Night at the Museum was great fun as long as they kept to the museum. There was a minimal amount of stock background involving the main character’s kid, disapproving ex-wife, and ex-wife’s dorky but dependable new husband that could have been pulled out of The Santa Clause (for example), only plus cell phones. But inside the museum, our hero must appease Attilla the Hun, not get eaten by the lions, babysit the fire-obsessed cavemen, and deal with the manifest (though miniature) destinies of both U.S. frontiersmen and a Roman legion. And check for his keys, because the monkey has probably made off with them again. Robin Williams makes a surprisingly good Teddy Roosevelt, who quickly becomes an important ally. TR’s puppy-love crush on Sacagawea is a cute gag, as is the fact that Lewis and Clark are so intent in arguing over their map that they seem not to notice that they’re locked in a glass case with a beautiful woman.

I’ll try not to spoil the entire movie, but I can’t resist this: Dick Van Dyke (yes, really!) is the boss fight and Chekhov’s maxim about the gun is put to good use…only this loaded gun is a pharoah’s mummy. Oh, also that one simply must stick around for the credits; Mr. Van Dyke is very spry and still has his dancing shoes. What a guy!

So for a movie to which I originally said I didn’t care whether I saw it or not, we had a great time! I had gone over to hear about their adventures in Texas — and I have to rag on you, Stephen, my favorite detail is your using the back seat of your van for a couch. Absolute favorite; it should be on a list of “you know you live in a bachelor pad when…” Anyway. Glad you all had fun and didn’t burn anything down and all like that. So I heard stories and we had dinner at Longhorn’s and after the movie, the girls loaded me up with graphic novels (”Hey, we should get her hooked on Fable!”) and season 1 of Babylon 5 to keep me busy while the rest of my family runs off to All State Chorus for the rest of the week. I’ve even been threatened with pop quizes!

This is some other museum across from the Natural History Museum. But the mountains are the ones I grew up with. I remember that my third grade teacher had one of those globes with bumps where mountains are. When I learned we’d be moving, and I saw that this state had no mountains, I flipped out.

They make telling direction a lot easier, too. Mountains=east!

This is what I see.

A corythosaurus
(Yes, it’s the Carnagie Collection! A number of my dinosaur models are Carnagie, they’re good quality. I saw them sold in a couple of gift shops last month and was vaguely tempted. There are things you really don’t outgrow… Also was amused to see some of the same models that are sitting in my closet, particularly the parasaurolophus and the pachycephalosaurus. Yes, I said pachycephalosaurus.)

The bones

As you can see I had a nice chat with an old friend at the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque.