The Ringer - Welcome to Bug Day on The Ringer2021-05-11T08:45:12-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/221942652021-05-11T08:45:12-04:002021-05-11T08:45:12-04:00The Definitive Ranking of Pop Culture Bugs
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="http://jaytorresart.com/" target="_blank">Jay Torres</a></figcaption>
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<p>In honor of the once-in-a-generation emergence of the Brood X cicadas, two insect authorities lay out their case (without shedding them) for the best pop culture bugs</p> <p id="X7UGdS"><em>Have you heard the news? The cicadas are coming—and some have even started to arrive already. In a matter of days, trillions of the once-every-17-years species of Brood X cicadas will emerge from their burrows and blanket much of the Eastern United States in a wave of ear-splitting mating calls and discarded molt shells. To commemorate the occasion, we here at</em> The Ringer<em> present to you </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22430224/welcome-to-bug-day-on-the-ringer"><em>Bug Day</em></a><em>: a celebration of all things insects, and their influence—for better or worse—on sports and popular culture.</em></p>
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<p id="kRKtDn">Bugs aren’t the sexiest creatures. They creep, crawl, slither, fly, and strike fear and disgust into much of the human population. But that hasn’t stopped them from becoming a forceful cultural entity.</p>
<p id="qwEmEV">From the ugliest, ooziest, most irradiated bugs in horror movies, to the cute and chirpy ones that often accompany animated protagonists on their journeys to self discovery, bugs are everywhere in pop culture. So, with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22430224/welcome-to-bug-day-on-the-ringer">bugs on the mind of <em>The Ringer</em> at large</a> (and because we absolutely <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/4/9/21214912/top-25-tigers-pop-culture-ranked-tiger-king-tiger-woods-tyga">adore</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/3/23/22344898/pop-culture-ducks-ranked-daffy-donald-aflac-psyduck-ranking">ranking</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/8/15/20806032/sharks-ranked-47-meters-down-uncaged">absurd</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2020/7/29/21345755/top-26-babies-ranked-baby-boomer-rugrats-baby-yoda">things</a>), my colleague Miles Surrey and I decided to rank the top 25 bugs in pop culture. A couple notes before we begin: No spiders were included in the making of this list, both because they sort of feel like their own separate category, and because they scare the bejeezus out of us. And second, some bugs had to be grouped together because, if you know anything about bugs, they tend to travel in packs.</p>
<p id="MjBnfV">Now without further ado, the list. <em>—Megan Schuster</em></p>
<h3 id="d8GZgi">25. Human Centipede, <em>The Human Centipede</em>
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<p id="uKhDKf"><strong>Schuster: </strong>I’m so sorry. From the bottom of my soul, you have no idea how sorry I am to remind you that this movie—this <em>abomination</em>—exists. Miles and I thought about leaving it off of this ranking; about shielding you from the unimaginable horror that is three people stitched anus-to-face together in a twisted experiment conducted by (of course) a fictional German surgeon. </p>
<p id="uLstR8">But, well, we’re only human. And let’s be honest, it’s gonna take a lot more than just the two of <em>us</em> to protect you all from something that villainous. So here it is: the human centipede. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to say 10,000 rosaries.</p>
<p id="EHEJW1"><strong>Miles Surrey:</strong> I mean, at least we had the good sense not to include the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/film/humancentipede3/humancentipede3-edit-xlarge.jpg">sequels</a>. It’s not the stuff of <em>BuzzFeed</em> quizzes, but for what it’s worth, I’d prefer to be at the front of the centipede. One sec, I’m getting a call from HR! </p>
<h3 id="2Npkuw">24. The Giant Bugs That Still Give Us Nightmares From Peter Jackson’s<em> King Kong </em>
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<p id="dswKid"><strong>Surrey: </strong>When Merian C. Cooper directed the original <em>King Kong</em> in 1933, he included an <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2006-01-06-0601060037-story.html">infamous “spider pit” scene</a> that horrified audiences from the movie’s first test screening. Not only was the scene cut, but Cooper apparently tossed the film canister in the trash, never to be seen again. Peter Jackson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOMKnhN7ABs&t=224s">recreated Cooper’s vision</a> as a side project, using an old shooting script and stop motion techniques. But while the scene is an impressively creepy sequence for something originally aimed at 1930s theatergoers, Jackson’s 2005 <em>King Kong </em>remake gets its own giant bug scene that is pure nightmare fuel. </p>
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<p id="fcfhi7">To this day, it’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen—a sadistic descent into hell where giant slugs latch on to Andy Serkis’s limbs and slowly devour him while his character’s still alive and (futilely) trying to fight them off with a machete. Jackson’s bravura filmmaking deserves a much higher place on this list, but Megan and I can’t forgive <em>King Kong</em> for all the sleepless nights we’ve endured thinking about the giant slugs and their giant teeth. </p>
<h3 id="mtVEuH">23. Z, <em>Antz</em>
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<p id="SEKKX2"><strong>Surrey: </strong>Released just under two months apart in 1998, <em>Antz</em> and <em>A Bug’s Life</em> had such suspiciously similar premises that it led to a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-bugs-life-antz-rivalry_n_5b7eb6c3e4b0348585fe2ecd">public feud</a> between DreamWorks and Pixar—specifically Pixar’s John Lasseter and DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was a former Disney executive. (If Katzenberg’s name rings a bell, he also had this brilliant idea for a streaming service called <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/10/22/21528921/quibi-folded-streaming-quick-bites-jeffrey-katzenberg">Quibi</a>.) </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="w6GiZz"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Summer Is Coming. So Are Trillions of Brood X Cicadas.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22429664/cicadas-brood-x-emergence-17-year-wait"},{"title":"The Night the Bugs Came for Joba Chamberlain","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/5/11/22428950/yankees-cleveland-bug-game-midges-joba-chamberlain"},{"title":"Most of All, Cicadas Sound Like Summertime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428860/cicadas-emerging-sound-of-summer-nostalgia"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="ifcXt3">Picking between <em>Antz</em> and<em> A Bug’s Life</em> might be a matter of individual taste: They both got favorable reviews and accumulated decent box office totals. But I’ll stick to <em>A Bug’s Life</em>, since its diminutive protagonist is a lot more likable and wasn’t voiced by Woody Allen. (Granted, Kevin Spacey was the grasshopper villain in <em>A Bug’s Life</em>, but at least he was brutally devoured off-screen by a bunch of chicks at the end of the movie.) Z needs to take an L here. </p>
<h3 id="wtnKIm">22. Flea Circuses </h3>
<p id="kme4TH"><strong>Surrey: </strong>One of the reasons flea circuses were a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2LF04Y9n5hJTHK1l6ffLhPc/the-rise-and-demise-of-the-flea-circus">booming industry in the 1800s</a> was because [<em>holds back vomit</em>] the insects were so prevalent in households you could just scoop a whole show’s worth out of someone’s mattress. If that’s what prevents flea circuses from still being a popular attraction in the 21st century, I’m all for it.</p>
<p id="AdanGQ"><strong>Schuster: </strong>I will go to sleep tonight knowing the history of flea circuses, and let me just say, my life is now worse off for it. </p>
<h3 id="Ox5dwV">21. The Bugs From <em>James and the Giant Peach</em>
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<p id="bJaOHL"><strong>Schuster: </strong>On the surface, this is supposed to be a sweet story about a boy who finds belonging and comfort in a magical, unexpected way. In reality, it’s an extremely concerning tale about neglect and human-sized insects who terrorize New York City and cultily convince a lonely child that they should be his family. Just look at this segment from the Wikipedia page of Tim Burton’s 1996 film adaptation: </p>
<blockquote><p id="JYuUEO">Mr. Centipede runs for New York mayor and is now James’ father, Miss Spider opens a club and is now his mother, Earthworm becomes a mascot for a skin-care company and is now James’ uncle, Mrs. Ladybug becomes an obstetrician and is James’ aunt, Mr. Grasshopper becomes a concert violinist and is now James’ grandfather, and Glowworm becomes the light in the torch of the Statue of Liberty and is now his grandmother.</p></blockquote>
<p id="wVZdTJ">The bugs in this story run the gamut from “not <em>so</em> scary” to “certified nightmare inducers,” and the Tim Burton of it all just adds to the creep factor. At least Mr. Centipede was probably a better mayor than Bill de Blasio.</p>
<h3 id="adCwlS">20. The “Judas” Bugs, <em>Mimic</em> </h3>
<p id="7tVgg2"><strong>Surrey: </strong>From the Pale Man in <em>Pan’s Labyrinth</em> to the Fish Man Who Fucks in <em>The Shape of Water</em>, Guillermo del Toro has been responsible for some of the coolest and most original creature designs in Hollywood. Given the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s reputation in this space, “big bugs” probably aren’t going to be listed among his greatest hits, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to like—or more accurately, be grossed out by—in del Toro’s 1997 horror film <em>Mimic</em>. </p>
<p id="z9Ph0L"><em>Mimic</em> is set in New York City, a few years after a plague spread by cockroaches was eradicated by a genetically engineered “Judas” bug. (It’s a cross between a mantis and a termite.) Naturally, the bugs continued evolving underground to the point that they’re the size of a human and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaWCkQzKopo">want Josh Brolin for dinner</a>. <em>Mimic</em> is an appropriate title for a movie that takes many of its cues from <em>Alien</em> and the works of David Cronenberg, but its disgusting bugs still hold up—even though I’ve <em>definitely</em> encountered weirder things underground commuting on the MTA. </p>
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<h3 id="VKtzca">19. Irradiated Ants, <em>Them!</em>
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<p id="aAFXnj"><strong>Schuster:</strong> <em>Them!</em> was a pretty revolutionary concept for its time. The 1954 film is about two groups of irradiated ants that escape the New Mexico desert and attempt to establish colonies in Los Angeles. It was the first film to feature Big Bugs as a villain, and one of the earlier nuclear-related movies that would eventually grow to have a huge (pun intended) effect on that era. All in all, though, it’s hard to take the ants as seriously today. First, they’re ants, which aren’t the scariest of antagonists even when they’re 8 feet long. And second, irradiated supervillains (and even superheroes!) are a pretty played-out idea in 2021. Still: These ants paved the way for some important future filmmaking tropes, so they earned a spot in the top 20.</p>
<p id="5C2raa"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Japan came up with a much better <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/5/29/18643290/godzilla-king-of-monsters-meaning-nature">nuclear metaphor</a> in the 1950s. Giant thicc lizard > big ants, no contest. </p>
<h3 id="2MKd1V">18. “Ants Marching” by Dave Matthews Band</h3>
<p id="KebU8z"><strong>Schuster: </strong>The opening sequence to this song is unforgettable: A horn-y ’90s relic that has transcended its era thanks to features in countless movies and TV shows (and specifically at least three episodes of <em>Community</em>—there must have been some major DMB heads among the producers!). But outside of the song being popular for being popular, there’s not a whole lot going for it. It’s another jam about how life is monotonous (original!) and we’re all just ants marching toward, well, death basically, which is a pretty dark fucking sentiment even when you mask it with an upbeat backing track. Apologies to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/4/30/22411715/crash-dave-matthews-anniversary">all the DMB fans we have on staff</a>, but while “Crash Into Me” may deserve to live on, this one does not. </p>
<h3 id="VmBXlU">17. The Scorpion King </h3>
<p id="BINzGa"><strong>Surrey: </strong>[<em>Record scratch</em>] [<em>Freeze frame</em>] Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation: </p>
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<p id="wFoftQ">It was a rough debut for Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson’s Scorpion King in <em>The Mummy Returns</em>, with PlayStation 2–level graphics that didn’t necessarily age poorly—they looked flat-out awful to begin with. (If it’s any consolation, Johnson still won Choice Movie Villain at the 2001 Teen Choice Awards.) The Scorpion King would ultimately redeem himself with a spinoff movie that’s quite entertaining in a “what if the Rock tried cosplaying as Conan the Barbarian?” sort of way. Still, the sting (sorry) of the Scorpion King’s original CGI monstrosity will haunt us for years to come. </p>
<h3 id="Kd7tGY">16. Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers</h3>
<p id="DnkcZG"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Honestly, Flea could have been higher on this list. I don’t think Miles or I would necessarily consider ourselves Pepper Heads (correct me if I’m wrong, Miles!), but between his incredible success as the bassist of the band, his, like, third life at this point as a basketball commentator/Lakers historian, plus the epic one he led before he even joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the dude has gone through a lot. Not to mention the fact that he titled his autobiography <em>Acid for the Children</em>, which is one of the single coolest things I’ve ever heard? </p>
<p id="65XU03">Like the Chili Peppers or not, Flea seems like someone who always has a story to tell—for better or for worse—and is probably a great hang. And isn’t that really what we’re all striving to be?</p>
<p id="8XDYA1"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Agreed, this is the one Flea I wouldn’t mind having over in my apartment. </p>
<h3 id="QfSfF8">15. Barry B. Benson, <em>Bee Movie</em>
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<p id="zlxMIP"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Jerry Seinfeld as the voice of a bee who decides to sue the human race for exploiting his kind and stealing their honey. What could go wrong?</p>
<p id="5Zw9QL">Turns out, uh, a lot. The <em>Bee Movie</em> did decently well at the box office and got <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/movie/bee-movie">pretty mixed reviews</a> from critics. But as with any movie that’s written by or features a comedian of Seinfeld’s level, that’s not enough to match expectations. Barry’s jokes were mostly funny, and the voice cast—which also features Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, and freaking <em>Oprah</em>—was rock solid. But stack this one up against almost any Pixar offering and it’s going to fall short. Even with Jerry Seinfeld making wisecracks about getting an ant tattoo or <a href="https://screenrant.com/bee-movie-hilarious-raunchy-jokes/">shacking up with a grasshopper</a>. </p>
<p id="v3R0kz"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Forget the grasshopper: Barry B. Benson is out here trying to hook up with a human woman! Talk about shooting your shot. </p>
<h3 id="it4EV4">14. Ant-Man and the Wasp </h3>
<p id="h9S7bw"><strong>Surrey:</strong> I don’t know about you, Megan, but with over 20 movies and now a steady rollout of Disney+ shows, Marvel fatigue is beginning to kick in. (I’ll try to type the rest of this out before I get jabbed with a poison dart by one of the<em> Ringer-Verse</em> folks.) But one area of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe that I’ll never tire of are the <em>Ant-Man</em> movies. Taking Paul Rudd’s lead as the superhero Ant-Man—sometimes he gets very small, other times he gets very big—these films are very charming because they refuse to take themselves seriously. Michael Peña’s rambling monologues belong in a museum. </p>
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<p id="SgdKlL">Meanwhile, Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp—sometimes she gets very small, sadly she does not go very big—does more of the requisite superhero ass-kicking in the Ant-Man-Wasp dynamic. And as long as the Wasp doesn’t share <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/news/evangeline-lilly-apologizes-coronavirus-comments-1203546392/">the actress’s views about social distancing</a> in a pandemic, she can certainly hang, too. </p>
<p id="gAdv8v"><strong>Schuster: </strong>I’m personally pro any film where I can act like the <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pointing-rick-dalton">Leonardo DiCaprio meme</a> whenever the titular character(s) appear on screen, especially when they’re teeny tiny and look like a clue from <em>Where’s Waldo?</em>.</p>
<h3 id="egHj7k">13. The Mutant Frog-Insect-Thing That Crawled Into a Girl’s Mouth in<em> Twin Peaks: The Return </em>
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<p id="JDJr8q"><strong>Surrey:</strong> David Lynch calls it a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/arts/television/david-lynch-room-to-dream.html">“frog-moth,”</a> the <em>Twin Peaks</em> fan Wiki refers to it as a <a href="https://twinpeaks.fandom.com/wiki/Hatchling">“Hatchling,”</a> I’ve gone with a more simple “Hell no!” Whatever you want to name it, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY2jHBtPcfk">closing image</a> of <em>Twin Peaks: The Return</em>’s superlative eighth episode, where said mysterious creature crawls inside a sleeping girl’s mouth, will be hard to shake off: </p>
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<p id="zi7frm">Even for Lynch’s standards, this is horrifying stuff. Make sure to close your windows at night, to make sure this doesn’t happen to you! </p>
<h3 id="LY5oAG">12. The Alien Bug,<em> Men in Black </em>
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<p id="hq8ZFk"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Not a lot of creativity went into the extraterrestrial antagonist of the first <em>Men in Black</em>: Taking off the human skin suit reveals that the creature is basically just a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UONfi1pwQzI">giant cockroach</a>. (Not that squaring off against a giant cockroach <em>wouldn’t</em> be terrifying.) What really makes the alien bug so memorable and disgusting in equal measure is Vincent D’Onofrio. His nonstop convulsing as the dead farmer whose skin is being used as the bug’s human disguise is a top-tier performance in terms of physical acting. I can’t decide whether we need to give him an award or douse his entire body with Raid. </p>
<p id="W44AZm"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Is “both” an option?</p>
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<h3 id="mQsPqI">11. “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov</h3>
<p id="cmoGkn"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov went <em>off</em> on this one.</p>
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<p id="1hbFWq">Seriously: Has a piece of music ever better reflected its subject matter? “Flight of the Bumblebee” was written for the opera <em>The Tale of Tsar Saltan</em> in the year 1900, but it’s still used throughout pop culture today. I played piano for over a decade so I have my moments as a classical music geek, but this is a piece that pretty much everyone knows, regardless of whether they’ve ever looked at a piece of sheet music. It’s both an epic and dainty score, and one that has lasted for over a century.</p>
<h3 id="txGrrc">10. The Arachnids, <em>Starship Troopers </em>
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<p id="UHPjyC"><strong>Surrey: </strong>The alien bugs, referred to as “the Arachnids,” aren’t the real draw of <em>Starship Troopers</em>, a glorious anti-fascist satire that was inexplicably misunderstood upon its 1997 release. (I’m not sure what more director Paul Verhoeven could’ve done beyond <a href="https://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/starship-troopers-700x300.jpg">putting Neil Patrick Harris in an SS uniform</a>.) Still, on a scale of the <em>Jurassic Park </em>dinosaurs to the Scorpion King, the Arachnids’ CGI has held up surprisingly well over time. </p>
<p id="1oSPSd">Verhoeven makes great use of the Arachnids’ swift, animalistic movements for <em>Starship Troopers</em>’ many gnarly death scenes in which nameless soldiers get hacked apart. But nothing compares to the scene near the end of the film where the “Brain Bug” lives up to its name and literally <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtTgHuGgW-c">slurps the gray matter out of a dude’s cranium</a> like it’s a smoothie. To be fair, I’d also go to war against a bunch of giant alien bugs for the chance to spend more time with Denise Richards. </p>
<h3 id="vGuvtP">9. Bumblebee, the Autobot </h3>
