Pop Culture: Curb Your Dragonfly

We've been binging on Curb Your Enthusiasm lately, and enjoying it quite a bit.  It's a fun series, and I like the fact that its shot in real locations, rather than in a sound stage, and that so many interesting people show up from time to time.

In the season 7 episode "Officer Krupke," referring to a character in West Side Story, Larry sits on a couch at the end of the episode.  I noticed that the pillows on the couch had representations of damselflies on them, which I thought was cool.  Here are a few pics of the scene, showing the interesting pillows:

Pop Culture: Wall Hanging

I ran across this wall decoration recently.  Nice representation of a swarm of dragonflies.

Dragonfly Carpet

My mother is attending the Baseball Winter Meetings in Nashville this week.  At the hotel where she's staying, and where the meetings are held, she noticed an interesting carpet.  Here it is:



Nice to see dragonflies making their way into many interesting environments!

Dragonflies in the Movies: Sci-Fi

Science fiction movies from the 1950s are fun to watch.  They can be so serious in their treatment of a topic, but silly and unintentionally funny, too.

A good case in point is Monster On The Campus from 1958.  It stars Arthur Franz and Joanna Moore, and marks an early appearance by Troy Donahue.  Most interesting from my point of view, however, is that it includes a scene prominently featuring a dragonfly.  But more on that in a moment.  First, here are a couple movie posters for this campy flick:

Hard to resist a movie after seeing posters like that!

Here's the basic premise of the film.  A professor at a small university obtains a coelacanth specimen for his research.  Coelacanths are often referred to as a "living fossils" because they were thought to have gone extinct in the Cretaceous period, until one was found alive and kicking by a fisherman off the coast of South Africa in 1938.  The professor's specimen was preserved by using gamma rays, then sent to his university.  Now we have all the basic ingredients we need for some 50s-style sci-fi – a "living fossil" and radiation.

When the coelacanth is delivered to the professor there is blood is leaking out of its crate, and a dog drinks some of it.  Now, what happens when a dog drinks radiation-treated, living-fossil blood?  Well – naturally – his evolution reverses, devolving him into a "fossil" wolf-like dog.  The effect of the blood wears off after awhile, and the dog reverts to normal.  Only the professor saw the dog's transformation, and without proof no one believes him.

Here's the coelacanth in its crate:

A little later, the professor examines the coelacanth in his lab for a class of students.

Now, here's the key scene:  A dragonfly comes in through the open window and lands on the coelacanth.  The dragonfly now begins to feed on the coelacanth's flesh and blood – interesting behavior for a dragonfly.  The dragonfly is shooed out through the window where, in a matter of minutes, it reverses its evolution until it's a hawk-sized prehistoric dragonfly.  Here it is wanting to get back into the lab for some more coelacanth.

The professor wants to study this "fossil dragonfly", so he lets it back in the lab, where it flies around for a some time.  No CG effects here – just models and wires, as you can probably see in the following photos.

Finally, the professor nets the dragonfly and takes it as a specimen for study.

He doesn't learn that much from the dragonfly, however.  A little later he accidentally gets coelacanth blood on his pipe and smokes it, whereupon he becomes a prehistoric man.  He's no longer a big man on campus – now he's a big monster on campus.

Grey Owl

Grey Owl is a delightful 1999 movie by Richard Attenborough, starring Pierce Brosnan as a real-life Canadian trapper turned conservationist, who became a work-wide phenomenon in the period between WWI and WWII.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie is Brosnan's co-star, Annie Galipeau, shown below.  She steals virtually ever scene in which she appears.

The real-life Grey Owl was a great lover of beavers, and firmly opposed to their reckless exploitation.  The beaver shown below with Grey Owl was his friend "Jelly Roll."

At one point in the movie, Grey Owl visits his childhood home in England.  As he explores his old bedroom, we catch a glimpse of an insect collection mounted on the wall, prominently featuring some dragonflies (ah, I finally got around to mentioning dragonflies).

This is a quite enjoyable movie, though little known to the general public.  The role of Grey Owl is certainly a bit of a departure from the roles we normally associate with Pierce Brosnan.

Unexpected Pleasures of Dragonflying: San Juan Surprise

Last September, Betsy and I took a short ferry ride from our home in Anacortes, WA to San Juan Island, in the heart of the San Juan archipelago of northern Puget Sound.  In the photo below, we're coming into Friday Harbor, where the ferry terminal is located.  After disembarking, we spent the day exploring the island by car – with an eye out for interesting dragonflies, of course.  We weren't disappointed.

Pulling into Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

One of our first stops was Roche Harbor, where we had a nice lunch on the pier.  Lots boats anchor in this harbor, and you can see many of their shore boats docked in the photo below.  The name of the large boat in the foreground pretty well sums up the feeling of the place.

I went into an old Mom-and-Pop general store with wooden floors, crab traps, fishing gear, as well as groceries and snacks.  I picked up a delicious ice cream bar for us.  It was wonderful on a pleasant day like this.

Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island, WA.

After lunch we headed for Lime Kiln Park on the western shore of the island.  The land you see in the distance is Canada's Vancouver Island.  The passage of water between the islands is the Haro Strait, known for frequent visits by pods of killer whales.  We saw groups of porpoises, but no whales this time.

A lighthouse overlooking Haro Strait on the west shore of San Juan Island.

Next, we dropped by a small pond that looked like good dragonfly habitat.  Sure enough, we saw lots of Cardinal Meadowhawks, a few Striped Meadowhawks, and some Spotted Spreadwings.  The activity level was quite good.

The pond was in the middle of a large sculpture garden.  The photo below shows a dragonfly sculpture we found there.  It was quite detailed, even in the wings and the eyes.  It put one in mind of the large dragonflies that flew during the Carboniferous period.

Dragonfly sculpture on San Juan Island.

This dragonfly was a bit large to hold in one's hand, but worth the try anyway.

"Nice dragonfly."

This wasn't the only large dragonfly seen at this pond.  More on that later.

"Monster Soup" with a Dragonfly on the Side

Recently, Jean Enersen on King5 TV did a cooking segment where she shared the recipe for her "Monster Soup".  Here she is in the kitchen preparing the soup:

What caught my attention, however, was the dragonfly towel hook on the wall behind her.  It appears to be one that is something like this:

As usual, the dragonfly stole the show – at least for me.