lamarck of the beast

The New York Times, April 6, 2006:
FOSSIL CALLED MISSING LINK FROM SEA TO LAND ANIMALS
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.

In light of this news, The Best of Write It Like Disaster presents:
An Idiot Reviews the ‘Darwin’ Exhibit
at the American Museum of Natural History
from February 26, 2006:

First of all, if you’re expecting a retrospective about the dolphin from the popular television series "SeaQuest DSV," or at the very least a tasteful tribute to the late actor Jonathan Brandis, then you’re in for a rude awakening at this museum.

Apparently this is exhibit is about an old scientist. I asked one of the guards, and he said it was possible the "SeaQuest" dolphin had been named after the old scientist, but he was not really familiar with the show so he could not be sure. I found it hard to believe someone would be so ignorant of the world as to not know about "SeaQuest." And believe me, I mentioned the original captain Roy Scheider AND Michael Ironside from when it was "SeaQuest 2032," and neither version rang a bell for this guy. Things were not off to a good start.

If you’re like me, your first question is: So what did this guy Darwin look like? Well, according to the stuffed dolls on sale in the gift shop, he was bald and had messy white hair, just like Alfred Einstein. But you can tell them apart because Darwin is not pictured in front of a blackboard with E=MC2 written on it it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Even though there’s no mention of "SeaQuest," there’s a lot of references to the Natasha Henstridge movie Species, which Charles Darwin apparently came up with the idea for. There aren’t any pictures or props from the film, I think because the museum couldn’t afford them. But there are a lot of pages from his notebook from when he was coming up with the movie. I don’t know if he wrote Species II or not.

At the door to the exhibit, there are two big turtles that are alive. I watched them for like an hour and they didn’t do anything. But after I came out of the exhibit, one had pooped AND moved across the floor. I was mad that I missed that!

So then you go inside and there’s a lot of stuff about Charles Darwin. First there’s stuff about him growing up, which is boring, unless you like old-timey stuff. For instance, they have his rock hammer in a glass case. Why was that there? I wondered. Did he hammer someone to death? I asked a guy with glasses, but he said he didn’t think Darwin hit anyone with the hammer. The Glasses Guy said Darwin was interested in rocks and how old the Earth was, which helped lead to his theory. I said, Why didn’t he just cut open the Earth and count the rings? The Glasses Guy laughed like I had made a very fine joke, so I pretended I had. We both had a good laugh, and I decided to keep up with him, so he could explain things to me.

Then there was a movie playing that I wanted to watch, but the glasses guy walked right past it! Before you think he’s retarded, though, it wasn’t a real movie like King Kong or King Arthur or King Ralph. It was a museum movie, so it probably sucked anyway.

Then there was a model ship. The guy said it was called The Beagle. I said that was a stupid name for a ship and if I ever had a ship I’d call it the "U.S.S. Fang Monster." The Glasses Guy looked at his watch and walked ahead some more. He was probably embarrassed that he couldn’t think up a cool ship name like I did.

Next was a bunch of fake animals from some islands called "Galapagos." I wrote it down on my hand because it was such a weird name I wanted to remember. Sometimes I write phone numbers on my hand when I don’t have paper with me and I want to call a girl later. Usually I forget and wash my hand in the shower the next day and don’t get to call her because I lost her number. One time I saw an old guy with a girl’s number tattooed on the inside of his wrist, so I thought he must have really wanted to call whoever gave him the number so bad that he was worried it would come off in the shower. I even said that to him. I said "I guess you were worried about the showers, huh?" and pointed at the number on his wrist, and he got all serious and said he had never been more terrified of anything in his life. It was weird.

Anyway: All the animals from "Galapagos" were funny looking. Glasses Guy said they had something to do with Darwin thinking it was decent of man. To be honest, I sort of stopped paying attention to him for a while here because I saw this little skeleton which turned out to be from a vampire bat. When I turned around he had left. This is where they had all of Darwin’s papers from writing the movie Species. I guess he was really ahead of his time, but looking at a bunch of papers is boring. The only cool part here was a little stuffed monkey dressed in human clothes. The sign said zoos in England used to dress up monkeys like people when Darwin was alive. That must have been cute to see, except when they throw poop at each other. Can you imagine being a stupid animal with nothing better to do than throw poop around all day? I’m glad I’m not a monkey.

This was where the museum ended, so I went back to the beginning and that was when I saw the turtles had pooped while I was inside. That was a bummer. So if you go to the Darwin exhibit, don’t go past where the two turtles are, because you might miss the chance to see them poop like I did.

I usually end my reviews with a thumbs-up or down, but if you’ve read this far, you know I didn’t really like Darwin, so thumbs are not necessary.