<p id="nehxmP"><strong>Surrey:</strong> I’m a sucker for robots with a soul, which is not something you’d associate with Michael Bay’s mindless <em>Transformers</em> movies. But the spinoff <em>Bumblebee</em>, released in 2018, went in a new direction for the franchise best described as “<em>Iron Giant</em> copyright infringement.” The film focuses on the bond between teenager Charlie (played by Hailee Steinfeld) and Bumblebee, the amnesiac Autobot taking the form of a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle. (OK, so there’s some Herbie copyright infringement, too.) </p>
<p id="3XtXyU">But just because <em>Bumblebee</em> is derivative of other human-machine companionship stories doesn’t make it any less moving. Did I start sobbing in a crowded theater watching a <em>Transformers</em> movie when <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/012-B-FF-028R-PK.jpg">Charlie and Bumblebee parted ways at the end of the film with an emotional hug</a>? Of course, I’m not a machine! But Bumblebee, clearly, is a perfect one.</p>
<h3 id="PywRFY">8. Cri-Kee, <em>Mulan</em>
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<p id="dqkmjj"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Cri-Kee’s introduction is such a classic Disney scene. With Mulan running late for her matchmaker appointment (natch), her grandmother buys what’s supposedly a lucky cricket to help with the process. Of course she has to prove it’s lucky—but rather than doing something sensible like flipping a coin or guessing a number someone else is thinking of, she closes her eyes and walks out into traffic.</p>
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<p id="4Kchpl">It’s an epic disaster: She causes a 10-cart pileup that disrupts the entire thoroughfare and probably gets her on the shit list of every merchant in town. But she made it through unscathed, so Cri-Kee is deemed to be a lucky one.</p>
<p id="QrCHwg">Fast-forward to the rest of Mulan’s adventures—stealing her father’s armor, illegally joining the army, falling in love, getting kicked out of the army, and eventually saving the Emperor—and Cri-Kee is there all along the way. Unlike Mushu, the talking “dragon” (voiced by Eddie Murphy), Cri-Kee doesn’t say a word. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t get his point across through looks alone—like this one he gives after his adventure with grandma.</p>
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<p id="hgKxMh"><strong>Surrey:</strong> My feelings about Disney’s live-action <em>Mulan</em> remake are best summed up by the fact that they <a href="https://www.insider.com/is-crikee-cricket-in-live-action-mulan">turned Cri-Kee into a human sidekick</a>. Tell me your movie sucks without telling me your movie sucks. </p>
<h3 id="nehdlk">7. Jiminy Cricket, <em>Pinocchio</em>
</h3>
<p id="PuCDDE"><strong>Schuster: </strong>The most famous song in all of the Disney extended universe isn’t sung by one of the original princesses, or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNKuARjkWEg">fairy godmother</a>, or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jQIIXuhsC8">lion</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08NlhjpVFsU">bear</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuR4KUmrbkA">popstar</a>. Rather it’s performed by a lowly cricket, in a movie about a wooden boy who dreams of becoming real—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pguMUFyJ3_U">and it’s so much more meaningful because of it</a>.</p>
<p id="2Zxffw">In the 80-plus years since it was originally performed, “When You Wish Upon a Star” has become Disney’s calling card. But it was written to be <em>Pinocchio</em>’s main theme, and it’s beautifully sung by Cliff Edwards, who plays the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the film. Jiminy serves as both the narrator of <em>Pinocchio</em> the movie, and also as the titular character’s conscience. It’s his duty to help his charge stay pure of heart and prove himself worthy of becoming a real boy. There’s a lot about <em>Pinocchio </em>that isn’t pleasant—the puppet lies, vandalizes, gets drunk, and at one point even grows donkey ears and a tail because he’s acting like such a jackass. But Pinocchio eventually gets his wish, and Jiminy is with him every step of the way.</p>
<h3 id="k2QAyZ">6. Seth Brundle, <em>The Fly</em> (1986) </h3>
<p id="5vKama"><strong>Surrey:</strong> A movie so disgusting it gives <em>The Human Centipede</em> a run for its money, so I’m sure I’d hear from HR if I linked to any scenes or screengrabs from it. The body horror god David Cronenberg is in fine form with <em>The Fly</em>, which sees hot-shot scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) inadvertently fuse with a fly while testing out his homemade teleportation device. The transformation from attractive, 30-something Goldblum to a deformed monstrosity with acidic vomit—OK, here’s a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuWXMMvnVcY">link</a>, but you’ve been warned—is not for the squeamish. But there’s no denying the power of <em>The Fly</em>’s Oscar-winning makeup and creature design, even if its enduring imagery is something you absolutely don’t want to spend a lot of time looking at. Thank God I already ate lunch. </p>
<h3 id="TUGd2s">5. Mothra </h3>
<p id="Y0AClD"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Here are some of the top Google searches for Mothra: </p>
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<p id="2552wX">I ship them, and I adore this gorgeous kaiju in her different <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/godzilla/images/f/f7/Godzilla.jp_-_28_-_FinalMosuImago_Mothra_2004.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190102223916">on-screen</a> <a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41pErbKLNkL._AC_.jpg">forms</a>. The biggest beef I have with the Warner Bros. MonsterVerse is that it had the audacity to kill off Mothra in <em>Godzilla: King of the Monsters</em>, which should be a federal crime. If Mothra doesn’t come back in future MonsterVerse films to plan the wedding of her dreams with Godzilla, we riot.</p>
<p id="Z6MfHB"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Miles, in the future, please give me a heads-up before you screenshot my browser history, thanks. </p>
<h3 id="1e1f6z">4. Flik, <em>A Bug’s Life</em>
</h3>
<p id="U9FWxD"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Flik has seen some shit, man. This ant is just out here trying to be an inventor, and instead of getting even one ounce of support from the rest of his ant colony, he’s ostracized and eventually exiled (granted he deserved that last part a bit, as he did knock a year’s food supply into some water with one of his inventions). After that, though, he meets a traveling circus troupe; convinces them to pose as warriors so they can get him back into his home colony; builds a fake bird to try to save the ants from the grasshoppers; gets exiled again; then gets captured, beaten, and mocked, before he goes on to save the colony once and for all.</p>
<p id="Jn7yv6">I don’t know about you, Miles, but I’m exhausted just reading that! Imagine trying to save the world as literally an ant; what a dreamer Flik is to not only conceive of the idea, but to bring it to fruition.</p>
<p id="TWpJLH"><strong>Surrey:</strong> Not even sure how you can sum that up on a résumé. But shout-out to Flik, especially since he’s very high on our list without committing insect category fraud. </p>
<h3 id="j8G6ca">3. Herbie the Love Bug </h3>
<p id="hIRDhw"><strong>Surrey:</strong> It’s the end of an era for the Volkswagen Beetle. The company discontinued production of the iconic car in 2019, and in the years and decades to come, we’ll be seeing fewer Beetles out on the road. But at least we’ll always have the nostalgic comforts of Herbie. The anthropomorphic Beetle, which first appeared in the 1968 film <em>The Love Bug</em>, was perfectly geared (no pun intended) for any kid obsessed with cars. It certainly didn’t hurt that Herbie looked adorable, either, or came with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwfIpCQ2TC0">boisterous theme song</a> that goes down like a heaping spoonful of sugar. </p>
<p id="TIl642">I’m sure most folks our age associate Herbie more with <em>Herbie: Fully Loaded</em>, a bland nostalgia play masquerading as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQOa3aAIi7g">NASCAR propaganda</a>. (Herbie belongs at Le Mans, not the Indy 500!) But my heart still belongs to <em>The Love Bug</em> and its ridiculous climax that saw Herbie finish a race with two spots on the podium. Your fave could never. </p>
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<h3 id="ZjOOkg">2. The Beatles</h3>
<p id="ub5m3u"><strong>Schuster: </strong>Here come the trolls, do do do do. </p>
<p id="GaCWCn">I don’t know who’s going to be angrier about this one: music fans, or the spelling police. Yes, we’re aware that the Beatles are not beetles, but we’re going phonetically here. And yes, the Beatles are an all-time group! They changed the face of music, brought the British Invasion to American shores (well, the musical version), and shoehorned bowl cuts back into the cultural lexicon. I’m honestly not sure which is the biggest achievement of that bunch.</p>
<p id="8mqeoA">But there is one force the Beatles can’t top, and unfortunately for them, he’s also a part of this list ...</p>
<h3 id="CFdBJ1">1. Bugs Bunny</h3>
<p id="FMJhay"><strong>Schuster: </strong></p>
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<p id="MmYfn5">How could it be anyone else? No matter how animated or irradiated, no pop culture bug is bigger than Bugs. Bugs Bunny has been around for over 80 years, and as it stands could easily be around for 80 more. He’s hilarious—his continuous roasting of Elmer Fudd is some of the funniest children’s programming I’ve ever seen—cunning, clever, and also chill. Rarely is he fazed by anything, and if he is, it doesn’t last long. </p>
<p id="J9JPU4">Kwame Opam said it best in a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/27/9049393/bugs-bunny-75th-anniversary-cartoon-characters"><em>Verge</em> piece</a> titled “Why Bugs Bunny is the greatest cartoon character ever”: “As a culture hero, Bugs punches up … He’s rarely ever in an empowered position. So often, he’s lost and disoriented when the bullets start flying. But he is uniquely able to take on the establishment and win. He even <a href="https://twitter.com/DevonESawa/status/1323862936545161217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1323862936545161217%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmelmagazine.com%2Fen-us%2Fstory%2Fbugs-bunny-florida-gif">cut Florida away from the Union</a>, just to show people he could.”</p>
<p id="c5qSka">Who doesn’t want to root for someone like that?</p>
<aside id="XaSnVZ"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside><p id="dgW55E"></p>
https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428629/pop-culture-bugs-ranked-bunny-beatles-mothraMiles SurreyMegan Schuster2021-05-11T06:30:00-04:002021-05-11T06:30:00-04:00Summer Is Coming. So Are Trillions of Brood X Cicadas.
