AT LEAST SOMEONE HAD SOME FUN-ICUS


with the overcoverasaurus.

I thought this morning's Post-Gazette coverage of the Carnegie Museum's renovated dinosaur hall was a bit excessive -- two front page articles? fifteen photographs and five different video features on the web? The Next Page as map, guide book, and marketing brochure all rolled into one?-- especially when you consider the exhibit won't even be finished until sometime next spring. But I did enjoy the cheek and cheer of TWM Favorite Dennis Roddy, whose uncharacteristically playful tone struck me not just as the result of having to be on site at 6am, but also as the reaction of a seasoned vet who knows how to provide just the right amount of leavening to an already overblown assignment.

And so, mercifully, does he give us a paragraph like this:

They ate doughnuts in the car. They snagged a primo parking spot right next to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Their journey was untroubled by crowded highways, busy side streets and common daylight.

And like this:

Juan Jorge Schaffer doesn't milk cows. He's a mathematician at Carnegie Mellon University. He knew exactly what time it was.

And, for my favorite little moment of mirth, a pair of sentences that culminate in the naming of a whole new order of reptile:

T-rex, as it turns out, is in a rather literal body shop in Jersey being detailed for the opening next spring of Phase 2 of the museum's new hall. His bony compatriots, Diplodicus, Stegasaurus, Allosaurus and every other manner of eat-you-uppicus, were waiting in their new digs at The Carnegie.

It's good to know that, like his readers, Dennis could have some fun-icus. And even better to know that, when it comes to unfinished openings of remodeled museum exhibitions, at least someone at the Post-Gazette has a little bit of perspective-us.

Posted: Sun - November 18, 2007 at 02:32 PM          

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