Five Fives for 4/13/24
Whale Facts, Rock Band Kit, Songs about Time, Fun Oddball Sports Stats, and NYT Spelling Bee Wrong Answers
Welcome to the inaugural Five Fives! I’ll be bringing you five lists of five fun things, with hopefully-entertaining commentary and links sprinkled throughout to relevant videos, articles, and funny references. Please subscribe for regular content, and consider becoming a paid subscriber if you’d like to receive bonus content, comment, vote in polls, and suggest new list topics!
Five Fun Facts About… Whales!
Whale earwax builds up in their ear canal over their entire lifetimes. These “earplugs”, like a tree’s rings or a rock core sample, can be used to measure their age, stress levels, environmental and hormonal chemical levels, and more!
Whales have their own versions of Bigfoot - Cryptid Whales - which are types of whales that people claim to have spotted, but which are not verified (and thus not classified as species or subspecies). Some are likely misidentified sightings of known whale types, but others, such as Giglioli’s Whale, may be genetic mutations or yet-unverified new species.
When a whale dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean (past 1 km depth, where it’s cold and dark enough to slow biological processes), its carcass becomes a mini-ecosystem of its own, known as a Whale Fall. It decomposes in stages, the last of which can go from 50-100 years, and over the various stages, different animals and bacteria travel there, thrive, and radiate out to other parts of the ocean floor.
Osedax Mucofloris, which (thanks to a gift from the taxonomy gods) translates to "snot-flower bone-eater", is a type of bathypelagic worm that seems to have evolved to eat whale bones specifically!
The SMOL-est whale is the Dwarf Sperm Whale, which is not only wee, but it can also shoot ink like a squid! Even though relatively smol, these adorable lil’ blubberflerfs still are bigger than most humans, ranging from 300-600 lbs (~140-280 kg). They also use echolocation (sonar) to locate prey (and maybe underwater Pokémon - who can be sure?)
Five Inventions That Changed Rock Music
The Rockman Amp - Tom Scholz, MIT engineering graduate and founder/songwriter/keyboardist/guitarist/bassist/drummer/basicallyeverything of the band Boston, created their signature sound literally by building his own amp to go with his Gibson Les Paul and Marshall setup.
By the way, if you like rock music, and aren’t watching Rick Beato’s videos, you are MISSING. OUT.The Infinite Guitar - that eerie, neverending guitar sound on U2’s With or Without You? That’s The Edge on the Infinite Guitar, invented by Michael Brook. There are only three in the world (though there’s plenty of equipment nowadays to reproduce its trademark sound); the first was built atop a Stratocaster body. An amp feeding back into an extra pickup allows the eponymous infinite sustain, and also allow the guitar to sound much like a string instrument. (Well, okay, I mean a bowed string instrument. More on that below.)
Theremin - every physics major (like me!) learns about LC (Inductor1/Capacitor) circuits in first-year E&M. Scarce few of us, however, turn one into a Jimmy Page concert accessory.
The loop of an LC circuit, which also underpins the technology that senses a large (engine) block of steel approaching a stoplight, is a simple resonating circuit. Changes in capacitance (for example, putting a large conductor like an engine block, or waving a connected metal wand, near or through an induction loop) can be measured to throw a light switch or amplified (with the LC circuit’s intrinsic heterodyne) to make a sound.
In the case of the Theremin (named after Lews Theremin, the reborn Soviet immigrant to America who broke the world 3,000 years ago)2, it can be connected to an amplifier to get the weird, spooky sounds you hear at the beginning of Doctor Who (video has all of them!), or during the solo for Whole Lotta Love. Here’s the Royal Albert Hall version - theremin is very salient around the 3:00 mark. And for kicks, here’s the blurry-ass version of No Quarter from The Song Remains the Same, where Pagey uses a theremin AND bows his guitar.Sequencer - remember the first 12,407 minutes of The Who’s Baba O’Riley before the drums come in - the track where Keith Moon enters over the synth at the wrong tempo and you can hear him adjust after he realizes what he’s done? What about the somewhat more restrained intro to Won’t Get Fooled Again, which culminates in the greatest scream in rock and roll history?3 Or is your brain simply fried from all those years you thought Eminence Front4 was a good song before the truth dawned on you?