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://jaytorresart.com/" target="_blank">Jay Torres</a></figcaption>
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<p>A once-every-17-year cicada emergence is about to take place. To prepare, we set out to find the massive insects—and learn all about how they live, sound, and taste. </p> <p id="kEpV0A"><em>Have you heard the news? The cicadas are coming—and some have even started to arrive already. In a matter of days, trillions of the once-every-17-years species of Brood X cicadas will emerge from their burrows and blanket much of the Eastern United States in a wave of ear-splitting mating calls and discarded molt shells. To commemorate the occasion, we here at </em>The Ringer <em>present to you </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22430224/welcome-to-bug-day-on-the-ringer"><em>Bug Day</em></a><em>: a celebration of all things insects, and their influence—for better or worse—on sports and popular culture.</em></p>
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<p id="HEApuD">In a greenwood behind a church near the border of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the nation’s capital, there are holes in the ground. A collection of four digit-sized burrows, to be exact. The creatures we’re hunting for lie within them. How deep is unclear, but they’re down there—really, they always have been.</p>
<p id="ClxIN8">They’re insects, our prize. At this stage of development they’re referred to as nymphs, suggesting etymologically that they are newly made, fresh, and immature. But in reality they’ve lived beneath this plot for about 17 years. If they were human, they’d be old enough to drive, apply for a passport, and register as an organ donor. Which, of course, they can’t. Because they’re nymphs. Cicada nymphs, more precisely. And as you may have heard, they’ll soon be coming out en masse. </p>
<p id="zwV0JG">From the middle of May to the end of June, in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/04/01/cicadas-come-out-2021-brood-x/">vast territory</a> stretching across most of the mid-Atlantic and a few Midwestern states, a constant and yet elusive revelry is about to take place. Brood X (as opposed to Broods I through IX, or Broods XIII and XIV, each of which has a different emergence cycle) of the 17-year periodical cicada line is set to bloom. For about a six-week period, the number of total cicadas in the aforementioned areas will likely reach into the trillions. By comparison, the total human population of the United States is just over 330 million. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="5rIY4M"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Night the Bugs Came for Joba Chamberlain","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/5/11/22428950/yankees-cleveland-bug-game-midges-joba-chamberlain"},{"title":"Most of All, Cicadas Sound Like Summertime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428860/cicadas-emerging-sound-of-summer-nostalgia"},{"title":"The Definitive Ranking of Pop Culture Bugs","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428629/pop-culture-bugs-ranked-bunny-beatles-mothra"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="NDo9a3">Periodical cicadas of this variety are distinct to North America, and have populated the continent for millions of years. Appearing in such overwhelming numbers, the bugs are often received by the unfamiliar as a harbinger of pestilence and downfall; <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/brood-x-cicadas-actually-good-fear-not">according to <em>National Geographic</em></a>, Puritan settlers in Massachusetts likened the bugs to “swarms from the Old Testament and called them ‘locusts’” in 1634. Now, in the midst of global pandemic, people could be forgiven for leaving a mark of lamb’s blood on their front door when alerted of the insects’ imminent approach. Yet the cicadas are in truth nothing more than a bizarre and natural marvel. The emergence of Brood X is, at its essence, a sanctified blip on the calendar.</p>
<p id="aOMPsb">“They’ve been feeding on the tree sap, right on the roots underneath us, basically. And they’re all over the place,” says Angela Saenz, a graduate student at the University of Maryland who studies entomology and has volunteered to be my guide in the hunt to find cicadas. Saenz is wearing a white T-shirt that features a print of a cicada sprawled from just below her shoulder to just above her navel. She’s been digging holes for the better part of an hour, to no avail. Nymphs don’t like water, and the ground is still moist from a recent shower. “As long as there’s a tree that they can feed on, they will be there,” she assures me.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="V4bw3Q"><q>“Cicadas are not going to bite, they’re not going to sting. They’re not going to fly away with small children and dogs like the monkeys in <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>.” —Dr. Michael Raupp</q></aside></div>
<p id="5gBDJ9">Saenz’s professor, Dr. Michael Raupp, set up this excursion after I reached out to him to inquire about Brood X’s arrival. The purpose of the venture is to locate a cicada nymph and, hopefully, see the creature that will define this summer up close. Raupp researches periodical cicadas throughout the country and educates the public by dispelling popular myths about the insects. He often talks to reporters and news networks, and in 2013 even made an appearance on <a href="https://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/video/cicada-expert-professor-mike-raupp-part-2/n37780"><em>The Tonight Show With Jay Leno</em></a>, in which he and Leno ate cicadas on national television. “I popped one in my mouth and I said, ‘It’s got a buttery texture and a nice nutty flavor,’” recalls Raupp. “[Leno] popped one in his mouth and said, ‘These are better than Cheetos.’”</p>
<p id="eCWgDW">The bugs have quite the reputation. For one, cicadas are gargantuan by insect standards. If the average grasshopper is about as large as the tip of an index finger, a fully grown cicada is the size of a large adult thumb, both in length and width. Remember that <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/07/new-york-yankees-aaron-judge-houston-astros-jose-altuve-tall-short-funny-photo-memes-jokes">photo of José Altuve standing next to Aaron Judge</a>? Think of the size discrepancy in that context … now imagine trillions of the insect equivalent of Judge hitting the country simultaneously. </p>
<p id="HA85SU">Secondly, the cicadas are <em>loud</em>. They’re the screamers of the animal kingdom: The males make a revving, guttural blare that’s meant to attract females to mate. When multiplied by a few million and applied in unison, the wave of sound can seem industrial in nature, a bit like a chorus of lawn mowers. In 2004, when Brood X last came out, a Maryland resident <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.cicada26may26-story.html">told <em>The Baltimore Sun</em></a>, “It sounds like I’m living in the Amazon.” “They can get to 110 decibels,” says Saenz. That’s roughly the same decibel level as a Metallica concert. </p>
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<p id="to0jXj">There’s also the matter of their life cycle, which is spent almost entirely underground, save for six hedonistic weeks above it. Cicadas start off as eggs laid on tree branches, falling to the ground only when hatched. Raupp estimates the tumble to be between 60 and 80 feet on average. Their body size, he says, is no more than a few millimeters at this point, making the fall the equivalent of a human jumping off a skyscraper. After impact, the micro nymphs will bury themselves, searching innately for the roots of a nearby plant or tree. Cicada nymphs can’t survive in soil temperature that’s below 64 degrees Fahrenheit, so they have to dig deep. Once they’ve reached an optimal depth they feast by harvesting crucial xylem fluid from nearby roots. </p>
<p id="8wjoLb">“[Xylem] is the plumbing that conducts water and nutrients up to the canopy of the tree for photosynthesis,” says Raupp. “And they’re just going to suck that underground for 17 years, shedding their skin several times, before they emerge 17 years later.”</p>
<p id="xto2VI">Cicadas are not asleep when they’re underground; they are merely growing. They spend the better part of two decades preparing for a single six-week extravaganza—their lives quite literally culminate in one big party. When a nymph is ready to emerge after its yearslong incubation, it must wait for the soil temperature to climb high enough. The holes we encounter in our search are known as turrets or chimneys, and they enable nymphs to venture outside and test their surroundings, to see whether the temperature is right. When the threshold is met, the bugs burst through and out of the ground. It’s the insect equivalent of the Undertaker rising from his casket. </p>
<p id="m20e1x">The cicadas do not emerge all at once. There are usually a few outliers that breach too early, leaving themselves vulnerable to hungry predators. Even for those that do arrive on time, there are multiple waves (to go along with multiple species) of periodical cicadas, stretching the season across a month and a half. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="TXjoWM"><q>“I bet you’ve eaten a clam, I bet you might have eaten a raw oyster. It sits at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and it sucks you know what out of the water, and now you’re not going to eat this cicada that’s been sucking on plant sap for 17 years?” —Raupp</q></aside></div>
<p id="a2u7L9">Much like a carcass that falls to the seafloor, the arrival of a cicada brood results in a momentary feeding frenzy. Birds, raccoons, frogs, opossums, snakes, and squirrels all gorge themselves on the creatures, until they simply cannot eat any more. The bugs that survive then go about living and, of utmost importance, completing the process of procreation. </p>
<p id="6lCBDJ">There is a fungus Saenz tells me about, <em>Massospora cicadina</em>, that infects cicadas through their abdomen. This fungus contains chemicals like those that are found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, and it eats away at the insect’s lower half, essentially replacing a cicada’s gut, genitals, and bottom with a makeshift structure of fungal spores. Once inside a cicada body, <em>Massospora</em> results in a kind of mind control, wherein an infected host is compelled to copulate with others, thereby spreading the fungus throughout a community before dying. While this may sound terrifying—CNN has referred to impacted bugs as “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/03/us/zombie-cicadas-west-virginia-fungus-scn-trnd/index.html">zombie cicadas</a>”—Saenz says that neither the infected cicadas nor the fungus itself is a danger to humans. “It’s very specialized in the cicada,” she says, “and it’s just there on the ground, in the soil, just waiting until [they] come out.”</p>
