Jurassic Park and Stuff

I'm writing this on a library computer because the charging socket on my laptop is broken, which renders me unable to use it for the two to four weeks that it will take to ship to the other side of the country, get fixed, and return. At least this provides the opportunity to also fix the headphone jack that got broken in December. That was horrible, since it has kept me from listening to my music in public, but I didn't want to lose my computer for two to four weeks just for that, especially two months after I just had. So now I'm looking at this as a blessing in disguise.

But there are drawbacks to it. I was almost finished with the prologue to my next book, and I had intended to finish it real quick and share it here and solicit feedback. Now that will have to wait. I'm sorry. I'm going to start working on the rest of it, but that will be more difficult for the next little while. Heavy sigh.

I had a friend who brought me great happiness, greater than I had felt in a long time, or perhaps ever. Then she brought me great sorrow, almost more than I could bear. My headphone jack broke around the time that I met her; I should have taken that as an omen. Eventually I unfriended her because I felt that I could only recover when she was totally gone from my life. But I still talked to her a couple times because of our professional obligations. And then she friended me back, and I decided that it was time to forget the past and start fresh. My life is so full of drama.

Canada Day was yesterday. I didn't know about it, and missed it, because it isn't nearly as important as Independence Day, which in case you just got here from another planet, is coming up soon. If Canada wants attention they should move their birthday farther away from ours. Jussayin.

Now I mentioned a while ago that I was considering going to see "Jurassic World" on my birthday, but not only did I end up being too busy, my frugality won out over my impatience. Instead, I have been watching the other movies and rereading both the original novels in preparation to go see it in the cheap theater. Some friends recommended that I see it in the cheap theater anyway because it wasn't that great. The general consensus seems to be that it's decent but could have been better. At least it has to be better than the third one.

Let us not forget how it all began. Now I don't think I can actually embed this video because Vevo is lame, but you should go watch it anyway because Weird Al isn't.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Jurassic Park

But that's not all! There's also this one, which really deserves more views than it has.

Goldentusk - Jurassic Park Theme Song with Lyrics

I hadn't read the original "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton for several years, since eighth grade I think, and it brought back a lot of memories. It actually doesn't seem particularly well-written to me now, but it's still very intelligent and exciting. The movie rights were purchased and pre-production started before the book was even published, because they already knew it would be a bestseller. But it's actually quite different from the movie. Though clearly recognizable as the same basic story and many of the same characters, I think it may be more different than alike. Some major differences from the book follow, put in italics so you can easily skip them if they would spoil it for you:

*Of course, there's a lot more detail and a lot more about chaos theory and several scenes that aren't in the movie, but almost all of the scenes they have in common still differ between the formats. Going through all these differences would take forever and just be tedious so I won't.

*The opening scene of the movie "The Lost World", where the little girl is attacked by compys, was adapted from near the beginning of this novel. In the novel, she has an allergic reaction and has to go to intensive care, but soon recovers, and draws a picture of a compy to show the doctors what attacked her. They think it must be a basilisk lizard and that she just got some of the details wrong, but she is super observant and doesn't get details wrong. One of the doctors goes looking and finds the remains of one of the compys being chewed on by a howler monkey; he sends it for testing along with Tina's picture; the lab finds traces of genetic engineering markers but don't report it because they think it must be a contaminant; one of the employees recognizes Tina's picture as a dinosaur and sends an X-ray of the remains to Dr. Grant, and you probably don't find this summary all that fascinating so I don't know why I put that much effort into it.

*Many of the characters are described differently than in the movie. Alan Grant has a beard and likes children; Tim is older than Lex and is the one who knows computers; Muldoon is an alcoholic; Gennaro is pretty buff; John Hammond is an unscrupulous money-grubbing villain, etcetera.

*Muldoon and Gennaro both survive. John Hammond and Ian Malcolm do not. A PR rep named Ed Regis, who isn't in the movie, gets eaten by the Tyrannosaurus around the same point that Gennaro does in the movie, though under different circumstances. Henry Wu, who barely appears in the movie (but now has a larger role in "Jurassic World"), has a much larger role in the book (he explains everything that's left up to the Mr. DNA cartoon in the movie, and in greater detail) and also dies.

*There are two Tyrannosauruses; an adult and a juvenile which is still pretty dang big. The adult chases Grant and the kids for quite a while longer, following them as they raft down a river and attempting to get them as they hide behind a waterfall (used in "The Lost World", except that in this one Tim actually gets wrapped up in its tongue and nearly pulled into its mouth). There are eight Velociraptors, not three. There are compsognathuses and pterosaurs on the island as well. At one point Grant and the kids find themselves in the pterosaur aviary, in a scene that loosely inspired the one in "Jurassic Park 3". But it's played far more realistically here; instead of trying to eat them, the pterosaurs are simply very territorial, and just try to body slam them to death.

*Some differences don't really make sense. In the movie, a Triceratops is sick and no one knows why; this is never explained. In the movie, they discover that the dinosaurs are breeding; but this is almost thrown in as an afterthought and hardly elaborated on (and it's not because they were saving it for the sequel, because Michael Crichton hadn't written one at that point). In the book, both of these things are explained and elaborated on. There's also a subplot about needing to contact the supply boat before it reaches the mainland because it has juvenile Velociraptors on board, but of course they can't contact it because all the power's out and stuff. Basically there's a concern about the dinosaurs all escaping and destroying the world.

*Several of the Velociraptors are actually killed. Muldoon blows up one and cripples another with his rocket launcher, and Grant tricks several of them into eating eggs that he has injected with a lethal toxin from the genetics lab. Only one of them follows Lex and Tim into the kitchen, and Tim simply lures it into the freezer with a trail of steaks. This is one scene that was definitely improved upon in the movie. The kitchen scene in the movie is simply one of the greatest movie scenes ever.

*Overall the book is darker. I was a little shocked on re-reading it because I had forgotten that near the beginning, compys escape to the mainland and kill babies in rural Costa Rican hospitals. Dennis Nedry's death also stands out as being far gorier in the book. While the movie just cuts away to his jeep rocking back and forth as he's attacked, the book goes into detail about his agonizing pain as the Dilophosaurus first blinds him with venom, then rips his intestines out, then clamps his head between its jaws. As if that weren't enough, Muldoon and Gennaro later find his corpse as it's being scavenged by compys, and that's described as well. Muldoon comments something along the lines of, "What an awful way to go. Maybe there's justice in the world after all."

*After the whole Velociraptor thing and what constitutes the movie's climax (though of course it plays out differently and has no deus rex maquina in the book), Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, and Gennaro go searching for the Velociraptor nests to find out just how many of them are breeding. They go down this long tunnel and find this huge underground cave with several nests. Then the Velociraptors start acting weird, and suddenly they all rush out to the surface, and Grant realizes they're trying to migrate and wonders where they're trying to go, and then suddenly some Costa Rican helicopters come and take everybody away and the island is bombed into oblivion.

Now, the differences between "The Lost World" novel and movie are far too extensive in breadth and depth to even summarize here. It would be more accurate to say that the movie was inspired by, rather than based on, the book.

I had a rough weekend. By "rough" I mean that it was a crapstorm from hell. I debated what to say about it because it's not considered socially correct to publicly show weakness or admit that everything isn't fine. Now I won't even bother saying much about it because I feel better, but I just wanted to mention it as a proverbial middle finger to social correctness. (But I would never ever use a real middle finger, because that would not be appropriate.)

And I just noticed that Grooveshark got taken down a couple months ago. Lame.