly right-sized and useful arms to hold a camera and snap some awesome pictures, it takes a special dinosaur, a talented dinosaur, to instead create original artworks depicting the fun of the evening.

This first one is called, “NO, JAKE!”

As you can see, Jake wanted to steal the bag of toys from Santa.  I tell you, you allow your mentor to participate in one teeny tiny Stanley Cup heist and the next thing you know, he thinks he can just steal anything he wants.  I scolded him and lured him away with the promise of fireworks.

As you can see, the city was so crowded it was hard to find a place for two giant dinosaurs to stand to watch the fireworks display.  Lucky for Jake and I, we were able to watch while taking a dip in the river.   If you look at the bridge, ninth person from the left, you’ll see Norm aiming the tranq gun at us.  He failed.

Lousy shot.  After the show, we headed over for some ice skating at PPG plaza.

What?  Don’t you judge me unless you can say that you’ve never flung human beings out of an ice rink to make room for you and your mentee to skate freely.

Like I said, I’m a fantastic mentor.  Come pat my back.

Rawr.

This weekend, AIP hosted PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 and when Norm told me about it for the first time a few weeks ago, I was like, “So, what, you guys gather around and talk about pods or camps or …?”

Then Norm told me it was a conference for bloggers, podcasters (no clue), and other such social media (no clue) type things, and I was like, “So, nerds, then?”

And then when I woke up from the completely unwarranted tranquing, I decided to check out this “PodCamp Pittsburgh 4″ for myself. I registered and everything.

The first thing that greeted me at PodCamp was some guy manning the registration table and his name was Chachi.  He really had a bad attitude with me, saying, “Yeah, if we knew you were a dinosaur, we wouldn’t have let you register. You’ll take up too much space, you’ll eat too much food, and besides, what does a dinosaur know about social media or blogging?”

I calmly explained to this Chachi person that 1. I have a blog and it’s the best blog in the world and 2. Joanie called and wants to know when he’s coming home for dinner.

Chachi eventually obliged and handed me my name tag, which, LOOK!

Do you see that? Rock. Star. It’s just a fact.

And do you also see they put my twitter name on there? My twitter account that Norm still won’t let me use for fear I’ll just post true facts about him like the fact that he always [redacted by Norm] before he [redacted by Norm] even if it [redacted by Norm].

After telling Chachi I would deal with his scrawny butt later, I headed up to the fourth floor to check out the sessions and the snacks and the cute nerd babes.  I learned so much! I learned how to find ways to post every single day (which I’m working on getting better at).  I learned how to be sure my online identity is a proper reflection of who I really am (and until Norm lets me show you how I can eat a flock of sheep, you’ll never really KNOW Creation Rex).  I learned not to tweet my poop (trust me, if I ever tweeted a picture of MY poop, I would break the Internet), and I learned about how to take better videos, during which, Chachi, who was in the session, whispered to me, “First, you’d need to get yourself some longer arms to hold the camera with.”

That guy.

After two days of instruction, I had made lots of new friends who now love to hang out with me.

BABES!  And yeah, there’s some guys there, too, but most importantly, BABES!

They even gave me a shirt to wear, see:

Stunning.

And then Chachi got brave and decided to try to steal my name tag and, well:

Totally worth the six tranq darts to my butt.

Rawr.

1. Well the G-20 is over and while many of you stayed away either because you wished to or were told to, I have to tell you, international reporter babes are so much fun.

I would tell you “Don’t tell Sally” but she was up to her eyeballs in love with a reporter from France, so I don’t think she would even notice if I was otherwise occupied with international reporter babes.

I wonder if River Rescue ever fished that reporter from France out of the Mon.  No clue how he got there.  At all.

Also, best part of the G-20? HORSES!

What?

2.  An adoring fan of mine, @getfreshdesigns, sent me this picture:

It’s a T-Rex game and the object of the game is to flee the angry, monstrous, king of beasts, the terrible tyrant lizard T-Rex.

Please note the box says you will move “realistic dinosaurs” safely away from the T-Rex.  I assume this means the dinosaurs cry like little babies all, “Don’t eat me! Please don’t eat me!”

I approve this game and if the maker of this game would like me to film commercials for this game, I will put that loser Sham-wow guy to shame.

3.  Pittsburgh is wondering what happened to the lions that normally guard the Dollar Bank on Fourth Avenue.

Norm even posted about it!  Here’s the before when the lions were on guard:

Here’s the now:

As you can see, their handler/wrangler is just staring at their empty seats wondering where his charges disappeared to.  You know his tranq gun is hidden safely in that bag, locked and loaded.

Um, those are my buddies Leo and  Leonis (they’re twins doncha know?) and when they read about my adventure in stealing the Stanley Cup, they came to me and said, “Rex, your life is so awesome and all we do is sit there on our pedestals and sleep and eat the occasional bank burglar.  We wish we had lives as exciting as yours.  And a girlfriend as hot as yours.”

I’m paraphrasing a bit.

So I instructed Leo and Leonis to find themselves an adventure.  I’m expecting a postcard back from them any day now.

I think they said they were heading east first.  Something about New York City.

I’ll keep you posted, Dollar Bank, and I’m sure as soon as they’ve sown their wild oats, those two rascals will be right back guarding your building before you know it.

And to you, dear readers, if you see Leo and Leonis’ handler around and he asks you if you have any idea where they’ve gone, repeat after me: “I don’t know anything about that.”

4. Finally, no, I can’t talk about the Steelers right now.  I’m too mad, it’s too painful, and Norm has told me I’m under no circumstances to eat Limas Sweed.

Even though he deserves it.

Rawr.

It is a good thing I know so many languages, because for uno, it has helped me speak to the cute reporter babes descending on Pittsburgh from all over the Tierra.

And for dooce, it means I can be of service by offering to answer any questions any visitors might have about our fine city.

Check me out:

So far, I’ve answered questions such as, “Where is Primanti’s?” and “What is a Pittsburgh Left?” and “Didn’t I tell you you aren’t allowed to make the visitors pee their pants in fright?” and “Why are you so handsome and amazing?” and “Why did you flick my boyfriend into the river?”

I’ll let you guess which one of those came from Mayor Luke.

Rawr.

Here I am with my new G-20 background, which is the world map formed from various international ways to say “Welcome!”:

You might also notice that I’m wearing my best tie so that I can show the leaders of the world that I am a classy dinosaur. A dinosaur of taste.  A dinosaur who knows which fork to use.  A handsome dinosaur.  Pulchritudinous, if you will.  A dinosaur of many languages. Languageisimos, if you will.   A dinosaur Michelle Obama can feel comfortable inviting to State Dinners. A dinosaur that only on rare occasions misbehaves and steals major sporting event trophies. And I mean, VERY RARELY.

If you’re downtown for the G-20, stop by and say aloha to your bueno ami Rex.

Of course with all the security restrictions in place, you might have a hard time getting to me.  Too bad you’re not a giant dinosaur that can just walk across the riverbed like I can.

Also, Norm, yeah I found your car.  It’s drying off on the wharf.  YOU’RE POZHALOVAT!

Rawr.