V is for Venus

Venus is a planet, the second one from our sun; it is roughly the same size as the Earth, with a diameter of 12,100km, about 1040km smaller in diameter than our planet. After the moon, it is generally the brightest object in the night sky.

The planet is named after a goddess, specifically the Roman goddess of love and beauty, who is the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and whose myths are largely shared.

There are four songs that start with the word Venus that charted on the US pop charts between 1955 and 2000.
Venus by Frankie Avalon, which went to #1 in 1959. I did not know that a disco version of this same song by Avalon went to #46 in 1976.
Venus in Blue Jeans by Jimmy Clayton, which reached #7 in 1962.
Venus by Shocking Blue which went to #1 in 1970; the cover version by Bananarama also went to #1, in 1986.
Finally, Venus & Mars Rock Show by Wings – that would be one of Paul McCartney’s groups – went to #12 in 1975.

Speaking of Venus and Mars, author John Gray made a whole cottage industry of the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. “John’s books have sold over 50 million copies in 50 different languages. His groundbreaking book…was the best-selling book of the 1990s. It launched his Mars Venus book series that forever changed the way men and women view their relationships.” (Feel free to discuss; I thought Gray’s message was a bit oversimplistic.)

Finally, there is the Venus flytrap. Antithetical to the goddess’ message of love, it is a carnivorous plant – see it in action! – which is native only in the Carolinas in the United States, though transplanted elsewhere around the world. Audrey II is a giant Venus flytrap that starred in various iterations of Little Shop of Horrors.

Oddly, there was a fictional radio disc jockey on the TV show called WKRP in Cincinnati with the pseudonym of Venus Flytrap, played by Tim Reid. Watch Venus Explains the Atom.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8