<p id="WBGYFQ"><em>Massospora</em> would seem to be a major obstacle for cicadas’ existence, but given the sheer volume of bugs in the brood, the fungus’s impact is limited. A large number may be lost, but the machine will continue to churn. Once out of the ground, each nymph searches for the nearest tree to summit, at which point it attaches to bark and sheds its creamy exoskeleton in favor of a new tar-toned shell. It takes a few days for this new husk to harden. </p>
<p id="lr7hsT">Raupp says a mature cicada will live for only about two to four weeks. Males and females will mate, and then the females will lay up to 600 eggs on the branches of the same trees they just crawled up. A few days later the 17-year cycle begins anew: The adults die and fertilize the soil, and the babies fall out of the trees and into the grounds of their ancestors.</p>
<p id="6AB3ZQ">By our fourth tree we still haven’t found anything. There’s a creek a few yards in the distance, a stony vein of water and nutrients. A mixture of dead leaves and crisp clovers blankets the three turrets at the base of a conifer. Water trickles occasionally from the treetop. Saenz continues to tunnel through the earth, pausing only to briefly describe the anatomy of our prey. Each cicada nymph has a piercing tube, she says, that it uses to feast on root sap. Fully developed females also have a tiny swordlike extension that protrudes from their thorax to cut the bark of a tree and deposit their eggs in the slit. “I really wish we’d find one so that I can show you,” she says, slightly perturbed by the wait. </p>
<p id="We0QGF">Soon enough, spotting cicadas will be the least of anyone’s concern. They will make themselves heard in parks, backyards, and wooded spaces. They will reign over branches and tree trunks. Yet they will not invade areas without greenery, nor will they travel great distances. While their size and sound might seem menacing, the bugs pose no threat to humans or pets. “Cicadas are not going to bite, they’re not going to sting,” says Raupp. “They’re not going to fly away with small children and dogs like the monkeys in <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>. These are harmless creatures.” </p>
<p id="GflGZs">Since he knows the comparison will keep being made, Raupp again emphasizes the difference between cicadas and biblical locusts of yore. “Locusts are grasshoppers. Grasshoppers have chewing mouthparts,” he says. “These are more related to aphids.” Cicadas have little desire for us or our produce; they merely want to mate, drink, and die. (A vibe.) </p>
<p id="qO1mfH">They are also, I’ve been told, quite tasty. Raupp’s website links out to a <a href="https://cicadacrewumd.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/2/5/112598151/cicada-licious_cookbook_cover_jennajandin_umdentm_2004.pdf">cicada cookbook of sorts</a> that a former student put together. It features recipes such as “Cicada Dumplings,” “Banana Cicada Bread,” and “El Chirper Tacos.” Raupp says that while the cicadas are best served cooked (and lord, please, season them), even eaten raw they are not so different from seafood like shrimp or prawns. “Here in America, let’s face it. I bet you’ve eaten a clam, I bet you might have eaten a raw oyster. And that’s what I say, ‘Guys, do you know what an oyster does for a living?’ It sits at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and it sucks you know what out of the water, and now you’re not going to eat this cicada that’s been sucking on plant sap for 17 years? What’s up with that?’”</p>
<p id="9s0y1S">Finally, we find one on a hillside. We spot five burrows protruding from the forest floor, and it takes only two strikes with a shovel to excavate the creatures from within. They are a pinkish beige, thicker than my finger and wide enough to cover the creases at the center of my hand. They are heavy and furtive, and—if I can admit as much—deeply off-putting. </p>
<p id="Tlem3v">They are not terrifying, though. Just natural. The type of natural that people generally avoid, step on, spray with poison, or call an exterminator to deal with, but natural nonetheless. Flipped on its back, the nymph has a sharp tube, the one Saenz promised, attached to its mouth, making it look like something out of a Ridley Scott flick. It is understandable, after holding the insect, how cicadas can reach such daring sizes in maturity. It would be surprising if they didn’t. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="B7TdqW">A step outside of the canopy, on a manmade pathway, an inquisitive onlooker watches us explore. His hair is a speckled gray, and he’s tall enough to make eye contact with us over the wall of ferns and branches that mark the thicket. He’s standing absolutely still, save for a slight lean, and he wants to know if we’re looking for cicadas. Saenz tells him that we are. “Are they here yet?” he asks warily from the shadow of the trees, as if the cicadas haven’t really been here all along. </p>
<aside id="AdO6gJ"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside><p id="XrRN4D"></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22429664/cicadas-brood-x-emergence-17-year-waitLex Pryor2021-05-11T06:10:00-04:002021-05-11T06:10:00-04:00The Night the Bugs Came for Joba Chamberlain
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/u3ELBkGIHhJyU3JrSDEg7b06MQY=/225x0:2625x1800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69267462/Joba_newFEATURE.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://jaytorresart.com/" target="_blank">Jay Torres</a></figcaption>
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<p>When the rookie phenom took the mound in Game 2 of the 2007 ALDS, he seemed poised to deliver the Yankees a victory. Then the midges swarmed—and created one of the most indelible moments in baseball history.</p> <p id="5WNGzv"><em>Have you heard the news? The cicadas are coming—and some have even started to arrive already. In a matter of days, trillions of the once-every-17-years species of Brood X cicadas will emerge from their burrows and blanket much of the Eastern United States in a wave of ear-splitting mating calls and discarded molt shells. To commemorate the occasion, we here at </em>The Ringer <em>present to you </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22430224/welcome-to-bug-day-on-the-ringer"><em>Bug Day</em></a><em>: a celebration of all things insects, and their influence—for better or worse—on sports and popular culture.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="lAEBfr">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="oE95bq">The first oddity was the temperature. </p>
<p id="i68fIg">On the evening of October 5, 2007, as the Yankees and Indians geared up for Game 2 of the American League divisional series, the thermometer at Jacobs Field read 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The warm, muggy air was typical for Cleveland in June, when slugfests often erupted in taxing humidity, but this was the third week of autumn. “We all brought our cold-weather gear thinking we would see snow and wind and ice and rain,” says play-by-play announcer Chip Caray, who called the game for TBS. Instead, the players, coaches, and fans traded their turtlenecks for T-shirts, as playoff baseball in Northeast Ohio took on the feel of a sweaty summer showdown. </p>
<p id="uEAdvV">This was an encouraging development for hitters, who entered Game 2 staring at the prospect of a pitchers’ duel between New York’s Andy Pettitte and Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona. A night earlier, the Indians had put on a power display against Chien-Ming Wang, backing their ace CC Sabathia with four home runs en route to a 12-3 victory. Now, without the burden of brittle bats and with a reliable breeze blowing out toward right-center field, “all the hitters were just happy,” says Ryan Garko, Cleveland’s first baseman at the time. “Nobody wants to play a playoff game in freezing weather. … That time of year, I think all of us felt lucky.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="OkySpf"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Summer Is Coming. So Are Trillions of Brood X Cicadas.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22429664/cicadas-brood-x-emergence-17-year-wait"},{"title":"Most of All, Cicadas Sound Like Summertime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428860/cicadas-emerging-sound-of-summer-nostalgia"},{"title":"The Definitive Ranking of Pop Culture Bugs","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428629/pop-culture-bugs-ranked-bunny-beatles-mothra"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="dzEiyw">By the eighth inning, however, any dreams of a high-scoring affair had been zapped. Outside of allowing a solo homer to Melky Cabrera in the third inning, Cleveland’s breakout starting pitcher—whose name was later revealed to be Roberto Hernández; Fausto Carmona was the <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/2012/07/cleveland_indians_rhp_roberto.html">false identity he had used to obtain a United States visa</a>—had silenced a potent Yankees lineup, allowing just two hits and two walks. Pettitte was every bit as good, stranding numerous base runners and turning a 1-0 lead over to Joba Chamberlain with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning. The dominant rookie right-hander cleaned up Cleveland’s threat and returned for the following frame in an attempt to set the stage for Mariano Rivera to close out the ninth. The game felt all but over. “We were dead in the water,” says Jensen Lewis, then a rookie reliever for the Indians. “There was no way we were hitting Joba that day.” Until a gust of wind changed everything. </p>
<p id="S6Imf8">As Chamberlain returned to the field, a swarm of midges—small, mosquito-like flies that are endemic to the Great Lakes—converged on the infield, turning the mound into a bull’s-eye. The sticky atmosphere, the bright stadium lights, and a gentle northerly wind had attracted thousands of the notorious, nonbiting bugs—typically dormant in the fall—from Lake Erie at the game’s most critical hour. “I just remember Joba grabbing the back of his neck to wipe off sweat and his hand was black, full of bugs,” says Doug Mientkiewicz, the Yankees first baseman in 2007. “You try to block it out, but they were so thick that every breath you took, you’d either inhale them through your mouth or through your nose.” </p>
<p id="CuSqob">Amid this unexpected frenzy, Chamberlain became rattled and lost his command; one walk and two wild pitches later, the rookie had allowed the Indians to tie the game at one. “It was just impossible to focus on throwing strikes,” says Roger Clemens, who had a front-row seat from the visiting dugout. “It should have been treated as a rain delay.”</p>
