Second Friday the 13th

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It’s a measure of how regimented my life has become.  The 9-2-5 workday is ruled by the calendar in a way teaching wasn’t.  But on this, the second Friday the 13th of 2026 I figured I’d reveal something that only repetitive calendar watching taught me.  It’s so simple many children probably know it, but it is something that being a drone taught me.  Ready?  Unless it’s a leap year, the dates in March are the same as they are in February.  Mathematically (and I don’t think that way) this makes perfect sense.  February’s 28 days are evenly divisible by seven, something that isn’t true of either 30 or 31.  That means in three years out of four, March begins on the same day of the month that February does.  So if February has a Friday the 13th, so does March.  

Photo credit: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikicommons

I’ve confessed to being interested in holidays and significant dates.  Last month we had Friday the 13th before St. Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and the following Monday, the 16th, was Presidents Day.  A special long weekend.  This kind of syzygy always catches my attention.  I knew even then, however, that Friday the 13th would recur in March.  The only extenuation, in this case, is that St. Patrick’s Day is on Tuesday.  Now, I have some Irish ancestry and Tuesday always vexes me a bit.  Well, the coming Tuesday, I mean.  Green isn’t really my color.  I have a green sweater that doesn’t really fit anymore, but I try to wear it just about every year.  (I’ve had it since high school.  I can still fit into my college clothes—those that I still have, but alas, nothing green.)  I keep clothes until they literally wear out.  I can’t donate them because they’re rags by the time I’m done wearing them.  I grew up poor and that shows.

So here I am on Friday the 13th wondering if I should buy something green to wear on Tuesday.  You see, I take holidays seriously.  One of my unpublished books was about holidays.  I ended up using some of it in The Wicker Man, but May Day is still a ways off at this point.  Friday the 13th isn’t really a holiday, except for horror fans.  I’ve only seen the first two movies in the franchise—slashers have never been my favorites.  So this is just another Friday at work for me.  It feels sort of like the movie Groundhog Day.  The calendar just keeps telling me it’s a work day.  But at least on Tuesday I’ll be wearing green.  And if I decide to act on my impulse, contrary to my usual practice, and spend money on a sweater instead of books, maybe it’ll even be something new.

Seasonal Horror

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It was a rare combination: Friday the 13th, Saturday Valentine’s Day, and Monday some federal holiday.  One of our first friends as a couple called unexpectedly on Friday to say she was in the area and that led to an impromptu meeting for a late supper at a diner.  Still, being Friday the 13th a horror movie was prescribed.  So I picked My Bloody Valentine.  I’ve seen it before, of course.  (I had a whole life before this blog, as witness this friend.)  But the confluence of Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day forced me to realize that I’d never posted about it.  And the fact that Monday is Presidents Day made a horror movie mandatory, given the current denizen of the White House.  Back to My Bloody Valentine.  First of all, there was the question of which to watch.  The original from 1981?  Kids in high school were talking about this, but I didn’t watch it until several years later.  Then there was a reboot, My Bloody Valentine 3D, which wasn’t as highly rated, in 2009.  It nevertheless was well made and, it was streaming for free.  Spoilers follow.

I’d forgotten whodunit, so the movie kept me guessing.  Here’s how the story goes: a coal mine cave-in led Harry Warden to kill his fellow miners to preserve the air to survive.  He went into a coma, but after a year he awoke and massacred the hospital staff and kids partying at the mine on Valentines Day.  He was shot dead.  Ten years later, Tom, the son of the former mine owner, one of the kids at the fateful party, returns to town to sell the mine.  Instead, he becomes Harry Warden in his mind and begins killing again.  Viewers don’t know that it’s him since he wears a miner’s mask.  Suspicion is thrown on the sheriff, Axel, who was also one of the kids at the party.   And Tom and Axel are feuding over Sarah, now Axel’s wife, but formerly Tom’s girlfriend.  The movie effectively keeps you guessing whether Axel (who’s a philanderer) or Tom (who has mental problems) is the killer.

The movie has a Pennsylvania feel to it, having been filmed in my home state.  This is more in the industrial part where I grew up, rather than the Bucks County that features in M. Night Shyamalan movies.  The only thing they got wrong is that it doesn’t seem very cold for February.  (February can be a trickster in this state, with temperatures anywhere from the seventies to zero or below.)  It isn’t a bad horror offering.  The 3D effects are campy, but that only adds to the fun.  It was the right choice, given the confluence of red letter days.

Jason’s Javelin

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This past weekend was my third this year spent recovering from vaccinations.  The shingles jabs were worse, but this time it was a double-duty flu shot and bivalent Covid vaccine.  That’s as good an excuse as any for admitting to watching Friday the 13th, Part II.  In general I’m not a fan of sequels, but I’d read quite a bit about this one and I was curious because I hadn’t realized before watching the first installment years ago that Jason wasn’t the original killer.  I’m also not a fan of slashers, and I know that many people who dislike horror think all horror consists of such movies.  (It doesn’t.)  But still, Jason is a household name as a movie monster and I was having trouble concentrating with all those vaccines swirling around inside.

Utterly predictable, there are still a few jump startles that’ll catch a first viewing off-guard.  All I really knew about the film was Jason and Camp Crystal Lake and that generally teens get killed for having sex.  As many critics report, this kind of horror tends to have a “conservative” outlook—“sin” is brutally punished and the girl who refrains tends to be the last survivor.  That much you know just from doing your homework.  So as Jason hunts down the teens and dispatches them, along with a police officer and a crazy guy, you almost get bored.  There was one scene, however, that had unrecognized biblical roots.  Interestingly, I haven’t found anyone pointing that out.  When Jeff and Sandra go upstairs for sex, Jason takes a spear and thrusts them through, right in the act.

Analysts trace this scene to the movie Bay of Blood (which I’ve not seen), but in fact the inspiration comes from the Good Book.  In a genocidal mood in Numbers 25, Yahweh tells the Israelites to kill the Midianites among them.  Zimri is seen taking Cozbi into his tent, and Phinehas the priest grabs a javelin, rushes into Zimri’s tent and skewers the two of them in the act.  That scene stuck with my young mind as I read through the Bible, which is probably why it immediately came to mind while watching Part II.  Others may well have noticed this connection, but with the vaccine-induced lethargy I didn’t have the energy to go thumbing through my library to find it.  Besides, when I read things about movies I haven’t seen, they don’t often stay with me (which is one reason I give thorough descriptions of movies when I analyze them in my books).  This particular horror over, I know I don’t have to worry about the flu this year.