The Last Dinosaur Extinction

Originally published January 2, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1259

Give way to your imagination, and see the prehistory of man. See our ancestors in the hunt, pursuing some great beast whose remains can only be viewed now as a wired together skeleton at the Museum of Natural History.

The beast struggles, trying to flee from its oppressors. It is large and mighty, and they are small and puny. But there are many of them, and they swarm all over him. He wonders in the back of his primitive, peanut-sized brain what he could possibly have done to offend them, and perhaps he even tries to determine what he might have done to deserve this. He was minding his own business, and suddenly they were upon him, bringing him down, howling and cackling while onlookers cheered.

It is a primitive, awful spectacle, and we can only pat ourselves on the back and be cheered over how far we’ve come since then…

I wanted to do something really special for the girls this year.

New York is home, of course, to one of the best-known parades on the planet: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So identified with the holiday has it become, that oftentimes people refer to it in a shortened manner as the Macy’s Day Parade, as if the holiday were about Macy’s rather than the first celebration that the Pilgrims shared with the residents of America who would eventually be completely disenfranchised. I wonder if Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with equal fervor nowadays (and I’m sure I’ll wind up hearing from some Native Americans who will inform me one way or the other).

I wanted to take the girls to see the parade, which I hadn’t for a number of years. Oh, sure, they’d watched it on television. Been able to sleep until 9 a.m. and then roll out of bed into the comfort of their living room with hot chocolate, a nice breakfast, and easily available bathrooms, and watch the parade while seated on a comfortable couch. But, gosh darn it, you just don’t get the real parade experience unless you have to haul your carcass out at an ungodly hour, schlep the ninety minutes into Manhattan, find a piece of concrete real estate that you cling on to for dear life, freeze your butt off while desperately wrapping yourself in a blanket against the chill of gale-force arctic winds, munch on an ice-cold bagel and be crushed by five thousand cranky people, all of whom have kids loudly announcing, “I gotta go potty.”

Me, I wanted it all. I wanted the kids to have the parade experience, but not have it carry with it the kind of personal physical exhilaration one could usually only get from—oh—being executed by Edward Longshanks because one was trying to free Scotland.

So I decided we’d go first class.

I made reservations at a hotel called the Novotel, conveniently situated on 52nd Street and Broadway, right along the parade route. We arrived Wednesday night, with the parade set for Thursday morning.

Both of our rooms faced right out onto Broadway, so the parade could be viewed from the comfort of the hotel room but still be live. Furthermore, the Novotel had a large open-air terrace seven floors up, so the parade could actually be watched outside as well. Best of both worlds. The girls could watch it outdoors without the crush of the crowds which ran, on average, twenty levels deep, and if the cold air became too much for them, they could go inside and watch from the rooms.

We took positions outside on the terrace at a little before 9 a.m. That was the start time of the parade, but it actually commenced its march some twenty blocks further uptown, so it would be a while before it got to us. There was a staggeringly fierce wind up on the terrace, blowing with such force that people were staggering under it. It seemed like Another Great David Idea, because of course I should have realized that the altitude would bring with it a much stiffer breeze. The terrace area facing onto Broadway itself was already jammed, but we were able to take up positions against the railing facing onto 52nd street, and we had a clear view of the intersection through which the parade would be passing.

Adults pulled together to accommodate the children and shield them from the majority of the wind’s force. The kids were all forward, peering through the terrace wall (which consisted of a brick wall several feet high and a protective railing—but there was enough space between the railing and the top of the wall that little people could peer through unobstructed). The adults then clustered in behind them, our bodies serving as breakers against the wind. So there we stood for half an hour, primarily breaking wind, and then we heard the first strains of music that indicated freezing teenagers from some high school in the Midwest were—even at that very moment—marching right down Broadway, freezing to death and wondering whether this supposed honor was really such a keen idea.

Down below, the mob at curbside looked like this solid, massive thing rather than something that was composed of individual human beings. They cheered and shouted as bands and floats went by. But the big attraction, as always, was the gigantic balloons.