Plenty of musicians have used analog and digital sequencers (synthesizers with playback capability) since, but Pete Townshend was the one who made it famous, in no small part by obsessing over them for literally hundreds of hours when they first became widely available. He loved them in no small part because parts he recorded at modest tempos could be sped up in concert, unlike his live guitar playing, which allowed him to play very fast sequenced phrases.Looper - sorta like a sequencer, but it records a brief piece of sound and then plays it back on loop. These have been around for a long time - first in tape form and later digitally - and Frank Zappa was the first to take bring them full-force into pop music, which then led led to sampling, repeated drum tracks, and other uses from artists as different as TOTO, Grandmaster Flash, and everyone who sampled the insanely resonant drum beat from the greatest song ever recorded.
In recent years, folk singer and Kaylee Frye separated-at-birth-twin5 KT Tunstall (on tour now, with Shawn Colvin) rose to fame with songs like:You can see her laying down the brief loops on her pedals at the beginning, as well as during various spots in the song. (It’s REALLY cool.) (Also, she’s totally Kaylee.)
Five Songs About Time
Time In A Bottle (Muppet Version) - the video, with the alchemist performed by absolute hero and all-time Good Person Jim Henson, tells the story maybe even better than Jim Croce’s haunting voice did.
Who Knows Where the Time Goes? - Sandy Denny, the only guest singer ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin album, was the frontwoman for English folk rock group The Fairport Convention as well as one of England’s finest solo singer-songwriters.
Taken from us far too soon due to complications from a fall down a flight of stairs at age 31, her most enduring song (thanks, in part, to a boost from Judy Collins covering it in America) is Who Knows Where the Time Goes6? Denny’s legacy lives on in these haunting lyrics and her perfect vocals.Sad, deserted shore
Your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know
It's time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
Tea For One (Led Zeppelin7) - England’s weird-ass tax laws in the 1970s had a loophole of sorts where non-residents (in this case, people who stayed in the UK fewer than 30 days in a year, even if their domicile and citizenship were there) could dodge the 87% tax rate on top earners. The larger financial and political picture is well-explained here (it gets crazy!), but it was a difficult time for the band members, being separated from their families for so long.
Robert Plant wrote Tea For One as a lament of that tour’s loneliness. Starting out with a misleadingly upbeat riff, it quickly turns into a slow blues crawl lasting nearly 10 minutes, with Plant’s vocals mixing with Page’s mix of plaintive licks and angry riffs, all over the steady, understated hands of Jones and Bonham.
How come twenty four hours, sometimes seem to slip into days?
A minute seems like a lifetime, baby when I feel this way
Turpentine (Brandi Carlile) - we’ve all had friends that we’ve watched grow slowly away from us. From her smash album The Story, which was my soundtrack on a road trip around 12 years ago, the video here is a perfect pairing with the music.
Forever Young (The Band, with Bob Dylan) - from The Last Waltz, one of the greatest rock films of all time. Dylan wrote it for his young kid Jesse as a lullaby, and he recorded it with The Band (who, before they went out on their own as a solo act, were Dylan’s backing band when he first went electric (controversially, to his folk-purist fans).
As a fun side note, the B-side from the live single was All Along the Watchtower, which has been covered famously by both Jimi Hendrix and U2. Like Forever Young, it draws on Biblical influences for its lyrics, and “the magnificent Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson”, per Dylan’s dedication in his Writings and Drawings by Bob Dylan.
Five Goofy Sports Stats
This one’s a bit New England-centric but hey, I’m a born-and-bred Masshole. May as well own it.
Pedro Martinez vs. Jay Buhner - A generational pitching talent on my BoSox versus a genuinely excellent outfielder for the Mariners. Buhner was no slouch with a bat (or his glove), but against Pedro, he went 0 for 8 all time… with 8 strikeouts.
He never even put a ball in play - or, to paraphrase, he never once succeeded in taking a Pedro Martinez pitch and getting the ball to go “generally forwardish at all”. (Video is from the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway , where he strikes out 5 of the first 6 steroid-era NL batters, making them all look goofy.)
For those of you aren’t baseball fans or weren’t watching at the time, Pedro Martinez in 1999 was stupidly good - light-years better than the second best pitchers in just about every stat, and nearly 2 games ahead of second-place Jeter - a positional player - in WAR. For those of us in Boston, his starts were appointment viewing - there had to be one hell of a reason to miss watching one.Dan Connolly’s Kickoff Return - who do you want running your kickoffs back in football? If you answered “one of the slowest, biggest guys on the return squad whose job is usually to block for the speedy, elusive guy”, this clip is for you.
