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).

 

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.