I had expected that the balloons would be several stories higher up, much closer to us than them. But the winds were so fierce that day that the balloon handlers were keeping them much nearer to the street, which was a mild disappointment. But this quickly became a fascinating spectator sport for those of us safely seven stories up as the balloons attempted either to (a) break free of their restraints and/or (b) attack the bystanders.

“Whoooooaaa!” the crowd would shout as a new fist of wind would seize a balloon and send it careening straight towards them. The handlers struggled mightily to haul the balloon back into position. It was an amazing struggle, almost on a primal level. How could anyone turn away from such a spectacle?

My eldest, Shana, had no trouble turning away. She’d gotten one sense of the breeze, immediately pivoted on her heel and headed back up to her room. Under an hour later, Gwen announced, “I’ve had enough,” and she too retreated to the warmth and comfort of the rooms.

Which left six-year-old Ariel and me. Ariel was bundled up in her parka, eyes peering through her elongated hood, looking like one of the kids from South Park. Truth to tell, I wouldn’t have entirely minded calling it a morning myself. We’d been down there for over an hour, and the wind showed no sign of letting up.

“Ariel,” I said generously, “if you want us to go upstairs, that’s okay. We can go.”

“No,” she said with quiet authority. “I want to stay.”

She wouldn’t budge. That determined six-year-old stayed put as teenagers, adults, and adolescents of much fainter heart than she decided to bag being buffeted by winds. The view improved considerably and soon I was standing next to her at the railing as, with quiet resolution, she continued to watch every moment of the parade.

Spider-Man came chugging along, partly deflated and somewhat limp wristed, while several dozen trustees hauled him along. Marvel in microcosm.

Unbeknownst to us, meantime, there had been problems uptown. The Cat in the Hat had slammed against a lamp post, which had come crashing down on the crowd. People had been injured, and as of this writing at least one woman is suing, although whether she’s going after Macys, the City, the North Wind or the estate of Doctor Seuss, I’m really not sure. (Paul Dini said that he would love to sue just so he could walk into court and announce loudly, “These are my lawyers, Thing One and Thing Two.) As a result of that accident, the parade handlers were very nervous about any other such disasters.

And then came Barney.

Barney, lurching forward from PBS into the streets of New York. Barney, beloved by children and despised by anyone over the age of nine.

Barney—who got ripped.

I don’t mean drunk, although that alone would have been something to see. No, Barney got a significant tear in him as he passed in front of our hotel and began to deflate with frightening velocity.

The big purple dinosaur was in danger of hugging the crowd to death. This looked like a job for New York’s Finest.

Yes, that’s right: The police “Rodney Kinged” Barney.

To the delight of parents and the horror of children, Barney the giant purple balloon was hauled down to street level and murdered. Police came charging in, wielding knives or scissors (it was hard to tell) and proceeded to release all the remaining air within him through the most expedient means, namely stabbing him to death.

It was an incredible spectacle to witness, and damn it, I couldn’t get close enough to see it clearly or get a good picture. But I heard it, God in heaven, did I hear it. Shouts and screams and cheers, ululations of some sort of demented ecstasy, primitive man in his glory brought howling back to life right down there, right in the streets of the city, as the mighty pre-historic beast was brought down.

One cop in particular was a bit too flamboyant, playing to the crowd as he repeatedly gouged the writhing balloon over and over again. Ostensibly a complaint was leveled against him. Yeah. I can just see that police board of inquiry, desperately trying to keep straight faces while they issued punishment. “You stabbed Barney to death too enthusiastically. We’re going to give you a time out.”

A friend of mine and his family, unbeknownst to me, were down in the crowd when it happened. Their two kids, seven and three respectively, were so traumatized that they had to leave immediately thereafter. Ariel, fortunately, didn’t see it. But not too long thereafter, she’d reached even her cold threshold (a good hour after her sisters) and we watched the closing moments of the parade in refined comfort. But that peaceful, civilized environment as we looked down from on high—somehow it posed a striking contrast to the barbaric spectacle which had unfolded minutes before.

We think we’re so civilized. We have such a high opinion of ourselves. But our primitive ancestry is so close to the surface that it all it takes is the slightest incentive to strip away that veneer of civilization and reduce ordinary, everyday people to primal bloodlust.

Or, to put it another way:

They killed Barney!

Yaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!!

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)