Halloween Thoughts 2021

The darkness of winter is approaching, and encroaching, and other such words; the pumpkins and plastic skeletons and fake spider webs have gone out in front yards; Halloween is almost here.  In the summer of 2020, I thought that the pandemic might be mostly over by Halloween of that year, and, Halloween being on a Saturday, people would use the occasion to release the tension of the previous months with some wild partying . . . but then the pandemic flared up again, and Halloween pretty much didn’t happen.  This year though, despite the continuing pandemic, we are, maybe, possibly, having Halloween.  And Halloween will be on a Sunday, which, while not quite as good as a Saturday, is better than a Monday.  

On Sunday (October 24) I went into the Old Town section of Alexandria.  I was surprised to see a number of people, and an even bigger number of dogs, wearing Halloween costumes. 

Is the fact that there were people walking around in costumes one week early evidence that Halloween will be super-crazy this year?

Or is it just part of the phenomenon of Halloween taking over the entire month of October?

Or, since I saw many more dogs than people in costumes, is one week before Halloween now Dogoween? 

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My Sunday visit also made me think more deeply about the twin topics of Halloween and Old Town.  

Halloween awakens my longstanding ambition to write fiction (which, like all my ambitions, remains unfulfilled), and, in this specific case, fantasy-horror fiction.  And Old Town, a genuine Colonial setting with narrow alleyways, walled gardens, and half-concealed cellar doors, seems like the perfect environment to fill my mind with visions of the unnatural and terrifying things about which I would want to write. 

Yet that never happens.

Maybe it is because I just don’t have the capacity to be inspired toward storytelling.  Or maybe it is because Old Town is a thoroughly modernized, well-maintained, touristy city, and not the sort of dilapidated, half-abandoned urban area where there could conceivably be evil fish-men lurking in the shadows. 

Of course, if you have seen any evil fish-men lurking in the shadows of Old Town, please let me know in the comment section.

 

Norm Macdonald

  Last month I put up a post with a video from Saturday Night Live in the Nineties.

And then, before I could put up anything else, Norm Macdonald died.  

Macdonald was on the show from 1993 to 1998, so he came in at the end of what I consider to have been the SNL’s golden age.  He was one of the last truly funny people on the show. 

I thought that he should have had a much bigger career than he did, based on how funny I found him, but maybe he was just too smart and idiosyncratic to have had widespread appeal.

Years ago I mentioned one of Macdonald’s best-known Weekend Update jokes, concerning the band Better Than Ezra.  He also delivered the absolute greatest Weekend Update line of all time, presented on the first episode following the acquittal of O. J. Simpson:

Delta, Delta, Delta Variant, Can I Help Ya, Help Ya, Help Ya?

If there is anything good about the delta variant of COVID-19, it is that it reminds us of a vanished, better time when Saturday Night Live was actually funny.

Notes:

1. I would not rank the Delta Delta Delta sketches as among the funnier material from that era of SNL, but they are ten times better than anything on the show now.  

2. Years after I first watched those sketches, I was shocked to learn that Delta Delta Delta is a real sorority; the members were not happy about how they were portrayed.  

3. A character in the above sketch discusses the minerals calcite and halite, which is almost certainly the only time that those minerals have been mentioned on SNL, and possibly the only time that they have been mentioned on network television in general.  

Bald Eagles for (the Day After) the Fourth of July

On July fifth I came across a pair of Bald Eagles on the Potomac River.  I tried taking several pictures, but since the eagles were at a considerable distance most of the pictures came out blurry. 

This first shot, in which one of the birds took to the wing just as I took the picture, could have been really epic, but unfortunately it was one of the blurry ones.  

Only one photo turned out clearly. 

Post-Pandemic Thoughts

After a year and three months, the pandemic situation is ending.  More and more Americans are vaccinated, and the rate of infection is decreasing.  Soon our masks will be put away, and we can return to our old habit of coughing on random strangers.  

And the general opinion is that we should also return to the relentless, relentless pace of our pre-pandemic lives.  

It seems to me that after all the pandemic stress, what we need instead is a long rest. 

But then, I always feel as if I need a long rest.  

Cicadas Are Here Again

 

Brood X of the seventeen-year cicada (Magicicada septendecim) has emerged from the ground, as one can see from the above image of a discarded exoskeleton.  Judging by their body parts strewn on the ground, many don’t make it, but others take to the trees and produce a call that sounds like the transporter from Star Trek.  Cicadas are a big news story, at least in this part of the country. 

(Note: Brood X should not be confused with Brand X, a jazz fusion group in which Phil Collins played drums in the Seventies.)

About a week ago I came upon the bizarre scene shown below.  A cicada was missing its abdomen entirely, but the head and thorax were still alive and walking, pulling along some kind of predatory wasp.  Presumably the wasp had eaten away the cicada’s abdomen, and was in the process of eating the rest of the cicada.  

As Dieter would say . . . truly disturbing.  

The Potomac Monster

I noticed this piece of wood floating in the Potomac at the end of last year and took some pictures.  

What really interests me is how sea-monstery the wood looks.

It kind of reminds me of the (somewhat) famous Mansi photograph, which purportedly shows the Lake Champlain monster (and which is extensively addressed in this Twitter thread by Darren Naish).