In 2016 some friends took me to Cabazon to see the dinosaurs. I deeply loved Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure growing up (loved Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, too), and I thought it was incredible.
Cabazon, California, Polaroid 600 with expired film (2016)1
Regardless of whatever people wanted to make them, the dinosaurs were imbued with the faraway thrill of my childhood and roadside strangeness. Plus they were huge—it was so much fun to run around and try to make a photo of them. You couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to photograph a real one, something breathing and grunting and scraping by you in a primoridal forest.
So on a 2021 trip to California, I made the effort to go see the dinosaurs. I was wrung out by the time I rolled into Cabazon after a 007-level white knuckle experience weaving through the San Bernandino Mountains; my jaw was still cleanched when the cooling amber of Interstate 10 brought my travel speed down to 20 mph. My mood wasn’t helped after a day making almost-good Polaroids. I just want to see the dinosaurs, I whined to myself, then I’ll feel better.
Well, they had painted the dinosaurs. There was an Easter egg on the belly of the Tyrannosaurus Rex for God’s sake.
Betrayed at Cabazon: My Story: Heartbreak in California, etc., etc., Polaroid 600 (2021)
I hated it so much. I HATED IT, hated it like a Golden Retriever who thought she was going to the park but ended up at the vet, hated it like a scratch on my favorite song on a Joni Mitchell record. I couldn’t even figure out how they did it—who do you even hire to paint an Easter egg on the belly of a giant statue of a T-Rex??
A GIANT PINK BRONTOSAURUS, WHY, and yes the composition is both amazing and hilarious, California, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
Even the better part of a year later, I’m sitting here whining. I’m actually sending you an e-mail complaining that the world changes without my permission. If I had maybe tapped it into my phone, I would have learned that they paint the dinosaurs all sorts of ways, including for Christmas. After all, they’re giant statues of dinosaurs—they’re meant to amaze and delight.
And while I grunted and furrowed my brow (even though I still made some pictures, just begrudgingly), all around kids ran and hollered in the sunshine, and families posed beside the giant legs of the dinosaurs. Everyone seemed to love it; afterl all, dinosaurs in pink outfits with Easter eggs on their bellies are still dinosaurs, and it was still a beautiful Spring day in California.
Why was I so miserable: what was I hoping to find—verisimilitude? Revelation? The ten year old me that thought Pee-Wee was such a riot?
Which brings me to another legendary creature who has changed many times over the years. I’m heading to go see Bob Dylan next weekend, and I’m wondering whether I will see the legend of the past or a paint-splashed brontosaurus.
NYC, Polaroid SX-70 (2018)
He’s surely not the boy who played in the Village in ‘61, with chubby cheeks and Suze Rotolo by his side as they shiver in the snow, “the unwashed phenomenon / the original vagabond,” a boy I’ll never see. I actually don’t think I like that boy very much, but I sure would have loved to see him a decade later, the feather-adorned shaman who rolled across America on a neverending tour, before going gospel, before music on television.
He’s not even the ragged regal troubadour I saw six years ago here in Jackson, who played more Sinatra than Blood on the Tracks. That was the kind of concert where I wasn’t on my feet, cheering, but sitting with my head down, fingers tented. That was a show for contemplation, observation, and quiet recognition. “Oh my God,” I remember thinking to myself, as I slowly realized I was hearing “Tangled up in Blue.” That realization wasn’t an electric jolt, like it is sometimes when you hear your favorite song live; it was more like the thick slow buzz of a weary 9-volt placed on your tongue. I’m still alive, that tingle says, still electric, still magic.
I don’t know if the dinosaurs are going to be green or pink next Friday in Shreveport, or something completely different.2 This time I promise myself I will be more open to whatever it is, without trying to stick it in a box from the past.
“THEY PAINTED THE DINOSAURS” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
Now I cannot help but sing “when you wake up I’ll be gone” to myself when I see them.
I couldn’t help but peek just now at a recent setlist. It looks like he’s playing almost the entirety of Rough and Rowdy Ways?! The show is also in the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, where they used to do the Louisiana Hayride. Don’t you just think he’s going to do something by Hank or Elvis? But with this old fella you never know. May we all grow to be 80 and restlessly creating, unpredictable, insisting on being something new every day. He’s taught me a lot.