My Jimmy Fallon Christmas Dream

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I had a Christmas-themed dream.  I wanted to blog about it at the time, but never got around to it.  Now Christmas is long gone.  And in general people don’t like to hear about other people’s dreams.  But it’s my blog, and I’ll do what I want.

In the dream, I was working at Saturday Night Live twenty years ago. (I must have been a writer, because I have neither the talent nor the charisma to be a cast member.)  A large group of people from the show was gathered in a hallway.  Jimmy Fallon began to sing an improvised Christmas song.  In the gaps between his lines, I would improvise lyrics of my own, creating a call-and-response effect.  (Of the phrases that I sang, the only one that I can remember is “I wanna sleep this Christmas”.  Those who have read the blog regularly will know that this is true.)

Then, as the song built to its dramatic conclusion, Tina Fey started rapping. 

Everyone viewed the song as a great success.  There was talk of the group performing it again, and even recording it.  (Presumably, the other people present were somehow involved in the song, though I don’t remember exactly how; maybe they just clapped rhythmically in the background.)  Fallon convinced NBC to let us to perform the song live in the 10:30 pm time slot.  But he felt that what had made the song special was its spontaneity, and he forbade the rest of us from practicing so as to preserve this feeling of spontaneity.  

We all assembled for the live broadcast, and I thought about how I would have to tell all my friends about it.  As the show began, Fallon spoke an introduction, which included him saying, “Bill Robinson sings some great background vocals,” and I thought about how Jimmy Fallon had gotten my name wrong on national television.  

 

We sang.

But, because Fallon hadn’t let us practice, our performance turned out to be a disaster, and everyone was disappointed.  

 

Eastern Musk Turtle

I needed a post for February before it ended.  As always, there are lots of blog entries that I want to write, but I just don’t have the time or energy to write them.  

I’m putting up this picture of an Eastern Musk Turtle (Sternotherus odoratus).  They’re rarely seen because they spend most of their time underwater, but I found this one basking in Maryland in 2019.  

The Skink Sleeps Tonight (and the Rest of the Winter)

I need to post something before January slips away, but I’ve had a hard time doing that, because this is the time of year when I feel that we should all be hibernating.  (And very specifically I feel that I should be hibernating.)  Speaking of which, here is something that gets to spend January in a torporous state, the Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus).  It is the only species of lizard that is common in this area, and I have blogged about it many times before.  

This individual is interesting in that it seems to be stuck in a state of awkward adolescent, showing both the blue tail of a juvenile and the red facial coloration of a mature male.  

 

The (Post-) Christmas Tadpole

 

I needed something to post for Christmas, but I didn’t have anything, so I thought that I should just post this picture of a tadpole from 2019, but then I waited too late for Christmas.  

But anyway, here is the Christmas tadpole.  It’s either a Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) or a Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans).  (I once read an explanation of how to tell the difference between the tadpoles of these two species by the distribution of black spots on the body, but I can’t seem to find that reference.)

And, in a way, this could be a Christmas tadpole; most other frog species start as eggs in the spring, and then change from tadpole to adult after a few months.  But the Green Frog often spends a year in the tadpole stage, and in this area the Bullfrog spends two years as a tadpole, and thus there would be individuals of both species still in the tadpole stage as December comes to en end, which it is doing now.  

Eddie Van Halen

Last fall I was blogging about the death of one of the musical icons of my youth, Ric Ocasek of the Cars, and now I must blog about the death of another, Eddie Van Halen, who died in October.   

 

Eddie Van Halen was the main creative force in the band Van Halen.  He is best known for his guitar playing, and in particular for bringing the technique of two-handed tapping to prominence within rock music.  

It wasn’t Eddie’s guitar, though, that made me a fan of Van Halen.  For on thing, I found his tone, on a purely sonic level, somewhat harsh and grating. (As I’ve gotten older I’ve found it less so, perhaps due to my ears losing sensitivity.)  And, maybe more importantly, in my own attempts at playing the guitar, I lack anywhere near the level of skill to pull off the sort of trickery that he could do easily.

What really appealed to me about Eddie Van Halen’s music was his absolutely huge synthesizer sound, perhaps the “biggest” synth sound that anyone has ever produced.  It was only employed on a handful of songs on a handful of albums in the Eighties.  They’re not the Van Halen songs that it’s cool to like, but they’re the ones that influenced me.  

Here is Van Halen’s biggest hit, and the first and perhaps best example of Eddie’s enormous synthesizer sound, just in case, for some bizarre reason, you’re not familiar with it.   

 

Halloween 2020

Halloween is usually a time when I do a lot of blogging, because the spookiness of the season somehow inspires me.  (If you want to explore this, just click the “Halloween” tag.) But I haven’t blogged this year, because, well . . . 2020.  

For Halloween in 2017, 2018, and 2019 I wrote a series of posts critiquing the osteology of decorative plastic Halloween skeletons,  My general sense is that, at this point, I’ve run out of types of skeletons to critique.  But then, I haven’t really looked this year, because 1) I sensed that my readership had lost interest in the series by last year, and 2) well . . . 2020.  

But then, are we even having Halloween this year?  I’m unclear here.  With respect to the child-oriented elements of the holiday, most specifically trick-or-treating, stores have aisles filled with Halloween candy just as always, but CDC guidelines seem to be ruling that trick-or-treating should be heavily restricted, if not considered outright unacceptable.  

And what about the grown-up part of Halloween, which involves wearing costumes while partying?  I saw on the television news that the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington will not be welcoming its usual adult Halloween crowd this year.  Earlier in the year I had expected that the pandemic would be pretty much over by now, and people would be using Halloween as the perfect occasion to cut loose with a massive party.  And Halloween is on a Saturday, which is the perfect day, because there’s no work or school, and no work or school the next day.  And there’s even a full moon on Halloween this year, which (I guess?) is the most appropriate phase for the occasion.  The only real problem, were we not in the midst of disease, would be that Halloween would be overshadowed by the rancor of the presidential election.  

I addressed the question of delaying Halloween on the blog many years ago.  

Maybe we can have two Halloweens next year. 

And so, ultimately, well . . . 2020 . . . 

Wild Turkey

 

Not much to say here . . . it’s a Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) . . . probably female . . . not at all uncommon in the world at large, but not the sort of thing that I normally see, especially standing calmly by a stream . . .