June 2, 2026 - Generations, Weird Al, Lemurs, Backrooms
This week's Boo's N.E.W.S. is all about the weird: Weird generational info, "Weird Al" concert review, weird lemur behaviour and another really weird A24 movie.
Nuggets of Information: Generations
I’m Gen X, the envy of all the other Gens that came after, which include Millennials/Gen Y, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and Gen Beta. Before us, Baby Boomers, before them, the Silent Generation, who were preceded by the Greatest Generation, who were preceded by the Lost Generation. That may be enough for most, but there must have been a few generations before then. But how many?
While the world record for the longest recorded lineage belongs to the philosopher Confucius—spanning an impressive 80 generations over 3,000 years—our species has been around way longer. Homo sapiens have been walking the Earth for roughly 300,000 years. So, how many Grannies and Pee-Paws does that actually make?
To answer that, scientists have to calculate the “generation interval,” which is the average age at which humans have children. Historically, researchers relied on recent written data. A 2003 study of Iceland’s meticulous church records pinned the average generation gap at 30.3 years, while European data from the late 20th century suggested 29.1 years.
To peer deeper into the past, scientists looked at our DNA. As parents age, the specific blend of genetic mutations they pass down to their kids changes. In a 2023 study published in Science Advances, researchers used these mutational footprints to map how parental age fluctuated over a quarter of a million years.
“If you know the types of mutations that individuals leave to their children according to their age... you can try to estimate how old the mixture of individuals was,” explains Matthew Hahn, a population geneticist at Indiana University Bloomington and the study’s lead author.
Hahn’s team crunched the genomic data and discovered that across the last 250,000 years, the average human generation interval was actually 26.9 years. When you apply that metric to the 300,000-year history of modern humans, there have been an estimated 11,152 generations of humans.
So when those around us lose their minds over the neighborhood kids on dirt bikes or their loud unintelligible music, just consider that the only difference between us and a Middle Paleolithic parent 275,000 years ago is that their kid was probably banging two rocks together too loudly and riding a baby wooly mammoth through the camp. Same headache, different millennium.
Enrichment: “Weird Al”!
He’s back! Yes - “Weird Al” Yankovic came back to Atlanta this weekend, and boy was it a great show. Our crowd consisted of Julie & Tom (Tom being our biggest Yankovicophile), David and Kylar, and Chris R. We met up at Mosaic, a wonderful local restaurant, that sadly was closing (temporarily?) after our dinner service, due to construction outside their space. Very sad, and we hope they reopen soon. We had a lovely meal.
We headed up to Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, where I had seen that killer Tedeschi Trucks/Jason Isbell show a few weeks ago. I like this venue - not too far a drive, ample parking, friendly staff.
By the time we got to our seats the opener, Puddles Pity Party, had started his set. Puddles is a stage persona created and performed by Mike Geier, who stands an impressive 6’ 8”. He grew up in Richmond, VA, but has spent a long stretch of his career in Atlanta, both as Puddles and in his band Kingsized. Puddles is great - soulful baritone voice, great timing and mixing skills, and a depth and sadness that are at times haunting. Don’t let the clown outfit fool you. Lisa got a cool shirt:
Then “Weird Al” came out. What an great show! His core band includes Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, Jim West, and Steve Jay, and they have performed with him for more than 40 years. Additional touring musicians rounded out his crew. They had a big setlist - it was impressive to watch them play so many huge songs, in their own style with their own lyrics, all night. They are very, very talented.
In between songs, videos from the last 40 years would play - all funny and ... weird for sure. It was more than a live music show - it was a celebration of a decades-long parody of our very society, as seen through popular music. Weird, stupid, meaningless, acutely perceptive, scathing, hilarious. The crowd was fun too - a very eclectic bunch. I was thrilled that 12,000 people not only showed up, but sang along to every song - even the ones that weren’t big on MTV.
