1993 FIRST TRIP TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Things to remember:

Alonzo Mourning and the Charlotte Hornets

Bulls Bucks NBA 2k 21

AUNT BETTIE’S house and the playoffs week of Jurassic trailer at Universal Studios Hollywood not Orlando, finally.

Swans in the pond in her backyard.

The samari sword and the Colorado Rockies hat new for a team that year and the Florida Marlins.

The Wild Animal Park.

Grandma Duescher’s motorhome before and after.

The Star Trek Experience, the gift shop before and after.

The poster for that new dinosaur movie April spring break of 1993, forth grade.

The pictures my mom had from when they visited the lot before we were born.

The house on fire that lit up and went out on control and command.

The tunnel with an ice mountain, that made you feel like you were spinning in a spiral on the tram ride.

The Battlestar Galactica Cylons patrolling the park like Mickey Mouse and Minnie or Goofy and Pluto.

70’s or 1980 Universal looked incredible.

We got to see it at the age of ten and 8 and Chrissy was 5.

My legs hurt watching the playoff basketball.

And leaving the lot that day before it was closed and before the sun went down.

We had to meet our family friends Janet and Judy. Their dad married my parents and was a preacher man.

They are twins with blond hair and I had the biggest crush on them as a little kid.

They had a band and played childrens music with guitars and microphones in small concert settings.

Their dog was Doogie and he was a nice guy.

There songs were on cassette and Dance the Doogie, Doogie on down was a favorite.

My mom asked me if I wanted to get the Jurassic Park poster one sheet at the gift shop and that dad would take me and Scotty in June when it came out.

I screamed at her or flipped out and just was not at all interested in the poster or the movie in that terrible moment.

It was the place of my dreams.
It was like MGM Studios in Florida opening in 1990.

But because it was LA and Hollywood it was different and way better.

Movies were actually made here.
I hadn’t figured that part out yet in research terms.

I just felt alive and an excitement I never had experienced with filmmaking yet.

It was incredible.
I was a movie maker and I was not yet holding the camera.

I wore a Ghostbuster proton pack and pretended the couch was ECTO-1 in our first movie.

“GET IN THE CAR,” was my first line in the movie.

Wonder if we have that footage?

Me and Scotty were Ray and Peter or maybe I was Egon.

My dad had just bought a new JVC VHS-C camcorder and filmed us playing around in the Newscastle residence of 2707, in the living room not the family room, where the piano was and not the tv, next to the dining room. The potted plant I nearly broke my neck on in Rochester was in that room too, and so was the hibiscus plant my little brother as a toddler-little boy somehow had the idea to eat a poisonous red flower.

Thank GOD luckily they found him and called the number on the MR. YUCK stickers my dad had in his medical books.

Center for poison control.

Poor Scotty was ok, mostly.

California was ok, I liked Florida better, but the movie lot was way cooler than the two Florida ones.

In Florida they don’t really have a tram ride in the same sense, the Jaws ride, the King Kong ride, all that stuff is individual and their Tram Ride did have a replica Psycho House and Bates Motel, it was just not as exciting as the real thing in LA.

Orlando and LA, my GOD dude.

My next months would include a Saturday night birthday party with advanced tickets.

A line across my future first workplace.

A Patriot Games standee we stood in front of as a group of 9 or ten kids in the 4th grade going on 5th.

Mr. Horstick as our only chaperone.

An idea that Steven Spielberg did it again.

But this time it was about something insane.

And it didn’t look as fake as the movies of that time looked.

I had a copy of the book and the whole world was seeing the commercial for a few months now.

I read the first chapter in my Grandma Duescher’s backyard in the sunlight after swimming one day.

It involved something with a strange word I had never heard.

Also somewhere down in South America.

A world I knew next to nothing about.

Spanish speaking workers getting mauled and no one knowing who did the crime.

Was it people?
Was it an accident?
Was it a construction machine accident?
The guy’s dying words were Raptor or some mention of raptors.

It was my first introduction to the world and ahead,

And obviously the world 65 million years or so behind….