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 . . .   

Vegetation

In my attempt to continue my nature photo series, and post something for August, I’m putting up a picture about which I won’t have to write much.  

It’s just some foliage, and one can also see what looks like a little bit of lichen.

I don’t know how I came to take this picture.  I might have hit the button on my camera by accident, or I might have been trying to photograph a bird that flew from the branch at the last moment.  

But the picture is kind of nice . . . kind of peaceful . . . and very green . . . 

 

Eastern Gartersnake

Here is an Eastern Gartersnake (Thamnophis sirtalis) that I photographed at Jackson Miles Abbott Wetland Refuge.  

The refuge, which was formerly part of Fort Belvoir, is named after Jackson Miles Abbott. 

It is the only park that I’ve ever been to that has an unexploded ordnance warning. 

(In layman’s terms, this means that there might be some old artillery shells or similar items lying around that could blow you up.)

A Duck Standing on a Turtle

When things changed from Coronavirus News to Rioting and Looting News, I decided to end my foray into blogging about current events.  Now I plan to blog about a bunch of my recent nature photos.  

In our first picture we see a Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) standing on a Red-bellied Turtle (Pseudemys rubriventris) as the turtle basks on a log in the Potomac River.  

This is not the first time that I’ve posted a picture of a Red-bellied Turtle.  It’s not even the first time that I’ve posted a picture of a bird standing on a Red-bellied Turtle.  In 2015 I posted poorly-focused pictures of a Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) standing on a Red-bellied Turtle’s shell.  

Judging by claw length, the duck is standing on a female turtle, and the other turtle is male.  

More Plague Stuff

I am now in my third month of involuntarily growing a mullet, and as my hair is getting longer, it is starting to curl up at the ends, forming a sort of Triceratops frill.  Barbershops in the area are set to reopen tomorrow on a limited basis, but I will probably wait a while for the initial reopening chaos to subside. 

  When/if this pandemic ends, I am going to miss Coronavirus Traffic.  It’s not just that I have an easier time getting around on the rare occasions that I drive somewhere.  The whole feeling of outdoor suburban life seems to have changed.  There are few cars on the streets, people are out walking their dogs, children are riding bicycles.  It’s almost as if we’ve gone back to the Fifties.  Of course, I wasn’t around in the Fifties, so I’m basing that observation on the impression of the Fifties that I formed by watching reruns of Leave It to Beaver as a child in the Eighties.  

I will not, however, miss Coronavirus News.  I used to love relaxing with the local television news, back when the news was all about murders, fires, accidents, wars, and political conflicts.  But now that the news is only about the coronavirus, there is nothing relaxing in the experience.  And I have to wonder how much non-virus news is being ignored.  

The content of television news of the last few months would break down something like this:

 1%  Somebody saying, “We’re going to get through this.”

93%  Newscasters trying very, very, very hard to convince us that we’re not going to get through this.  

 6%  Weather

The two above opinions converge with the recent death of Eddie Haskell, or, rather, the actor who play him, Ken Osmond, who helped create my Leave It to Beaver-inspired concept of the Fifties, and whose death was mostly unreported due to the coronavirus dominating the news.