Discussing the Mahatma with a four-year old is like taking Gandhi from a baby. I heard that line many years ago from Larry Josephson, radio personality on NPR. I had to look up how to spell Gandhi. It has a wandering H in my mind. I placed it right after the G at first. It can almost go anywhere in the middle. My granddaughter Lianna shares her birthday with Gandhi (and Groucho Marx!). October 2.
Groucho was interviewing a woman contestant on You Bet Your Life who told him she had 17 children. Groucho asked her: “How do you explain that?,” and she said, “Well, Groucho, I really love my husband.” And Groucho said, “I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”
Linda and I went to see a Groucho impersonator, Frank Ferrante, in Morristown, and he recounted that tale. To my mind, it is absolutely perfect humor.
Today’s puzzle started off with ROOMBA, “Autonomous household helper since 2002,” and sort of continued the vacuum cleaner theme with the next clue “I feel your pain!,” the answer to which was THAT SUCKS.
There was a great clue for ALE: “Quaff of gruit and wort, in days of yore.” And if you had too much, you might become SALLOW (“unhealthy looking.”) Been there, for sure.
One New Year’s Eve in the 1970’s, I had too much pizza and beer with Sylvia, our law secretary, and her Vietnam-vet boyfriend Jerry, in an outstanding pizza place in Rochester NY (Bay and Goodman). I excused myself and went to the men’s room. I sat down in a stall and waited patiently to die. Although the pizza there was great, the place itself was pretty dumpy and there was no door to my stall. But I was way past the point of caring about appearances. After too much time passed, Sylvia told Jerry to go check on me — to make sure I was okay. So he came in and was looking at me, trying to determine if I was okay. (I only learned this later.) A gentleman standing by the sink, who didn’t know that Jerry knew me, saw him looking at me and said “That guy is gone.”
I guess I was pretty SALLOW. But I lived.
MOO was nicely clued with “Sound emitted by methane emitters.” (Get it? A cow’s flatulence is comprised of methane, and a cow says MOO.) There goes the old NYT “breakfast test.” (The puzzle is not supposed to bring to mind images that would be unpleasant to a casual reader over breakfast.)
Remember the famous bar scene in Star Wars? It took place on MOS EISLEY, clued as “‘Wretched hive of scum and villainy,’ per Obiwan Kenobi.” Impossible to get that one, except via the crossing words. But for only $399.00 you can get a LEGO Mos Eisley, Star Wars fans! Take a look here: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/mos-eisley-cantina-75290
And I liked this one: the clue was “Flat . . . or inflate?” and the answer was PAD. (Get it?)
So how did you two meet?
We live in the same building. I have an apartment in front, and she has a flat behind.
According to The Writer’s Almanac, on this day in 1900, Henry James started a correspondence with Edith Wharton whose work he admired. They became life-long friends. Wharton’s work was more popular than James’s. When he learned that she bought a car with her earnings from one book, he joked that he hoped to be able to afford a wheelbarrow from the sales of his next work. (Alright — not as funny as Groucho, but who is?) He appreciated her friendship, and once wrote to her, “Your letters come into my damp desert here even as the odour of promiscuous spices …might be wafted to some compromised oasis from a caravan of the Arabian nights.”
Yeah.
What he said.
I’ll just let myself out now — no need to get up.
The Wellington Files 