Two Score and Ten Years Ago Today

Today has seen a lot of commemoration of the first appearance of the Beatles on American television.  In watching footage from the occasion, one is reminded that the band, particularly in their early days, was in some ways what we would today call a "boy band"—young men whose popularity depends not on the music that they play, but rather on the fact that they are found attractive by hordes of irrational, screaming teen-aged girls.   

John, Paul, George, and Ringo were, of course, much more than a boy band.  But understanding this aspect of their appeal helps to explain why there will never be, and indeed can never be, another rock band as big as the Beatles.  The Beatles came along at a time when rock music had not yet diversified into myriad genres and sub-genres, and so the Beatles could be all things to everyone. They were One Direction, and Metallica, and Sigur Ros, and Vampire Weekend, all at the same time.  No band today could be regarded as both a boy band and a serious rock band, let alone simultaneously satisfy the fans of pop rock, hard rock, art rock, blues rock, and all the rest.  

(As I wrote this, I noticed that the spell-check function on my computer was flagging the word "Beatles".)

Running out of January

It seems that we are rapidly running out of January.  As always, I have an endless amount of ideas for things about which to blog, but no energy to do the actual blogging. 

But I also wanted to post at least one entry per month. And so I am putting up this entry, even though it really isn't about anything.  

I only hope that I don't do this again on the last day of February.

This Has Not Been a Good Year for Blogging

Scaly Distractions will only have 25 posts on the books for 2013, as opposed to 30 in 2012, 26 in 2011, and 55 in 2010.  That might not seem too bad, but the summer was abnormally low, redeemed only by high posts counts for January and October, and for the first time I had a month where I didn't post at all (June). On the positive side, I did start my new blog, The Wandering Archives, but that's kind of like running in place, because it only reposts blog entries that I wrote in 2006 through 2008.  

Blogging didn't work out too well this year because I decided to concentrate on doing some other things instead.  Unfortunately, most of those other things didn't work out either. 

I Don't Know What Happened Here, but It Involved Christmas and Motorcars

I get very tired this time of year.  I am, as anyone who knows me can attest, tired in every season, but the tiredness gets to its worst around Christmas.  I attribute the phenomenon to the fact that the last week of December occurs between the darkest day of the year (December 21) and the coldest day of the year (on average around January 15) in the Northern Hemisphere.  And that's why I see December's end as a good time to try to get a nice long rest.  

At work on Friday I was feeling this tiredness, and somehow my mind drifted toward upper-class England in the Twenties. First I considered Downton Abbey.  (Although I probably have a fairly high genetic tolerance for Britishness, I can only watch Downtown Abbey for about ten minutes at a time, because it consists mostly of people disapproving of one another.)  Then for some reason I started thinking about a similar show, Brideshead Revisited, which I never watched, but saw advertised on PBS when I was younger, and checked the show out on Wikipedia.  

As the afternoon wore on, I began to more and more seriously consider the option of traveling back in time to become an aristocrat in England in the Twenties, where I would live in a vast country house and spend my days disapproving of people and driving around in a motorcar.  As far as I could reason, the biggest barrier to this plan would be operating the motorcar, which at that time would likely have been controlled via an odd assemblage of levers and cranks.

Turtles Influence Our Culture, in a Particularly Odd Way

Let's say that someone told you that turtles are divided into two groups, two overarching evolutionary lineages. What would you guess that these two groups are?  Most people, I imagine, would think that it's the sea turtles versus the land turtles.  In reality, though, the two groups are Cryptodira, which bend their necks vertically, and Pleurodira, which bend their necks horizontally.  (By the way, all the turtles native to the United States are members of Cryptodira, so, for most of the people who read this blog, the next time that you come upon a turtle, you needn't worry about watching it to see how its neck bends.)

Several weeks ago at work, I needed to find a reference explaining Cryptodira and its included groups.  When I checked the internet, I was surprised to find that "Cryptodira" is also the name of a progressive death metal band from Long Island. In fact, six of the first ten websites to come up on a Google search refer to the band, not the turtles.  

I can only assume that the band chose the name from an association with "crypt", which of course is a tomb, which is the sort of thing that death metallers would enjoy.

The music and videos of Cryptodira are available on the internet, but I feel no compelling desire to listen to any of it.  

And please keep in mind that Cryptodira is not just a death metal band, but a progressive death metal band, which means that it appeals to the more intellectual and musically sophisticated death metal fan.

The Failed Scary Pumpkinhead Dude and Other Halloween Musings

After I saw a Buzzfeed feature on old Halloween postcards featuring pumpkin-headed people, I was inspired, in the tradition of my previous holiday artwork, to use my limited computer graphics resources to draw a scary pumpkin dude.  

I had a terrible time drawing it, and what I ended up with was less of a scary pumpkin dude and more of a lame and uncertain pumpkin dude.  I think that my biggest mistake was trying to give him an evil smile, rather than an angry frown.  Also his bodily proportions look wrong somehow.  

He carries a glaive, which is intended to make him more scary. (Also he wears a broad-brimmed pumpkin hat.) The glaive is a Medieval polearm weapon; like many polearms, it was developed from a farming tool.  This agricultural connection reinforces the concept of the pumpkinhead as a scarecrow-type figure come to life.  We are, however, on shaky ground in combining the glaive and the pumpkin, because the glaive was a weapon of Medieval Europe, whereas the pumpkin originated in North America, and was unknown in Medieval Europe.  But then, we are on shaky ground in accepting the existence of a pumpkin-headed humanoid in general.

In case that picture was too scary for you, here is a slightly different view of the pumpkinhead dude.  

He is collecting for UNICEF. 

*   *   *   *

I get a certain feeling that Halloween is already over.  It dawned on me that this year most of the Halloween parties, and probably at least some of the trick-or-treating, occurred over the weekend.  (To me, if Halloween is on a Thursday, the logical day for a Halloween party is the following Friday.  But most people's minds don't work that way.)  Perhaps the time will come when Halloween will be celebrated not on October 31 specifically, but rather on the last Saturday of October, whatever that date might be, in the manner of Thanksgiving and some other holidays that are not tied to a specific date.  

*   *   *   *

The Washington area was earlier predicted to get some heavy rain late on Halloween night (but now the rain is predicted more for the daytime on Friday). I am thinking that Halloween rain might be kind of cool, as long as it holds off until the trick-or-treating and other festivities are over.  A midnight thunderstorm could provide some nice scary ambiance, when everyone is home safely in bed, and the streets have been ceded to the real goblins and ghouls—and pumpkinhead dudes.

Revisiting the Pumpkin Days Concept

In a recent blog entry I put forth the idea of the Pumpkin Days, a sub-season comprising October and November.  

At the same time that I was writing that entry, I was also assembling content for my new blog, The Wandering Archives, which collects my old blog entries from the Wandering Army site.  

And now I notice that in an introduction to one of my 2006 posts, Wandering Army publisher Marc Brush wrote the following:

Now cast your mind back to the pumpkin days of October . . .

And so it appears that I may have unconsciously plagiarized the term "pumpkin days".