<p id="JXLhdd">For everyone involved, the “Bug Game” remains one of the strangest experiences of their sporting lives—an unthinkable ecological conflation of events interfering with a rookie phenom right before the greatest closer in MLB history could take the mound. The ramifications and second guesses from that night have since become part of baseball folklore, bolstered by the indelible, insectified imagery and subsequent fall matchups between the two organizations. Almost 14 years later, those in attendance still talk about the moment less like a playoff classic than an act of god.</p>
<p id="kl5fMh">“I don’t know if it was divine intervention or what,” Lewis says, “but we certainly needed it.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="hOPXyG">The Indians had dealt with strange and adverse circumstances throughout the 2007 season. When their home-opening series against the Mariners was postponed in April thanks to about 20 inches of snow, Major League Baseball sent the team to Milwaukee to play a three-game set against the Angels. To make up the original four-game series, Cleveland hosted Seattle on mutual off days during the season, which created burdensome stretches of consecutive games and doubleheaders. The team also dealt with its share of injuries—Cliff Lee suffered a groin strain in spring training, and threw fewer than 100 innings that year—and umpiring controversies. On April 28, it had a six-game winning streak snapped because the umps retroactively added a run to the Orioles’ score three innings after the play in question had occurred. “There were challenges that year,” says Derek Shelton, then Cleveland’s hitting coach. “We continued to plow through.”</p>
<p id="JhfZln">The key to that resilience was a no-excuses organizational mentality that fifth-year manager Eric Wedge had established while climbing the ranks as a minor league skipper. Cleveland featured a blend of youth and experience, and the team bought into Wedge’s mindset down the stretch, going 19-9 in September to finish with 96 wins and clinch the AL Central. During that month, the Indians swept the Twins by defeating ace Johan Santana for the fifth time that season alone. “It’s about learning toughness and just to be able to focus and concentrate on a level that’s beyond others,” says Wedge, who earned AL Manager of the Year honors. “And when you come up against adverse situations, that’s when it really pays off for you.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="pTpQaK"><q>“I don’t know if it was divine intervention or what, but we certainly needed it.” —Former Indians reliever Jensen Lewis</q></aside></div>
<p id="Cl3d0c">Nobody embodied that philosophy better than the pitcher formerly known as Carmona. As a kid working on his father’s farm in Yasama—a rural region of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic—he had grown up <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/2012/02/the_mystery_of_indians_pitcher.html">without proper health care, and had a bad set of teeth from eating raw sugar cane</a>. When he joined the Cleveland baseball academy as a lanky 20-year-old, the organization helped him fix his teeth and devised a plan for him to add weight and improve his strength. “I came up with him all through the minor leagues and if you knew Fausto’s background, it was tough,” Garko says. “He went through a lot to get there.” After three years developing in the minors and a failed attempt in the closer’s role as a rookie, he broke out in 2007, winning 19 games and posting a 3.06 ERA over 215 innings. His emergence at the top of Cleveland’s rotation was one of the main reasons the team went into the 2007 playoffs with real World Series aspirations. </p>
<p id="5UXfpM">“He worked hard in the minor leagues,” Wedge says. “He developed into a solid starting pitcher, great arm, very intense, a lot of fight in him, and a guy that went out and competed like you want all your players to compete.”</p>
<p id="KvS4TP">The Yankees had their own reasons for optimism. They had swept the Indians in two different regular-season series, and had a star-studded lineup headlined by Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Hideki Matsui. After going 21-29 to open the season, they had recalibrated with an impressive summer and finished with 94 wins. Clemens, in his final professional season, joined the team in June, and Chamberlain made his MLB debut in August. The hard-throwing rookie reliever was perhaps the most valuable part of the Yankees’ own 19-win September, as he took the league by storm while posting a 0.38 ERA with 34 strikeouts in 24 innings. “He had electric stuff—a power slider, dominant fastball,” says Clemens, Chamberlain’s lockermate. “He was a great kid, always wanting to learn and get better and he fell right into that role real nicely.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="4m6XXu"><q>“They were so thick that every breath you took, you’d either inhale them through your mouth or through your nose.” —Former Yankees first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz</q></aside></div>
<p id="PbqnRj">As the two teams prepared to square off in October, Caray remembers being “kind of scared shitless” of his assignment. An announcer for Braves games, he had been tasked with leading TBS’s first playoff broadcast, and remembers scrambling to internalize all the narratives swirling around the two historic American League clubs. “The Yankees were the big kids on the block: all those championships, all those big names, Joe Torre, the fantastic legacy that he helped create in New York,” Caray says. “I think in many ways, Cleveland is the prototypical American underdog city. That team was trying to make its mark and show, ‘We are as good as, as important as, and our fans are as knowledgeable as the great fans in New York.’”</p>
<p id="SmWmWY">After the Indians slugged their way to victory in Game 1, the pressure shifted to the opposing dugout. The Yankees needed to take a game on the road, even the series, and return to the Bronx with an opportunity to close things out. “They were in position to do that,” Caray says. “Until Chamberlain came in and the bugs came out.”</p>
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<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="ALDS: New York Yankees v Cleveland Indians - Game 2" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EWQLuRZHio8PzmKHfe7GDIYJbyE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22504847/77205926.jpg">
<cite>Gregory Shamus/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Yankees manager Joe Torre talks to reliever Joba Chamberlain as New York infielders try to swat away the midges that had descended upon their ALDS Game 2 matchup against the Indians in Cleveland in 2007</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="IZBpuP">About three weeks before Game 2, the midges were minuscule eggs nestled into nutrient-rich mud at the bottom of Lake Erie.</p>
<p id="xm6eOe">Laid primarily in warm, still water sources such as lakes, rivers, and streams, midge eggs hatch and begin the insect’s four-stage life cycle. In their larval stage, they look like bright red worms that burrow into sediment and organic matter for a couple of weeks or sometimes months. Once they reach the pupal stage—and when the water is warm enough—they swim to the surface, a three-day journey that prepares the midges to become winged adults. “Once it hits the top of the water, it quickly splits its skin open and it liberates a little adult midge,” says Joe Keiper, an entomologist and the executive director at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. “It unfurls its wings and quickly flies away before it can be eaten by a fish.”</p>
<p id="2jUnRr">At that point, thousands of midges take flight together in what becomes a frantic attempt to reproduce. Over the course of just three days, the males will mate and die, and the females will return to the water to drop their eggs to continue the life cycle. “Nature is pretty harsh, so if you are a tiny little midge, imagine getting hit by a drop of rain. It’s nothing to us, but to something that is orders of magnitude smaller than us, it could be a disaster,” Keiper says. “That’s why insects reproduce so prolifically—it increases their chances of surviving.”</p>
<p id="slTc5h">On that particular night, dew points had reached the 60s, meaning there was an excessive amount of moisture in the air. Thanks to the growing October heat wave, the temperature of Lake Erie had become just warm enough to trigger another midge cycle. Though midges typically don’t travel far, according to Kelly Dobeck, a Cleveland-based meteorologist, the swarm could have been nudged toward the stadium by a light northern wind that developed into the later hours. “Toward that time of day, we can get clouds moving in that’ll fire up the lake breeze, so just that little push can sometimes [be enough],” Dobeck says. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="vJKOnY"><q>“Just because of perfect conditions—the bright lights, the warm temps, the winds coming in from the lake—you get the insects blown in there. By chance, that poor pitcher got kind of smothered.” —Entomologist Joe Keiper</q></aside></div>
<p id="iRCkul">Keiper suggests that as the midges floated into the ballpark’s vicinity, the towering light standards acted like a magnet. Because most insects are attracted to light, the midges instinctively navigated toward the field. “The interesting thing about swarming insects is that many of them, including these midges, look for a high point,” Keiper says. In this case, thanks to the mound’s elevation, the high point became the pitcher. “We don’t know for sure, but it just seems to make a lot of sense with what we know of insect biology. It’s like a rallying point where the swarm will occur so males can find females easily.” </p>
<p id="O3w4IK">Midges are typically more active as night sets in, which is one of the reasons Dobeck tells Clevelanders to keep bright lights turned off around their homes when they expect swarms to hit the city. “You have to remind people that it happens all the way through October, as long as the lake water is warm,” she says. But with Jacobs Field all lit up, nothing could prevent the bugs’ inland migration. </p>
<p id="eT7dQP">“Just because of perfect conditions—the bright lights, the warm temps, the winds coming in from the lake—you get the insects blown in there,” Keiper says. “By chance, that poor pitcher got kind of smothered.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="wOvvO9">The first signs of the bugs came in the top of the eighth. Mientkiewicz hit third that inning, and remembers having to call timeout multiple times in the box to swat the midges out of his face. “[Jeter] thought I was like trying to mess with the pitcher by stepping out, and I’m like ‘No dude, the bugs are all in my nose, my face,’ he really couldn’t tell,” Mientkiewicz says. “Just being able to concentrate was almost impossible.” Once the Yankees took the field, Mientkiewicz says, “it just got to be so bad.”</p>