Late in the 2010 season, the Packers tried a squib kick against Belichick’s Patriots. Normally the big guy gets out of the way on a squib kick and lets, you know, the returner grab it. Not so for Dan Connolly, who still holds the record for longest return by an offensive lineman in NFL history at 71 yards. The clip is visually fun enough, but do leave the sound on for this one, as the announcers have a lot of fun with it.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 3-Point Shooting - one of the greatest big men ever to play the game (and nemesis of my beloved Bird-era Celtics) hit exactly ONE three-pointer in his entire career. It would be a little bit cooler of a stat if he’d gone one for one, but alas, it was out of 18 attempts (which probably explains why he didn’t shoot them often).
Mike Vrabel, Linebacker Touchdown Machine - Vrabel was an excellent outside/hybrid linebacker for the Pats, Steelers, and Chiefs, but he also played in goal line situations as an extra tight end.
He caught a total of 12 passes. “Sure, but how many were touchdowns?", I hear you ask? Oh. Same number. 12 for 12 with 12 touchdowns. Never caught a pass that wasn’t for six.Doug Flutie’s Extra Point Drop-Kick - Flutie, who leapt to fame as BC’s Heisman-winning quarterback when he threw the “Hail Flutie” game-winning touchdown pass against the Miami Hurricanes, led by hardly-a-slouch QB Bernie Kosar.
After a brief stint with the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, who were owned by some little-known yet always-laughably-inept cartoon-lookin “businessman” who decided that it would be best to change from a spring schedule to a fall one that COMPETED DIRECTLY WITH THE HUGELY POPULAR NFL (with predictable results; the league failed almost immediately thereafter), Flutie moved to the NFL for a few years. Undersized for that league (and under-used given his results), he went to the CFL, where he won three Grey Cups (the CFL’s championship) and six league MVPs in eight seasons.
He returned to the NFL, coming back for a few years with San Diego and spending his final year in New England, where, in what would be the last play of his football career, he successfully drop-kicked an extra point against Cleveland. The drop-kick was a rule that never really left the rulebook, despite its lack of use (and the superior results from traditional place-kicking) since prior to the formation of the NFL (Chicago’s Ray McLean). Bill Belichick, who is (regardless of your opinion of him) an enthusiastic and exhaustive historian of the game, felt it would be an appropriate capstone to Flutie’s remarkable career. See the kick (and the coaches and players’ smiles) here, and to see Flutie tell the story, click the video link above at the bullet point.
Five Delightfully Wrong NYT Spelling Bee Answers
From April 6’s puzzle:
HOGPILE/PIGPILE - no definition needed. I’m just fairly astonished that “PIGPILE” isn’t in their dictionary. Then again, I get surprised at the contents (and omissions) of their dictionary far too frequently.
HELIOPIG - noun
According to ancient German myths originating during Oktoberfest 2015, the sun is a giant glowing pig that rises in the morning, glows, then returns to the sloptrough. Solar flares are just sky-oinks and eclipses are giant, briefly occlusive pigpoops8.
PEEPLE - pl. noun
These folks in the picture below.
POGOPHILE - noun
A devoted lover of swampcore art
E-POOP - noun
Any unironic post on Truth Social.
Thanks for reading my inaugural article! I’m leaving these polls and comments open for everyone for a while, but in the future they’ll be available only to paid subscribers (along with bonus content!)
Inductance is represented by “L” for two reasons. First, it’s far less confusing when writing out equations than a sneaky 1-looking “I”, and second, because of Heinrich Lenz’s contributions to understanding how electromagnetic fields (EMF), current, and magnetism are related.
This is not even remotely true but screw it, I’m obsessed with the Wheel of Time show, even though I’ve not read the books, and typing this made me laugh.
Or maybe I used a link that has literally three minutes of just the screams from various concerts? Like a jerk?
What even WAS that song? Intentionally not linking it. It was the we-play-this-because-the-commercial-contracts-don’t-cover-streaming hold music on WEEI’s streaming audio for way too long in the mid-2000s. #survivor
Prove me wrong. Also I won’t listen if you do prove me wrong.
I first heard this song as a singer in a Texas Early Music Project concert, where maestro and founder (and dear friend of mine) Danny Johnson sang it at the end of the program, with only a baroque guitarist’s sparse virtuoso to accompany him. I - no joke - had to hold back tears.
Yes, I’m obsessed with Led Zeppelin. Name me an assemblage of four musicians who are clearly better. (Don’t say The Beatles. Revolutionary, yes. Innovative, yes. As virtuoso as Zep were? NO.)
Don’t fact-check this, just trust me that it’s true.