I saw him last summer at Shaky Knees, and years ago at Chastain. He never disappoints. Always puts on a great show. Next time he is in a city near you, GO SEE “WEIRD AL” - he is criss-crossing the country now through October. Check out his website for tour dates.
Workshop: You Aren’t Very Demure, Mr. Lemur
While most primates binge on sweet, juicy fruit, lemurs opted for a mostly leafy diet. According to a study in Scientific Reports, this isn’t picky eating—it is a survival tactic. The fruit native to Madagascar, the only place lemurs live, contains the lowest protein levels of any fruit across the globe.
An international team analyzed fruit from 62 forest sites globally. By measuring nitrogen—a critical building block for proteins—they found that Madagascar’s fruit is too nitrogen-poor to sustain standard primate metabolism. This deficit drove lemurs to develop some truly bizarre survival strategies:
Extreme Adaptations: To cope, various species eat leaves, hibernate during lean periods, or eat around the clock just to hit their basic nutrient quotas.
Stink Fighting: Ring-tailed lemurs settle disputes by rubbing scent secretions from their wrists onto their tails and waving them at rivals. The male with the most overwhelming stench wins the argument, while the loser backs down without a single scratch being exchanged. That’s my kind of fightin’!
Toxic Snacks: Black lemurs deliberately bite into toxic millipedes. They rub the secretions all over their fur to act as a natural insect repellent—though the chemical buzz often leaves them visibly droopy-eyed and intoxicated. College kids call it “getting lemured.”
The Sifaka Saunter: Because their back legs are built for massive vertical leaps between trees, species like the Sifaka cannot walk on all fours when on the ground. Instead, they perform a comical, sideways bounding dance.
“Lemurs represent the extremes and the extremely strange in the primate world,” explains Abigail Derby Lewis, a senior conservation ecologist at The Field Museum. Lead author Giuseppe Donati of Oxford Brookes University notes that this low-quality fruit ultimately forced lemurs to differentiate their diets and develop the unique traits we see today.
Selected Content: Backrooms
Last Sunday we met our friends Kathy & Kevin at our local cineplex to see Kane Parson’s Backrooms, which, not surprisingly, is an A24 film. It was very weird, unsettling and tense. I went in knowing very little about the Backrooms phenomenon, but quickly felt something was not right. It was both claustrophobic and expansive. The actors were all compelling and believable - showing their characters’ desperation and trauma. The cinematography was intense. I felt unease and discomfort throughout the film - even in scenes not in the Backrooms. (Example: Role playing in therapy session.)
It is hard to express how we felt about this movie. We did not know the backstory behind Backrooms. Maybe that would have helped? I would recommend it, but prepare yourself to sit in some discomfort. To say I liked it seems wrong, but I definitely appreciated it. Lisa and I aren’t quite sure about the ending, and have questions. Would love to talk about it with any of you who do see it.
As I mentioned, we didn’t know about the internet Backrooms universe. But after seeing the movie, I did some research. If you want to know about it backstory before seeing the movie, read on. If not, come back after you check out the film.
In 2019, a post to the anonymous imageboard 4chan featured a creepy picture of a series of connected corridors with yellowed carpet and wallpaper, accompanied by the text:
If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you
What started as a single 2019 message board post asking for “disquieting images that just feel ‘off’” triggered a massive wave of collaborative internet fiction. Users quickly expanded off the original photograph, building elaborate wikis detailing endless “levels” and hostile entities roaming the damp-carpeted maze. The horror isn’t explicitly thrown in your face. As internet studies professor Tama Leaver noted to ABC News, the phenomenon works so effectively because it invites you to “interpret what’s not shown.”
In 2022, then-16-year-old animator Kane Parsons uploaded a hyper-realistic short film that blew open the lore, later caught the attention of A24, and resulted in the feature film adaptation that is now in theaters.
The source of it all, however, is appropriately basic. In 2024, dedicated internet sleuths tracked down the origin of the original 4chan photo. It came from a 2002 digital camera snapshot taken during a water-damaged renovation of a HobbyTown toy store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
I love it when we make the papers