<p id="FXWf02">On television, the insects swirling around Chamberlain’s head looked like snowflakes, until the camera zoomed in to show the black specks coating every inch of his skin. It didn’t take long to see their effects. Chamberlain walked Grady Sizemore on four consecutive pitches to start the inning, something he’d done only once against the 91 batters he’d faced during that regular season. When his next pitch got past catcher Jorge Posada, he motioned to the Yankees dugout to express his discomfort. Not wanting to waste a mound visit, Torre sent trainer Gene Monahan—armed with bug spray—out to the mound to see what could be done.</p>
<p id="94Ao40">After spraying Chamberlain down, Monahan passed the insecticide around to Jeter, Rodriguez, and Robinson Canó, all of whom applied the aerosol repellent liberally before offering it to second base umpire Fieldin Culbreth. Mientkiewicz, however, refused to join in the spontaneous confab. “I didn’t think it was going to work,” he says. “They weren’t biting you, they were just annoying. There’s nothing you can do—there’s so many of them that they were stuck to everything.” </p>
<p id="2nOdAV">Indeed, bug spray was the wrong decision that night—the liquid only attracted even more midges to stick to Chamberlain’s increasingly sweaty skin. “It got in the guys’ eyes probably,” Keiper says. “Insect repellent is not some easygoing stuff. It’s poison. Basically they poisoned their pitcher and said, ‘Now go do your best.’”</p>
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<p id="TYUfxj">Cleveland’s trainers were more familiar with the midges, and thus avoided the repellent. “Our trainers knew it. They understood,” Shelton says. “I don’t think you saw a lot of our people putting it on. You have people from Northeast Ohio around, you understand it a little bit.”</p>
<p id="KbAKyi">In the broadcast booth with Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly, Caray had no playbook for the bug delay. “With a rain delay, you see the grounds crew come out and they pull the tarp on, there’s a natural progression to the delay and understanding what is going on,” he says. “But nobody had any idea at all that bugs were gonna stop the game, or that bug spray was gonna make it worse.” The crew eventually sent the broadcast back to TBS studios in Atlanta, where Ernie Johnson tried to make sense of what was happening and buy time for Caray to determine the direction of the game. “I think that was the most difficult part of it,” Caray says. </p>
<p id="nN0JOJ">After a short pause, play continued. Though he’d later come to regret this decision, Torre made no effort to delay the inning further. “Joe was such a high-character guy,” Wedge says. “Whatever he would have [preferred] I would have respected.” But much like crew chief Bruce Froemming, who had a bug-less view from where he was standing down the right-field line, Torre couldn’t grasp the severity of the midges from his vantage point in the dugout. “You’re breathing [and] they’re going in your nose, they’re going in your mouth, they’re going in your ears, they’re sticking to your face, your forehead, the back of your neck,” Clemens says. “To stand out there on the mound and throw a baseball as hard as Joba throws it, they should have called it and waited the 35 minutes for that to clear.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="hLQz3n"><q>“To stand out there on the mound and throw a baseball as hard as Joba throws it, they should have called it and waited the 35 minutes for that to clear.” —Former Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens</q></aside></div>
<p id="TBGc0t">On the first pitch after play resumed, Asdrúbal Cabrera bunted Sizemore along to third. Then Travis Hafner took Chamberlain’s first offering of his at-bat and lined the ball straight at Mientkiewicz, who squeezed the second out. “I remember Posada setting up inside and I’m playing on the grass and I was like, ‘Oh no,’ and he hit an absolute rocket at me that thankfully was right to me,” Mientkiewicz says. “I’m surprised it didn’t explode my glove because it hit me square in my chest. If it had been an inch to either side I think I would have either missed it or taken it off the body, because I literally couldn’t see.” </p>
<p id="07Hdgr">With two outs and Victor Martinez at the plate, the midges disrupted Chamberlain again, as he threw a second wild pitch. Sizemore sprinted home and slid beneath the pitcher’s tag, tying the game and bringing more than 44,000 dormant fans to life. “I really give our guys credit,” Shelton says. “They did not get affected at any point—they were laser focused on winning. We’d won big [the night] before and then that night it was just any way we could just try to score a run.”</p>
<p id="JRMhrP">“As soon as he scored that run and we tied the game, we felt like, ‘We got this now.’” Cabrera says. “‘Let’s win this game at home and go to finish the series in New York.’”</p>
<p id="qbAvDd">After Chamberlain avoided further damage in the eighth, the bugs remained relentless in the top of the ninth. But Cleveland’s roster was more familiar with them. Instead of swatting at them like the Yankees had, the Indians sharpened their focus and shrugged them off. “Fausto didn’t get fazed by it, and I think the rest of us kind of fell in line behind him and we weren’t going to really acknowledge it and just try to keep going,” Garko says. The pitcher erased Johnny Damon with a groundout, and then struck out Jeter. After Bobby Abreu eked out an infield single and stole second base, the Yankees’ hopes rested on Rodriguez, that season’s league leader in RBI, to knock him in. In the midst of that at-bat, cameras zeroed in on Carmona’s unflinching face as he peered toward home plate, midges angling in every direction. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat and his 113th pitch of the night, Carmona made Rodriguez whiff with a 97 mph sinker on the inside corner to finish the frame. “He was joking with us that he eats those bugs for breakfast,” Lewis says. “It was just another day for him.”</p>
<div id="EoVQ54"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JWmlgriRU4M?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; clipboard-write; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="7IrzLr">The bugs dispersed shortly after the ninth, and Cleveland capped off the wild night in the 11th. Hafner connected on another line drive against New York reliever Luis Vizcaíno that scored Kenny Lofton to win the game, 2-1. It set off an ear-splitting celebration that felt bigger than an ALDS victory—it was a burst of relief, an improbable comeback in the strangest of elements, and an iconic triumph that would be remembered by generations. Most importantly, it provided enough momentum to close out the Yankees in Game 4, marking Cleveland’s first MLB playoff series win since 1998. </p>
<p id="lIKTXf">“I’ve been playing this game, been part of this game for a long time, I’ve seen some of the strangest things happen, with bugs or bees or other animals,” Wedge says. “But it’s the mindset that you have overall that’s real—that’s a given that allows you to make your way through something like that. That’s where I was really proud of our guys.” </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="ALDS: New York Yankees v Cleveland Indians - Game 2" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/c0H3A8ir0_kgw5KEFskgkB15Jj8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22506242/77206421.jpg">
<cite>Gregory Shamus/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Yankees catcher Jorge Posada sprays pitcher Mariano Rivera with bug spray during their ALDS Game 2 matchup against Cleveland in 2007</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="6F9Rqm"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="IJOtuI">Then a Cleveland-based entomologist, Keiper wasn’t used to receiving so many phone calls and emails late at night. But as the midges descended onto Jacobs Field and messages flooded his inbox, he realized that he had to flip on the television to witness bug history. “It was pretty crazy,” he says. “I can’t remember another time like that.” Though he’s not a diehard sports fan, Keiper saw an opportunity to educate Cuyahoga County residents about their backyard insects. </p>
<p id="RDj5H8">“A lot of topics in entomology are very esoteric, but when you have something that everyone can relate to, they want to talk about it, and when they talk about it, they learn. That is what it’s all about,” Keiper says. “You get into academics or the museum world, you’re in it, in part at least, because you want to impart that knowledge, and grow appreciation for it.”</p>
<p id="IqBrRK">For Chamberlain, the person most affected by the midges, the night probably has a different tint. Despite the electric start to his career, he never developed into the lights-out performer many thought he would become. He toggled between starting and relieving over his 10 years in the majors, serving stints in Detroit and Kansas City and ending with a 25-21 record, 3.81 ERA, and seven saves. Chamberlain’s arc, perhaps unfairly, makes the “Bug Game” feel like an inflection point—a fluky moment that ended an otherwise flawless start in pinstripes. To his credit, the righty never made excuses for his lack of command, even <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/bug-game-forever-part-of-tribe-yankees-lore-c257346172">making light of the scenario</a> upon signing with Cleveland briefly before retiring. “You have great success early and then a couple things don’t go right and then you might want to question yourself,” Clemens says. “But I always thought of Joba as being a pretty confident kid.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="zXgLIN"><q>“It got in the guys’ eyes probably. Insect repellent is not some easygoing stuff. Basically they poisoned their pitcher and said, ‘Now go do your best.’” —Joe Keiper</q></aside></div>
<p id="P7W3Uj">The series had other casualties. Coming off their third consecutive ALDS ouster, the Yankees offered Torre a cheaper contract, but the skipper declined, ending a 12-year managerial run that included four World Series titles. When reflecting on that night, Torre said he <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/10/04/the-night-when-bugs-changed-the-course-of-yankees-history/">“second-guessed” himself</a> for not taking his players off the field and, instead, letting the inning continue. “No matter how long you were in the game—Joba Chamberlain for a couple of months, or Joe Torre who had spent his life in the game—nothing could prepare you for that,” Caray says in Torre’s defense. “Bad breaks are a part of baseball, that’s the old cliché. It’s really true—and the bad break for the Yankees was a young, inexperienced pitcher pitching in the game of his life, and nobody, nothing could prepare him for what took place.”</p>
