Today is the beginning of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. It’s bound to be a bit more exciting than the departing year, that of the Rabbit. The Rabbit makes nice, the Dragon makes noise. To those who believe in the Chinese zodiac, dragons mean good luck, strength and power. They control the weather and water. Alas, they don’t breathe fire. Western dragons on the other hand, all breathe fire. They scorch, devour maidens, and whack knights.
According to those who study such things, dragons are the creations of our innate fear of snakes, big reptiles and other predators who dined on our primate ancestors. They lurked in dark caves’ deep pools and haunted forests. Their images were exaggerations of living creatures such as Komodo dragons, gila monsters, iguanas and alligators.
One of the most notable dragon legends features the dashing onward Christian soldier, St. George. It seems that a nasty dragon was terrorizing the English countryside, demanding tribute from the local villagers. They gave the dragon trinkets and livestock, but they eventually ran out of such stuff, so they began offering human tribute. This worked out okay until a princess was chosen as the next offering. St. George came to her rescue and killed that dragon. Don’t you believe it, folks; dragons live forever, but not so little boys. It says so right there in the song.
Here’s another take on the St. George legend:
Year of the Wolf
Struggling in the long shadow cast by his famous father, Lon Chaney, Jr. (Creighton Tull Chaney), born February 10, 1906, finally found his career
in the 1930s after his father’s death. Cast mostly in small supporting roles for several years, his first major film role came in 1939, when he reprised his turn on the stage as Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men, a critical success.
Then in 1941, he starred as the tortured Larry Talbot, a role with which he would always be associated, in The Wolf Man. Like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, he would be a horror film actor for the rest of his life. (Chaney was the only actor to play all four of Universal’s heavyweight creatures: Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man)
Year of the Nose
Unlikely star entertainer Jimmy Durante was born February 10, 1893. Said
critic Leonard Maltin about Durante: “The old ‘schnozzola’ was the living embodiment of the term ‘beloved entertainer’: Everyone adored him, but no one could ever really figure out just what it was he did. He sang, he danced, he played the piano and, of course, he clowned — but he wasn’t really great at any of these tasks. Mostly, it was the sheer force of his overbearing personality that won viewers over.”
Wretched Richard's Almanac 