<p id="KSp90x">Beyond taking their place in the annals of baseball lore, the midges also provided a brief reprieve from the narrative of a curse surrounding Cleveland sports. After all the pain the city’s fans had endured over the years, the “Bug Game” offered marginal proof that the sports gods didn’t always spite their city. The seemingly biblical anomaly had worked in the team’s favor, delivering a legendary October victory to a city starving for one.</p>
<p id="uzhP0h">As a way to commemorate the game the following year, the Indians hung a black-and-white photo of Carmona staring through the bugs—what Lewis says teammates called his “breakfast picture”—inside their spring training facility. It’s there to this day, a reminder of the resilience the team displayed that year. “That was a huge sense of pride and example of ‘You never know what you’re going to face,’” Lewis says, “and [that] the adversity that you’ve got to overcome can literally come in all shapes and sizes.”</p>
<p id="CYdXKj">More than a decade later, both organizations remain bonded by the bugs, a shared ordeal that’s become a talking point in recent playoff matchups. Cleveland hotels have even <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanKutyNJ/status/1310612021789052929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1310612021789052929%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mlb.com%2Fnews%2Fbug-game-forever-part-of-tribe-yankees-lore-c257346172">posted notes about the harmless insects</a>, cautioning guests to close windows and reminding them that the bugs “helped the Indians to win.” The midges’ recurring presence isn’t exactly a point of pride; the bugs are a flat-out nuisance. But summer swarms still serve as nostalgic reminders of a game that will never be forgotten.</p>
<p id="9e0gyH">Though midges have returned to the stadium (which was renamed Progressive Field in 2008), nothing has resembled that 2007 infestation. And how could it? The humid air, the northern breeze, the odd start time, the bright lights—they all conspired and aligned seamlessly that October night. “An incredible coincidence,” Garko says. “We [barely] put a ball in play to score a run and tie the game up, and we end up winning. Who knows what would have happened had the [midges] not shown up? </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="d3TuTV">“It’s kind of what sports is all about.”</p>
<p id="breG13"><em>Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and entertainment writer based in New York. His work has also appeared in Esquire.com, GQ.com, and </em>The New York Times<em>.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/5/11/22428950/yankees-cleveland-bug-game-midges-joba-chamberlainJake Kring-Schreifels2021-05-11T05:50:00-04:002021-05-11T05:50:00-04:00Most of All, Cicadas Sound Like Summertime
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2NWmMUOKdXy60fx1Pyk0kLOsiVs=/517x0:3184x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69267394/soundofsummer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://jaytorresart.com/" target="_blank">Jay Torres</a></figcaption>
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<p>Cicadas sound like ice cream trucks, the whistle of a whiffle ball, the clink of ice in a glass of lemonade—stealthily singing in the backdrop as if they were there all along</p> <p id="eIiG7i"><em>Have you heard the news? The cicadas are coming—and some have even started to arrive already. In a matter of days, trillions of the once-every-17-years species of Brood X cicadas will emerge from their burrows and blanket much of the Eastern United States in a wave of ear-splitting mating calls and discarded molt shells. To commemorate the occasion, we here at</em> The Ringer<em> present to you </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22430224/welcome-to-bug-day-on-the-ringer"><em>Bug Day</em></a><em>: a celebration of all things insects, and their influence—for better or worse—on sports and popular culture.</em></p>
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<p id="hBgrDF">You just know it’s gonna be a scorcher when you hear the cicadas in the morning. They sound like 90 degrees in August; like sizzling, sticky heat bubbling over and down the tops of the Sycamore trees around you. They sound like ice cream trucks, the whistle<em> </em>of a whiffle ball, the clink of ice in a glass of lemonade—cicadas stealthily singing in the backdrop as if they were there all along.</p>
<p id="PFIUEp">This year, in a matter of days—or hours, or <a href="https://twitter.com/AndyMcCanse/status/1391721410213601281">maybe it’s already happening</a>—the conjoined song of the cicadas will elevate to a symphony. The Brood X cohort of cicadas, the largest of 15 known periodical cicada species—seven of which emerge every 13 or 17 years—will crawl up from their underground burrows and unleash a cacophony of noise across much of the Eastern United States. At least 15 states are expected to welcome trillions—yes, <em>trillions</em>—of cicadas over the course of four to six glorious weeks. Glorious because, as much as this event may sound like the plot of a fucked up Guillermo del Toro film, the phenomenon is a wondrous and sentimental marvel of nature. Never mind the fact that the cicadas you hear are males crooning to prospective partners, an altogether necessary yet romantic act of survival; the hum of the cicadas is tinged in nostalgia. To hear their song is to remember childhood—and not just for those who grew up in the pockets of woodlands scattered across the Atlantic seaboard. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="Fwmx9I"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Summer Is Coming. So Are Trillions of Brood X Cicadas.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/11/22429664/cicadas-brood-x-emergence-17-year-wait"},{"title":"The Night the Bugs Came for Joba Chamberlain","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/5/11/22428950/yankees-cleveland-bug-game-midges-joba-chamberlain"},{"title":"The Definitive Ranking of Pop Culture Bugs","url":"https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428629/pop-culture-bugs-ranked-bunny-beatles-mothra"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="Ius8Qe">Haruki Murakami wrote in <em>A Wild Sheep Chase</em>: “Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas—if I like these things, why should I apologize?” In his native Japan, cicadas—or <em>semi</em>—hold special significance in popular culture. From a young age, children collect the insect’s discarded molt shells or, if they’re lucky and capable, live cicadas, who will continue to emit their whirring shrieks when grasped between fingers. The bug has shown up all over Japanese culture from literature to fashion and anime. “If you’re trying to convey the sense of it being the height of summer in a movie or an anime, you can include the sound of cicadas and everyone will understand straight away,” artist Makoto Aida <a href="https://features.japantimes.co.jp/cicada/#:~:text=Cicadas%20%E2%80%94%20known%20as%20semi%20in,as%20far%20north%20as%20Hokkaido.">told <em>The Japan Times</em></a>.</p>
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<p id="t73qS4">For millennia, human societies across the world have identified the cicadas as the sound of summer. Classical poets loved them: “Feel the freshness of the air; how pretty and pleasant it is; how it echoes with the summery, sweet song of the cicadas’ chorus!” Socrates says in Plato’s 370 BCE dialogue, <em>Phaedrus. </em>Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, wrote in his poem <em>Works and Days</em>,<em> </em>“When the Skolymus flowers, and the tuneful Tettix”—ancient Greek for cicada—“sitting on his tree in the weary summer season pours forth from under his wings his shrill song.” During the Xia dynasty in ancient China, the cicadas’ emergence at the summer solstice was <a href="https://orthsoc.org/sina/c700lm29sec01.pdf">marked as an official date</a> on the calendar. Danish-New Zealand librarian and ethnologist Johannes Andersen noted in a 1926 study of New Zealand fauna: “[T]he reason the Maori held the insect in such estimation was that its cheerful song sounded in the summer when the days were warm and long and food was plentiful. Then the Maori, happy himself, enjoyed the shrill song of the merry cicada.”</p>
<p id="hVtw8w">Still, not everyone is thrilled about this year’s emergence of the Brood X cicadas. While cicadas are totally harmless—they don’t bite or sting—they are, well, bugs, and frankly rather large and disgusting-looking ones at that. There’s something disconcerting about trillions of gigantic, red-eyed insects swarming around the air, emitting piercing shrieks following a biblical, once-every-17-years awakening. Just try to make it through this David Attenborough narration of the cicadas’ life cycle without chopping up your face into a twisted screwball, like you just ate an entire pack of sour Warheads in one sitting. </p>
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<p id="W1Y2U6">And to some, even the lovely melodies the Greek philosophers waxed poetic about can be disturbing, if not outright painful. Cicadas are the world’s loudest insects. Their mating calls can reach up to 100 decibels; a sound of a motorcycle racing past you is 95 decibels, an emergency siren comes in between 120 and 140 decibels—which <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/animals/insects/cicadas-superfamily-cicadoidea/">some cicada species in Australia can reach</a> in unison. Just 10 more decibels can cause damage to human ears. But to be in the cicadas’ presence is to sit just a tad bit too close to the stage at a memorable concert: Sure, the amps might cause some discomfort, but it’s still a binding collective experience that’ll leave an everlasting mark on you.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="PDYW2J">Would we have it any other way? The cicadas’ call is incredibly powerful and defining. Surrounded by their inescapable sound, you’re suddenly transported to a time you thought was long past. When you played for hours in the summer haze until dusk set and the fireflies began buzzing against the pinkening sky. When you sat under some tall, leafy tree during some oppressively hot day, relieved to be in the shade, like Red when he reads <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAYXlC59yWs">Andy Dufresne’s letter</a> at the end of <em>The Shawshank Redemption</em>. You probably never noticed the cicadas humming in that scene. But they were there, as they have been for parts of many of our lives. And then one day the temperature cools, the leaves brown, you move to some new place without the cicadas, and you miss them when they’re gone.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2021/5/11/22428860/cicadas-emerging-sound-of-summer-nostalgiaAric Jenkins